“The best piece of parenting advice I’ve heard came from flight attendants; in case of emergency, put on your own oxygen mask first.”
Randy Pausch
Randy said that during an interview with Diane Sawyer that was broadcast earlier this week. Makes sense to me; if a parent isn’t taking care of himself/herself, they’re not doing the kids any favors.
Good advice.
I’ve heard that Randy’s Last Lecture is a must-see for everyone. I haven’t seen it myself (yet), but I have it on good authority…
Kyle-Anne Shiver has written another brilliant piece about Barack Obama over at American Thinker; in her morning prayers she thanks “God for the emergence of Barack Obama. Not because my hope is in Obama, but because my hope is always, unequivocally in God.”
While I can’t say that I’ve thanked God for BHO any time lately (like, never), and only hope for his defeat this November, I can see the logic and wisdom in Kyle-Anne’s words. It’s so clear that Obama isn’t fit for the Presidency — and becoming clearer every day — that there really isn’t any choice to be made come election day. He is not just an empty suit, he is The Empty Suit with an empty resume. And that’s one reason to be thankful for him — that the choice will be so easy for so many Americans.
Unfortunately, there is a sizable number who cannot see past his flowery yet empty speeches to the shallowness of the doomed promises he makes, and will cast their votes for him anyway. That’s too bad.
I could go on about this, but will just encourage you to just read Kyle-Anne’s column. Another good one to read is from last month, where she asserts that the coming election could be a landslide, with Obama on the losing end. (Link) I happen to think that might come true. And so does George McGovern. How else can you explain McGovern’s early support of Obama unless he secretly hopes that Obama will take away his shame by losing even bigger than he did back in 1972.
I heard about this article from both Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh last week; the article talks about how many pundits are focusing on all of the voter categories but one, and that is the one that will decide the upcoming presidential election; the Angry White Man.
According to the description in that article, I fit the profile of the Angry White Guy pretty darn well, with one notable exception; I don’t consider myself angry. I can identify with nearly every one of the traits Hubbell talked about in that article, but anger isn’t part of the equation. Frustrated? Yes, a little. But definitely not angry.
The part of the article that resonates most deeply with me is his reference to Hillary Clinton. Her voice does remind me of a shovel scraping a rock. I do recoil at the mere sight of her on television. Her very image disgusts me, and I cannot fathom why anyone would want her as their leader. It’s not that she is a woman. It’s that she is who she is, and that she has done absolutely nothing to merit being elected to be a US Senator, much less President of the United States. And yes, her inability to give a straight answer to an honest question bugs the heck outta me. I could go on, but… Ick.
I don’t know who Gary Hubbell is at all, but it’s fairly obvious that he’s not part of the voting bloc he describes in that article. Obvious because he just doesn’t get it; doesn’t get that people can be ignored by the political who’s-who and not be angry. But Hubbell answered that question in his third paragraph; we’re not angry because we know who will decide the election. And because we — the not-so-“Angry White Men” of America — know we’re right.
In case the referenced article disappears, you can read it in its entirety after the jump.
(more…)
I’ve been working on tracking down some of my ancestors lately, and there’s one thing that really, really sticks out to me — for most people the sense of who we are and what we’ve accomplished doesn’t stick around very long after we’re gone.
I look at the names of my grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on, and I have no idea who some of these people are nor what they did in life nor what was important to them. My Mom’s mother lived across the street for us until she died in the late ’60’s, but I can’t say I knew her well. Grandma Thornton lived close by too, and I remember spending a lot of time with her, but my recollection of her is pretty fuzzy. She died when I was 12, and knowing how my own boys were able to understand things around them at my age helps me to understand why I don’t remember her better. Both my grandpas were gone before I was born, so what I knew was told to me by my parents, and that was pretty sparse.
For most people, if you go back three or four generations, even the barest of details is difficult to unearth: Where were they born? Who were their siblings? Who were their friends? Whom did they marry, and why? How many children did they have? What difficulties did they face through life? The record of their life history is reduced little more than a few pertinent dates, if that. And that’s sad.
My own kids didn’t have much opportunity to know my parents; Dad was gone before Emily was born, and the accursed Alzheimer’s had made Mom pretty much unknowable. I’ve tried to help them know Mom & Dad a little through stories I share about them, but there’s a huge gap between what I can tell my kids about Mom & Dad and what was truly important to Mom & Dad. For that matter, I can’t honestly say that I know what was truly important to Mom & Dad, because that was something that was never discussed. They were busy raising nine kids, and did what they could to pass their values & morals on to me and the rest of the family, but all of that is colored and distorted by how I processed all that through the years. I’m left with my impressions of them and a handful of stories and photos.
Very few people are truly good communicators. It’s a difficult thing to articulate one’s thoughts, feelings & desires to someone directly and have them really understand. It’s more difficult still to do that indirectly, to someone one or two generations removed. It’s pretty close to impossible if you don’t set out to do that intentionally, and for most people… Well, life is pretty much all-consuming for us in this day and age, and I’m sure it was even more so in days past. There’s a lot of stuff to fill out in Maslow’s Hierarchy before you are able to make time for leaving a legacy.
I don’t know if I’m just weird, or if I have too much time on my hands to think about things like this or what, but I don’t want my kids and their kids to not know me and Yvonne. So I’m going to set out to leave a history behind. Most of it will be pretty boring — just as my parents’ and grandparents’ stories were likely pretty boring — but what I wouldn’t give to have a better understanding of who they were. I don’t have any specific plans, but I will come up with something by the end of this week, and will report back. I’d encourage anyone reading this to come up with your own plan, and leave a legacy for your kids, and grandkids, and great-grandkids. They’ll love you for it.
After posting that last night, this morning’s devotional focused on Psalm 90; I thought parts were very fitting to the subject at hand;
You return man to dust
and say, “Return, O children of man!”
For a thousand years in your sight
are but as yesterday when it is past,
or as a watch in the night.You sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream,
like grass that is renewed in the morning:
in the morning it flourishes and is renewed;
in the evening it fades and withers.The years of our life are seventy,
or even by reason of strength eighty;
yet their span is but toil and trouble;
they are soon gone, and we fly away.
Who considers the power of your anger,
and your wrath according to the fear of you?
It’s a little strange, all the hand wringing going on in Sioux Falls this week over the execution of Elijah Page. It was scheduled for last night, and they went through with it. No last minute reprieve, no last minute change of mind. But also no last words & no apologies to the victim’s family. He was pronounced dead at 10:11 last night.
Page was convicted and sentenced to death in 2002 for his part in the murder of Chester Poage near Spearfish, SD. In 2005, Page fired his lawyer and dropped his appeals to stay his execution or have his sentence commuted to life; essentially giving up and wanting to commit state-sponsored suicide. The execution was scheduled for August of 2006, but got delayed on a technicality. Having that technicality now sorted out, the state is once again ready to pull Page’s plug, so to speak.
I guess I’ve never really had much concern over the death penalty. It’s been part of human civilization for centuries, and when properly administered, I think it works as a good deterrent to serious crime. But there are times I have trouble with the death penalty, when there are questions about the guilt of the condemned. But in Page’s case, he’s admitted to what he did, what he did was beyond horrible, and even he agrees that the death penalty is his just desserts.
Part of me says that Page’s punishment fits his crime, so let’s just get it over with and put it behind us. But another part of me says, “Not so fast.” And that part of me seems to be in agreement with the people who are doing the most hand wringing this week. They tend to be a very vocal group, acting as self-appointed consciences for those don’t oppose the death penalty or are ambivalent. What I find curious is that the vast majority of that very vocal group tend to be just as strident in their support of keeping the practice of abortion legal in the US.
There seems to be an amazing disconnect in these people; they will bend over backward in support of “a woman’s right to choose”. They say that what a woman does with her body is her business, and since that unborn baby is inside her body, she can decide what to do with it. Period. Anybody disagreeing with what she does with her body is worse than… well just really bad. The abortion doesn’t harm anybody else in the process, they tell us, so why should anybody bother? And besides, they say, everybody knows that bringing an unwanted life into the world is just cruel — just look at how bad things are — we’re doing this kid a favor by putting it out of its misery before the misery starts. And as for any rights that the baby might have, “pish posh,” they say. “What rights?”
What I’d like to ask these people is how that differs — aside from the obvious — from Elijah Page’s situation. Page wants to end his life… It’s his body, so what he does with it is his business. Nobody else is harmed by his wish to be put to death being fulfilled. Besides, he is guilty — by his own admission — of crimes that the State of South Dakota says are worthy of the death penalty.
In Page’s case, I’d like to say, let’s get it over with, but I hesitate. I personally know the forgiveness offered through Christ’s sacrifice, and I pray that Elijah Page has had a chance to learn of that forgiveness — and if not, that he’ll have that opportunity soon. A deathbed conversion does have a place in Christianity, and has good Biblical support; consider Jesus’ comments to the thief hanging on the cross next to his. “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”Luke 23:43.
We as humans like to categorize our sins, rank them according to our perception of their severity and how many sins we’ve committed, then compare our standing on that scale to others. And to some it makes sense to try to counterbalance their sins with the good things — anti-sins. But the problem is that our own categories and our own rankings are not God’s. We don’t know the mind of God, although we like to think we do. “There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” Romans 3:23. “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.” James 2:10. What the Bible tells us is that in God’s eyes, a sin is a sin. If we screw up in one place, we might as well have screwed them all up. Why? Because sin is disobedience to God, and God expects his followers to be blameless in His sight.
So, if that’s true, we’re all in trouble, right? Yes and No. It is true that none of us can achieve God’s favor by our own efforts. That is the sad truth. But if we admit our shortcomings — our sin — and by faith we trust in God’s mercy and the sacrificial substitutionary death of Christ Jesus, we can see God’s favor. That is the one hope that we all have, the one hope that Elijah Page had, and the one thing that I pray he was able to understand before his death.
Page was a very fortunate man in knowing the day and the hour of his death. For the rest of us, that is unknown. Don’t risk losing your eternal life in exchange for what little you think can be gained in this life by thumbing your nose at God. It’s a terrible gamble with terrible consequences for those who choose wrongly.
Saw this over on Say No To Crack; a parody of the Calvin & Hobbes comic strip using images of & quotes from John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes. (Click on the comic to check out the Uncyclopedia entry for Calvin & Hobbes.)
John Calvin is an ecclesiastical reformist and psychic detective who can see into the future because everything is “predestined by God.” He nominally attempts to solve mysteries, but usually ends up being sidetracked by getting into fights with Catholics or Arminians, whom he always eventually challenges to a game of Calvinball. His strict adherence to predestination means that he gives up pretty easily in everything he was doing, and simply says that God predestined him to give up and it was out of his control. This allows Calvin to generally be a lazy douche. While typically a devout Christian, when he is angry Calvin occasionally threatens God that he may become an atheist (see right). God usually has no comment but allows the parent in Hobbes to speak.
In contrast to Calvin, Hobbes is far more cynical about human nature. The two usually get into philosophical debates and crack big cases together. Interestingly, whenever someone other than Calvin looks at Hobbes, they simply see a stuffed tiger. When Calvin gets sidetracked, Hobbes reminds him that they should either solve the most important philosophical questions facing a weary mankind, or else go back to solving the current mystery – usually via some clever method of investigation that involves tossing water balloons at Calvin’s neighbor, Susie, from their tree house to get her to go to a wet tshirt contest.
I’ve often wondered if Watterson named the characters after the philosophers (if Wikipedia is correct, he did), but I would never have thought to replace the dialog in some of the strips with quotes from the writings of the philosophers, nor the faces with images of them.
Too bad they didn’t go any farther with this concept. Maybe something to do in my spare time. Yeah, right! I really crack myself up sometimes!
I’m a Christian. Not just one who happens to be part of a church that happens to ascribe to Christian traditions, but I am a follower of Jesus of Nazareth who is the Christ.
A couple of weeks ago at a Bible study, the discussion turned to the persecution of Christians, and that is something that makes me squirm a bit. I think it’s ok to say that I hope I’m never subjected to any real persecution — because I hope that I am not. What Christians experience here in the US in 2007 can’t really be called persecution, but that doesn’t mean it’ll never happen. But if it does happen, I wonder how I might react to it. My fear is that if real persecution ever comes my way, I might fight back. And I wonder if that would be an acceptable reaction, both to the Christian community and to God.
I recall reading not long ago about islands in the South Pacific where Christians experience a great deal of persecution at the hands of Muslims. Often the Muslims would drive away entire villages of Christians, commandeering their property and even killing some. Searching news articles can almost always yield stories of how Christians are persecuted in many parts of the world today. But is it ever appropriate for those Christians to strike back?
Jesus’ example to us was to go like a lamb to the slaughter, to turn the other cheek, to forgive countless times. But if my family is in danger, can I just stand by and not do anything to protect them? Is it God’s intention that we should just allow the bad things to happen?
Then there’s also the issue of living in a place like the US… Today we enjoy a peace that is currently being subsidized in a way by armed conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. If fighting & killing those who openly attack us — persecute us — is a sin, then is it also a sin to condone and enjoy a peace that is bought with such a price?
I need to think on this a while.
Labor Day is upon us once again. How time flies.
That means it’s been four years since I broke my ankle. How’d I break my ankle? Well, what I like to tell folks is that I was trying to rescue orphans from a burning building, but it’s hard to keep a straight face with that story. The truth though, is pretty humbling.
We had bought little aluminum kick scooters for the kids years earlier, and although I used them from time to time when camping or chasing the kids around the block, they were always too small for me. I had to bend over to reach the handlebars.
Then one day I saw an older lady riding what looked to be an adult-sized kick scooter through Spellerberg Park, and I thought, “That is for me!” Soon after I found them for sale at Shopko, and they were even marked down, and I bought one. And it was a fun ride!
How morally bankrupt can you get. This organization calls itself South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families, and their main goal is to keep abortion legal in South Dakota. Is it just me, or how can someone claim to have a healthy family when they are willing to kill their children?
Why is there such a distinction drawn between a child who is still in the womb and a child that has been born? The same people who insist that there must be abortion on demand seem to be the same ones who are the most disturbed when a news story about children being killed comes up.
I need to remember that those with whom I disagree on points like this are not my enemies, but people in need of God’s grace. And my prayers.
Beloved;
Well, as you know, it’s time for my birthday again. Last year they had a real big party for me and it seems like they will again this year. After all, they’ve been shopping and preparing for it for months now, and there have been announcements and advertisements almost everyday about how soon it’s coming! They really do go overboard about it, but it’s nice to know that at least on one day of the year some people are thinking about me a little. You know, it’s been many years now since they first started celebrating my birthday. Back then they seemed to realize and appreciate how much fun it is for the little children. Just the same, it seems that most folks are missing the point of it all. Like last year, for example. When my birthday came around they threw a big party but can you believe it, I wasn’t invited! Imagine! The guest of honor, and they forgot all about me! Here they had begun preparing for the festivities two months in advance but when the big day came I was left out in the cold!
Well, it happened so many times in recent years I wasn’t even surprised. Even though I wasn’t invited I thought I’d just quietly slip in anyway. So I came in and stood off to the side. Everyone was drinking, laughing and having a grand time, when all of the sudden, in came this fellow in a bright red suit wearing a phony white beard and shouting “Ho Ho Ho!” Everyone cheered, all the children came running over to him, excitedly yelling “Santa!” You would have thought that he was the guest of honor and the whole holiday was in his honor! Then he began telling them the most ridiculous stories you’ve ever heard… Finally I had to leave, walked out of the door, but no one even noticed that I had gone.
I’m planning of holding my own party! How about that? It’s going to be the biggest, most fantastic feast, you could possibly imagine! I’m not saying the date yet, but I’m sending out invitations now anyway because I know you’ll want to come. There’s going to be room for everyone who wants to come! I’ll reserve you a seat of honor (Matthew 8:11) So hold on to your hat because when everything is ready I’m going to spring it as a big surprise and a lot of people are going to be left out in the cold because they didn’t answer my invitation! Let me know right away if you’d like to come and I’ll reserve you a place and write your name in large golden letters in my BIG GUEST BOOK!!
Much Love,
Jesus
Audio rendition of this story from Kim Jeffries. Thanks Kim!