Obtineo

For those who know E, I thought this beautiful little sign on her bedroom door was an amazing metaphor.




Sisters. Young Love. Awesome. Kisses. Wow. Girlfriend. Flowers... Stay Out.

"The Spanish empire was an autocracy, governed from the center. In England, by comparison, the power of the monarch never became absolute; it was always limited, first by the country's wealthy aristocracy and later by the two houses of Parliament. Yet the weakness of the English crown concealed a future strength. Precisely because political power was spread more widely, so was wealth. Taxation could only be levied with the approval of Parliament. People with money could therefore be reasonably confident that it would not simply be appropriated by an absolute ruler. That was to prove an important incentive for entrepreneurs."

N. Ferguson.
-Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power.

I just finished reading the novel "Cutting for Stone." It is the first novel I have read in a long time, and I enjoyed it. It was a very intense story that pulled me in from the beginning and kept me attentive the whole way. That's partly because of the descriptions of life in Addis Ababa (which we visited recently) but mostly because of the vivid characters who's lives were interconnected in so many ways. I was also fascinated by the medical descriptions throughout the story. It is a tale of relationships that declares -

"The world turns on our every action, and our every omission, whether we know it or not."

Today I explained something to the kids that I also need to remember. Our job is to become less and less selfish every year. We are certainly born selfish. But it should be all downhill from there. The eight year old should be less selfish than the four year old, and the forty year old should be far less selfish than the ten year old. More and more we should be willing to give up what we want in order to give preference to others. That's one way to "love your neighbor as your self". When we can't agree on which game to play, the older should be better prepared to love the younger. This is part of our sanctification. It's not linear, but it should be noticeable.

Am I less selfish than I was ten years ago? Actually, yes. But this is no time to stop. I hope that in another ten years the answer will again be yes. As we grow in grace, tight fists will be loosed. My wrinkled hands should be open hands.

"This was the first time in America that I had to give someone news of a fatal illness, but it felt like the first time ever. It was as if in Ethiopia, and even in Nairobi, people assumed that all illness - even a trivial one - was fatal; they expected death. The news to convey in Africa was that you'd kept death at bay. Those things that you couldn't do, and those diseases you couldn't reverse, were left unspoken. It was understood. I don't recall an equivalent word for "prognosis" in Amharic, and I'd never tried to speak to a patient about five-year survival or anything like that. In America, my initial impression was that death or the possibility of it always seemed to come as a surprise, as if we took for granted that we were immortal, and that death was just an option." - from Cutting for Stone