Another month has passed. It is Newsletter time!
WHY WE WRITE A NEWSLETTER
We try to send our IN SEASON Lifestyle Newsletters once a month, but many of our readers may not be aware of the intentions we have for doing so. I want to review those things with all of you before we do our recap and preview for June.
At first we were just being friendly, giving you a recap of the blog for the month that just passed and presenting you with information planned for the coming month. That within itself is a lot of information.
As time has progressed we have seen that our monthly newsletters make you aware of all the facets of our blog; how it tends to read like a monthly Christian magazine with many subjects that pertain to the daily life of a Christian trying to adhere to the words of 2 Timothy 4:2.
Our Newsletters emphasize the meaning of our topics, but this is something that a casual reader would not take in at first glance. It takes months of reading the blog to get to the very heart of the matter and to know why and how we publish things. I get comments from long-time readers that are suddenly all excited saying; “Oh! Today I understood! I finally get it and I see what you are doing here!”
I love those comments.
The topics (given at the top of the first blog page) help you to find the sections that you are most interested in because they relate to different categories of specific subjects.
Some people only want to read the weekly bible study that we present once a week on Thursdays in our COME AS A CHILD topic. In this area of the blog we are slowing making way through the whole bible as we try to keep the heart of a child following their Father through life.
Others are only interested in the recipes found in our MONDAY MENUS topic.
Some want to explore deep theological or philosophical thoughts in our PIECES OF THE PUZZLE topics.
Many follow our blog simply because they keep God’s Holy Days and his calendar. They know we publish those types of articles under the SEASONS topic. This is definitely a huge part of our lifestyle.
We also have articles about national and regular holidays in that SEASONS section of the blog, and we like to talk about the changing of the seasons of life too. You will probably pick up on the fact that we are very patriotic when you read those articles.
There are those who simply love poetry and art of all kinds, especially that of the written word. Those people love to read our PEN ART topics section of the blog. This is also where we like to post movie and book reviews from time to time. We might sponsor local art event articles too.
Those artsy articles could cross over and be repeated within our OH THE PLACES WE SHOULD GO topics; where we mostly like to post travel articles. The travel articles cater to families trying to relax together in their spare time and their small home towns.
We also have a topic called THE HOUSE DOCTOR. It is all about turning a “house” into a home. Our blog thinks this is art too; and especially the art of a friendly Christian community.
What ties all of these subjects together?
In the IN SEASON Lifestyle, we are looking at all of these things from a Christian belief system that has a Hebraic slant to it.
We find family, community and fellowship to be vital for this type of lifestyle.
The main idea is to be living out our daily lives in an inside-out and upside down way; just as Jesus and the disciples did; and to share all of those parts of life with each other in a community that will take the Good News of The Gospel of Jesus Christ to the world.
We call this outgoing fellowship The IN SEASON Lifestyle Community and we express those views in a million different ways in our blog articles.
Another topic we often publish is titled AN APPLE A DAY. This topic relates to the way we should be promoting healthy and godly lifestyles as we walk around in these bodies that God gave us and as we use them to house His Holy Spirit within our hearts. Some people only want to read these health-related articles; and we are fine with that.
As much as we would like; we can’t feature every single topic every single month. There is only one writer on staff so far; and she is limited in the time and attention she has to offer, plus she is busy creating books to sell on this blog (a feature that is coming soon.)
If you have articles which you would like to share with us; we would love to read them and consider them for publication. We can’t pay for articles at this point; but it would give the writings of our own community more publicity and credibility.
So; if you would like to add your two-cents worth to any of these many topics we like to discuss in this community; please send them to wordcastlepublications@gmail.com. We will be happy to publish them as we deem appropriate. There are no rules for sending – (how often will you hear that statement?) Of course we reserve the right to edit before publishing and we are sorry to say we will be very choosy and not publish everything that we receive. It has to be well-written and blog-related and agree with our world-views.
We love receiving your contributions to the community!
That is also a good address for sending any suggestions or comments. If you communicate to us in that way though; you must include permission with your message for us to add you to our mailing list which goes out once a month with the Newsletter publication. We think of this list as a census of our community readers more than a mailing list. We promise not to abuse the privilege of contacting you. None of your contact information will ever be made public, shared or sold without the giver’s consent.
Hopefully the above gives you a better understanding of The IN SEASON Lifestyle blog and why it exists. Among all the other reasons; know it is a life-calling that God has put into the author’s life.
We do like to re-post this information and these instructions from time-to-time because blog templates often tend to hide things, even from the best and most advanced of readers.
For instance; if you are trying to find a list of all of these topics we publish; you need to click on the third tab at the top of our first page that says “topics.” You can get the same list if you click through and click on the “menu” tab at the top of the next page.
On this second page there is a down-arrow on the right side under “topics” that will display every category we write about; so just click the one that interest you the most and you will come to all of those articles in date order with the latest first and the earliest last. The page numbers at the bottom of these tabs will indicate pages to other articles we have posted on each subject. Of course you may also search the archives by month and year, or you can use the search by subject button.
You may not want to read any article; you may simply wish to browse through The IN SEASON Lifestyle Community Store. Come on inside; you are welcomed!
The store is set up with product information that pertains to the current month’s blog articles.
For instance; if you enjoyed our THE HOUSE DOCTOR articles for June; and you found an article discussing how to decorate your beach house to be interesting; you might want to look at the June Community Store to find some of the products that we used in creating that article.
We often post seasonal décor and crafts, and we LOVE seasonal books and movies. Books are our favorite product. You can find lots of good reading suggestions in our book products and many of the books posted relate to articles and subjects that we have discussed within the blog; especially if we are sharing from a series of articles; such as our series on social justice (or injustice) topics and Christianity, and whether or not a Christian should do yoga. From time to time we will have such series based on the author’s opinion and her own scriptural interpretations.
There are also many cookbooks for Hebraic cooking and cooking for the Holy Days. We love cookbooks of all kinds though.
Our lifestyle is all about family, and we try to put whatever we find that is excellent in the way of Christian educational and homeschooling items into our store. This would include, books, toys, movies and games. Christian education never stops. There is no age limit. We think of our homes as Sanctuaries where God dwells and we love books that are related to these topics.
Every Newsletter will contain a link to that month’s Community Store which will relate to that month’s blog discussions; but you can also find The latest IN SEASON Community Store posts in month/date order under the “ABOUT” tab of the first page of the blog – then click “PRODUCTS.” The “ABOUT” tab will also take you to a chronological section of all of our Newsletters; just click the “NEWSLETTER” tab under the “ABOUT” tab of the first page. Of course we will share what we are about there too!
If you are using the blog like a Christian Monthly Magazine and just want to look at ALL of our articles for the month; just click on the “HOME” tab and you will get a display that gives you a glance at all of the articles we have posted in chronological order. Click on the title and it will take you right to that particular article.
We love to hear your feedback. If you go to the bottom of each blog post article you will find a place to submit your comments and feedback.
Maybe you wish to contact us and be added to our mailing list. If you click on the “CONTACT US” tab at the top of the first page of the blog it will take you to an article called “HOW TO FIND THE IN SEASON LIFESTYLE BLOG.” Just click into that title to get to a page that will put you in touch with us and let you leave any comments, ideas or suggestions that will link back to us.
If you love an article that we wrote; please click the “like” button at the bottom of each article to show your appreciation. Likes help our blog rankings and help us get attention toward our writing for other publications.
There are also buttons you can click on at the bottom of each article that will let you share by e-mail or with social media of your choice. Sharing is caring. We hope you use those buttons often.
It is our hope that all of the above explanations will help you in accessing our blog-posts and make them more useful and easier to find. Please be patient with our photos loading; sometimes they are slow because the blog contains so many lovely photos. We are doing all we can to make them load faster.
Over time, these monthly Newsletters have grown more popular and significant to many of our viewers because of the enormous amounts of daily American and Christian history they unintentionally record each month.
Every month we wind up discussing historical things that have happened in the seasons of our lives and we talk about how God leads us through one event after another; until we find we have actually recorded several years of history over the lifetime of this blog.
It happens unintentionally and by default; but this makes it the truest example of living history. That all simply becomes more relevant to all of us as time goes on. It is a fun trip down memory lane to click into all of the old Newsletters. We leave them up for this reason.
So; you could say the monthly Newsletter is a type of journal in time. Journals in times are important to the world. I would love to be able to go back and access some of the blog-posts that Dr. Martin Luther King and other such leaders would have produced if blogging had been available in their times. I’m sure you can think of many others too, and that this will drive home the fact that our monthly existence is important to our future.
Some of us have begun to look at these Newsletters as an example of a scrapbook of the history of American Christianity.
Thank you for being one of our favorite subscribers! Our calling and You are the main reasons that we keep going. Regular blogging isn’t easy.
Forgive us for side-tracking you with all of those important facts; now we will move on to the normal and traditional review of May articles and the previews of our articles for June 2020.
One more little point we will make is that as you may have also already noticed; the previews in these Newsletters don’t exactly hit each calendar month right before that month begins. There is a reason for that strangeness. Blogging logarhythms are usually crazy on the first week of each month; so even though things may seem to be a few days late when they do arrive at your mailbox; we have better results when we send the Newsletters out at the beginning of the second week of each month instead of the first.
Thanks for your patience during this long introduction. Now on with the current stuff!
WAVING GOODBYE TO MAY 2020
WILL WE HAVE DERBY DAY???
May was a very busy month at The IN SEASON Lifestyle blogging community.
We celebrated a lot in this month, beginning with an article about the status of The Kentucky Derby for 2020.
This year’s Derby date brought some very interesting developments which left all Derby enthusiasts waiting for fall for all of their answers.
You can find our article here: https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/what-about-running-for-the-roses/.
MOTHER’S DAY DEFINITELY GOT SCHEDULED
In spite of the sheltering-in-place orders that most of us were under; Mother’s Day turned out to be special for all of the Moms in our little community.
You can find our articles on the subject here: https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/may-is-mothers-day-month-lets-help-mom/
MEMORIAL DAY CELEBRATIONS
The end of the month of May brought forth Memorial Day celebrations.
We re-posted many of our Memorial Day articles on heroes from World War One which we published from last year again; then we added some new articles about some World War Two heroes. It is our hope to keep collecting these heroic stories and passing them on each year. We are slowly progressing through the many war times with our annual featured articles.
From year to year we have followed a historical order in our publishing of these memories of our heroes, and next year we hope to cover some of the heroes from The Korean War.
Two new poems came to live in our PEN ART section of the blog. These poems were meant for the celebration of Memorial Day (So they were posted in SEASONS too.) We hope you enjoyed the poetry and the stories as much as we enjoyed writing them.
For a recap of everything about Memorial Day; just click these links: https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/soldiers/ https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/memorial-day-stories/ https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/remembering-the-ritchie-boys/ https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/thank-you-to-our-veterans/
PENTECOST
Pentecost was our last, but favorite celebration of this month. We all were still sheltering-in-place for our celebrations; but God showed up!
Hopefully you caught our articles, but if not; you can review them here: https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/waiting-on-pentecost/ https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/pentecost-2020-is-coming/
All of the above topics made up most of the May publications in our SEASONS topics for the month of May 2020.
COME AS A CHILD
This on-line, every Thursday bible study didn’t miss a beat in May.
We covered the last few chapters of The book of Numbers.
There will probably be two more lessons on Numbers and then we will begin our journey through the book of Deuteronomy.
Please come along and join in with us!
If you missed any of the lessons for May you may find them again right here: https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/the-battle-before-the-crossing/ https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/when-you-settle-for-less-than-gods-best/ https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/when-you-cross-the-jordan/ https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/dividing-the-inheritance-among-the-people/
PIECES OF THE PUZZLE:
We are still completing our quest for solid answers to find out whether or not Christians should participate in movements of social justice.
We haven’t arrived at any firm answers yet because we are still exploring all of the social justice issues that have happened in the past. We are working our way up to current history, and have so far covered biblical beginnings, World War One, The Great Depression and some of World War Two. There are actually too many historical topics to discuss in one little series, and we may not be able to hit on them all.
The articles we shared in this series in May can be found here for review: https://theinseasonlifestyle.com/when-you-suddenly-become-the-enemy-social-justice-history/
History has been crushing around us right and left on these issues concerning the injustice of the world, even as we have been writing this series.
In the middle of handling a world pandemic, our nation has experienced the sad and shockingly brutal death of George Floyd. Violence and hatred, crimes and looting have erupted on its heals.
We have also experienced some very harsh religious persecutions from state governments concerning their ideas about controlling church activities during the pandemic.
Individual freedom and liberty are constantly being compromised by governing procedures because of the pandemic.
Social justice issues have been an everyday topic during these times.
Even now as I write these words, my own hometown is under curfew laws because of racial unrest and rioting in the streets.
It may look like The IN SEASON Lifestyle is ignoring the latest facts and happenings on these important subjects; but we are not. No we do not live in a happy little Christian bubble that ignores the rest of the world. We are simply following an order that we set out to follow in writing these articles from the beginning of our publications on the subject. In the meantime; we are also in constant prayer.
We WILL get around to discussing these latest issues as we move forward in this series of articles in the future. Perhaps by the time of that writing we will have more clear answers to the ten questions we asked at the beginning of our Social Justice Series.
Please pray for God to provide our nation with answers and for our government to accept what is right and good and fair and true to our constitutional rights and freedoms. Pray with us for our President as he leads us through unprecedented times. It is a very hard job.
Be prepared to receive an article that researches these points in the future.
MOVING ON TO JUNE 2020
As we come to June, we find America still in pandemic mode.
The results of corona virus are ripping through our country, as well as the whole world, and this is causing much chaos and confusion. It is our hope to shed some light forth from the Gospel of Jesus Christ and make a new way through this wilderness of the world into some happier places by the end of June. Let’s pray together toward that goal.
At least for those who are still stuck at home; we have this free magazine that is our blog to offer which will help you pass the time away as you wait. It is our desire for you to be inspired and filled with hope for what God is doing and going to do with our future. We plan to publish more encouragement than sad news. We want to offer answers and solutions from God’s Best Ways to live.
We must not fear; and we need to keep looking up and walking on.
June will take us on a great new journey to many new and interesting places:
AN APPLE A DAY
This June, we hope to write an article that will inspire you to find hope in the middle of so many hard world events. We want to lift your spirits and encourage you to keep trusting God. It is our desire to give you new tips for staying healthy, in body, mind and spirit. Those articles are on the schedule; pray that they will be helpful and inspirational to our community as well as the world at large.
This is the time for gardens to flourish and we want to bring you information on local farmer’s markets and provide you with new healthy meal plans.
MONDAY MENUS
Monday menus will cross pages a bit with AN APPLE A DAY on those healthy recipes for all of the fresh produce that we will begin to gather during this month of June.
How are your tomatoes?
Maybe we can give some instructions on simple new techniques for how to grow a few of these vegetables year round from your own back porch or in your kitchen window.
Be looking for some great new vegetable dishes to add to your cookbook collections.
OH THE PLACES WE SHOULD GO
With so many travel restrictions that are happening right now, we want to inspire you to begin to explore your own hometowns a little more. What areas of town have you not paid much attention to? There are treasures lurking around every corner. Try a stay-cation this year and see how much fun you can find.
There will be articles full of suggestions for stay-cations and at-home ideas coming your way in June.
SEASONS
The Big event of the season for June is Father’s Day!
We love our fathers and want to show them our greatest appreciation. Look for a whole bunch of new articles and also a review of some of the past Father’s Day articles that are full of ideas, suggestions, crafts and recipes.
June is the month when we officially step into summer. Look for some summer fun suggestions to be posted this season.
PIECES OF THE PUZZLE
We are about to get familiar with one of the hardest parts of the history of World War II – The Holocaust.
There will be articles about social justice due to anti-Semitism to review in June.
We will continue with exploring the history of social justice issues that happened during World War II.
PEN ART
It has been a while since we gave you a good book review. Expect some new titles to surface in June, as well as a few movie reviews.
COME AS A CHILD
This on-line, on-going, every-Thursday bible study will continue in June.
We are about ready to start our study of Deuteronomy. It is a good time to drop into the bible study if you haven’t been following along with us yet.
God is showing us amazing things.
We are so excited about the studies that are coming up next.
SURPRISES
Expect a few new surprises in June.
We are feeling spontaneous and anything could catch our attention at any time.
Thank you for being such an important part of our IN SEASON Lifestyle Community!
Gail Landgraf
Writer/Blogger/Editor/Publisher/The IN SEASON Lifestyle Blog/Produced and published by Wordcastle Publications LLC/wordcastlepublicaitons@gmail.com