The Peaceful Gnome

I just finished reading an interesting article about a family living in a very small house on wheels.  It is encouraging to see that someone has actually attempted such a thing :-)  They have 3 children several cats and a hamster.  One thing that is mentioned towards the end is the idea of having more than one tiny house, especially if you have teens (or a grandpa!) Here is a link to the story, enjoy! Could you live with three kids, three cats and one hamster in 440 square feet? This family is trying

This morning's sunrise, through the smoke of the many fires in California...

I had to work this morning, my counterpart needed today off so my normal Sunday routine is gone.  Worse than just that though I was interrupted 3 times as I was attempting to do my routine of shower, get dressed, pray and go to work.  As a result of this I'm sitting here at work with no socks.  :-)  This wouldn't happen if I was willing to wear regular shoes on my way to work but I prefer sandals and put my socks and undershirt in my bag... which I neglected to do today.  Ah well, it's not the end of the world. When I went out to get in the car I found that it was coated with ash from the fires up in the Sierras, I had to wash the windshield to see out of it, the smoke and ash is everywhere in the valley today :-( Pray for rain...

Once again we have gone to the Yuba River to camp.  I already linked to this on FB but in keeping with my intention to stay away from that place as much as possible I'm putting this album slide show here as well.  Enjoy.

I wonder if I can make more regular posts here, and reduce by about 99% my posting frequency on that great time sucking, click baiting and profit making abomination, Facebook?  May Zuckerberg be cursed for his evil invention!   But this is not just a rant against the evil empire of Facebook. Nope, it's actually a continuation of my thoughts about rituals and routines and coping with life.  I'm sorry if this is boring, well not actually, I don't care if anyone thinks it's boring, it's my life we're talking about here. Sure it's boring!   But it's MINE! Until I began writing about being Aspie and the routines that I follow I hadn't realized how ritualized my whole life really is.  When I get up I must  take a shower first thing.  If I do not do that the entire day is "wrong" and I never get back on track until the next day when I can start over and do it right.  If I try taking a shower later in the morning or in the evening, it...

Once upon a time I took a couple of online tests for Asperger's Syndrome and I scored very  high on them all.  Does that mean I win? Most of the time I manage to cope fairly well with life. Most of the time I suppose that I pass as "normal," whatever that means. Most of the time. But sometimes my facade slips and I'm unable to maintain my cool and calm exterior  and then the seething mass of confusion and struggle that is beneath surges up to the surface, like lava bursting from a subterranean magma chamber it scorches whatever is near by when it erupts.  Sorry about that world. What is this "struggle" I am speaking of here?  It is the daily struggle to make sense of the chaotic world I inhabit.                                           SOUNDS!   Listen to how it sounds...                   ...

This morning the New Testament reading for the Morning Office was from James chapter 3.  "...if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body.  If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well.  Look at the ships also: though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs.  So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire!  And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.  For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.  ...

As I mentioned not too long ago on this blog I've returned to the Anglican Church after a long time away during which time I drifted through Lutheranism, Catholicism and atheism.  This return was made possible by the emergence in recent years, without me noticing until now, of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) as an alternative to the Episcopal Church USA (ECUSA)  which is no longer really a Christian denomination as far as I can tell, except in certain pockets of stubborn congregations here and there. Truly, I would never have left the Anglican Church if i had known this group was being formed.  I had called myself an " Anglo-Catholic " for a number of years.  I loved the idea of the Anglicans being the "middle-way" between Catholicism and Protestantism.  While confessional Lutheranism is sort of in the same place, a middle place, they generally don't have bishops, and are lacking in apostolic succession in the way Anglicans have it, by actual ...

Because I need and want to spend all of my time with these guys! I want to spend time working on projects with my grandsons, digging in the vegetable garden, building a house, building forts and taking care of chickens and maybe goats, who knows?  :-)  I want to be around every day, not banished to a distant city for no real reason. That's why.  

Same basic subject on a different day. I'm ready to move on into a phase of Radical Simplification in my life.  Getting rid of the clutter and junk that weighs me down so much.  Oh wait, I already did that!  It's OTHER PEOPLE'S clutter and junk that is weighing me down. When I look around our house I see large stacks of... stuff.  Most of it buried deeply beneath layers of other stuff for months on end, proving that it is neither needed nor really wanted.  The thing is I can't force others to unload all of this crap, trying to do so just makes me come off as nagging and grouchy.  I'm not even going to try actually, but in the process of deciding to move away from the concrete and stench of the city I think that will sort itself out :-) If everyone wants to come along with me then they won't have that much choice but to get rid of most of the crud... or find a place for it themselves.   Right now we're just doing it wrong!  A big...

This aging hippie, angry gnome, is about ready to toddle off the grid. Sure, civilization has it's attractions, computers and flush toilets and running water... but you know what, it's just not worth it anymore.  I keep waiting for the right time, but the time has never been right.  I think this is one of those things where you just have to step out and do it without all that much worrying about doing it just right. What benefit are any of us in our household getting out of being in Tracy?  The ability to sit around like lumps watching Netflix on the TV?  Running the AC so we don't melt?  What is there in that house that we need?  What is there in any city that we need?  What is the point of spending every dollar we make to just to stay in one place? My toes need to touch dirt, not pavement!  I need grass and trees and fresh air, not concrete, piss and the smell of car exhaust.  I need to spend my time with my daughter and granddaugh...

Make sure to start the video as a background to reading this post :-) Not long ago I posted on FB that I've felt like running away more as an adult than I ever did as a kid.  That is so true.  Lately I've been thinking that this life is just wrong, I and all of my family with me are not where we ought to be.  I mean that in more than one way, but mostly I mean we are in a big house in a city and that sucks.  Also, I work in San Francisco, and I really hate that.  The city is sort of disgusting to tell the truth, in the moral sense, and in the olfactory sense.  It is crowded, noisy and unpleasant in every way. I live too far from work and end up either sleep deprived or missing my family by staying in San Francisco day after day while I earn money to "live" in Tracy.  Tracy stinks as well, but at least that is honest cow manure and not the stench of human waste.  Even though I have a place to stay in San Francisco, due to the generosity of a...

There is a recent statement by the Department of Justice that declares it is not constitutional to forbid people sleeping on the street.  This is one of those difficult issues for me.  I come down on both sides, the side that say we need to scrape these vermin off of the streets so normal human beings can walk the sidewalks in peace and without the revolting stench of urine and feces and without being accosted by mentally ill and drug crazed "homeless people" seeking money for their next drink or fix. On the other side I see that these people are suffering human beings whose lives have spun horribly out of control.  I see Jesus sitting by the side of the road, hungry, homeless and helpless and most of the time I turn from him in disgust and pass by on the other side. I think part of the solution is actually less government interference in the problem.  Allow churches and organizations like Food Not Bombs to house and feed people without jumping through intermin...

What is the point of Facebook?  Some people use it well, they share a photo or two and that's that.  Others, like me, are constantly posting, well re-posting mostly, little cartoons or questionable quotes or whatever.   Really?  What is the point of that? It's not really communication at all, if I haven't written something original I haven't actually done much at all.  I know that when you see someone has "Liked" a post you put up you get a little shot of psychological reward, it's actually sort of addictive .  But it's really useless at the same time. Facebook is not really a place of communication but of cheap rewards for minimal effort.   No, I'm not leaving Facebook again.  That's pointless too, I always come back.  But what I am going to do is to make a big effort not to re-post things other people have written.  Not to post other people's cartoons and short quotes.  Instead I'm going to post things via my ...

This was the opening hymn for tonight's Evening Prayer from the Mission of St. Clare .  Sweet and just what I needed to hear tonight.

Today, August 10th, is the commemoration of St. Lawrence, my "name Saint" as I think of him.   From the Mission of St. Clare Morning Prayers for today: The Commemoration Laurence 10 August 258 Laurence (or Lawrence) was chief of the seven deacons of the congregation at Rome, the seven men who, like Stephen and his companions (Acts 6:1-6), were in charge of administering the church budget, particularly with regard to the care of the poor. In 257, the emperor Valerian began a persecution aimed chiefly at the clergy and the laity of the upper classes. All Church property was confiscated and meetings of Christians were forbidden. The bishop of Rome, Sixtus II, and most of his clergy were executed on 7 August 258, and Laurence on the 10th. This much from the near-contemporary records of the Church. The accounts recorded about a century later by Ambrose (commemorated on 7 Dec) and the poet Prudentius say that, as Sixtus was being led to his death, Laurence followed him...

I've seen a lot of conservative memes condemning the fact that the Obama administration has made a deal with Iran over their nuclear program.  They seem to think that the fact that people there chant anit-American slogans is significant somehow.  Whenever I hear people getting all upset about the fact that some Iranians have chanted "Death to America" I'm reminded of this parable by Jesus in Matthew: Matthew 21:28-32 28 “What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’ 29 “‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went. 30 “Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go. 31 “Which of the two did what his father wanted?” “The first,” they answered. Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. 32 For John came to you to s...

It is sad that even though I have bookmarked over a dozen "News" sites I find myself not believing any of them.  Each and every one has a blatant agenda that they are following.  Liberal and conservative, libertarian and statist.  Very few stories are simply recounting facts, it seems every story is told to further an agenda.  Pretty pathetic.  I've searched through literally hundreds of sites looking for one that would just tell the facts... ...but there doesn't seem to be even one such news site on the web, it's all opinion and prophecy.  They are either telling me what they think the events "mean" or predicting things that haven't happened yet.  What a complete waste of my time reading the news is.  It has gotten to the point now that I just open the front page of the BBC, Guardian, FOX, CNN, RT and SF Gate and read the headlines and call it good.  If any really important news comes up I'm sure someone will tell me about it on Facebook ...

I was going to make some political comments on the anniversary of the dropping of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but decided not to.  Instead I want to recommend people watch a couple of Japanese anime. First is Barefoot Gen , a story written by a survivor of the destruction of Hiroshima. Second is Grave of the Fireflies. Nuclear weapons are weapons of terror, the use of such weapons is a war crime in every case.  We must eliminate such weapons from earth, not build more. Let us pray: Blessed is our God, now and unto the ages of ages. Blessed is our God, who grants us peace and is the source of all peace. Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called children of God. Loving God, you create and sustain all that is good and beautiful; You give life to the earth. You have called us to wholeness; to the fullness of life But, as we gather here, we are conscious of our brokenness Both as persons and as communities. We have heard the cries fo...

As a result of deciding to read more real physical books instead of e-books I went to the library and hunted for a book to read.  I chose a book by Dan Simmons called " The Abominable " based on other books by the same author I read years ago, "Hyperion"  and the rest of the "Hyperion Cantos" as the series was called.  That was a great series, though it started to get a bit tedious after a while, but I figured that was just the typical author milking a good selling book series just a bit too long. This abominable thing is 663 pages long, but I only made it to page 178 before giving up on it as a waste of my time and effort.  I now know far more than I ever wanted to about the details of Alpine style mountain climbing.  :-(  The story was so relentlessly dull and tedious that I finally decided to look up the reviews it got on Amazon to see if the pace ever picked up.  According to one review  "...the first 400 pages are an exhaustive and frankly ...

I’m sitting in my room, listening to “Anglican Radio” which is just playing music at the moment, nice though.  I’m really pleased with the compromise position we have managed to take here in the Anglican Church of the Resurrection in Tracy.  The whole family went to church yesterday and we all went up and had communion.  There was none of the exclusionary crap that the LCMS and the RC throw up in front of people being able to partake, as long as you are a baptized believer then you are welcome at the table to receive the body and blood of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Of course our family pretty much doubles the size of the congregation, but that is OK, maybe it will grow now that we are there and they now have the web site up. I was listening to a podcast from Anglican Radio earlier this morning and the phrase “simple faith” was used to describe those who do not have fully articulated apologetic approach.  I think that is actually a good sort of th...

I've been thinking, as usual, about the truth.  You know what I'm on about here, T-R-U-T-H.  :-)  The idea that any single Christian group has all of the truth is an attractive one, but one that I now have come to conclude, to my dismay, is not even possible. I had thought that the Lutherans (LCMS only, ELCA don't even qualify as heretics anymore) had a pretty good grasp on it, until I started noticing the extra crud they were adding on to the list of things one "must believe" to be a proper Christian.  I've gone over that before so I won't belabor it now, Young Earth Creationism and what I consider a mistaken reading of Romans 13 and their overly restrictive rules on who can share the Eucharist are on the top of my list.   Then there was the Roman Catholic Church, who actually do claim to have "All of the Truth" about the gospel.  They even claim that since Jesus stated that the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church that eve...

No doubt it's "not that easy" but so far I've been quite happy with my return to the grain free world of neo-paleo-pseudo-low-carbism.  :-)  Since hitting just over 200 pounds on Saturday morning I have not eaten any grains, no bread, no pasta, no chips, no rice and even no taters.  As of today the scale cheerfully informed me that my weight is now 195 pounds.  What am I eating?  Meat, vegetables and dairy with some fruit thrown in for good measure.  So, it's not really "low-carb" and it's not really "Paleo" but just eating food, whatever I want and as much as I want but s kipping those addictive grains!  The only glitch comes when someone wants to be nice and feed me pasta or pizza or something, please don't do it! On a completely unrelated note, I've been using the Daily Office from the Book of Common Prayer for a little while now.  I have three apps on my phone for the Office, one Lutheran called Pray Now that is based on the ...

Oh BART , how do I loathe thee? I loathe thy noisy trains, so loud I cannot think. I loathe thy overly fragrant passengers, both those who never bathe, and those who bathe in cheap perfume. I loathe thy decaying stations, I loathe thy brutal cops, I loathe thy disintegrating tracks, and thy rickety cars,  and the way they combine to cause delays, each and every day.  I loathe the crowding on cars, the criminals who lurk, I loathe the urine soaked stairwells to the streets. Yeah, I think I'll drive.   I know, it's not really poetry, but neither is riding on BART.

I was going to call this post "Moderation" but as I began to write I realized that moderation is not actually the problem I mean to address today.  I started out explaining how moderation was a good thing but that I was not good at "doing moderation."  But that's not actually true.  In some things I'm quite moderate.  I'm moderate in drinking wine for example, outside of the rare times when I may overindulge I usually have no more than two glasses in a day.  Other things I used to allow to get out of hand I've moderated.  I once was quite out of control on Facebook, checking it all through the day and feeling uncomfortable if I didn't check for a couple of hours.  After a few "fasts" from that I find it is not so difficult to moderate.  Online games, especially Civilization, were once a problem, yet now I am able to play for a while and then put it aside to do other things without the feeling of "one more turn" that used to af...

Of course the answer to the question in my title is Jesus Christ, for he is the way and the truth and the life.   Naturally we can't just leave it at that though.  No we start asking all sorts of questions and trying figure out "what does this mean?" In my last post I quoted a Lutheran pastor who was explaining that Lutherans are less tolerant of "heresy" than Anglicans, especially when it comes to those who publicly teach or preach.  As a layman I imagine I could quietly sit back and not speak out about the things I believe that are condemned in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, or even speak about them in an unofficial manner, and I wouldn't be tossed out on my ear for the heretical notions I hold :-) I stumbled across the story of Matthew Becker the other day in my reading on line as I sought to clarify my thinking on the reasons I don't really fit in with the LCMS.  Of course, as I stated before, if I didn't live so far from Messiah Danvill...

  Today is the commemoration of Mary Magdalene, who was chosen to be the first witness of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.  I've heard it said that this is a good indication of the historicity of the gospels since in that day she would be the last person you would choose as a witness because women were not considered good witnesses. This commemoration is today for all three of the church bodies I "identify" with, Roman Catholic, Lutheran and Anglican :-) I've been trying for a while now to come to grips with the differences between these three bodies of Christians and understand why they seem to be so angry with each other.  I can't seem to sort it out, the differences seem to me minute and unimportant when compared to those things that are truly important, such as we are sinners and are saved by the life death and resurrection of Jesus, who is true man and true God.  There is basic agreement on baptism and the Eucharist as well, though they will p...

For a long time I've been trying to figure out a way that our entire family can worship together.  We live about 40 miles from Messiah Lutheran Church in Danville where we've been members for a long time. This is a very long ride with small children and surly teens and it takes two cars to get us all there.  Mostly Lora is broke and doesn't have enough gas to make the trip anyway and the kids are pretty resistant to getting out of bed early enough to make the 45 minute trip to church.  One of the big reasons I loved the Catholic Church was the fact they seem to be pretty much everywhere within a short drive no matter where we lived.  We tried St. Paul's LCMS in Tracy - barf.  We also tried Good Shepherd LCMS in Livermore, a bit better but still a weak liturgy and it's still a big drive over the hill.  Mom went with me to St. Bernard's Catholic Church here in Tracy last week, but she really doesn't ...

So much horrible news is out in the world these days, mostly caused by "my" government, which makes it just that much worse in my mind.  The worst is the absolute glee with which total evil is greeted by so many people.  It seems to me that the more perverted and disgusting a practice is the more it is celebrated.  From same-sex so-called "marriage" and abortion on the left to endless wars and torture and murder of innocents for the greater glory of corporate America on the right, it's all evil.  How has this come about? I don't have an answer to that, any I might give would be speculation.  But you know, it should not be a shock.  Mankind was created good, but we have fallen. That said, I don't suppose I really need to even pay all that much attention to the course of America, after all, as The Dissident Dad points out, my family is my country .   I follow those laws of America that I'm forced to follow by immediate threat and also those that mak...

Because I know everyone cares deeply about the random fluctuations that shoot through the neurons of my brain I write again... I'm working today, on a Sunday.  This caused me much anxiety as I tried to figure out how I was going to manage to make it mass and still get to work on time. I could have driven my car into The City and gone to the 7:30 mass at Sts. Peter and Paul , which is a lovely church, but the mass at that hour there is pretty weak in my experience, plus I've developed an aversion to driving in San Francisco again.  I don't know what caused that, a month ago I thought driving to The City was wonderful, I actually LIKED it.  Now I can't imagine a worse fate. I could have tried to go to 11:00 mass at the Shrine of St. Francis in The City, which is where I go to daily mass on my work days, but that would have used up my whole lunch and more since a Sunday mass is longer than a daily mass, it didn't feel like the right way to do things. I didn...