Pastor Candace’s Chellew-Hodge Sermon, a “Beginner’s Mind” from Whosoever Magazine is terrific.   What stuck most with me was the whole point about how our experience and knowledge can hold us back from really understanding others or even from seeing what God is doing in our life and the lives of others.   I love this quote from her sermon:

Jesus’ ministry was a Jubilee – a time for the poor and oppressed to be liberated, a time for those in bondage to be set free. Jubilants, we too are called to that ministry – to help the poor and liberate those who are oppressed because of economic conditions or society’s prejudices and hatred. Before we can do that, however, we have to get out of our own bondage of the expert’s mind. We are held hostage by our old thinking patterns, held in captivity by the things we “know” to be true – the opinions and beliefs that we will fight to the death to defend. Those beliefs don’t keep us safe – they keep us in prison. When we say “I know” – we lock the door to new possibilities and throw away the key.

My classical evangelical biblical upbringing says, “use the bible to test all things” (Acts 17:11) and I still subscribe to that but over the last 5 years with a much more open view to how God’s “box” or vision of life is far bigger than my own.   The religeous leaders of Jesus’ day used the bible, (Tanakh) But instead of testing all things with their sound biblical knowledge and being open to what God might do outside of their understanding (but not outside His character or plan) they put God in a box built by their own limited (though sincere) understanding.

The sermon is good, so have a read (or a listen an MP3 of her sermon is up as well) at this link: Beginners Mind.

Local gal Joanne Herman will be at the UCC of Needham on Sunday, April 11, 6PM-8.30PM doing a book reading, “Transgender Explained for Those Who Are Not”.   We’ve blathered a bit here about Ms. Herman as most of you can see at this linkie love here.

The event is open to the public.  From the UCC Needham web site, here’s the full announcement:

Sun., April 11, 2010 – 6 p.m.-8:30 p.m. – Open to the Public Book Reading and Signing by Ms. Joanne Herman – author, speaker, transgender woman, member of Old South Church UCC in Boston Joanne’s book, Transgender Explained for Those Who Are Not, will be available for purchase for $15 (cash only).  See amazon.com, borders.com or barnesandnoble.com for purchase ahead of time.

Looks like the church is providing a light dinner.  Reservations don’t appear to be mandatory but the church would appreciate it if you could, email your intentions to kacarp@comcast.net

Have  you ever had a program, document, presentation or web page on your screen you needed to show someone but you needed to describe to them something about the page in words or maybe by circling parts of the page to tell them?  Ever found that frustratingly difficult to do between trying to screen capture part of your screen then paste a .jpg into Open Office, Google Docs or MS Powerpoint?   I know we have here at Beck’s Cafe.    But now there’s a tool called Jing that makes this process crazy easy to do.

Jing let’s you capture your screen then paste it or save it and then send the URL of it, to anyone.  You can annotate your screen by drawing lines, arrows or highlighting.   You can narrate your screen by recording your voice describing what you want people to see.  We’ve been using Jing here at Beck’s Cafe both on MS Vista and Windows XP machines this whole week and it’s worked wonderfully.  We’ ve captured web pages, and parts of other documents, drawn lines and arrows, narrated what we wanted (some would say yipped orders – ouch!)   In every case Jing has made our communication easy.

What are some uses for Jing?  They list the following ideas though we are sure once you use it you’ll have a bunch of your own:

• Collaborate on design projects
• Share a snapshot of a photo or document
• Narrate your vacation (or new baby!) photos
• Show the results of a software bug in action
• Comment verbally on homework (what a great tool for on-line education!)

And of course, as the Frugal Tech LOVES a good value, Jing falls square into that realm.  Jing has a nicely featured free version AND a pro version with more capability.   We’d recommend Jing and suggest you give it a whirl too and help your communication shine!  Get your copy of Jing at this link:  Jing Project

Donna Rose, author of, Wrapped in Blue, will be speaking at the Fourth Annual Transgender Lives Conference on April 17th.   The Transgender Lives Conference is in Connecticut at the University of Connecticut Health Center.  The conference runs from 8AM-5PM.  The one day conference is, “geared towards Community, Service Providers, Medical and Legal Professionals, Trans and Gender non-conforming individuals, allies and all those interested in the Health and Law issues facing the Trans and gender non-conforming communities.”

You can learn more by visiting their web-site at this link:  Transgender Lives, The Intersection of Health and Law Conference.

You can catch a glimpse of Donna during a speaking engagement at SCC in 2008 at this link on You Tube:  Donna Rose speaking at SC2008.

In our post earlier today we noted how Senior Women are likely kicking your butt in the gym and in many other parts of life as well.  So if you weren’t convinced that strength training is for you, Elizabeth Quinn, About.com’s resident exercise physiologist and fitness consultant notes these and more in her About.com column on fitness:

1. You Will Be Physically Stronger: Increasing your strength will make you far less dependent upon others for assistance in daily living.
2. You Will Lose Body Fat: Studies performed by Wayne Westcott, PhD, from the South Shore YMCA in Quincy, Massachusetts, found that the average woman who strength trains two to three times a week for two months will gain nearly two pounds of muscle and will lose 3.5 pounds of fat. As your lean muscle increases so does your resting metabolism, and you burn more calories all day long.
3. You Will Gain Strength Without Bulk: Researchers also found that unlike men, women typically don’t gain size from strength training, because compared to men, women have 10 to 30 times less of the hormones that cause muscle hypertrophy. You will, however, develop muscle tone and definition.  (FYI – this applies to the majority of trans-women as well; especially if you are on HRT; see this article by Krista about how to strength train for MtF trans-women).
4. You Decrease Your Risk Of Osteoporosis: Research has found that weight training can increase spinal bone mineral density (and enhance bone modeling) by 13 percent in six months.
5. You Will Reduce Your Risk Of Injury, Back Pain and Arthritis: Strength training not only builds stronger muscles, but also builds stronger connective tissues and increases joint stability.
6. You Will Reduce Your Risk of Heart Disease: According to Dr. Barry A. Franklin, of William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan, weight training can improve cardiovascular health in several ways, including lowering LDL (“bad”) cholesterol, increasing HDL (“good”) cholesterol and lowering blood pressure. When cardiovascular exercise is added, these benefits are maximized.
7. You Will Reduce Your Risk of Diabetes: In addition, Dr. Franklin noted that weight training may improve the way the body processes sugar, which may reduce the risk of diabetes.
8. You Will Improve Your Attitude And Fight Depression: A Harvard study found that 10 weeks of strength training reduced clinical depression symptoms more successfully than standard counseling did. Women who strength train commonly report feeling more confident and capable as a result of their program, all important factors in fighting depression.