2026 Summer Staycation: The Weekly Digest

Looking out the window....

The weather is hot and dry with the occasional clouds taunting us into false hopes of rain.  Yep, a typical Colorado July.

Some cool experiences...

Each year, I normally take the last week of May off for summer vacation (and to celebrate my birthday).  This year, I took of two weeks:    

Week One: 

Monday & Tuesday:  I made a few summer and Memorial Day themed cards. 

 

Wednesday: I made a box for my plastic canvas bobbins.  I had no pattern for this since the bobbins were also an improvised creation from years ago.  The top of the box is a slider-type lid.  I think I did pretty well since I made the whole thing up.  

Thursday: Diana and I made our annual trek to Castle Rock. 

First, we went to Oo-De-Lally Coffee Shop where I had my first iced coffee:  a Reese's cup cold brew.  The coffee shop was adorable with its rope swing seating and playful atmosphere.  The cold brew I chose was a perfect introduction to this type of coffee--it was very flavorful without being too sweet.

Next was the pièce de résistance: the Quilt, Craft, and Sewing Festival at the Douglas County Fairgrounds.  I did get some fabric and a quilt pattern. I'll share once I've made the quilt.  Stay tuned.

Friday:  I reset my front "stoop" for summer.  I planted impatiens in the top planters and one of my spider plant babies in the lower planter.  I tried my hand at a little fairy garden.  It was cute, but I may not do it again:  I'm not sure I did it right.  My summer wreath still looks pretty good.  However, I noticed as I was putting it out that the mesh is starting to disintegrate.  This wreath gets the most heat and sun and I've had it the longest, so it's to be expected.  I have no idea how to stop that from happening so after the season, I'll take it apart and rebuild it with new mesh and ribbon. 

  

 

 

I celebrated my birthday weekend by having my friend, Jamie, over for Sunday dinner.  Hey, did you know that you can bake the layers of a cake in a bread loaf pans?  Me either.  My plan was to make cupcakes, but forgot that I'd ruined my muffin pans somehow and threw them away, so I had to make do.  Miss Jamie made a dairy-free butter pecan ice cream to go with our loaf cake.  So good.

 

Week two: For the most part, I hung out at home and rested.  The highlights of the week were:

 

Delivering all the baby items to Colorado Family Life Center
I've been working on for the past few years.  I also got to tour
their new facilities.

 

Hiking with Diana at Lair of the Bear near Evergreen.

 

Viewing the current exhibit at the Rocky Mountain
Quilt Museum.  It was stunning display of medallion quilts
by Cindy Vermillion Hamilton.  Out of respect for the artist, I'm only
showing a small portion of a much larger work.  Her work is all hand done and
intricate.

 

Favorite quote(s) of the week... 

 

...all you've got to do to be selfish is nothing. - Pastor Keith Moore, Video:  Being Given to Hospitality, 1998.

 

First, we see that Christ saved us from the power of Satan.  The seed of the woman has bruised the serpent's head, so that Satan's power is broken (Genesis 3:15).  Next, he also saves us from the guilt of past sin.  In one moment, as soon as the blood of Christ is applied to the conscience, every past sin is gone, and in God's sight, it is as if we had never sinned.  The next thing he does is kill the power of sin within and makes us believers new creatures.  And do not forget this precious truth of the gospel--Christ saves us from future falling.  He saves, not only for a year or for ten years and then lets people go--no, he finally and completely saves that which was lost.  We do not preach that Christ forgives sinners and then lets them live as before.  No, the moment he gives pardon of sin, he gives a new nature too. - Charles Spurgeon, The Risen King,  p. 89.

 

I don’t think age matters so much as people think. Parts of me are still 12 and I think other parts were already 50 when I was 12: so I don’t feel it very odd that they grow up in Narnia while they are children in England. - C. S. Lewis, Letters On Living the Faith. 

 

Nondiscipleship costs abiding peace, a life penetrated throughout by love, faith that sees everything in the light of God’s overriding governance for good, hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstances, power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil. In short, it costs exactly that abundance of life Jesus said he came to bring (John 10:10). – Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines, p. 263

 

I'm thinking about... 

Why aren't all cans pull-tab cans now?  It's not deep, but it is what I'm thinking about currently.

What I've read since the start of the year... 

Please see my "2026 Baby Got Stacks" reading challenge here.

   

I'm currently reading...

• The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy L. Sayers
• Garden City by John Mark Comer

My current "crock pot" reads (slow and steady reads that will take a while):  

• Diary of an Old Soul by George MacDonald 
• The Emotional Healthy Leader by Peter Scazzero 
• Devotional Classics by Richard J. Foster and James Bryan Smith

Recent blog posts... 

• My previous digest, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?'" is here. 
• My latest book review of Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman is here.
• Government Cheese:  The Weekly Hodgepodge is here. 
• Five Minute Friday:  "Lazy." is here. 
• First Line Friday post:  #43 - Looking for the King by David Downing is here. 
• My "2026 Baby Got Stacks" reading challenge is here.  (Updated regularly).  
• My "26 for 2026" challenge is here. (Updated regularly)
• My "26 for 2026" art challenge is here.  (Updated regularly). 

From the Workshop... 

 

I am thankful for...

• A new bird to enjoy:  the black-capped chickadee.  I heard the "phoebe" call of the male and was intrigued.  I must paint one someday.
• Another successful academic year at CCU.
• A new FitBit.  My old one died.
• Fun YouTube channels.
• Thriving house plants.
• An anonymous gift I received:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Thankful that nothing got caught on fire since some of my not-so-bright neighbors (I'm trying to be nice) decided to shoot off fireworks around the apartment complex over the holiday weekend.  Why would you do that during a period of extreme heat and crispy-low humidity?  Not to mention they are illegal in Colorado.  Y'all, many of the cities in Jefferson County cancelled their Independence Day fireworks shows because of the danger of fire.  Take a hint!
• The 250th anniversary of our country's independence.  Yes, we've got issues (lots of them), but we're still here.
• Colorado Community Church's jubilee celebration.  We are officially DEBT FREE!  

 

 

 

 

 

2026 Baby Got Stacks Reading Challenge: 01

Title:  Jesus and the Disinherited

Author:  Howard Thurman

Info: Copyright 1949. Beacon Press.

Rating (on a scale of 1-4 stars):  ✮✮✮✮

Category (ies) - This book was a  rrecommended read from my pastor.

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What does it look like to walk in the shoes of the disinherited:  the excluded, the marginalized, the underprivileged?  Is it possible for such persons to escape fear, hatred, and hypocrisy (what the author calls the three "hounds of hell"), or are they doomed to perpetuate it while being victimized by it?   Theologian and Civil Rights leader Howard Thurman attempts to answer those questions.  In answer to Vladimir Simkhovitch's treatise Toward the Understanding of Jesus, Thurman expounds on his thesis that Jesus not only ministered to the disinherited, but as a working-class Jew in a Roman-occupied Israel, he experienced their plight first hand.  Thurman explores Jesus' response to the governmental and religious sanctioned dehumanization of the people of his time and His instructions to the disinherited of both Thurman's time and ours.

I approached this work with much trepidation, and nearly stopped reading before I had even gotten to the first chapter.  In the introduction to the 2022 edition of this book, Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas states:

For some, Thurman’s book perhaps represents one mystic’s attempt to capture the inner spiritual strivings of Jesus. For others, it may exemplify theological liberalism’s overemphasis on the historical Jesus as a great exemplar and role model for humans to follow. And for still others, Thurman’s book is a precursor to twentieth-century Black theologians’ declaration that Jesus was Black. (p. ix).

Now you see why I almost didn't bother reading the rest.  However, I did complete the volume and would like to address Dr. Douglas' points.

First, Thurman's words vividly capture the spiritual strivings of Jesus, if by that Douglas is referring to not only how Jesus worked in His earthly ministry to relieve the burdens of the oppressed (see Luke 4:18-19), but also how Christ's ultimate sacrifice purchased those same freedoms for all who call Him Savior and Lord (see Psalm 34:19).  He says (first quoting Simkhovitch):

Jesus had to resent deeply the loss of Jewish national independence and the aggression of Rome…. Natural humiliation was hurting and burning. The balm for that burning humiliation was humility. For humility cannot be humiliated…. Thus he asked his people to learn from him, “For I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." (p. 17)

Then he goes on to say:

He [Jesus] recognized with authentic realism that anyone who permits another to determine the quality of his inner life gives into the hands of the other the keys to his destiny. If a man knows precisely what he can do to you or what epithet he can hurl against you in order to make you lose your temper, your equilibrium, then he can always keep you under subjection. It is a man’s reaction to things that determines their ability to exercise power over him. It seems clear that Jesus understood the anatomy of the relationship between his people and the Romans, and he interpreted that relationship against the background of the profoundest ethical insight of his own religious faith as he had found it in the heart of the prophets of Israel. (pp. 17-18) 

Douglas' second point about seeing Christ as a mere exemplar portrays Him a one-dimensional character and Thurman does not present Him in that manner.  Jesus is no simple template from which we can extract the favorable parts, dispose of the unfavorable parts, and add our own spin on.  He is not a generic essay or a Mad Libs story we can fill in as we please.  Jesus Christ is the story already begun and finished.  Our job is to find our place in the narrative and live it through to the end.  Or as the Apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians 3:2-3 (English Standard Version), "You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all. And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts."  He writes upon our hearts and we dare not try to change the story.

Her third statement was a complete turn off that nearly had me press the "return early" button on my Libby app. If you've read my previous book review, you know how much I loathe those who use Scripture and/or God for race baiting. Admittedly, I also struggle with how to successfully study theology through the lens of different cultures without that lens magnifying the culture (the created) over the Creator (see Romans 1:18-25).  Also, how would anyone who gave the work a serious read ever come to Douglas' conclusion?  Thurman himself puts that notion to rest at the close of the book by saying:

For such his answer becomes humanity’s answer and his life the common claim. In him the miracle of the working paper is writ large, for what he did all men may do. Thus interpreted, he belongs to no age, no race, no creed. When men look into his face, they see etched the glory of their own possibilities, and their hearts whisper, “Thank you and thank God!” (pp. 101-102). 

It reminds me of the Joan Osborne song from the mid-90s that laments "What if God was one of us?"  Well, He was.  Was Jesus "us" as it relates to race, gender, or other demographics?  Only if "us" is a Jewish male.  But was He "us" in the more universally recognized aspects of being human?  Absolutely.  Hebrews 4:15 (New International Version) says, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin."  Even if Jesus did not look on the outside like whatever our "us" is, He experienced and completely understood all of the "us" that is on the inside.

So, why is this book still relevant more than 75 years after its publication?  To me its relevance lies both in its history and theology.  Today, government-backed segregation and slavery have been abolished as part of the laws of the United States.  However, the mindset that perpetuates oppression has not.  Yes, ignorance will always exist and along with it hatred and vitriol.  If those individuals reject truth and refuse to change, God help them as they rot in their own ignorance. But what of the hatred, fear, and hypocrisy experienced  by those of the disinherited class?  Since this is no longer a legislated preloaded lot in life, why do so many still live back there as if it was?  I'm not talking about those who remember history (they should--we all should) but those who remember and repeat it as a given.  Why do so many of us in the black community perpetuate our own oppression by refusing to educate ourselves and work so hard to oppress and ostracize others who choose education and job training over the status quo?  Why do we still have so many homes where children are raised without a father because of poor choices or apathy on the part of both parents?  Why are the privileges for which many marched, fought, and died (like education, the right to vote, freedom of religion, and the chance at upward mobility) relegated to "white only."  Why are we creating our own version of Jim Crow?  Thurman laments this very point:

The implications of such a view are simply fantastic in the intensity of their tragedy. Doomed on earth to a fixed and unremitting status of inferiority, of which segregation is symbolic, and at the same time cut off from the hope that the Creator intended it otherwise, those who are thus victimized are stripped of all social protection. It is vicious and thoroughly despicable to rationalize this position, the product of a fear that is as sordid as it is unscrupulous, into acceptance. Under such circumstances there is but a step from being despised to despising oneself.  (p. 33)

Thurman's understanding that Jesus is not just an example of the answer, but is THE answer to hatred, fear, and hypocrisy is another reason why this book is still relevant.  His words cut to the quick of any person's oppression regardless of race, creed, or gender.  For example, he says, "There are few things more devastating than to have it burned into you that you do not count and that no provisions are made for the literal protection of your person." (p. 29)  Statements like those go straight to the heart of anyone's pain.  He comforts with the words in Luke 4:18-21 where Jesus both acknowledges and presents Himself as the embodiment of freedom and comfort for the oppressed and hurting.

Another big part of the book's power is that unlike much of the literature of this type I have attempted to read, Thurman's book does not incite one to hatred.  Yes, he talks about what "they" did to "us," but more importantly, he addresses what "we" did (and still do) to "us."  His goal is to teach us to receive God's love so that we can truly love Him, love others, and love ourselves.  That is the love that disempowers fear, hatred, and hypocrisy and breaks the chains of oppression.

This book impacted me so deeply that I purchased a copy of it and intend to add it to my rotation of books that I reread on a regular basis.  I'm sure I could add more, but I recommend reading Thurman's words that most powerfully speak for themselves.

26 for 2026

Welcome to year three of participating in Gretchen Rubin's yearly challenge. To learn more about the 26 for 2026 challenge, please see the Happier podcast here.

To see how I did on my 25 for 2025 list, please click here.

Yes, I know it's May and the list was supposed to be published in January.  Hear me out. 

This year, finding items was hard.  I didn't want too many repeats from previous years (especially the items I've failed to complete year after year) and I didn't want to include things that might be outside my budget.  Chris Hogan said, “[A big goal] is one of those that you know you’re going to have to work hard to get to, but you don’t have to find a unicorn to achieve it.”   I wanted fun stretch goals, not "unicorn" goals.

Quite frankly, until now my heart just wasn't in it.  As you can see, I have been working on a few of the items, but for some reason, this year has started on slow drag and I haven't had the mental or emotional bandwidth to nail down much of anything.  This is supposed to be fun, but in Auntie fashion, I've turned it into work.

Let's get 'er done! 

I have compiled the following list.  As I complete each item, I will mark it as complete.  If it is blog worthy, I'll post it as a link, or where applicable, include a photo, Pinterest pin, or Instagram post.  NOTE:  List is subject to change without notice and some items may overlap.

1. Redesign this blog.
2. Get down to the goal weight set by me and my physician.  (14 pounds to go). 
3. Move 26 in 2026:  Work out at least three times a week for at least 15 minutes for 26 weeks.  (8 weeks so far).
4. Walk an average of 8,000 steps per day.
5. Read 100 children's books.  (79 books read so far) 
6. Read something by Tolkien. The Hobbit completed 06/02/2026
7. Read the first book of C. S. Lewis' Space Trilogy. 
8. Read through John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion.  
9. Release eight episodes of my podcast. 
10. Finish and self publish a book.  
11. Try five new foods/drinks and/or restaurants. (3 so far).
1. Nutella:  I give it a strong "meh."  It just tasted like very cheap chocolate with no hint of hazelnut.  I would have gotten more flavor from eating a Ferrero Rocher.   NOTE:  I just looked it up:  The Ferrero company owns Nutella and changed the recipe.  Not smart, folks.  Change it back.
2. Iced coffee.  Tried the Reese's Cup iced coffee at Oo•de•Lally Coffee in Castle Rock.  It was fabulous.  Also tried the Salted Maple iced latte at Amano Plant Cafe in Evergreen.  This one was also quite tasty. Thoroughly enjoyed the toasted coconut cold brew at Starbucks also.
3. Snarfs - A sandwich shop in Arvada.  Think Quizno's, but better, Subway, but much better and the staff doesn't look like they just got out of jail or rehab.  Would recommend. 
12. Try five new recipes.  (4 so far).
1. Blueberry Baked Oatmeal from the cookbook Satisfied by Amy Hannon.  I made this recipe again using canned peaches and it was great. 
2. Hash Brown and Egg Breakfast Casserole from Allrecipes. 
3. Homemade Taco Seasoning here.
4. Sloppy Joe Cornbread Casserole from Zach Coen's YouTube channel here. 
13. Attend or create a spiritual retreat.
14. Have a themed summer reading focus.  Theme "My Inklings Summer."
15. Write 5 book reviews on my blog (or elsewhere as the opportunity arises). (2 so far)
16. Write 10 First line Friday posts. (2 so far)
17. Blog about my one word theme:  "Care." 
18. Start a blog series called "Are You Happy Now?" 
19. Finish the next unit in the Rhema correspondence course I started ages ago.
20. Finish one course unit from the Dallas Theological Seminary's free courses.
21. Redecorate my bathroom. (In Progress)
22. Redecorate my bedroom. (In Progress)
23. Meet (and hopefully exceed) my savings goal to fully fund my emergency/maintenance fund. 
24. Get my dream sewing machine.  (Completed 05/05/2026)
25. Finish the photo project I started from my 50th birthday party. 
26. Free play!  These are the fun things I want to enjoy throughout the year that didn't make into the top 26.   

• Items from my 26 for 2026 list on my other blog.
• Go to some sort of conference--preferable in person. 
• Buy a new personal laptop. 
• Make a fairy garden. (Completed 06/01/2026)
• TBA