News of a sundry nature...and ..."Word number two".

Good evening all. Let me acknowledge first of all that I've been delinquent in this, the next chapter. For that I apologize and promise to try to do better. In reality though, this post required some research, which I've done, but still feel ill qualified to write, but on the other hand it's my blog and if I don't who will? ( :-D ) Last time, after offering mint juleps, I had a request for, of all things, water. So, I'm adding water to the menu of items offered. With that said, pull up your chair (most have assigned seats now) place your order, enjoy your beverage and read. The news I spoke of in the title is this. I went to my arm Doctor last Wednesday and was told that my elbow is in great shape. I think the words He used were 'It couldn't look better'. I, not wanting to under go another such surgery, was more than happy to hear that. Crissy and I spent a fun filled evening at B. B. Kings blues club the night before the appointment and that was a really great treat for me. I wish Kim could have gone too. We missed her being there and commented on that. OK, enough of the news and on to the word for this chapter. (and maybe others to follow too) The word is (drum rolllllllllllllllll)..........Faith. Again, let me say that I feel singularly unqualified to do the writing for this but here goes. Faith is a word of immense proportions. It's used rather freely and glibly in our society and language. There are several theories about the source of the word but the most commonly held view is that it came from the Latin. The Latin word was "fides" from which we also get our word 'confide' from. It meant to have a hard, unshakable and firmly held belief. I'll touch on different 'ingredients' of the word as we know it. Let me say here that for me it's a very seriously held word. I suppose the first ingredient would be "belief". We all have a belief system by which we live. That system governs our thought processes and behavior in our walk everyday. If you know a persons beliefs you'll be able to easily figure out their values (or lack thereof), their priorities (or lack thereof) and future behaviors. Our belief systems are often neglected because most don't give any thought at all to it. The question for you and I to ask tonight (and lots of other nights) are...What do I belief and why? The next ingredient is 'trust'. Most of us think that faith and trust are mostly interchangeable. Let me emphatically say here that they are not. Trust is a part of faith. If you remove trust faith fails but the same can be said for belief. Oh yeah, some other words to come also. Trust is, like most everything else, a choice. It's easily destroyed and long and slowly built. I don't think that there is anyone in the world that hasn't been guilty of destroying the trust others have had for us. Most of us, if given the chance, can rebuild that trust but it's a long, slow and arduous process. At the same time, we've all lost trust for someone else and they've had to rebuild it. Wow, this could be the longest chapter ever, huh? This is the basics and the best is yet to come. At least it was the best and most exciting for me. So, on that note, I'm going to close this chapter with the promise to continue it in a couple of days. The research being done, I promise it won't be more than a day or two before the next exciting chapter in "Mike's blog". So, keep checking in. ...........And so it goes..............