STUCK ON STUPID.............

I have been thinking a lot lately about many things... the state of my life, the state of our economy, the state of our morality, the state our religioniousness, the state of our government's influence in our daily life, the state of why an intelligent society allows itself to be duped by politicians and led around by their collective noses to agree to things that only a few years ago they (the politicians) would have screamed in rebellion against. Libertarians are confused by a conservative government that in all aspects is more liberal spending than the most Liberal in the past 70 years. Conservatives say they hold values, yet they erode more connections and agreements than they conserve. The only thing they have learned to conserve is their own power. Conservation...is nothing to a conservative! I refuse to listen to talk radio and the talking heads that spout the talking points straight out of the DC think tanks. Which are the conservative version of intellectual groups. For a group that is so confident, they have a lot of opinion makers, that do not agree with each other. To be a group, they are very splintered.
I also find it amusing that the intellectual conservatives have used a "dumbing down" philosophy to connect with the mainstream of society, since the mainstream has been proven to be skeptical of intellectuals. At least that's what the conservative talking heads have said for years now...
It is also funny how Fox News more resembles the National Enquirer than it does a real new outlet. Tabloid Entertainment, maybe that is why the common people have shifted to watching Fox instead of traditional new. Watch a few moments of Fox News and you will notice that by the "terror alert status" at the bottom of the screen and the constant reminder of "bad" news on the ticker at the bottom of the screen also. They also tend to focus on stories that illist an emmotional response, rather than a rational one. Always telling of the evils and complaining about everyone else that only does nothing positive, while repeating more, if not more of the same.

"Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table." ~ W. H. Auden

We must remember in our human frailty to forgive our enemies and our friends just as Jesus taught us to do. It is a difficult task to forgive those who have wronged you even when we know we are right, but if we allow pride to get in the way we are at fault just as much as those that wronged us in the beginning.

"It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend." ~ John Dryden

On a much lighter note I rediscovered an old friend ASTERIX!!

How will we know?

"In many ways, the evangelical churches are much more reflecting our modern culture than they are really being shaped by the Gospel." ~ Os Guinness

Years from now how will we know what the effects of the past has made on the future? Will we be able to predict the outcomes of elections and conflicts by prior actions of lunatic fringe of the present? Today's Pat and Jerry may be tomorrow's Moshe and Jack. Why are people obsessed in portraying an all-knowing point of view? We are obliged to allow God to work things out on his own. Let's face it, He's been doing it a very long time. Who are we to question Him.
I received an email from a college friend of mine who regards himself as the expert in residence on all things political regarding conservative, libertarian, religious and anti-governmental in these days. Yet, remembering him and his deep beliefs he fits these values only when they serve his needs. He is strongly anti-abortion, however, he is probably the one person that I have known that would have suggested a young female acquaintance should visit a clinic that specialized in family planning.
He is conservative, only in that he believes in a strong military, that does not or did not include him. He is so religious that the last few times he was in a church were for his brother's funeral and his wedding over twenty years ago. Libertarian, in that he thinks the government should keep their nose out of his business, especially the drug use and alcohol abuse. That leads to his anti-governmental feelings and support of Grover Norquist...well, that the pot calling the kettle, crooked. Besides the fact that he left the US to get away from child support.
He always wants to abstain from political discussions when he is presented with facts and information. He never wants to discuss the overall opinion of the entire country. He doesn't like facts, only opinion, his. But he never fails to restart by sending out a probing, proding, ugly email to those progressive among us that count him as a friend.

"Too much Christian faith is in a flight from reason and ends up being very simplistic and irrational but my position is for Christian that thinks in believing and believes in thinking." ~ Os Guinness

The Christian writer Dr. Os Guiness has addressed this issue about whether or not we will know, or whether or not it matter with the following quote:

"The other problem with an over fascination of the end times is that it cuts the nerve of Christian engagement with society. So the Church is no longer salt and light." ~ Os Guiness

Random Thought

IF TODAY IS THE FIRST

DAY OF THE REST OF MY

LIFE, THEN WHEN WAS LAST

DAY OF THE REST OF MY LIFE?

What happens to a man that he becomes obsessed with his state of being? As we approach middle age and our body stops its natural regeneration processes, we feel the effects of aging

more readily each day. We cannot allow our mind to

freeze with the rest of our decaying body. Excercise it daily, hourly so that it will not lose it acuteness.
"Learning is weightless, a treasure you can always carry easily." ~ Chinese Proverb

Maybe I'm Just a Dreamer

HAVE YOU EVER ......
sat and listened to the crickets calling out to each other on a warm southern night? On these winter days I long for the nights of summer: sounds of families at the local ballpark, smells of overcooked popcorn and steamed hotdogs, additional subtle reminders of the heat of the day. A rising aroma of the sporadic summer rain that seems to fall every afternoon. Nearby the gins are working on the harvest of this season and the dusk is filled with a haze of peanut hulls and cotton lint. Pray that the sinuses don't act up in the morning.
HAVE YOU EVER ..... sat on the bank of a shallow farm pond waiting for one last fish to bite before calling it a day? Musky scents of the willows or cypress that line the bank drift into your olfactory glands and tickle the nerves unlike any other. Across the pond you may hear a splash and be tempted to move to a more procductive spot, yet the fish are feeding and soon you should reach your limit.
HAVE YOU EVER ..... sat in a deer stand or duck blind on a cold winter morning and told yourself that this was the last time you would ever do this? Then just when you had endured all the cold you thought humanly possibly, your senses became aware of God's world and all of it's glory in the grayness of the morning light. As the sun slowly rose and warmed your cold hands and feet, you thanked Him for another day.
HAVE YOU EVER ..... went to school and been called a n*****r lover, because your family had a maid? Or have you got into a fight with someone you thought was your best friend because he turned out to be a racist? Today it seems apalling that so many conservatives will not say in public what they say in private, because they don't want to appear as being racist or intolerant. But they are both in private. I had forgotten what it was like in parts of our great country. Some places I have lived have been very blind to a persons color, race, religion or nationality. Funny thing is some of those places are in the deep, deep South.
But what makes this so much more disturbing is that these conservative are hiding behind the church to spread the bigotry of race, color, religion and nationalism.
HAVE YOU EVER .....
sat on your front porch with a loaded shotgun as a twelve year old waiting for the KKK to drive by and firebomb your house? I have. We were tipped off by someone in the klan that knew my Dad, who my father had helped in the past. So as an impressionable twelve year old I sat waiting with my Dad on my front porch for the klan to attack our house. So you may ask why us? No, we are not black, hispanic, catholic, muslim, jewish or any other group that the KKK singled out to hate in the 1950's and 1960's. My family came to America in the 1600's, fought in the Revolutionary War, owned slaves, freed slaves, fought in the Civil War, fought in the Spanish American War, fought in World War I, moved west with the migration of America, moved back east, fought in World War II, and now has fought in the Middle East.
They picked us because we did not support them or their agenda. What is funny now is that I was friends with the sons and grandsons of many of the officers of the mystery organization. I've often wondered if my friends knew that their dads and grandads had threatened to burn down my house and kill my family, but time doesn't heel all wounds. One son and one grandson are a judge and a lawyer in my hometown...I wonder if they are members?
The League of the South has a motto that they think applies to the Southron Cause, yet I think it applies more here:
Deo Vindice (God will vindicate us.)
HAVE YOU EVER ..... taken the time to just dream of a better tomorrow.
"The problem with being sure that God is on your side is that you can't change your mind, because God sure isn't going to change His." ~ Roger Ebert, film-critic (1942- )

"Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status." ~ Dr. Laurence J. Peter
Tomorrow is another day....................

From Southern Exposure 1974

OUR PROMISED LAND
"Speed now the day when the plains and the hills and all the wealth thereof shall be the people’s own and free men shall not live as tenants of men on the earth…" ~ Ceremony of the Land, Southern Tenant Farmer’s Union (1937)

I've been re-reading some old periodicals we purchased at a thrift store in Blacksburg, VA a few years ago and came across this great quote.....

"Our long national nightmare is over..." ~ President Gerald R. Ford

and it was followed by this prophetic comment in the ad it was included in:
"NO WAY!" ~ The Progressive
...It goes on to say.
No way is the nightmare over. Watergate was only a small part of it; rising unemployment, skyrocketing prices, shortages of housing, gasoline, home heating fuels, grain, aluminum.... For millions, the American Dream is turning into an American nightmare.

And then...
"Our society cannot continue indefintely to decay. It seems virtually certain that it the Left does not begin to give voice and direction to the growing anti-corporate anger, then a right-wing politician like Wallace will, through demagogic appeals to fear and uncertainty. It is a crucial time in which to work and build." ~ Harry Boyte from Prospectus for a New Party

So even thirty one years ago it was apparent that demagogic right-wing politicians would use fear to convince the masses of a need to fall into lock step with them. Our need for security is a basic need, yet one that cannot out-weigh the desire for freedom.

With the current K street mess in DC, the adjusted employment figures, continued rising prices, the upcoming fall of the housing market, OIL PRICES (that they could not have dreamed of in 1974), food shortages due to drought, and production shortages due to corporate America not spending the money to upgrade facilities....umm...sounds vaguely familiar.

"We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security." ~ Dwight David Eisenhower, U.S. general and 34th president (1890-1969)

Pilgrim's Road

The Bridge Builder
by Will Allen Dromgoole

An old man, going a lone highway,
Came at the evening, cold and gray,
To a chasm, vast and deep and wide
Through which was flowing a sullen tide.

The old man crossed in the twilight dim;
The sullen stream had no fears for him;
But he turned when safe on the other side
And built a bridge to span the tide.

"Old Man," said a fellow pilgrim near,
"You are wasting strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day;
You never again must pass this way;
You have crossed the chasm, deep and wide --
Why build you the bridge at the eventide?"

The builder lifted his old gray head;
"Good friend, in the path I have come," he said,
"There followeth after me today
A youth whose feet must pass this way.
This chasm that has been naught to me
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building the bridge for him!"

For all the Men since 1856

Tuesday's Tidbit

A view of the Plains

Glimpses of tomorrow give us strength to endure the misfortunes of today. While realization of our mistakes fortifies our caracter with mortar that will not crumble as time ages our foundation.

Foundations are built brick by brick, our character likewise is established by using our mistakes and experiences to develop our strengths.

It is hard for an outsider to understand what it means to be an Auburn man or woman, they cannot understand why a town allows several thousand people to throw toilet paper over power lines and into trees, paint everything orange and blue, and yell at the top of their lungs for hours on end.

A chill runs up along your spine as you exit I-85 and it builds with anticipation as you pass familiar landmarks. The War Eagle Supper Club, the remains of the old cinderblock building that used to be the closest beer store to campus (The Tiger), The Casino, the building that housed WAUD. Then you realize as you head down that small hill into town, that up ahead, past the new buildings, is the familiar clocktower of Samford Hall, and you're home. AUBURN

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