Life is Good

     Beth needed to go to Toronto to Princess Margaret Hospital this week to talk to the dentist there about her lack of saliva problem, which resulted from the radiation she had to her neck area during treatment for Hodgkin's disease way back in 1984. Dry mouth is not fun and has caused lots of cavities in her teeth as well. The meeting was pretty disappointing and frustrating as the doctor was not very compassionate/interested/helpful, saying there's really nothing that can be done, but that Beth really should have been administering regular flouride treatments for the last 25 years - which nobody had told her.
     We stopped at the Square One mall in Mississauga on the way home and I ended up getting quite a few new clothing items, even though we were looking for stuff for Beth. The best thing was that we found a framed Tom Thomson print that was 1/2 price and will look fantastic in our living room.
     We put a fair bit of time and energy into preparing the presentation about our lives for the Friday night small group - scanning old pictures, constructing Keynote, making notes, trying to condense 70+ years (20+20 single years plus 30 together), figuring out who would share what. In the end it was very well-received (though maybe a bit long) and was a great exercise to go through. The conclusion seems to be that we've been through a lot, but God has been gracious and we've come "through it all" (only Andrea Crouch fans will get that reference I guess) with our faith intact (and stronger).
      I read through the children's classic (1929) book 'Swallows and Amazons' - it's a classic but I'd never heard of it until a month or so ago. I really enjoyed the story but am curious why so many old children's books have 4 children in the family (2 boys, 2 girls). Listening to some Terry Taylor music this week - he's been in Facebook news as his family faced a financial crisis and his fans came through with $40,000 (yes, of course I contributed). He had a nice post thanking everyone for their support. I listened to The Swirling Eddies 'The Midget, the Speck, and the Molecule' and Daniel Amos's 'Mr. Buechner's Dream'. Beth and I listened to a new David Wilcox live recording from March on our trip to Toronto and it just reaffirmed to me that he is simply the best songwriter and performer ever.
     Beth and I have done lots of talking about the internet - her unfamiliarity with cyberspace and maybe the need for her to become more conversant with it, along with wondering if I use it too much. I always counter that most of my surfing is reading so it's not necessarily a waste of time. Then this morning I came across this great quote:
Speaking decades before the debates over Twitter or the wonders of Google, Malcolm Muggeridge seemed to foresee the possibilities of too much information.  "Accumulating knowledge is a form of avarice and lends itself to another version of the Midas story," he wrote.  "Man is so avid for knowledge that everything he touches turns to facts; his faith becomes theology, his love becomes lechery, his wisdom becomes science.  Pursuing meaning, he ignores truth." (A Slice of Infinity 4/29/2011)
I thought this was pretty profound, and prophetic. It makes me want to ensure that my pursuit is for truth and not just more information.