Posted on 12/25/2007 6:27:43 AM PST by Kaslin
I agree that “Devil’s Dictionary” is best in small increments. “Owl Creek Bridge” isn’t his best Civil War writing, either. He was an amazing observer and a real prose stylist. Gorgeous sentences.
Wow, that was a Twilight Zone
If you find yourself needing to stay awake, try his “Complete Civil War Stories.” You’ll be too creeped out to sleep, and therefore able to nurse a baby for 18 hours straight :-). (James could really eat!)
Otherwise you’re a stupid, spoiled brat who is hasn’t grown up enough to realize the world doesn’t revolve around you.
I don’t care what or even if I receive a gift from anyone as long as they have a kind word for me. And for that I’m just as thankful as if they give me something material, often more so.
You grumpy old man!
Take note:
1) Women like cookware. (Cheap is ok)
2) Men like flashlights. (Check the Internet for the latest and greatest) This years is pocket size and 10 million candle power. (Expensive is good)
So simple even Squantos can do it!
Oddly enough 2000 years ago a Gift was given to the world out of perfect love and they rejected it as a "bad gift". They wanted a King and they got a Savior instead. So they threw Him away as worthless.
Just something to think about.
Kindred spirits!
I received one for Father's Day and love it. It is 69.4F at my desk and 54.0F outside. I have no idea how my wife would know that I would like it so much, but she did.
When I give someone a gift, I make sure it’s going to be something the recipient wants. But even so, I will make it as easy for him to tell me it isn’t as I possibly can. “Here’s the receipt. If you want to exchange it. I won’t be offended at all. Please, if it isn’t what you really want, get something you’ll enjoy. I want to bless you, not be a problem, and I’d be truly upset if you didn’t exchange it.”
= = =
I try to do similarly.
Especially if it’s something like handmade pottery. I make a big deal of not wanting to clutter up their home with something that’s not attractive AND USEFUL, comfortable to them.
Mostly I give few gifts at special times. I tend to give things all year long as I make them or have means . . . for no special occasion.
When someone offers me a gift—I am quick to thank them for their thoughtfulness and caring as well as their bother/expense.
If it’s not something I really want—I tend to ask them if they’d like to give it to someone else as I’m full up of STUFF at my age. And if I move back across the Pacific again, I’m not going to be carting a lot of STUFF back with me. If they really insist that they have no one else they’d like to give it to nor to keep it themselves, I might suggest an old folks home or some such or that I might have someone who could make better use of it than I would—if they’d be open to that.
I act like such a response is perfectly normal.
If they get all huffy, pouty and offended, the psychologist comes out immediately with some exhortations about a gift being freely given with no strings attached or it’ snot really a gift. IF it is a gift, then they would most constructively feel blessed for me to do with as I see fit—the gift was FOR ME AND MY PLEASURE, RIGHT?
If it’s not truly a gift with no strings, then they would do well to not give it and I must not receive it in the first place.
I might occasionally in a given relationship with a fragile person modify the above but generally, I try and stick pretty close to it. Seems to work OK. And, many folks become freer about giving and receiving gifts as a consequence.
Thanks for this thread.
But there’s one more benefit to this approach. When people know you react honestly, they know your expressed joy at a gift is real. Precisely because my friends know I’m honest, they also need never second-guess my reactions. I yield no false positives. And as a symbolic reinforcement of this very concept, my honesty about the need to be honest is my possibly unwelcome Christmas gift to you. I sincerely hope you enjoy it.
= = =
INDEED.
My face is quite overly expressive anyway. Doesn’t do any good for me to try and be too obsfucating. Sometimes folks get my face’s meaning wrong but they can sure tell the wheels are turning and the emotions are stronger than average.
I agree with the author that subtrefuge and deception hurt far more people far worse in the long run. And, no one grows on either end.
Jesus died that we might have better relationships with God AND WITH EACH OTHER, than THAT.
The Chinese—especially in Taiwan—tend to have a closet full of such gifts that they constantly regift. Everyone knows that’s what’s happening and it’s usually not a huge deal—particularly at office parties, birthdays in the extended family etc. Most of such gifts are hardly even unwrapped—or only enough to see what it is and rewrapped.
Honesty can be plenty graceful.
John and Paula Sandford say in THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE INNER MAN
that
Love without truth is useless [possibly even destructive] sentimentality
and
Truth without love is brutality.
I have found it so.
Paul Tournier once wrote a book on GIFTS and gift giving. A lot of complex junk can get tied up in it.
SOMEONE needs the grace and love to slice through the junk and bring some wholesome healing light into it in many lifes and families.
There’s a LOT of wasted effort and bother and annoyed to angry feelings NEEDLESSLY when some serious communication and education could bring the relationships to a whole new level of health.
Depends on who makes the fruitcake.
Collin St in Texas I’ll take any time of year.
Indeed.
I’d be very, very, very inclined to set mom down . . . for a very firm talk. Though I suppose it might depend on how much I cared about being disinherited! LOL.
Mom, you can continue to be selfish, proud and stubborn in how you relate to us at times—especially around gift giving—and be remembered as such.
Or, you can become a lot closer to us emotionally and a lot more integrated into our daily lives and hearts.
The choices is yours. But you will not be able to be a lot closer to us emotionally and a lot more integrated into our lives and hearts
IF
you insist on stubbornly holding on to your arrogant and selfish ways of relating to us. I’d think that growing old that way would get lonlier and lonelier. But the choice is yours.
I’d like you to think about that and maybe pray about it for 12-14 days. Then respond. I won’t entertain a response before then.
IF
I don’t hear a response within 12-20 days, I will assume that you wish to maintain your distant lonely stance from us.
Amazingly enough, that has never happened to me.
ROFLMSS!!!!!!!
I got the cooking thermometers I wanted for Christmas --- and they were NOT cheap.
Hubby got 2 different flashlights, and they were dirt cheap!
GRACIOUSNESS
POLITENESS
and
CIVILITY
are not all equal, identical terms.
Politeness often faintly masks a lot of squirrely junk in relationships. And everyone knows it. And it just gets wound up tighter and tighter with annoyance to bitterness and resentment.
NO thanks. That’s not Biblical and not edifying—subtracts far more from relationships than even brutal honesty in the long run. But honesty does not have to be brutal. It can be gracious.
There’s nothing preventing
BEING KIND AND HONEST.
They are NOT mutually exclusive.
What the other person does with the honesty MAY have to be their problem.
When it’s intentional, it’s not a “difficult person”. It’s an abuser.
I made the horrendous mistakes of
1. marrying her baby
2. Giving birth to two girls he loves more than her
Jesus said turn the other cheek. He didn’t say set yourself up to be slapped.
= = =
INDEED.
If we will have to give an account for every idle word—as Scripture insists we will—and we certainly will—
then I think we shall also have to give an account for
NOT
drawing healthy boundaries around ourselves and our family and teaching our kids to do the same.
There is a time to suffer in silence. But I have found that Holy Spirit leads me to do that far less than I’d been raised to think.
There are potential learning moments on a lot of growing edges all around us. When we fail to rise to the occasion, we suffer needlessly and usually cause others to suffer needlessly, too.
Boors, insecurely arrogant selfish clueless folks often need emotional 2 X 4’s upside the head to wake them up to reality in a list of ways. They are usually artists at being victims, needy, whiney, petulant, demanding, controlling and generally all around miserable and gifted at spreading their misery far and wide.
ENOUGH ALREADY YET. If you want time with me, learn to be more real, more honest, more loving and more constructive . . . or get out of my sphere and stay out.
I don’t always emphatically enforce that last part but if someone is persistently prone to being negative I will certainly minimize my exposure to them.
INDEED!
With documentation on her felonies.
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