"I enjoy having a lot of cereal bars in the same way squirrels like having a lot of acorns for winter."

Please let me introduce you to my better half:

After serious consideration, I have decided that, for everyone's benefit, he will be making occasional guest appearances on the blog to highlight our culinary prowess as a couple.

Be ready to be wowed by our joint domesticity and refined taste in all things munchable.

For instance:

Or Perhaps:

 

But usually more like:

 Weekly archives will be posted under Sunrises, Sunsets and then "Things Matt Says About Food (2014)."

Thank you and good weekend!

Religion will make God a stranger to you

It's refreshing to get back to the root of intimacy with God, and others, via the indomitable Andy Stanley and his ability to convey truth.

Intimacy requires:

1) Time - un-rushed, unstructured, "I'm just hanging out, sitting with you" time.

2) Transparency - quit being so polite; be honest. You get all of me - the good and the bad.

3) Mutual Submission - the most powerful relational dynamic in the world. I'm going to harness all of my best talents and abilities for your best interest, and you will do the same for me. You have my best interests at heart, I have have yours too.

Ritual and religion are a caricature of what we really want, which is relationship.

While I think I do okay with this most of the time, it's a lifelong thing, and the people I know and the God I trust are so worth it.

For anyone who's suggested that Tina Fey resonates with me

 

You would be correct.

Maybe this is a next decade thing?

An encouragement for the day

"Be gracious in your speech. The goal is to bring out the best in others in a conversation, not put them down, not cut them out."

Colossians 4:6

"I can cook, provided you like pasta with any of a number of jarred sauces."

File this under little things that make my day.

"It takes a lot of effort to look like a normal/chubby woman."

This is worth a high-five.

Never be afraid

“An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he must choose.” - Langston Hughes, 1926, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.”

Hughes wrote poems about ordinary people leading ordinary lives, and about a world that few could rightly call beautiful, but that was worth loving and changing. 

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What must you choose?