There are very few blank slates any more. Every available site is simply background for an ad. We have become so used to it that we accept that bus shelters offer some unusual thoughts—and images—, that clothing has its labels on the outside and that TV ads are less and less tasteful.

I will admit I was a bit startled the first time I walked into Port Authority bus terminal and found I was walking on advertising. Now I look forward to the changing messages.

I was recently in Penn Station for the first time since last spring. As I was leaving I was halted in my tracks. What was that? Quite simply, NesTEA has claimed the risers of the steps leading to 7th Avenue. Glimpsed from a distance it looked as if the travelers were climbing a billboard. Clever!

As a church we have learned that subway ads are effective. After all, we have to do something while we cling to our poles. The bus shelter ads appeal to the passing pedestrian as well as to the patient traveler inside. Handbags, totes, umbrellas (preferably when open), all sport logos or messages.

I am often amazed at the knowledge, insight and creativity of children. We, as parents or parenting persons, feel we need to educate, lead, explain, and protect our children.  And of course this is true.  But we also need to LISTEN to them.

It is amazing what you can learn when you listen. We parenting persons often make the mistake of relating to our children as they were 6 months or a year ago. Our parenting does not keep up with their growth. It is important that we frequently how we see our kids and adjust our parenting techniques to who they are today and who they will be in 6 months. We want to be parenting into the future, not holding them back and relating as though they were 6 months or a year younger than they are which can be the source of much anger in kids.

There's a gloom in the air this week. Yesterday's stock market decline is the latest in a long string of sobering events: war continues in Iraq and Afghanistan, without an end in sight; a tense presidential campaign with ideologically different candidates wrestling to define our nation's problems and propose solutions; an economy crumbling under debts that can't be repaid. Add this onto our daily stresses: the cost of housing in New York, a tough job market, how hard it is to get a decent date.

What can we say about any of this?

For me, it's a reminder about just where, at the end of the day, I put my trust and confidence... more specifically, in whom.

To live a life in Jesus—in the Way of Christ—is to put our life in the hands of God and one another. It's to say that we belong to God. God gives us life and breath, our bodies and our minds, our hearts and our hands. God counts our days and commissions our work in the world. God loves us and welcomes us into the Realm.

I suppose it was inevitable, given our national obsession both with exercising and multitasking. The days of great-grandma and grandpa, when the ordinary chores of farm work and household care offered enough muscle-bending to prevent obesity are forever gone. And so we have had to invent exercise equivalents.

The New York Times of September 18 illustrates the latest gift to exercise lovers. For those bored with the gym or unable to rise early enough to take advantage of its offerings, the treadmill has come to you!

An endocrinologist from the Mayo Clinic has constructed the first treadmill desk by uniting a hospital bedtray with a treadmill. Add your laptop, and the workwalker is all set to burn 100 to 130 calories an hour as he walks a leisurely 1.4 miles an hour at his work station.

I was traveling last week and brought along a new book by a favorite author, Jungian analyst Robert Johnson. It’s called “Living Your Unlived Life,” and at one point he gives the original definition of the word “heresy.”

This potent word, what we think of as a large sin against God or against some rules of the faith, originally meant “to be off balance.” In Johnson’s words, “to overrate one side or the other of a basic equilibrium.”

There is something both very forgiving and very challenging in this classic definition. For one thing, we are all heretics, and the invitation is to be aware of my heresy on any given day. Not in a narcissistic, self-flagellating way, but as an exercise in greater consciousness and awareness.

Am I going too fast or too slow? Being too negative or too positive? Too stubborn or too pliable? Where am I living (read: clinging) to one way of being or thinking that, however comfortable and familiar, is ultimately something I should outgrow? What unlived parts of me are tired of living in the basement and are starting to pound on the door and come into the house?

In his book, American Scandal, Pat Williams tells a story of two brothers who are on their way home from a basketball tournament. It’s a story about character…

“Still in the top ten, baby,” Eric bragged as he showed off the third place trophy he’d won in a high school basketball tournament.

“Wasn’t a good day for you, was it?” his older brother George commented during the drive home.

“What? I did okay,” said Eric. “I may not have won, but--”

“You think I’m talking about the tournament, but I’m not,” said George. “You missed a bunch of shots during practice.”

“Oh, those don’t count,” Eric assured him.