FlowerDust.net | Anne Jackson

what kind of people are you, anyway?

occasionally i post the random searches that land people here at flowerdust. without further ado, the searches…and responses.

pantyhose blog
you will find none of that here. i haven’t worn pantyhose in…10 years?

girl dies from spider laying eggs in throat
that sucks.

doggie day care hot springs arkansas
i prefer cats, actually. and really? day care for dogs? i thought that would be called, “a yard and a rabbit?”

purring cat paws at my face
that means he loves you.

why does my cat put his butt up and in my face?
that means he doesn’t.

what to do when you live in the middle of nowhere and stay at home with your child
open a doggie daycare.

my husband of 38 years ran into his old girlfriend what should i do?
did she fall down? well, make sure she’s okay! chances are she’s pretty old.

chicka chicka boom tree shaped cake
uhhhhhhhhhh………

sister teaching brother to put on pantyhose first time
and let’s hope it’s the last time, too.

evil leprechaun drawing
like this?

sister farting on a airplane bathroom
and how, exactly, would you know?

any surprises in your stats lately?

how can i pray for you?

this weekend, i am sharing my thoughts on blogging community at the lifechurch.tv internet campus. something i am talking about is how this community here on flowerdust.net has formed over the last few years and how we truly do cover each other in prayer, support, advice, and even discuss the questions of life. we even fight a little bit. all signs of healthy relationships!

so, with that…i think it’s time to have another post dedicated to how we can pray for each other. i will be checking in over the weekend and praying for you, and encourage you to come back and do the same for others.

i’ll start.

chris & i could really use your prayers about our finances. we have cut back so much, but like some of you shared, similarly, we have made poor decisions in our past that we are paying for now. there is also quite a bit of medical debt that we were able to defer but it is now staring at us in the face and is making a tight situation tighter. i could identify with much of what anonymous had to say earlier this week.

please pray that we are sensitive to areas we are able to cut back on so we can build more margin into that area of our life. and for god’s protection. we don’t have any room for emergencies!

wow, that was hard to share!!!

your turn…

the decline of christianity??

it started last week when i was watching the today show. matt lauer was quietly peering through the door of a buddhist temple. the monks, quietly chanting. matt left his shoes at the door to respect the sacred space, and took a step or two in.

“it’s nothing like anything you’ll ever see,” he said.

a friend sent me some stats. it confirmed what i was questioning.

the mainline protestant church is NOT REALLY growing.

from the report:

Mainline Protestant denominations continued to decline, according to the 2006 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches. The United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church USA, and the United Church of Christ, all reported slight decreases in membership in 2005. For the first time in many years, the Southern Baptist Convention, a conservative evangelical denomination, also showed a decrease of 1 percent.

i am by NO MEANS a historian, or a theologian. but from what i’ve read, other, non-protestant religious sects are growing much faster than protestants.

so then i wonder…what are we doing differently?

my gut reaction came kind of easy…too easy…so that is why i wanted to run it by you.

none of these other faiths are really “modernizing church” the way the west is doing it. (and please humor me; this is just me wondering out loud rather than any stance i am taking).

when we (the modern, western church) are blending into our culture by appearances, other religions still keep to many of their sacred traditions, even to the point where it does not make sense at all.

but the christian church is barely scrapping by statistically…the growth has come to a near-screeching halt, and less people are hearing about their one true love.

your thoughts??

[PS - this is simply going off statistics. this is not a reflection on spiritual growth. we'll save that topic for a rainy day!]

does a blogologist use latex gloves?

i’m not *too* geekafied, but as i wander the streets of the blogosphere, i noticed a few things and thought i should contribute some knowledge (which has been passed down to me by many older, wiser, bloggers) and some things i’ve just learned on my own.

1. SUBSCRIBING TO BLOGS - i realize this is blogging 101, but you’d be surprised how many people are unfamiliar with RSS readers and email subscriptions.

do you bookmark all your favorite blogs or manually type them in when you visit them? save yourself a ton of time by subscribing.

you can do this easily by subscribing by email (click here to do that with my blog) and have my updates come straight to your inbox.

or, use an RSS reader like google reader or bloglines. all of your favorite blogs should have a subscribe button (mine is up top under my header that says “feed”) and by clicking on this on each of those blogs, you are pretty much consolidating all the blogs you read into one webpage! it is automatically updated whenever someone posts something.

i use google reader…here’s a screenshot. see how all the blogs i read are in that window? i can just scroll through them all to read them, and click on them if i want to leave a comment.

use a reader to subscribe to my blog by clicking here!

2. POST TITLES - see how in the URL bar it has my domain, then is followed by the date, and then the title of this post? this helps people find your blog through SEO (or search engine optimization). sometimes blogs use a numbering system instead…search engines don’t like that.

use thoughtful titles and you’ll have more people discover what you’re blogging about.

3. IMAGE TITLES - you know how when you upload pics from your camera, they are named DSC_009 or something? if you change that and use the same hyphenation technique as in #2, this will also help search engines (and especially image searches) find your blog. i’d like to bring some more exposure to compassion international, so for the sponsorship posts, i title my photos “compassion-international-uganda-childname.jpg”

name-your-pics-like-this.jpg and more people will find relevant content on your blog!

there are a million other little things that help make your blog easy to find and easy to read…but these are three important ones!

any tips you’d like to share?

my thoughts on boobies

did you know?

–there is a female feature we call breasts. they can also be referred to as “boobies,” or “the twins,” or “the rack,” or “jugs,” so on, so forth.

–most men find this particular feature interesting. tempting. and amazing.

–upon catching a glimpse of said feature (regardless of how much is actually exposed), it is likely for a man’s mind to go to places it shouldn’t.

–with above knowledge, women, you now are educated and have no excuse.

–PLEASE USE WISDOM WHEN YOU DRESS YOURSELF.

aside: call me a prude. call me whatever. i don’t really care. and as much as this may seem like “casting judgment” (said in a very, scary, echo-y loud voice) on members of the female gender, please get a freaking clue.

i was doing some bloggy-clicking-around during my lunch and it amazes me how many “nice christian girls” (some who are even in church leadership - gasp!) show quite a bit of skin. in the office, at church parties, whatever (oh, and then post them ALL OVER THE INTERNET!)

please forgive me if it seems i have something stuck, as they say, where the sun don’t shine.

I DO.

it’s called modesty.

and if you are supposed to be living examples of godly women…you should too!

that is all.

sermon over.

please, carry on.

[this is also part of watercooler wednesday!]