Here’s how to participate:
1. Pick something you’d like to memorize. Something long. Something formidable. Something Mega. (Mega to you may not be mega to me–simply challenge yourself relative to what you’ve tackled in the past.)
2. Announce it on your blog whenever you like.
3. Return with a link to your blog post talking about how you’re going to take the challenge and participate in October’s Mega Memory Month carnival. I’ll update this post so that participants are front-and-center.
4. On Mondays, because it offers the best alliteration, I’ll write a Mega Memory Month post. Chime in with your own progress report that day (or any time during the week) in the comments or at your own blog (it won’t be instant, but I’ll update to your linkage if you supply it). That way we can visit and encourage each other.
5. Try typing out what you’ve mastered little by little.
6. Post any memory techniques you’re using, so we can borrow ideas that work.
7. By the end of the month, present a creative culmination of your work (a video of you–and your family, if they’re participating–reciting it by heart; or write it out by hand and take a photo; or just type it up on the blog).
...and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
- 2 Corinthians 10:5b
Whether I am aware of it or not, everything I say and do is done within the Presence of the Lord. What would it look like if I lived my life in the knowledge that every moment of every day was a prayer, a conversation with My Lord? One of the reasons for my practice of the spiritual disciplines is to make me aware of this Holy Place in which I abide, to put me into a place where I am alert to the Presence; but so many other things intrude on the conversation. I want to embrace the intrusions because in reality they aren't that: the children who need my attention are not getting in the way of my communication with my Lord, but are offering me another way in which I can commune with Him - service, or maybe love, or listening to them and through them hearing Him. How many times have I dismissed His Voice because it has been 'disguised' as the voice of one of The Ones I Love? That question gives me pause.To live every moment of every day as though it were a prayer. If we
were to do this, it would leave little room for...
My Girl looking for (and finding!) fossils at the Devonian Fossil Site in Iowa.
Astounded at the plenty and beauty of the fossils.
From the Stations of the Cross at the Grotto of the Redemption.
153. Stones heaped as a monument, arranged to depict Your Redemption.
::
The day had been a slow one for school-work. We had the timer set for every ten minutes so we'd remember to send someone to the front porch to look at the "J-Man" and see if any changes had begun. He'd been hanging there for more than 36 hours, so we knew that the time was close. By mid-afternoon I had assigned 
the children to 5-minute watches: we were determined to witness this miracle of change!
on a much straighter, stiffer posture.
Before our eyes there appeared a tiny slit of green at the bend in the J, like a minuscule incision through the caterpillar's skin. As the skin gradually separated in a perfect straight line, more of the hidden body underneath pushed its way through. The soft, moist, lumpy green mass squeezed its way through the little opening, forcing it wider and longer.
The wriggling and straining continued for almost an hour. Near the end of that time, the exoskeleton was completely compressed at the top of the soft, moist chrysalis and he began to swing and twist to push it off and away. It fell into a tidy pile on the floor of the cage, useless now, but once an essential part of his 
existence. 
Freed from the constraints of the old skin, the little fellow continued to swing and bend. We imagined it was from the discomfort as the new exoskeleton, the chrysalis, began to shrink and harden around him. It was so flexible still, and yet we knew that in less than an hour it would be the 
same solid jade-green jewel we had admired in our other specimens. 
