Point of Personal Privilege and Pride

Readers, this has nothing to do with the purpose of this blog, but is merely, as the title says, a point of personal privilege. After all, it is my blog, and I hope you will excuse me.

My son and his wife are musicians in Tennessee, and today, they released a single on all sorts of streaming sites. I’ve been sitting on this news for a long time, as the song that they were finally able to release was used in a documentary for Lee University’s 100th anniversary this year.

If you stream music from any of the sites listed below, search for Send Me Forth by Stormy and Adrian. I love the song, and I think you will too. Please, stream, buy and listen. You will enjoy it.

CSL
(one proud papa)

Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, TikTok, Google Play/YouTube, Amazon, Pandora, Deezer, Tidal, Napster, iHeartRadio, ClaroMusica, Saavn, Anghami, KKBox, and MediaNet

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

Echoes from My Well of Silence

Hello, folks; long time, no see, and all. I recently received some emails from readers who called down into the well, “Is anybody there… body there… body there?” (When you have people checking you for a pulse, you realize you’ve been gone too long.)

Yeah, I have been silent for some time, as it’s been over six months since I have made any posts on this blog. First off, my family had to fight off the annual winter plague that descends upon the CSL household around Christmas and lingers for months. Add to that Wife and Daughter #1 making three trips to the hospital in Feb. (two in ambulances), and I recently had to have dental surgery, I think I have a plausible alibi for my extended absence. Alibi, but not an excuse, if I’m being honest with myself.***

Of Resets, Resolutions And Reality: part 2

 

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

In my last post, I spoke of Reset and Resolution sex as being possible outcomes of having The Talk™, neither of which help a marriage bed to get back on track. In the case of Reset Sex, any uptick in sexual activity is illusory, as it is merely a ploy to tamp down any threatened mutinies to the sacred status quo.

In the case of Resolution Sex, there is intention to improve, to change things for the better, but there is a serious problem with Resolution Sex. While there is intent, there is no intentionality.

“Are You Where You’re Needed?” [link]

There is a new post on my other site, CSL On The Bible, should you be so inclined…

btw – for those who don’t get my Twitter announcements, my lead in to this story was “A Methodist minister meets Jesus”. Hope that is intriguing enough. 🙂

 

“Unexpected Good-byes” [link]

As most of my readers know, I have two blogs and whenever I post on my CSL On The Bible, I post a link here for those who might be interested in my writings about topics other than marriage.

Today, I am posting a link to my latest post, but am asking that all of you please go there, read Unexpected Good-byes, and pray for us.

CSL

A Cautious Cheer For #MeToo

This post has been a hard one to write because I understand that it has the potential to upset some very good people, people whom I admire and esteem. But as the old Muslim proverb says, “It is the dead mouse that swims with the current.”

If you scroll down my page, you will find (in the right sidebar) the logo of the Christian Marriage Bloggers Association, which, (due to a momentary loss of lucidness) allowed me to become a member. Recently, on the CMBA Facebook page, someone encouraged all the male CMBA bloggers to post something in support of the #MeToo movement, and many of them did so by writing a post about sexual harassment/abuse.

Rare Opportunity For My Readers

In a post on my other blog, CSL On The Bible, I told how a book that I picked up in January has had a profound effect on my Christian faith. I cited a C. S. Lewis quote, from his short work An Experiment in Criticism, in which he wrote that some readers are so affected by a book “[t]heir whole consciousness is changed. They have become what they were not before.”

For me, that book was Sitting At The Feet Of Rabbi Jesus, by Ann Spangler and Lois Tverberg. I poured over that book for months, and then purchased Tverberg’s second book, Walking In The Dust Of Rabbi Jesus. Without a doubt, these two books have changed how I look at the practice of the Christian faith, giving me clarity at what it means to live as a disciple of Jesus Christ. Through my posts this year, I have recommended these books highly.

Today, I received an email from Tverberg’s Our Rabbi Jesus site that announced that, for a limited time, her two books, Sitting… and Walking… are available on Amazon for $2.99 each! This is part of the roll-out for her next book, Reading The Bible With Rabbi Jesus. (Guess what I’m getting for Christmas!)

So, please, my readers, in this season of giving, do yourself a mitzvah** and buy yourself an inexpensive but powerful present. Here are the links for the two books:

Sitting At The Feet Of Rabbi Jesus
Walking In The Dust Of Rabbi Jesus

CSL

** mitzvah – good deed.

 

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.

Now We Are Three

A glance at the calendar shows me that not only did I turn 68 last month, but that today is the third anniversary of the debut of The Curmudgeonly Librarian. In spite of the good advice from those with good taste, I went ahead and started writing, and the jury is still out on the wisdom of the whole mishmash.

In past anniversary posts, I have laid the blame for this blog squarely on the shoulders of those who helped me get this blog set up on Word Press, so there is no need to further sully the reputation of those two excellent bloggers, so Chris and Bonny, you can breathe a sigh of relief on that score.