Monday, August 23, 2010

Try a Little Tenderness: August 20





Already August and it's time to try a little tenderness. We had a great cake from the Chinese bakery at the end of dinner that was the epitome of tenderness. Also, lots of other wonderful yummy food and fellowship.



"Tenderness" was our word this month. The first description of tenderness was as a kind of pain in the stomach. We heard of a rather painful experience of having a doctor get pretty focused on seeing how much of a tummy was really "tender."


The second attempt was perhaps tender was still a negative word that was too sweet or too saccharine to really be used to mean what it should mean. Sort of like a Thomas Kincaid Painting or








a Keene "big eyes" painting. That being tender was a way of relating to evoke a certain softening of heart in response.






We did finally hit on a Bible story though. The story of the shepherd and the lost sheep. One of our intrepid team of explorers admitted being quite moved by the story always even though its depiction is often kind of sappy.

The shepherd? Or the prize fighter?

Or maybe he's both -- a tenderhearted tough guy.