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By Dan Carlson, on September 7th, 2007
I was reviewing some of my old posts today, trying to see what needed to be updated and maintained. I came upon this previous post and thought it would be a good re-run for those new to the sight. Enjoy!
By Dan Carlson
Yesterday Father Tim, a friend and adviser, gave me the following story adapted from “A House with Four Rooms†by Rumer Godden.
A house with four rooms
Imagine a house with four rooms:
One room is a fully equipped kitchen, stocked with every kind of delicious food and wine.
Another room is a quiet library, furnished with comfortable chairs and lined with shelves of the best books written.
A third room is a work room or studio. It houses a work shop for carpentry, a garage for automotive maintenance, or a studio for painting, pottery or sculpting.
The forth room is a high tech media room, with the latest in audio-video hardware and a state of the art computer set-up.
You become so interested in one of the rooms that it becomes the room you live in: you become so immersed in cooking that you never avail yourself of the treasures of the library; or you become so engrossed with all the toys in the media room that you never sit down and enjoy dinner with you family; or you become so immersed in projects and gadgetry that you forget how to connect with other human beings. Our lives are houses with many rooms. Yet we tend to live in only one room: whatever room we find most comfortable and safe, whatever room is most fun and satisfying, whatever room is least stressful and demanding.
There is an Indian proverb that says that everyone of us is a house with four rooms – a physical, a mental, an emotional and a spiritual room. And most of us tend to live most of the time in one of those rooms. Unless less we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired out, we are incomplete.
There are lots of stories out there that hit on the mission of Public Safety Ministries. As I spread the message, people see the Spiritual Fitness idea and share it with me. One of my goals with this website is pass those sightings along to others. So enjoy and feel free to contact me with your Spiritual Fitness sightings and I’d be happy to pass them on
By Dan Carlson, on September 6th, 2007
The following is the invocation I presented at today’s Hennepin County Chiefs of Police Association Meeting:
Dear God,
We thank you once again for this opportunity to gather in the spirit of Public Safety leadership. We ask that you bless the food we receive today as nourishment for our bodies, the information presented as nourishment for our minds and the fellowship we share as nourishment for our souls.
Specifically today we ask for blessings on the new chiefs and other new members of our association. We ask that they feel welcome and enjoy the relationships and fellowship that membership in this association can bring. Also, help us as an association provide resources and guidance to our new members as they take over their new leadership responsibilities.
Again we thank you for this time together. Please guide us as we lead those who protect and serve our communities.
Amen
By Dan Carlson, on September 5th, 2007
It’s 8:55 AM and the start of the new fall season is upon us. Yesterday was a very eventful day in the Carlson household. Sophia started middle school, Amy started her first day as a senior in high school, we put Pete on a plane back to Alaska after a three week visit, I took my 83 year old dad to the hospital for prostate surgery (very successful!) and I started sorting through how I spent the last three weeks as well as how I was going to spend the rest of my life. A pretty full day. But from talking to people, a day filled with events that are very common, in substance and quantity. We live very full lives.
I accomplished the travel I wanted, spent a lot of family time as predicted, but I didn’t get around to the study, reading and reflection that I hoped to. Several work/career transition projects popped up and were very productive, yet very time consuming. The abundance of family time, just time spent together and hanging out was very spiritually refreshing. I learned a lot about what was going on in my kids lives just by being with them. But from a study standpoint, I did do some reading, some recreational reading that turned into study.
“Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”
My daughter had it as assigned reading over the summer and said I needed to read it since this guy talked about a lot of the things I talk about. So she gave me a copy (due to a redundant purchase) and I was going to make it my recreational novel reading. Well if any of you have read it, it is NOT recreational reading, at least not for me. I’m about two thirds through, I quit twice, and now I have difficulty putting it down. I could, and probably will share some of my thoughts on the book, but now is not the time. If you are interested, google it and you will get more opinions than you could imagine. There is even a full version of the text on-line, click here.
But I will give you a short excerpt from the book that gave me a lot to think about, and is something I think everyone could gain some insight from:
“You look at where you’re going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you’ve been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something.”
 So I’m back on-line, talk to you soon!
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Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association
Minnesota Law Enforcement Memorial Association
Minnesota National Guard "Beyond the Yellow Ribbon"
Minnesota Emergency Services Chaplain Association
Hennepin County Chiefs of Police Association
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
