Blog Archives - Page 10 of 11 - Dallin Malmgren
2019
Handling finances — a perspective
What is the number one source of stress in a marriage? Raise your hand if you said money. Not only do I think you’re right, I think you’re mostly right no matter how much money the couple makes. (Okay, maybe LeBron and Tiger don’t stress about it.) For being such an important factor in a […]
2019
Lies
I still tell them., even though I shouldn’t. I mean, I don’t tell Trump lies, where I make things up, or hyperbolize things from sources that are questionable. And I don’t tell sin lies, like “I was at the gym,” when I come back home from my secret lover’s. (Ha, that’s a laugh) I mostly […]
2019
Sleeplessness — why, Lord?
A disclaimer: I am not that well qualified to write about this. I’m only a mild, almost rare, sufferer of insomnia, and I’m retired! So the pain, the distress, the anxiety is only secondary to me. When you know you need to go to sleep, as soon as possible, and you’re not able to…that stress […]
2019
I Will Be Brave…a meditation on fear
I think fear is evil’s most powerful weapon. Fear pits itself against some of the human spirit’s most benevolent impulses. Fear keeps us from becoming the kind of people we want to be. Fear paralyzes, love flows. There are two types of fear: external and internal. I listed external first because it is the more publicized. […]
2019
The Black Sheep
From Wikipedia: …black sheep is an idiom used to describe an odd or disreputable member of a group, especially within a family…the term has typically been give negative connotations, implying waywardness. I love that term—waywardness. You could ask any of my siblings (one brother, four sisters) and they would tell you I was the black […]
2019
Being Pop Pop (the joy of grandfathering)
That’s me. I consider it one of the major roles in my current life, a role at least 95% great. I am not sure how I got that name—I think Kallie gave it to me. My recollection is that she even consulted with me about it. It stuck. I am now Pop Pop to my […]
2019
The Willow Tree
I became a Christian when I was 26 years old. Since I had virtually no church background and since I had spent my previous young adult years in varying states of dissolution, my conversion demanded a drastic change in lifestyle. I immediately became an initiate of a house church comprised of college students and dropouts […]
2019
To thine own self be gentle
You cannot be judged by status; you cannot be judged by success; you cannot be judged by Facebook friends or neighbors’ opinions; …by your spouse;…by your parents or your children; and you should not be judged by yourself. There’s only one Judge. And, let’s face it, you have been found guilty, and, thank God, you […]
2019
X#%&*@$! (Profanity)
I made a vow to stop cussing when I was 23 years old—not sure why. I hadn’t become a christian at that point—didn’t carry any conscious guilt feelings—certainly had no peer pressure—and I was pretty good at it. I suppose it seemed unnecessary to me. I was reading more at that time and becoming more […]
2019
Sorting out the past
I could be wrong, but it seems like a natural current for my age group. You start to look back. I’m not talking about dwelling or obsessing or recapturing or idealizing or mourning—just reflecting. Even if you are not an adherent, your dreams probably are. At least, mine are. Dylan said, “Anybody who lived through […]
2019
In Praise of Jubal (Music makes the world go round)
“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” –Aldous Huxley When I decided to write about music, I asked Aunt Faith what kind of music under what circumstances has had an impact on her life. “None,” she replied. “I don’t listen to music.” I was amazed. We moved a collection of […]
2019
The Other
So you are here. You know that you cannot have created yourself, but you are aware of a self. Your mom and dad? That’s just biology—they had no hand in designing you. They were busy enjoying other things. You and The Other—that which created you. This is an immediate and an eternal relationship. If you […]
2019
Dreams (…are only in your head…)
I used to tell my students that dreams were one of the greatest gifts we received—free life. I’d tell them that I knew exactly how it felt to be shot because one time I had—in a dream. I had experienced, close up, in an open field, the power of a hurricane. (If I was on […]
2019
Part II: Phrases and thoughts…(from God)
This might seem like just a continuation of my last post, but really it’s not. Those last ones (Phrases and thoughts that opened up my mind) I would call accidental—I was living my life and these ideas jumped out at me and stuck. This next set I would call interventional—at the risk of grandiosity, God […]
2019
Phrases and thoughts that have opened up my mind
(Photo by Steve Slate) Okay, I am sure you have your own list, but if mine gets you thinking about yours, that is a good thing. All that follows are illuminations, insights, existential hypotheses, moments of clarity, revelations that changed the way I looked at the world. I mean, stuff that stuck with me. Most of […]
2019
The Log
Okay, I told this story a hundred times in my classroom: At my old high school in Upper Darby, PA there was a revered couple, Johnny Scott and Sally Drake. Johnny was the star quarterback and Sally was the head cheerleader somewhere back in the 1950’s. They went to Silver Lake to make out, and […]
2019
That was the Lord (events, major and minor)
We all have experiences that illuminate my selected title—even if we don’t acknowledge them. As long as you accept that there is an Other out there—as a creature (you didn’t make yourself) you accredit a creator—you have to be available for the possibility of an interaction with Him/Her/It/Force. Maybe you don’t have to—if He speaks, […]
2019
Why I Am Writing Again
Craziness. To think anyone would want to know…to think you have a chance of reaching anyone in this world of a billion messages a second (or whatever)…to think you possibly have any hope of expressing that which is inexpressible. But not inaccessible. Dallas Willard told John Ortberg (two christians I admire): “Don’t hurry. “ So […]
2018
Lists, lists, lists.…(a cry for help)
A confession: I am a list maker. I started thinking about it the other day, and I might have gone over the top. But I am too close to the issue to know if it’s a problem. Can you help? My first instinct is to suspect that I have become OCD. But that doesn’t hold […]
2017
2017 — Your Year in Review
I know, how presumptuous! Like I have any insight at all into your 2017. Actually, the title is just a hook. It was sparked by the realization that this is something I need to do. It’s a tired metaphor, but life really is a journey. Consider the end of each calendar year a milestone, […]
2017
Immanuel
I see the signs all over the place: “Keep Christ in Christmas”. I know that it is a noble sentiment—we are celebrating Jesus’s birthday—the reason for the season—all that jazz. It is a testament that His birth is celebrated all over the planet. But something about the sign rankles me, and I think I’ve […]
2017
2017
Waiting for…
Traffic lights, grocery lines, license bureaus, auto repair services —we all have to wait. (I especially hate it when they assign you a number.) Most of us never learn to wait, so when we have to, we have no plan. We just go where our minds take us, and, in my experience, it’s not usually […]
2017
Karen’s poem — A Lament for Sutherland Springs
Here’s the thing: it’s gotten hard to watch the news because a madman (or madmen) doing horrible things to innocent people has become such a frequent occurrence. But Sutherland Springs hit us hard. As we watched the story unfold, it shook us to the core. For one thing, it’s so close (only 30 miles away). […]
2017
Hello, Jesus: my true confession
It has been about three and a half years since I retired from teaching. I have to confess, I haven’t looked back at all. Don’t miss it, haven’t kept in touch, don’t think about it (but still dream about it!)—I even avoid good old Clemens High School like the plague. I knew that when I […]
2014
Cinco Anillos — My take on Spurs’ championship
Cinco Anillos – My take on the Spurs’ championship It’s been a week now, and I’m still riding the wave, even if the water’s getting shallower. I don’t think about it as often, but when I do a big smile breaks across my face. We got number five! In one of the most glorious […]
2014
My Retirement Speech
I have no intention of giving one, but I did want to write one… Wow. Thirty-three years. My plan was to teach for twenty and then become a full-time writer. But our plans are not always God’s plans. When I think of the things that have happened, the ways that I’ve changed, and, most of all, […]
2013
The First Day of School
Blogger’s note: Like my last entry, most of this blog comes from a book I wrote 20 years ago entitled “Is This For a Grade?” I am in the process of republishing that book as an e‑book, but annotating it with my current observations and opinions. I hope to publish this update the day that […]
2013
Inservice Training
Bend over and we’ll teach you to teach (Blogger’s note: Twenty years ago I wrote a book called Is This For a Grade? — a collection of essays about teaching high school. My latest book project is re-issuing that book, only amending it; adding to the original text my current opinions on the same topic. You’d […]
2013
The Vagaries of Memory and the Spirit of Perverseness
When I taught sophomore English, we did the novel The Lord of the Flies. I thought it was a strange choice because there are no girls in the book, which tended to diminish the interest level of half my class. But I had no trouble accepting the main premise of the book, that when the […]