Your bookshelf

[Lanolin]

Hello again amadeus. Catching up on old threads...well I didnt take my stamps to be valued but I did take a whole lot of used ones to put in the missions collections box and they do get something for them!
I used to have lots of penpals in the days before internet and still had their letters so pulled the stamps off them. Sad I dont write to them anymore but most all have moved on. As well as in my own country I had overseas penpals in USA, UK, Australia.

 

[amadeus2]

Hello again amadeus. Catching up on old threads...well I didnt take my stamps to be valued but I did take a whole lot of used ones to put in the missions collections box and they do get something for them!
I used to have lots of penpals in the days before internet and still had their letters so pulled the stamps off them. Sad I dont write to them anymore but most all have moved on. As well as in my own country I had overseas penpals in USA, UK, Australia.

I never had pen pals as such, but up until the late 1990's I had dozens of stamp collecting friends located all over the world. We traded stamps by mail and got to know each other by our written communication with no money ever changing hands. I used my Spanish to make many such friends in South America and Spain as well as many other countries where collectors were able to communicate in English. That combined with my membership in local and national and international stamp clubs were my best sources for stamps that were new to me.

I enjoyed all of that but eventually it did get in the way of serving God.

For a few years I pretty much set my collection aside. In last several years up the present I have been in the process of selling my stamps through one of the larger clubs. It is a long slow process and for most people it would be more work that it was worth, for it certainly doesn't make a living for me and mine.

I am glad you have found a way of handling your stamps.

 

[Lanolin]

I dont have that many just two books and hardly ever look at them. My dad loves historical stuff but it doesnt really interest me at all. Maybe if I reach a golden age I will look back on early years with fondness but I actually think God doesnt really want us to dig up the past all the time.

My dad works for nz post and he does get the latest on stamps but they sre always commemorating some dead anniversary like some war that happened before I was born or some disaster. Why do people commemorate disasters and deaths I dont know. I find it depressing.

 

[amadeus2]

In this life all we have is what we are doing from day to day. As you will likely see and have already guessed your past will become more important to you when the present has slowed way to where you don't do a lot and don't feel like doing a lot. For example I can remember as a young man loving to play tennis. I was not great at it, but I was much better than I was in other sports where I was terrible. I wish I could play tennis again but my old body is too far gone to move around the court. I am sure I could hit the ball if it were within reach, but if I had to move in a hurry to get to it, I would be in serious trouble.

I happy lots of other good memories, but I also have some bad ones. Those bad ones I'd like to forget, but I certainly make no effort to commemorate them. Once stamp collecting was very important to me, so important that is threatened the walk with God that I thought I had. I discovered that I really scarcely knew God at all. Do I know Him better today? A little bit, but mostly I recognize better what I do not know about Him. Quite a strange change. I remember thinking when I was 12 years old that I smarter than most of the adults I knew. It took me many years to realize how very wrong I was.

 

[Lanolin]

I dont think we can know everything about God but Hes given us plenty of clues about Him, until we meet Him face to face. I am really looking forward to that day..well eternity..

When I was 12 of course I thought I knew a lot!! People used to call me brainbox and I didnt like it though..to be smart at school wasnt cool. It was more 'cool' if you were really good at sports! But as I grew I dont regret not becoming a world champion athlete cos not everyone can be one and it would be a waste of time to do something that you are not gifted to do!

Besides even world champion athletes have days where they are injured or cant be at the top of their game and then what do they do? Whereas...I think as long as I can see and hear I can read and write. And even if you find difficulty with that you can always pray. And prayer can make all the difference.

 

[Lanolin]

@amadeus2 funny about the stamps I saw an ad, this evening on the back of a toilet door at the movies would you believe, about getting your stamps valued at a stamp collector dealer. It had a picture of a rare early nz stamp but my stamps are not THAT old. I didnt take down the number but thought well maybe I should give it a whirl and let you know.

If its worth a lot maybe I can sell my stamps and give the money to missions? I mean they not much use to me anymore are they? Even if they arent worth that much it would be good to give something to them anyway. Cos I cant really go there myself, Im not really called to go overseas on missions. I did ask God about that but He wants me to do stuff here.

Which is a bit annoying but I have to obey. Sometimes its harder to stay at home!!

 

[amadeus2]

@Lanolin

I know about your "brainbox" thing. They didn't pick out a special name for me, but at the time I wished I were a bit of both, athletic and brain. The athletic was never to be and the brain was the main thing I could see that God had given me.

I wasn't smart enough to know what to do with what I had. Is my previous sentence a contradiction?

On contacting the stamp dealer, just take it slow. There are some good honest stamp dealers, but they are frail people like the rest of us. Some of them would be dishonest. Then again, nothing ventured, nothing gained. If personal profit is not your concern and you don't want to be bothered or are not interested in checking the values yourself, what can you lose? If you lived across the street I would be happy to look at them for you, but, that is not even close to being an option.

On the staying home thing, we may indeed have to at times grin and bear it while staying where God has placed us. I traveled a lot around the world prior to my marriage [45 years this next June], but that was as a member of the military in the US Army and as a student for myself. I was not serving God at all at the time.

I studied Spanish and German with no idea what I would use them for... I did use them as a secondary part of my secular job but generally speaking it was almost never really for God.

I have used the Spanish quite a bit at times and places, but except for spending a year in Germany as a student a couple of years prior to my marriage, my use of the German has essentially been limited to reading my Luther Bible.

 

[Lanolin]

Half the things I studied in school I never used..the most important thing I am learning is to study the Bible.
I never did that at school so now making up for lost time.

 

[Christ4Ever]

Dear Brothers & Sisters,
This thread has turned from a query into the book reading to bringing to light the deficiencies of Catholicism which is not the purpose of the thread. If you'd like to move in that direction, please start another thread or let me know and I'll move the associated postings done in this thread to a new location, where this discussion can continue.

Otherwise, please lets keep it to point "Your bookshelf".
Thank-you.
YBIC
Moderator
Nick
<><

 

[Lanolin]

Actually it is MY thread and I'm talking about books on my bookshelf and the one I am reading at the moment happens to be THE NUNS STORY.

 

[Lanolin]

Sorry. I just want to say as I always keep to topic in the threads I start, it is very annoying when Mods try and fix things for you which isn't necessary. Please Christ4 Ever, I know you mean well, but it's fine. REALLY.

 

[Lanolin]

At first I thought, hmm should I read this? But actually it is quite interesting. I don't know that much about nuns, well of course nuns aren't going to write about their lives unless they have left the orders because they take vows of silence.

Another book I have read think it was called...arrgh name escapes me I know it was by a woman named Mary! It was a memoir and she was a nun for the missionaries of charity - the Mother Teresa one. Anyway she left the sisters and became a christian. I mean she always was but she actually found that being a nun was over and above what God had called her for.

She chose the strictness and to have a religious life but the vows and insituations are man made. She ended up marrying and having a family.

Will try and remember the title. It was so sad I was really moved by it. Piety has it's place but God never said to us we had to be nuns or monks.

 

[Lanolin]

An Unquenchable Thirst by Mary Johnson.

 

[Lanolin]

I had been reading several books about nurses. One was Confessions of a male nurse, then he wrote a sequel called Confessions of a school nurse.

And no the nurse is not catholic.
In the nun's story, the nun is a missionary nurse to the Congo.

I have also been reading 'Confessions of' a ghostwriter, and the other was a Police Constable. They aren't christian books exactly, but they are interesting because I am not these professions and it's always interesting to find out what it's like.

The next christian book I am going to read is John Bunyan's The Holy War. Looking forward to it.
What is on everyone elses' bookshelf?

 

[Christ4Ever]

Sorry. I just want to say as I always keep to topic in the threads I start, it is very annoying when Mods try and fix things for you which isn't necessary. Please Christ4 Ever, I know you mean well, but it's fine. REALLY.

I'm glad you see I mean well.

However, the need to correct is still necessary if it continues on with "bashing of Catholicism" on this thread.

Another suggestion is that you might think about starting a separate thread since it seems to have elicited a few comments from others in this thread.

I am glad however, to see that you have moved on from this. Hopefully, the Brothers who have also contributed to the above line of discussion will do so as well.

Your Servant here at Talk Jesus.
Moderator
Nick
<><

 

[Lanolin]

The thing is I think its perfectly acceptable to talk about a cult religion and its downsides and not be accused of bashing it because you are actually stating facts and experiences.
I talked about scientology in another thread and nobody is saying I am bashing scientology or scientologists.

I have read books about scientology too, by people who have experienced what its like.

The fact is, religious cults are never a good thing..and they ARE bizarre with their rules and regulations of belief.
That is why there are books on it by people who have lived under that kind of life or been subject to it and after youve read something like that you are free to make up your own mind about whether the adherents are crazy or not lol.

For me..I know I am not cut out to be a nurse for example. Or a catholic nun for that matter. Or scientologist. I can see the appeal of each of these ways of life and mindsets of these people but doesnt mean I have to subscribe to them.

 

[Lanolin]

I also dont think any subject is taboo and I dont think catholics have any special treatment in that those of us who arent catholic arent allowed to even talk about how it appears to us.

For example. I have read a few maeve binchy novels and they are set in ireland which is a predominatley catholic country right? So the characters in her novels are mostly going to be catholic. And so they all talk about going to mass and all this bizarres stuff being very religious and all but many if not all the characters do not genuinely know Jesus and act in weird and often immoral ways without any kind of thinking what does God think? So I think well thats just weird. The last one I read was The Glass Lake in which this character left her husband and two children to run off with her lover, and nobody knew and assumed she drowned in the lake. She had left a letter explaining she was abandoning her family but her duaghter found the letter in an envelope and burned it without even reading it because she was scared that her mother would not be buried in a catholic cemetery for taking her life (she assumed it was a suicide note) and they have afuneral with someone elses body and say mass etc.

Now this is a far fetched story at best and it all turns to custard when her daughter finds out she didnt die after all but had run off to London and living a double life. To cut a long story short...the mother ends up dying in a car smash and being cremated so she doesnt end up being buried in a catholic cemetery after all.

And I'm going well this is just bizarre. After 600 pages of this..I am not sure what to think about catholicism, or at least, the Maeve Binchy version of it.

 

[Lanolin]

Btw am not really a novel reader will pick one up now and then but reading them through christian eyes I think I do want to see if theres any moral to a story or not. I find it more satisfying that way. When Jesus told parables there was always some spritual truth to be gleaned from it.

Sometimes you cant find any and its like well that was a waste of my time...although sometimes you do read books for a bit of time travel or armchair travel and sometimes a writer can be descriptive and make you feel like you part of the action.

Anyway am still on Nuns Story. Because its a novel am not sure if the part where the nun is encouraged to lie and fail her exams to prove her humility is genuine. But her ambition to nurse overrides her desire to draw close to God in the way the order requires.

 

[Christ4Ever]

@Lanolin
You have failed to understand, by choice or otherwise what I have written you concerning what was posted.
As time allows I'll clean up the thread and create another one for you. It will be your choice and others on whether they will continue to post there on the subject of Catholicism. Think of this as a Librarian who is relocating a misplaced book.

Off to give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar.

With the Love of Christ Jesus.
YBIC
Moderator
Nick
<><

 

[Lanolin]

If you want to talk about books on your bookshelf then feel free. Nobody is stopping you.

The Nun's story happened to be on my bookshelf. It means I can talk about it here. Why is it on my bookshelf? Its not misplaced, I wanted to read it. I did have an old workmate who btw is catholic, Recently she had been telling me she wanted to become a nun. I don't know anything about nuns as I'm not catholic. I didn't know what to say to her. So that is why when I saw this book I thought I might read it to find out.

This is the thread I created, and you are misunderstanding the purpose of it.
If you have another book on your bookshelf you want to talk about, do so.

After I finished reading that I will read another book, and maybe write about that. Yes there are stamp books on my bookshelf. We talked about that. I enjoy hearing from people. Some books are not christian, and I will say if they aren't. Don't get all hissy with me.