Spark

Today's results . . .

🌟Honoring goodness 💯😇
🌟Enjoying serendipity 😊🌍
🌟Remembering the why 🎯🍎

A Story:

I have Bose speakers I absolutely love listening to from time to time for their crisp clear sounds. I thought today was a time for listening to them again. They're loud enough for a neighborhood concert if I turn the volume up halfway, so I rarely play them louder than necessary.

So today I chose to compare the speaker sounds with another set of sounds I love to hear on my smartphone earbuds, a pair I purchased years ago from a local store.

I played a song that really enhanced the sound quality of both my Bose speakers and my smartphone music player.

I played a CD and listened to the Bose. After a few repeats, I placed my earbuds in and clicked the smartphone while in another room where I was unable to hear the Bose speakers still playing the same song.

I clicked play and enjoyed the earbuds and moved into the Bose room to compare the two.

Both songs, played on separate sound equipment, a smartphone and a country player, were perfectly in sync without trying. How often does that happen?

Here's the 🎵🎶 song, whatever it means . . .

Source: song for speaker sound quality

https://youtu.be/3U31Q73yhlw

✍🏾 Forgive to live

Today's Healthy-Happy-H@ly Do List . . .

🌟Focusing 😊
🌟Understanding 🌍
🌟Nurturing 🫂

A Story:

Love covers a multitude of wrongs. Today's verse is problematic in the interpretation, so I've read a bit more to get the gist of what needs saying.

At a glance, the meaning is clear—those who overlook something seek love, and those who repeat a matter separate friends. The most popular renderings of this text point out that friends often have to keep quiet about certain things to maintain the friendship, usually some cutting remark or sordid behavior that could easily create a rift in a relationship. That's the easy part to understand.

Yet, even that simplicity deserves a bit of contextualization. Sometimes, you have to clearly establish a boundary for behavior; otherwise, the offense grows into something unmanageable. Boundaries for acceptability need to be established.

The rest of the relationship is simply a measure of how well both people attend and listen to their intimate connection, the subtle nuances of communication found in a touch, a raised brow, a high-pitched voice falling, or a word with some shared meaning—like love.

Love is one of the key words in this morning's verse—ahabah (ah-hab-aw). The masculine version of the word is ahab (ah'-hab), a word that immediately resonates with those familiar with Melville's classic 🐋 whaling story.

Ahab, the main character, was a man obsessed with a passion, a fanatic hunting his own conspiracy theory to its watery end. In its Hebraic form found in the verse, 'ahab' concerns lovers, loving, and affection. It's doing what's necessary for sustaining connection, even if it means forgiveness.

There's another way of understanding the text, something I found as I sifted each word's meaning and compared the findings against what a few centuries have published. The key came in the word 'cover'—a word translators rendered as to forgive.

To forgive and to cover is kashah (kaw-saw') in Hebrew, and that sound also means to be covered in fat. This is where the verse takes on a whole new meaning for me. Those who are covered in, filled with, and gorged with atypical misbehavior are seeking attention for love. These are the folks who every now and then seem a bit out of sorts. Yet, the second half of the verse requires an astute reading as well.

The latter end of the verse references those who misbehave a second time. The Hebrew term used is 'shanah (shaw-naw'), and in one of its etymological branches, a Syrian one, 'shanah' means to grow insane. It makes good sense to me when looking at the verse from this perspective: those who break a boundary are in need of attention and seek a corrective love, and a repeated misbehavior suggests something deeper, a structural problem of the mind.

That interpretation, I found a bit insightful, especially in anecdotally recalling how I managed classroom behaviors. Some students, and adults as well, require an instruction manual (perhaps some medication, too) for managing—their own Individualized Educational Plan (I.E.P.).

Fortunately, most people, even those with structural brain damage, can be helped, especially with some of the more fascinating uses of brain scans (Dr. Daniel Amen) for seeing how the structure of the brain affects behavior (I'm gonna leave out saying much about whole swaths of the country who may benefit from some brain imaging). 😊🤫🤔

Reuven Feuerstein taught children of the Holocaust, the ones so traumatized that the schools had to leave them behind. He demonstrated by his work with those children that the brain can be structurally changed in an ameliorating way that normalized behavior. Their IQ's improved, too.

When the principal and guidance counselors found out that they were a few teachers short, they shifted the most unmanageable kids to the newer teacher—that would have been me back then. 😊 I was fresh out of the Army and grad school in those days. I faced a hundred high-strung hormonally-challenged teenagers in a cafeteria study hall.

"Sure. No problem." 🤯😊

I found out by real-life experimenting how well Feuerstein's theories really worked. I gave the most challenging students a set of Feuerstein's "Organization-of-Dots" handouts that I photocopied by the hundreds. In a matter of seconds, my study halls became immaculately peaceful, my favorite mood. 😊

I like the fact that the behaviors changed without the kids being sent away for whatever drug-of-the-day people usually gave them for being 🧟‍♀️ zombied out for hours. Dots worked for my situation, so I'm all-in on Feuerstein. 😊

When people misbehave, it should tell us something—either they're calling out for love . . . or just crazy. 🤷🏾‍♂️ That's just how I see it. Either way, it's good to have a plan in place for whatever works best, a hug, a 'sorry', a kiss right on the lips, a juicy bubblegum kiss (that's in my I.E.P. somewhere 🤭), or even a game of Bocce Ball for soothing the soul. Whatever works for you.

I hope you're finding a way to connect with those you care about, a way for mending when misunderstanding gets the better of us. Have yourself a most excellent day!


Source: Chapter 17: Verse 9