New .pdf, “CSL’s Marriage Observations and Advice”, Available

I have uploaded a new .pdf file to my Free Downloads page. This file is different from others that I have created. Yes, it is another collection of selected posts from the blog, but unlike the other files, this doesn’t really address great themes.

Previous files addressed issues couples in marriage, such as Bad Teaching, Porn, or Addressing Sexless Marriages, just to name a few. This file, however, is basically a practical one, in which I address smaller, specific topics, howbeit with my usual curmudgeonly tact. (Hey, lines like “Just because you have a dick doesn’t mean you have to act like one” aren’t really the stuff of scholarly examination or exhortation.)

The .pdf is free, as all my files are, and you can find them on my Free Downloads page. The link is in the header above and in the sidebar to the right. Your pick.

CSL

New .pdf, “Red Sky At Morning…”, Available

I have created a new .pdf for my readers, which can be found on my Free Downloadables page. In this new .pdf, I have gathered several of my posts dealing with warning signs for those who are worried about lack of intimacy in their marriage. A smaller .pdf, but I hope it will be helpful. The link to my Free Downloads page is above in the header, and to the right in the side bar.

New “Waiting and Working” .pdf for downloading

Okay, CSL, I have read your articles about the Bad Teaching that we have heard about marriage, and I have read what you had to say about good teaching, and I even agree with you. I’ve even spoken to my wife about how I think that we don’t have a good or happy marriage at this time? So now what? What am I supposed to do?

Again, I’m not a marriage counselor, but since when has that stopped me before? You are either thinking about doing your version of The Shot Across the Bow, or you are waiting for some kind of response to it, and don’t know where to go from here. In the past, I have written about what I call The Interim, which is that period that you are now it. I have just uploaded a new .pdf for helping refused spouses with the things that they can do to help themselves as they wait to decide, and some of the things to consider as you think about what you want your marriage to be.

If you are in The Interim, if you don’t know what you should be doing, this .pdf is for you. It is available for downloading on my Free Downloads page, listed in the side bar.

CSL

New Sexless Marriage .pdf available

A new .pdf on Addressing Sexless Marriages is now available. Once again, I have gone through my unorganized archives and aggregated articles that I have written on how to start to address sexless marriages.

My first two downloadable .pdfs on Bad & Good Teachings were descriptive, focusing on presenting teachings about sex and marriage that is promulgated by the Church. With this new .pdf, it is my intent to expose strategies and tactics that are used by one spouse to break faith with the other and to present reasons for why these tactics are wrong. I want to help to blow away the fog that befuddles hurting husbands and wives, and then to present strategies for husbands and wives to counter these faithless strategies and tactics.

This is now available on the Free Downloads page. The link is in the page header and in the sidebar to the right. As always, I hope that having these articles collected in one  place is an aid to hurting brothers and sisters in Christ.

CSL

Oh, just one word of caution… it’s BIG! It’s nearly 500 kbytes, and apparently, if printed out, it will run about 75-80 pages, so be aware of toner needs.

Sheesh, can I be verbose!

Has It Been Five Years, Already?

Yeah, I guess the calendar doesn’t lie. It was Oct. 18, 2014 that I posted my first article on my new blog, The Curmudgeonly Librarian. As I have indicated elsewhere, I am not a professional counselor, social worker, etc. I am just a crusty old coot (just turned 70!!!) who has done a few laps around the sun and observed a few things while doing so.

Does this qualify me to give out pronouncements on marriage, Christian or otherwise? Obviously I think so, but that isn’t anything that is beholden to you to accept. I will say that I do believe that there is some truth in that old aphorism that says to really screw something up, call in a professional. I do know that we are told that old men should teach young men, and old women should teach young women, so for good or ill, I took up my laptop and started writing.

Before Be Five Be Four!

That is a line from my favorite poet and cartoonist, the late great Walt Kelly. Curmudgeonly Librarian has been four and is now five. Have I learned anything? Yes, I think so, anyway.

First, I accept that I am a niche blogger. I have one message for a single audience. I write to and for Christian men, an underserved audience, I believe. Oh, there are many who want to lecture them and tell them how to be good little Christians, but precious few who want to build them up in God. However, I have no illusions of grandeur and accept that Curmudgeonly Librarian is and will always be a small blog, a voice in the wilderness. I  subscribe to the saying that says that if you can’t be the beach, be willing to be a pebble.

Second, I have learned that, for that niche audience, my blog has been a great help. Now, admittedly, I don’t reach a lot of people. But those few who come looking for me tell me that this small oasis is just what they need.

Third, I’ve noticed something in my viewing stats that is intriguing. WordPress, the company that hosts my blog, has a free service in which they record daily the number of visitors that come to my blog, and the number/title of articles that are accessed on  the Curmudgeonly Librarian. For some time now, I have noticed a trend, that I think gives me insight into the minds and hearts of those who come here.

What I have noticed is that there is a weekly pattern to my statistics. Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays are the site’s slowest days, as there is a decline in the numbers of readers who come here as the weekend approaches. But on Sundays and Mondays, there is a huge spike in visitors and views that begins to taper off as we move into the week. What that tells me is that disappointed, hurting people come to my website because of another sexless weekend, one in which they had hoped that somehow, some way, they might have been able to have intimacy with their wives. But the fact that Google, Bing, Duck Duck Go, and other search engines send people to my blog via the search term Sexless Marriage after the weekend tells me that there are people with dashed hopes.

One of my mantras is that marriage shouldn’t hurt, for either husbands or wives, and it bothers me to see the amount of pain that is caused by husbands, wives and, unfortunately, the Church.

New Resource Coming?

Finally, as I have been looking at my blog, with its posts all laid out chronologically, as all blogs are, I think I see a way to organize my content in such a way as to make it more accessible. With that in mind, I am working on a small project that I hope will be useful. I hope to have the first efile up by the end of the month.

Hope to see you soon.

CSL

Cupcake image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Of Resets, Resolutions and Reality, part 3

 

[This is the last of a three-part series; the first post can be found here, and the second post can be found here.]

First off, please accept my apology for the delay in following up with another post to complete this series on Resets. I have been working on developing, from the ground up, a class for my church on the Roots of Christianity. With no textbook, I have been busy creating lessons and resources, creating PowerPoints and .pdfs, loading movies up to YouTube, and creating a web platform on Moodle for my lesson resources. As you might imagine, that occupied all my summer and September. With most of the work behind, I find I can devote a little time to writing for my blogs, and so I especially wanted to finish with the final post in this Reset series.

Of Resets, Resolutions and Reality: part 1

Well

 

[This is the first of a three part series; the second part can be found here, while the third part can be found here.

Well, I thought I was done with aphorisms, but while reading old posts for a project that I am working on, I realized that one of the aphorisms that I mentioned needed another going-over. Rather than the Gamble Rogers’ line about works speaking for themselves, I am going to flesh out some thoughts I have on the Bob Jones line, I don’t care how high a man jumps when he gets saved; I’m more concerned with how straight he walks when he comes down.

Two years ago, I wrote a couple of posts about what “Better” looks like; you know what I mean–“I’m sorry, I’ll try to do better.” In the first post I talked about the need to get down to specifics when having The Talk™, to not speak in broad, amorphous generalities, and in the second post I wrote about ways to start defining “better”.

Addressing the Man-O-Sphere: The Last Word

In my quick reaction post to questions about the Man-O-Sphere (MoS), I did not spare readers my feelings about the it (okay, I did. I kept it clean.) But I did promise that after I got that rant out of my system, I would address the MoS phenomenon and so, here goes.

First off, let me say that I understand the appeal of the MoS. To borrow terminology from Newtonian physics, it is an equal and opposite reaction to feminism in our society. However, an equal, opposite reaction is not necessarily a good thing. Everyone has seen images of the little device called a Newton’s Cradle, which has 5-6 balls suspended in a frame. When one or two are pulled away from the others on one side and allowed to drop back, the force is transferred through the stationary balls to the other side, and they, in turn, are knocked from their place, and so it goes, back and forth.

I see feminism as one side of the cradle and MoS as the other side. I get the reaction to feminism, but that doesn’t mean that an equal and opposite reaction is corrective. In fact, I believe that it is just as toxic as the feminism that it reacts to.

Why Marriage?

Having looked at the concept that God created marriage to make people holy and having rejected it, is there anyway to discover the purpose of marriage?

It seems to me that the best thing to do is to go to the source, to see what God said at the beginning, when He created marriage. The place to look, is of course, Genesis 2, where we read: