Winning Words 10/31/11
“Where there is no imagination, there is no horror.” (Arthur Conan Doyle) To imagine is to form a mental image of something that’s not really there. Halloween masks cause that to happen. Life is such that Oct 31, isn’t the only time the mind plays tricks on us, causing unnecessary fear. It’s a continual challenge to try to know what is real and what is not. What imaginary things scare you? ;-) Jack .

FROM PLAIN FOLKS CHESTER:
Imagination is funny, it makes a cloudy day sunny
Makes a bee think of honey just as I think of you
Imagination is crazy, your whole perspective gets hazy
Starts you asking a daisy "What to do, what to do?"
Have you ever felt a gentle touch and then a kiss
And then and then, find it's only your imagination again?
Oh, well
Imagination is silly, you go around willy-nilly
For example I go around wanting you
And yet I can't imagine that you want me, too
FROM JACK: I just listened to the Ella Fitrzgerald version with a soft piano background. Great!

FROM SHARIN' SHARON: Actually, it's the tendency to privacy and individualization in the church that scares me but it's really imaginary, the church is really knit together closer than any other institution. but I can still manage to be scared in the church too, particularly when I externally see us shrinking and not growing and successfully including others and question my own faith and trust in God to form us in the community He wants us to be, sometimes I imagine us to be actually against Him and that is a horrible thought.////FROM JACK: Rev Jonathan Edwards once preached a sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, " which had people literally screaming and crying out in fear. Ralph Sockman once wrote: "The job of the pastor is to comfirt the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable." That goes for churches, too.

FROM OUTHOUSE JUDY: When I was a little girl, my grandparents lived in Detroit. Their house had an alley behind it. Whenever the "shenny man" was coming, we had to go into the house. I had a great fear of the alley at night. I had a reoccurring nightmare for years and years about that alley and I still remember it today. It was only my imagination but it was sure scary!!!////FROM JACK: The scariest movie I can remember watching was "Silence of the Lambs." I only got half-way through it, before turning off the TV. I also recall seeing, "Snake Pit" and thinking that it was really frightening.

FROM GOOD DEBT JON: "Obviously this writer has never suffered through a political debate. They are equal parts horror and lack of imagination, pandering to those seeking hope while winking to those clinging to the status quo." ////FROM JACK: Isn't it strange? That which comforts one can be frightening to another. Welcome to the elections of 2012.

FROM JACK: “None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear.”
(—MARSHAL FERDINAND FOCH, French soldier and World War I general)

FROM BLAZING OAKS: You mention the sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" by Edwards. I read that sermon to my Senior S.S. class awhile back, and they could NOT imagine a pastor preaching such a message! times have changed, more than a little bit. The Presbyterian church in Chicago used to have a huge eye painted over its altar space, titled "The All Seeing Eye of God"... Believe me, that was a deterrent for not being detected doing anything "evil"...The eye of God would follow you wherever you were! Scary, tho I'm not sure it was intended to be. It was the church of a childhood friend that Jan and I would sometimes visit for a few days. It occasionally showed up in my dreams. :-) Mostly imagination is a blessing, to an avid reader!