B&W Sunday

Hello Friends

Just hangin' with my friends.  Waiting for my MOM. 

Blessings,

Goose

Easy Rocks My World

Hello Friends.

OH DOG did I get something super special in the mail all the way from France from my brother EASY.  It was delivered on Wednesday, but MOM did not find it until Thursday.  Our nice letter carrier always puts packages in our garage.  Butt MOM did not pull in the garage so she did not find it until the next day.  Sheeesh MOM.

See here, right here.  It says it is from Easy.  I'm telling you if you do not know my pal Easy you have got to go meet him.  Just make sure you pee first before you read his blog.

 

Now let's see what is in here.

 

Oh you are not going to believe this!!!!

 

JACKPOT!

 

Check this out.  I got a super cool Weimaraner DVD.  It's even in my native language, German.  I will have to translate for my MOM.  All though her Grannymom and Grandpa were from Germany and spoke it and my MOM took German in school.  Butt it has been a long time since she has actually spoke it.  Butt not a problem I am fluent.  And if that is not cool enough I got some yummy Veggie snacks shaped like alligators.  AND AND I got a Igor!! 

 

I LOVE this Igor.  When I bite his tummy he farts and burps.  When I bite his eye he screams.  When I bite his foot he laughs.  And when I bite his hand it is a recorded message from my MOM.  OH AND if you don't turn him off after a little while he starts to snore.  He is so so much fun.

 

Hey EASY I am blowing you a big brotherly kiss to you.  Thank you thank you.  I love it all.  Oh an as an added bonus when I fart now I can just blame Igor.  It's perfect.  I'm off now to watch my DVD and eat some beans and broccoli.

Blessings,

Goose

 

 

 

 

Turkey Coma

Hello Friends

This is my friend Scrappy.  He is Bert's brother.

 

"He Goose is this what the humans call Turkey Coma?"

"Zzzzzzzzzzzz.  Huh?  I suppose."

"Where is your human?  (yawn) Is she in the kitchen cooking a turkey?  You know our Vickie is not much of a cook."

"I am sure my MOM is in the kitchen, just not your kitchen (sigh).  She is at the Homeless Shelter cooking."

"Bummer dude.  Do you think she will bring us something?"

"Zzzzzzzz huh, oh I am hoping for some turkey balls."

"That's gross dude."

Hehehehe.  No Scrap.  She makes me a special turkey treat with turkey, bread crumbs, eggs, cranberries and stuff.  They are called Turkey Balls, not.... hahhaha oh but that is funny."

"Hey Goose you want to go pounce on Bert.  I'll distract him and you steam roll him."

 

"Sure Scrapy, that sounds like fun.  You go find him I'll be right behind you.  Zzzzzzzzzzzz."

 

"I'm on my way. Zzzzzzzz"

 

MOM and I wish you all a wonderful Thanksgiving and hope you get to spend it with the ones you love.  We are blessed to be a part of such a wonderful community called Blogville.  And a VERY special thank you to Miss Vickie for taking such good care of me while my MOM is cooking for hungry people.  I will make sure I share a turkey ball with you.

Blessings,

Goose

 

 

Wordless

Hello Friends.

Blessings,
Goose

Eucharistically Yours

Hello Friends.

There was a great plan to have some cool photos just for this message.  Butt... Well for the last 3 days we have had arctic winds.  And not just the kind of wind that muffs your furs.  These are the kind of winds that blow you right off your paws and you end up in a tree somewhere.  In fact the roof of my shed blew off and a window in the living room blew out.  So I thought I'd just pepper this message with some photo that you may not have seen before.

Do your peeps have story time with you?  Mine does.  You get too put aside stuff, snuggle together, and listen to an unfolding story about someone and somewhere else.  Story time invites all of us to enter into the worlds of others, to involve ourselves in their trials and triumphs, to encounter new cultures and challenges through others. Fairy tales give us stories that included dragons and giants, noble knights, heroic platypus' and not-so-noble connivers and conspirators.

But for those raised in the church, there was another time, another “story time” that described the ongoing relationship between God and God’s creation, between God and all God’s children. The church had a different kind of “story time.” This “story time” was called “testimony time.” It was the open-ended, ongoing “story” of God’s First Story (Old “Testament”) and Second Story (New “Testament”) as it unfolded within our story, the Third Testament of God’s Never-ending Story. “Testimony time” was the church’s “story time.”

Before worship hour became a carefully scripted "performance", before Sunday morning became an obligation instead of an opportunity, worship was the playground of the Spirit, a time for heartfelt expressions of God’s Spirit in the lives of the faithful.  The worship “hour” itself was not confined by the minutes on a clock face, but was an undefined time determined by the stirrings of the Spirit.

Here’s the most striking thing about “testimony” stories: they have no conclusion.  Unlike fairy tales or Hallmark-channel movies, there is no automatic happy ending. “Testimony stories” are never a done deal. The curtain never falls. They are always plays in progress.

One Christian couple who watched and waited as their twenty-something daughter became employed as a server at a “Hooters” bar and grill, where asked how their girl was doing.  They simply replied, “She is working on her testimony!

We are all “working on our testimony.” Every day of our lives, every moment of our lives, we are “working on our testimony.” How many times, now that you look back on your life, were “working on your testimony?”

None of us have straight lines in our life stories.  Instead we have complex plot-lines, with paths not taken, wrong turns made, and double-backs to new beginnings.  Our roundabout, ox-bow lives make up our “testimonies,” our personal story of God’s persistent presence and perseverance in our lives. We are all “scattered sheep” looking for the guiding and good shepherd to take us home

On Thursday we will celebrate what might be the only holiday that has resisted grand scale commercialization.  Christmas decorations have been up in some places since September, and twenty-eight percent of brands started their holiday campaigns on or before October 1st. Halloween is no more than a gigantic candy-gram, but is coming to rival Christmas as North America’s favorite holiday.  

Easter is another reason to enhance tooth decay — but it has the additional ambiance of selling new spring clothing.

Thanksgiving, however, does not lend itself to big commercial enterprises — expect perhaps for grocery stores.  Thanksgiving doesn’t have any accessories except friends, family, turkey feathers and tables.  No fashion designers hawk “Thanksgiving wear.”  There is nothing you are supposed to buy for Thanksgiving — except turkey, cranberries, and pumpkin lattes. Thanksgiving is still pretty much just about getting as many people who love each other together and saying “thank you” — for their presence in your life and for the presence of God in their lives.

Just like we sign our letters “Sincerely yours,” Thanksgiving is when we sign our lives “eucharistically yours.” “Eucharist” simply means “thank you” in Greek.  When we gather around the fatted bird at the table, we are saying to God, each one of us, “Eucharistically Yours.” We are signing our life story “Eucharistically yours.”

In Judaism, at the other end of this year’s seasonal cycle, there is the spring celebration of saving activity and a new redemptive relationship known as Passover, or Pesach.  It is the festival that celebrates God’s actions that liberated the Hebrew slaves from Egypt. An astonishing number of miracles marked the events that led to the Egyptian rulers letting the Hebrew slave population “leave the premises” without bloodshed.  A Passover Hymn that celebrates all these miracles, all these saving redeeming moments is “Dayenu” — a title that mean literally “it would have been enough for us.” The hymn extols the miraculous work of God, act upon act, stage upon stage, any one of which would have been “enough for us.”  You can check out the words and HERE.

Redemption is the act of being saved.  The scattered sheep being brought back into a safe and guarded flock.  But the “Dayenu” hymn at Passover recognizes that God did so much more.  Each one of us could write our own “Dayenu” litany this Thanksgiving . . . . In fact, we could go around the Thanksgiving table with each offering a eucharistic “thank you” to the God who brought us through another year, and end with the phrase “Dayenu” — it would have been enough for us.

Thanksgiving is the time we take a “time out.” A time we don’t buy stuff, or decorate, or hold concerts or do anything in particular, except be “eucharistically yours” with those we love. Thanksgiving is saying “eucharistically yours” for God’s continuing story in our lives — past and present and future. And Thanksgiving is our “Testimony Time,” our “Story Time,” for acknowledging the powerful and persistent presence of God’s enveloping love in our lives.

Eucharistically Yours,
Goose



  

Officer Goose

Hello Friends.

Look at me!  I am now a police officer for Blogville.  I am still the Chaplin of Blogville butt now I am also Captain of Patrol Officers!!!!  You may not know this butt I have always wanted to be a cop.  Just goes to show you it is never to late to realize your dreams. 

 

I got a badge and everything.  OK, I'm off to cruise the street making them safe for all the citizens.  You can buzz on over to Susie and Sidebites to read all about my new position, just keep your speed down on your way over.

Blessings,

Goose

 

Different Day Same Postion

Hello Friends.

 

Remember this from Monday?

 

Well here I am the next day.

I'm at Bert's place while my MOM is at work.

Different Day, Different Location, Same position.

All that is missing is my Moose, Billy.

 

"Is my MOM here yet?"

Blessings,

Goose

 

 

 

No Mischief

Hello Friends.

No mischief here.  Just a dog cuddling with his moose.

Blessings,

Goose

Initiative, Industry and Integrity

Hello Friends.

There has been a lot of adjustment lately.  First that whole time change thing and yesterday we had our first "real" snow fall.  So how have you doing fighting back against snow and falling back?  Spring forward; fall back.  These past couple of weeks our bio-rhythms have been batty, fighting back after “falling back” or maybe even “falling flat.”

You cannot wake up “bright-eyed and bushy-tailed” to birdsong when all the song birds have flown south and the only feathered friend you see on your morning walk is the occasional owl.

It's hard to argue with us dogs when the door opens for a gloomy, rain or snow soaked “morning” walk is rejected with horror and we beat a fast-track back to our snuggly doggy bed.  Or in my case back to my MOM's bed.

Cold, dark days make us want to hunker down and veg out.  The feeling that all there is ahead of us is a cold, dark future can bring on a kind of “root vegetable” behavior.

Getting up every morning, keeping motivated, giving all we have to our family, our church, our community, our friends is not easy under these dark conditions.

The concluding commands made to the Thessalonian community (2 Thessalonians 3:6-13) addressed the threat of “idleness” to the life of the faithful.  This “idleness” was not just a sitting-around-watching-TV all day- kind of inactivity.  It was the idleness that took on the activity of despair, disorder, and disobedience.  Those who thought their faith entitled them to a life of support and special treatment disobeyed the apostolic examples of daily toil and labor Paul and his companions had demonstrated personally.

To all these wrong-headed notions there was one simple apostolic answer: “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.” Paul rejected the world of patronage and privilege.  Instead he advanced a new ethic of labor as love — love for Christ, love for each other, love for the unlovely, and love for the future.

Over a decade ago the media was transformed by a quirky British import that was renamed “American Idol.”  The quest to find the next big pop star became a national obsession and a billion dollar industry.
 

As other “reality” based programs have spun off “Idol’s” success, it has become more and more obvious that the true “American Idol” is a quest for the ultimate “American Idle.”  This is not the “idleness” of simple couch-potato sloth.  This is our American Idle quest for a life and lifestyle that has no purpose, no goal, no commitment to “doing what is right” or doing what is good, what is true, what is beautiful.

The American Idle obsession is easy to find and define.  We validate it endlessly.  It's the “work of being the busybody” instead of the “work” of doing any genuine “work.”  We glorify and glamorize the idleness of busybody work.

Need an example?  Our peeps are offered “Keeping Up With The Kardashians,” “Jersey Shore,” and “The Real Housewives of . . . . (L.A., D.C., N.Y.C.–-you pick) as the new social pathways to patronage and privilege, as the alternative to working for your bread and working because of Christ’s righteousness and love.

All the hottest electronic advances seem to share one common thing: a vowel. “I” as in i-pod, i-phone, i-pad, i-Tunes, I-messages.  The peeps can’t even do a “Wii” without two “ii’s.” “I” of course stands for “individual.  The electronic culture is all about maximizing the power of the individual.  Do your own thing, on your own time, for your own advantage. All those “i” creations are far too often expressions of Idleness.

What if instead of connecting individuality to the world’s social network of power and privilege,  we found some other “i-tunes” to play?  What if instead of Idleness we chose Individual Initiative?  What if instead of Inactivity we chose Individual Industry?  What if instead of Excess we chose Individual Integrity?

The reason why initiative is so important is that the distance from 0 to 1 is greater than the distance from 1 to any other number.  One of the hardest things in this world is to go from nothing to something.  It takes initiative.  And a key method of fighting back against fall back, is to exercise some initiative to move something from 0 to 1.

You know what?  People will make a mess of anything, of everything, and it takes major industry, with showers of God’s grace to climb out of old pits and to keep from falling into new pits.

A certain music critic, covering a performance of a Beethoven concerto, played by a master pianist, set down his highest praise in a one-sentence review, he said:  “Beethoven would have liked it.” Integrity is living in such a way that Jesus will like it.  Integrity is hearing Jesus say of us what his Father said of him: “Well done. Your life, your ministry, brings me great pleasure.”

This does not mean that a life of integrity will not have falls and failures. Fine Oriental rugs can be distinguished from machine-made rugs by their curious variations in patterns.  In Middle Eastern villages, where each Oriental rug is hand-woven under the direction of a master-weaver, it often happens that a weaver makes a mistake.  But when a mistake is made, instead of pulling the work out to correct the error, the master-weaver finds some way to incorporate the error into the pattern. Experts say that the exceptional beauty of complex design in the rugs often is due to the skill of mater-weavers in turning mistakes into works of art.
 

Everyone has the God-given potential to become a uniquely beautiful masterwork of God’s creative art.  The “work” of being “busybody,” the “work” of being an “American Idle,” is exhausting.  The work of initiative, industry and integrity, the “work” of being the beloved and laboring for “doing what is right,” is exhilarating.

Blessings,

Goose

Rockin'

Hello Friends.

I am a lover of music.  All music really, well most.  Butt at the heart...

I'm a ROCK and ROLL Dog.

 

I'm thinking of getting a tattoo to complete the Rockin' Goose image.  MOM says "no" to the tattoo. 

 

"Phfffffft" to that, I say to the woman with a tattoo. 

Anyone want to join me on tour?

Blessings,

Goose