July 2025 :: Back in Koreatown

• Urban Wilderbess Lectionary Blog for July

• Google made a couple of impressive collages of the food pics I took at the monthly Santa Monica Tuesday Brunch.

• With an interesting turn of events and employment in late July, I've come back to Koreatown.

• Street view my first morning back in Koreatown

• One of three presentations of succulents and assorted posies at the entrance

• It's been since South Central, so I was ecstatic to see yellow cassia trees. I got several good pics; this one won a spot here because of the Metro Bus sign.

• RIP, Walter Brueggemann. I'm reading his Sabbath as Resistance and wanted to show off the Vanille Ice Cream Cone desk cup I serendipitously bought.

Five Minute Friday :; Perception

• Five Minute Friday :: Perception Linkup

You've heard about a perceptive individual. maybe you've been perceptive at times in some situations. Perception is a spiritual gift that helps us navigate aspects of everyday life. Perception comes in more than handy when slmost every solution looks right and all the inputs add up right but something still feels wrong, or at least a little "off".

Is perception insight? Is perception the sum of what we already know about what's going on? Is it a "sixth sense" that sneaks in when the other five aren't enough? Maybe perception is all of those and even more.

When we read scripture, do we need to be perceptive? I heard how a seminary professor told his students not to assume the bible is an obscure document that's almost impossible for any human to understand. And don't assume the bible is easy to perceive and offers everything at face value without any need for prayer, study, reflection, conversation, or waiting on the Holy Spirit. So, do we need to be perceptive reading scripture?

According to what i just wrote, although interpretation always is about the Holy Spirit, haven't you discovered that at times the meaning of a passage just zaps you almost instantly with insight and perception, and other times you pray, consider, read commentaries, sleep on it, discuss it with others, and still wonder what it means?

Thanks for reading what I currently perceive about perception.

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Five Minute Friday :: Path

• Five Minute Friday :: Path Linkup

A couple years ago we wrote to the prompt follow. We can't follow a better path than the one I wrote about then, and I couldn't express it as well today as I did during Lent 2023. Today I'm using a version of the same graphic because whatever path Jesus shows us; wherever he goes, we will follow.

You know it's about the journey and not about the destination. We talk about a walk by faith. Not a run, jog, sprint, or race. Not a leisurely stroll, either. Almost nine years ago we had Journey as a FMF prompt, too.


A Path

For today let's consider only a small part of the journey, a piece of the path with its switchbacks and surprises, because originally the word journey was about a single day.

Where one day's path begins and ends. What happens during the hours from sunup to sundown, or more realistically, when we get out of bed (any time from a couple of hours before sunrise to a couple of hours after) and when we go to bed and try to go to sleep, which usually is a few hours after the sun goes down.

How do we discern (to use that fancy spiritual term) each day's path? Is it a copy of the previous day? Do we follow an hour by hour schedule someone else outlined for us? Do we separate the path into segments that could be labeled individual, family, work, and other-elsewhere? Does one run into another? Do they happen in different locations? Do we have our list or someone's else's list that we check off as we finish each item?

How much a part of the larger whole does a single day feel? Does one day help hold your family together, help your workplace run smoothly, or maybe contribute a tiny piece to fulfilling your dreams? Does your path for any given day include physical paths like those in your garden or a nearby public park? Do you drive on city streets or urban freeways? Does an unpaved road or neighborhood sidewalk path play any part in your lengths of days? How would you illustrate your path in pen and ink, in pencil, in watercolor, with any kind of art? What would your journal or daybook say about your path?

I'm asking those questions for myself, and I'd love to talk about your answers and your path.

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"I will follow you wherever you go I will follow…"
Luke 9:57, Matthew 8:19

Twenty-Three Years

For this blog's twenty-three year anniversary, I'm celebrating with a birthday cake by Gracey I got on Morgue File.

Although I already used it ten years ago for Blogoversary Thirteen, this time I did some image editing and formatted the words in Magnolia Script instead of the more fanciful Bombshell Pro.

Indigo Rose :: Shopping Bags

Indigo Kids :: Shopping Bags

Five Minute Friday :: Perhaps

Kitchen table from px here

• Five Minute Friday :: Perhaps Linkup

My first thought is, "who on earth uses the word 'perhaps?'" (no offense, Sharon who suggested the prompt, Kate and everyone else who perhaps uses the word perhaps.) It's a super pretentious way of expressing maybe, isn't it? Or is it?

I can hear in my head someone affecting a fake upper class accent and saying "Perhaps I'll do this or that. Perhaps the sun will shine."

Enough of my intro. On to the content. I'll write about what I wish would happen, because maybe it will. I found my header photo (with legal reuse rights, of course) online because I'm longing for a kitchen table filled with friends and food. I'm longing to be surrounded by a world resurrected from the loss of what I had and knew. Maybe even (possibly even? Perhaps even?) recreated from those scraps of hope, pieces of dreams, images of what I assumed more than reasonably would be mine before long.

You notice the kitchen holds no food. It hosts no people. Perhaps I'll go to the farmer's market or the nearby Aldi. A couple of South Bay Walmarts have good and reasonable fruits and veggies. Perhaps (oh, just maybe), I'll venture to highways and byways and invite random strangers to my future kitchen to help slice, dice, chop, shred, and sauté and assemble a feast for all comers.

Perhaps my life finally will rebound. The sun will set on disappointments and losses. The sun will rise on a brand new day—perhaps (possibly, maybe) branded by the hugs and the hopes of friends I haven't found yet. Or is that perhaps friends who haven't yet found me?

I retitled the picture "Kitchen Dreams."

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Five Minute Friday :: Transform

Do not be conformed to this world
but be transformed
by the renewal of your mind.
Romans 12:2
• Five Minute Friday :: Transform LInkup

This week I get to include one of my all time favorite scripture illustrations and talk about Romans again.

World here is "age," eon, era, epoch, and not cosmos.

What can we say, think, or do about the way the world and its leaders, the USA and its leaders, and so much about and around us seems to be changing, not transforming into vibrant new life from death, but from health to despair to death itself?

"Transformed" in this passage from Romans is metamorphosis. Our most familiar images in creation may be butterflies and dragonflies; I did a little research to confirm what I thought I already knew.

Butterflies symbolize transformation and rebirth. In the Christian tradition, butterflies are an icon of easter and resurrection.

Dragonflies originate in water and migrate to air as they grow and mature. Throughout their lifespan, dragonflies are at home in both water and air. In addition to change and transformation that's similar to butterfly lore, dragonflies are about adaptability. Maybe you know they can change direction amidst flight, and they can fly backwards? Somewhere I read dragonflies are about the realization of dreams.

The world and its leaders, the USA and its leaders, and too much about and around us is changing, not into life from death, but from health to despair to death. Maybe your neighborhood, your family, or your workplace has troubles that appear beyond hope. Maybe your own situation has imploded and you need to start from scratch?

Like a dragonfly we are birthed and re-birthed in water; we need to keep returning to the water for sustenance and renewal; we need to keep walking the talk still "wet behind the ears" with God's baptismal promises and claims on us, with God's baptismal charge to us to live transformed, to be agents of change and transformation to help create a world filled with justice, righteousness, newness, possibilities, and hope.

Via the apostle Paul, God calls us to "be transformed," to undergo a metamorphosis, but no human can achieve that radical change on their own, by themselves. It's the work of the Holy Spirit. It's about death and resurrection. Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

Wherever we are, in whatever place we live, transformed people can be agents of change and transformation for this age, this epoch, this eon. Reborn into the cross and the empty tomb. Transformed by water and word. Amen? Amen!

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• Common milkweed in full flower this year in West Los Angeles
• Monarch Butterfly from West Los Angeles in a previous year (2018) with depleted milkweed plant. We've been planting milkweed at church for more than a half dozen years. What a ministry to creation!
• Dragonfly from hippo px

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Jenny Han :: Summer Trilogy

• Summer trilogy 01: The Summer I Turned Pretty on Powell's

From Jenny Han, author of To All the Boys I've Loved Before

"First in a series of three" with the disclaimer I read them all before writing this.

Plot, settings, and characters in The Summer I ["I" is Belly or Isabel] Turned Pretty are atmospheric and suggestive rather than grounded and concrete. This intro to bestselling author Jenny Han's Summer trilogy acquaints us with the Fisher and Conklin families who are every summer denizens of a New England down Maine beach house. We observe typical vacation activities, relationships, and misunderstandings—nothing out of the ordinary, even to a predictable degree.

You might enjoy this as a standalone novel, but experiencing kids and grownups getting older and gaining wisdom as their lives expand is the intention of any coming of age book, so I suggest you keep on reading into It's Not Summer Without You. By the conclusion of We'll Always Have Summer (volume 3), you'll discover Fisher brother Conrad has turned into the central character – an ultra-protagonist – ready to launch a decades-long dynasty that deserves at least a half-dozen more books and a classic TV or film series.

• Summer trilogy 02: It's Not Summer Without You on Powell's

Volume 2, It's Not Summer Without You, continues the Fisher-Conklin narrative. Even after dying from cancer, Fisher matriarch Susannah continues her powerful and loving influence over the intertwined families. Author Jenny Han writes realistic dialogue within relatable human messiness of misunderstanding, betrayal, reunion, divorce, romance, and not-so-romantic situations. A reader can feel the teenagers grow in every dimension!

Even if I hadn't known most of the action happened along the East Coast, I'd still compliment how clearly Han elicits its overall style and sensibility. Really! Could the Summer Trilogy have been set anywhere else? No! Geography is destiny.

• Summer trilogy 03: We'll Always Have Summer

Teens love these coming of age novels; some of us who have achieved a level of chronological maturity enjoy them, too.

What person anywhere doesn't enjoy a beach read that's even mostly set in a beach town? This is the third and final volume of Jenny Han's Fisher-Conklin Summer series that unfolds like a dynasty in progress. My research revealed The Summer I Turned Pretty was a Netflix movie during August 2013; rumors suggesting it might become a TV series circulated for a while, but that still hasn't happened. Han does well with character development, particularly as ultra-protagonist Conrad grows in years, wisdom, and influence; even more, she creates dense layers of action and meaning that never quite resolve. However, in this volume 3, we get the happy resolution of Conrad's and Isabel's long-anticipated marriage. Now the countless readers who've loved this series can create their own multipart sequel, and/or wait for Jenny Han to do so.