Source: States explore new ways to tax motorists for road repair – USATODAY.com. States are looking for new ways of taxing motorists as they seek to pay for highway and bridge repair and improvements without relying on the per-gallon gasoline tax widely viewed as all but obsolete. Having to import oil from the Middle East is the primary reason so many of our kids die in … Continue reading A Wrong-Headed Idea…
TO start this post here is a quote from Robin Myers book entitled The Underground Church – Reclaiming the Subversive Way of Jesus. Although Western Christianity would eventually be defined as a belief system about God, throughout its first five centuries people understood it primarily as spiritual practices that offered a meaningful way of life in this world not as a neat set of doctrines, an esoteric belief, … Continue reading Early Christian Practices….
The one thing a man can do better than a woman is to grow a beard – John Steinbeck (Travels with Charley) I am not used to pulling quotes from my hero John Steinbeck. That duty usually fall to my other hero Will Rogers. But when I came across this quote in Steinbeck’s book Travels with Charley recently I knew I had to include it … Continue reading The One Thing a Man Can Do Better Than a Woman…..
I don’t know how many times I have heard the title of this post. I defiantly don’t want people putting me in a pre-defined box! I guess that makes me ornery but I really don’t care. When someone says act your age they are really saying lie back and do what you are supposed to do. What a bummer man…. Besides that just which age … Continue reading Act Your Age!!!!
TODAY Health – Diet, Fitness and Wellness Blog | TODAY.com Blogs – Doctors behaving badly: 7 types to watch out for. This is a very interesting article about seven things you should watch out for in the doctor that is treating you. It isn’t often that we get this type of “insider” information about the medical establishments. I always get a kick out of the … Continue reading About Your Doctor…..
They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If that is really the case then I say let the Democrats emulate the Republicans in their do-nothing attitude. There has been talk about the Senate Democrats letting the all the Bush tax cuts expire and forcing the ten-percent reduction in the military budgets by doing nothing. Will the Republicans be flattered by this imitation … Continue reading Let the Democrats Emulate the Repbulicans
I want to give you a quick answer up front to the question posed in the title above. The answer is absolutely not. Let’s use the following quote from Harvey Cox in his book the Future of Faith as a starting point for this post. Recent discoveries about the first three centuries after the crucifixion of Jesus shed a bright new light on a series of … Continue reading Were the Early Christians Unblemished??
If a picture is worth a thousand words this one is certainly it. Our current congress is so afraid of the NRA that they panic when ordinary citizens bring up the topic of gun control. Yes, the NRA is a very powerful lobby but until more congressmen stand up to them they will continue to have a strangle hold on civilized debate … Continue reading A Picture is…..
via Ron Paul ‘Revolution’ strikes at GOP state parties – First Read. “Look at the next generation,” Paul said on MSNBC. “I mean, there is so much excitement out there. The big deal is that the next generation are sick and tired of what they’re getting and they’re looking for something. And what we’re offering seems to appeal to the young people.” I guess anything would … Continue reading Not Only The Next Generation….
If we could just send the same bunch of men to Washington for the good of the nation, and not for political reasons, we could have the most perfect government in the world. – June 8, 1924 –Will Rogers I ran across this quote recently and was again amazed how true Will’s sayings are to today. Political reasons seem to dominate our whole country … Continue reading For The Good of the Nation
Here we are ending day eleven of our trip heading home. The were a few sites I had picked for visits today but my wife just isn’t feeling up to it. She has really not done well this entire trip. Maybe the elevation along with all her many usual ailments was too much for her. So we called it quits this morning. Maybe a future … Continue reading On-The-Road Day 11 — Calling It Quits….
Let’s start this post with a long quote from A People’s History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story by Diana Butler Bass: The early Christian text (from the second or third century) known as the Epistle to Diognetus explains that Christianity is neither an ethnicity nor earthly citizenship but a way of life that is somehow at odds with the societies in which … Continue reading Citizens as Foreigners…
Here I am heading toward Denver in a few minutes so the most recent gun slaughter is on my mind. I know President Obama will also be heading for Denver. I selfishly hope he doesn’t hold up my travels. It just amazes me that we in the U.S. so quickly forget all these types of shootings and there have been so many of them in … Continue reading Emergency NRA Board Meeting…
When we left Mesa Verde yesterday we headed northwest into Utah to visit Canyonlands National Park. Canyonland is a very different place but also much like the Grand Canyon in its majesty. Here are some pictures: Have to have one last picture of Mesa Verde that I took just the evening before we left. It is a sun drenched view of the Cliff Palace. I … Continue reading On-The-Road Day 10 Canyonlands National Park
As I mentioned a few posts ago I somehow got myself into an extended FaceBook dialog with a friend about politics. It surprised me that he seems to hate our current president with such a venom that it scared me. I had never seen that side of him before. After an extended comment/counter-comment it shook some of the peacefulness from my current environment. I had … Continue reading My Travels….
Today is a somewhat leisurely day for us. It is our last day at Mesa Verde so I thought I would give you an evaluation of our time here. This has been one of my favorite vacations for quite a while. Five days in one spot is a record for me. We are usually in the different-hotel-a-day mode. Being without a TV for all … Continue reading On-The-Road Day 8 –Thoughts about Mesa Verde
Source: Boehner joins criticism of Bachmann over Clinton aide comments | World news | guardian.co.uk John Boehner, the leading Republican in Congress, has chastised his colleague Michele Bachmann over allegations she made linking a key aide of Hillary Clinton to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. Boehner said on Thursday that the comments – made in a letter from Bachmann to the state department and Minnesota congressman Keith … Continue reading A Crack in the Armor???
For the last hundred years or more the average person went to work for a given number of hours and then went home to his family. He was paid for his efforts and used that money to provide food and shelter. The number of hours demanded for a day’s work has varied over the years but the idea of working for someone else has remained … Continue reading On-The_Road Day 7 –Working 9 til 5…
Let’s start out this post with another quote from A People’s History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story by Diana Butler Bass. Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, and Origen all specifically condemned participation in war. “The Christian fathers of the first three centuries,” states theologian Lisa Sowle Cahill, “were generally adamant that discipleship requires close adherence to the nonviolent and countercultural example of … Continue reading Nonviolence – Absolute Pacifism
Being as I recently saw that the person famous for this quote from the L.A. riots died the quote has been on my mind. It seems that just getting along is a hard thing to do now days. Politics puts one set of beliefs at war with another set. Each thinks that they are wholly right and the other is at the worst evil. How … Continue reading On-The-Road Day 6 — Can’t We Just Get Along…
No, the Spruce Tree House is not something up in a tree. It is one of the pueblo ruins found here at Mesa Verde. We made the trek down to it this morning about 9:00am shortly after it opened. We were hoping that it would not be so crowded then and that proved right. But within twenty minutes the hordes came 🙂 First here are … Continue reading On-The-Road Day 5 Mesa Verde – Spruce Tree House
Ok, call me a fool if you want but I was up at 5:30am this morning taking pictures of the sun rise. This was a trial run for later in the week when I get serious about it with a tripod and more patience with adjusting F-stops and speeds. Continue reading On-The-Road Day 5 Mesa Verde Sunrise
We are now settled down in our lodge room at Mesa Verde National Park. The photo below is looking out our room window. We plan to spend many hours out on our deck admiring it. The room and especially the view is everything I expected it to be. We spend the day at the visitor center and just vegging out in the room. Tomorrow we … Continue reading On-The-Road Day 4 Mesa Verde
Given the amount of weight that “correct” beliefs have with so many churches today it is hard to understand just how little weight the early church put on such things. In the early years Christianity Bibles weren’t available to local congregations because it would be several hundred years before it was formulated by a council of then current day church leaders. But there were several … Continue reading The Didache
Here we are settled in for the night at Cortez Colorado. We check in to the Mesa Verde National Park lodge tomorrow for our five-day R&R and spiritual regeneration. We spent today traversing the Rocky Mountains. It was an interesting trip down mainly two lane roads for over two hundred miles. We crossed the continental divide at Wolf’s Pass. It was 56 degrees there and … Continue reading Colorado On-The-Road Day 3 Cortez Colorado
Just a quick post this morning. I got up at 5:00AM (7am body time) so have been cruising the web for a few hours now. I realize that I have been neglecting on part of this blog and that is my barn pictures. We got a good one yesterday somewhere in Kansas (I don’t have GPS on my best camera). Continue reading Kansas Homestead…..
We spent the last two days eating up blacktop. Traveled about 1200 miles and we are now in Pueblo Colorado. We don’t usually like to travel via interstates but since we decided to get here as fast as possible that was the only way to do it. I mentioned before that I have a new car for the first time in twenty years. It is … Continue reading On-The-Road Colorado Day 2
Mesa Verde National Park Yes, starting today my wife and I are on the road again. This time we will be traveling by car to the great State of Colorado. The majority of our time will be spent at Mesa Verde National Park so expect many photos in the next few weeks. We will be staying at the park lodge for six days of R&R, … Continue reading On The Road Again…..
Hospitality was a very important thing to the early Christians. They put it above beliefs in their understanding of Jesus. I will use a quote from Diane Butler Bass’ book Christianity After Religionto illustrate this point: Not offering hospitality was a much greater failure than not believing that Jesus was truly God and truly human. Early Christians judged ethical failings as the most serious breach … Continue reading Hospitality….
Source: Lew Says Republicans Should ’Get Over’ Health Law Debate – Businessweek In Massachusetts, where former Governor Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, implemented a similar law, just 1 percent of the population is subject to the penalty, Lew said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program. As the White House Chief of Staff says in this article the Republicans in Congress need to … Continue reading Get Over It……
I was looking at my blog title and realized that I have not posted anything about the current quote contained there. If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t it get us out – Will Rogers Most of the things that are going on around us now seem to fit this phrase and the proposed solutions seem to be more of the same. … Continue reading Stupidity
As I have said many times on this blog I am perfectly attuned to the Quaker concept of the “light of God in each of us”. Everyone, including the most evil in history, has a glimmer of God in them. Some have covered it with a very dark and dreadful blanket but it is there none the less. Even those who absolutely deny the existence … Continue reading Aside — A Glimmer of God….
For that’s all there is to success is satisfaction. – July 29, 1928 Will Rogers It really is as simple as what Will says here. If you are satisfied with your life and what you do then you are a success. Some people equate success with how much money they earn. Some, especially those in Washington and corporate boardrooms equate it with how much … Continue reading Success…..
Source: Bye, bye, GI: Deep impact for many Germans as US troops downsize – World News. Earlier this year, the Pentagon announced defense cuts of $487 billion over the next decade, as the United States seeks to move to a smaller, leaner and more agile force, putting a new strategic focus on the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region. The Defense Department in January said that … Continue reading Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due…
Lets look at just how much the Followers of the Way increased in membership during the Pre-Constantine years. Here is what Wikipedia says about that: Early Christianity spread from city to city throughout the Hellenized Roman Empire and beyond into East Africa and South Asia. The Christian Apostles, said to have dispersed from Jerusalem, traveled extensively and established communities in major cities and regions throughout the Empire. The original church … Continue reading Early Church Growth….
It was 1965 when Medicare was enacted. I was just entering college so I still have some vivid memories of what went on around it. I remember the conservatives in congress were saying such things as: We’ve got to repeal this law, it is bad for the country. Its Socialism. It takes away choice. It will bankrupt the country And the most typical comment that … Continue reading Get Rid of It!!!
RJ's Corner 