via Jack Welch: I was right about jobs report – Oct. 9, 2012. Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, had previously contributed content to Fortune, but following critical coverage of his comments on the jobs report and tenure at GE, Welch said in an e-mail Tuesday that he was terminating his contract with Fortune. In his WSJ op-ed, Welch suggests that the reaction to his … Continue reading All Rich Guys Think They are Infallible….
I have often said on this blog that maybe we should give up our stained glass churches and move them to strip malls, abandoned buildings, or other less costly surroundings. For many churches today paying the mortgage and utilities is a the second biggest drain on a small congregation (the biggest drain is usually the pastor’s salary). That is why there is some validity to … Continue reading The Common Cathedral…..
Now that I have passed the 1,000 post mark on this blog and have managed to get a regular and growing following I thought I would give you some “secrets”on blogging. Even though I am just an ordinary guy and not a Pulitzer prize winner I think I have some wisdom to offer beginning bloggers. Continue reading “Its All In The Editing….”
via Due Diligence: Where the candidates differ on foreign policy – CBS News. The president wants the military to focus more on nontraditional threats like al Qaeda, and no longer wants the United States to serve as the world’s policeman. He noted on Monday that America spends more on the military than the next ten countries combined – which you only say if you think America … Continue reading Where the candidates differ on foreign policy…. thank heavens….
I am putting aside my usual Sunday post about things that inspire me in order to tell you about two milestones that are happening today in my life. The first milestone is that today is my 66th birthday so I have officially survived my first full year of single-payer system health insurance. I have to tell you that it was great. Although I had no … Continue reading Celebrating Two Personal Milestones Today…
Toward the end of his life, while in a Nazi prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was a well known Lutheran theologian, wrote some tantalizing letters to his friend Eberhad Bethage where he wrestles with what he calls “religionless Christianity.”The letters in question were written in 1944 not long before he was executed by the Nazi’s. What did Bohhoeffer mean by Religionless Christianity? Here are some of the words … Continue reading Religionless Christianity???
Source: Defense cuts could further dim US jobs picture – Life Inc.. There are thousands of civilian jobs related to the war effort, and cutbacks in defense spending have already led to reductions in these defense-related jobs, including direct government positions or those with defense contractors. Outside of slightly more federal money spent on citizen’s safety nets the defense budgets are the biggest use of our … Continue reading War Jobs vs Peace Time Jobs….
No this post is not about anything in today’s world. There are some Christians who are on evangelism missions abroad who are doing risky things but for the most part Christians are pretty well settled down in their safe lives much like everyone else in this country. But that definitely was not the case for many in the early church. Here are some words about … Continue reading Christians Doing Risky Things….
via Colin Powell endorses Barack Obama for president – CBS News. When he took over the country was in very, very difficult straits. We were in the one of the worst recessions we had seen in recent times, close to a depression. The fiscal system was collapsing. Wall Street was in chaos, we had 800,000 jobs lost in that first month of the Obama Administration and … Continue reading A Powerful Moderate Republican Backs Obama….
Here we are twelve days away from the election! I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. It seems that each election, especially when a president is on the ballot, gets uglier and uglier. There just seems to be so much hate in our country now and that is truly scares me at times.
Twelve days and we will finally be finished with all these negative ads costing billions of dollars telling us why we should be against someone but little about why we should vote for the other guy on the ballot. I just saw some yard signs like the picture here in several yards in my neighborhood. The Republican party’s mascot is the elephant and of course we all know that an elephant never forgets (all of us believe in all those clichés don’t we). As I am getting older in years I definitely am forgetting things but I don’t forget who caused so much of our current problems. Continue reading “The Light at the End of the Tunnel…. Finally…..”
I saw a statistic somewhere that said that 68% of U.S. citizens are war weary. I am certainly one of them. Neither party seems to shy away from sending our kids and/or our dollars to fight in this or that conflict. After twelve years of constant war costing us thousands of our kids and $trillions I am war weary. Do we really need to be the policemen of the world even if it bankrupts us? Our war machine has cost us enough! Continue reading “I am War Weary…….”
The phrase “I believe” seems to have a lot of weight in today’s world but to me it is a cautionary phrase. We have to distinguish between “I believe” and “I am”. Let me give you an example of that: “I believe that Jesus told us to take care of the poor.” This seems to be a powerful declaration but is it really? What if … Continue reading I Believe……
[Republicans] take care of big money for big money takes care of them. – 20 September 1931 Will Rogers I don’t think that even Will would have dreamed that we would one day have something called “Citizens United”. That is the Supreme Court decision that opened the money spigot in today’s politics. There are now dozens of groups both Republican and Democrat, but mostly Republican, … Continue reading Big Money….
In 1997 Richard Carlson wrote a very popular book entitled Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff…. and it’s all small stuff. In that book he listed one hundred things to make our lives more peaceful. Some of those topics that I took to heart included: Let Others Be “Right” Most of the Time Learn to Live in the Present Moment Surrender to the Fact that Life Isn’t … Continue reading And Its All Small Stuff…..
Tonight is, thank heavens, the last debate for this presidential season. It will be on foreign policy. I can tell you in advance what will happen. Each side will tear into the other saying their opponents foreign policy will assure the total destruction of the United States. There will be little of anything but put-down and counter-put-downs.
If I were running for president I would give you very clearly what I would proudly call RJ’s Doctrine: Continue reading “RJ’s Doctrine….”
I am going to start a series of posts around quotes from some of the many books I have read. One of the favorites is the book “If God is Love” by Philip Gulley. Here is the quote for today: The theology of love begins with the assumption that all people are God’s cherished children and deserving of love. “We love because he first loved … Continue reading If God Is Love… (Part1)
We have been away from New Jersey for over twelve years now and are quite settled again in our Indiana home. But there are still some things about N.J. that I miss. One of those are the diners and the one in Freehold was our favorite. Continue reading Freehold Diner…
From A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith by Brian D. McLaren: We’re following the best Christian tradition of going back to Jesus and the Scriptures, so our quest for a new kind of Christianity is, in fact, a most conservative quest. In our return to our roots, however, we’re not writing off all the great sages, scholars, and saints … Continue reading A New/Old Kind of Christianity
When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad ones you did do well, that’s Memoirs. – Will Rogers I think almost all of us who have ever put pen to paper so to speak have thought about writing our memoirs. But it seems that only those folks who are famous ever actually get theirs published and … Continue reading Memoirs…..
As we have learned in several of my recent posts Origen was one of the most influential theologians in the early church who was later deemed a heretic and then after that a saint again. He spent quite a bit of time reading the “scripture” of his day. I put scripture in parens here because there was no Bible as we know it today in … Continue reading Oh That Founding Father Origen…
I can’t seem to shut my brain off with all this change talk the last few posts. Hopefully this is the last post in this area. Here are some more basic things that need to change in our country in order to go forward with a least a small hope of getting better. I will admit that a some of the items on the current … Continue reading More Brainy Stuff….
I guess I am still fixated on the post from yesterday about how so many very sparsely populated States in the U.S. now have so much power. It seems that our country is quite out of balance right now as a result of past decisions. Maybe it is time to revisit some of that stuff. Being that I am the fool who rushes in where … Continue reading How About Some Changes….
There are many today who believe that all of the Bible must be taken as absolutely happening and the stories are without the possibility of error. But this is not the case with many of us follower of Jesus.. Several of the early fathers of the church warned against taking things literally. One of those was Origen. Here is a quote from People’s History of … Continue reading Don’t Take It Literally….
The West has got lots of open country but none that you can live on. – October 1, 1933 Will Rogers Of course when Will talked about the “West” I’m sure he was not talking about the States along the coast but instead those along the east slope of the Rocky Mountains. But it turns out that he was mostly right in that not many … Continue reading The Great American Desert….
Of course all Christians recognize the phrase the kingdom of God from the Lord’s prayer. But the interpretation of that phrase seems to vary considerably depending on what version of Christianity you follow. Here is what Martin Luther said about it in his small catechism: Your Kingdom Come on earth as it is in heaven: What does this mean? The kingdom of God certainly comes … Continue reading The Kingdom of God…..
Source: Mr. 3.75 Percent – By Daniel Altman | Foreign Policy. One political leader who likes to plan for the really long term is Paul Ryan, the Republican nominee for U.S. vice president. By 2050, Ryan’s budget plan would reduce federal spending outside health-care programs and Social Security to 3.75 percent of GDP, down from 12.5 percent last year, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. … Continue reading Mr. 3.75 Percent
I am starting a new category here for some Sunday posts. As some of you know I have been blogging about living by the red letters, meaning the words of Jesus found in the Bible, for several years now. Since that blog, even though it has been running longer, does not get the readership of this one I thought I would bring a few of … Continue reading That Bearded Guy Up There…..
This was my second visit to the Grand Canyon in December 2005. We stayed at the park lodge just fifty feet away from this view. That is one of my dirty little secrets that park lodges are often some of the most affordable places to stay. Continue reading Grand Canyon
Religion and politics together!! Boy am I asking for it. But, thank heavens I am not going to be talking about abortion (I have done that more than enough lately). Maybe I am going to talk about how Evangelicals seem to make up the majority of the Radical Right? Nope, not going to talk about that either… The thing I want to talk about that … Continue reading What do the Republican Party and the Christian Church Have in Common???
My study of the early church leaders is to show that there was much diversity in the early church that was later driven out. Many, if not most of the “church fathers” believed things that are now considered heretical. Ignatius was certainly no exception. Ignatius and Irenaeus had definite ideas of how the young Christian congregations should be governed. Both authoritarians, they were hardly advocates … Continue reading Early Church Leaders – Ignatius …..
We can get mighty rich, but if we haven’t got any friends, we will find we are poorer than anybody. – June 1, 1930 Will Rogers I am totally embarrassed that it has been so long since I used any of my hero Will Roger’s quotes on this blog. He is my inspiration for sitting down and doing this on a daily basis. When I … Continue reading Mighty Rich But….
Source: The jobs are there, the education is not – USATODAY.com. This disparity has come to be known as the “skills gap” — the divide between the jobs American businesses need to fill and the jobs Americans are qualified to do. Research shows that approximately 90% of the jobs in the fastest-growing occupations in our economy require some level of postsecondary education and training. And 80 … Continue reading The jobs are there, the education is not…
I started out my Spiritual journey as a Catholic because that is what my parents were. I came to find out that they were only tepid Catholic as they really didn’t go to church themselves very often but more often just dropped us off and then went home. Upon entering high school I went about twenty years moving between an inactive Christian and an agnostic … Continue reading Shouldn’t you read Paul in light of Jesus, instead of reading Jesus in light of Paul?”
I am a senior citizen so I guess it expected of me to occasionally talk about the good old days. Generally I believe that most things in life continue to get better as time goes by so the “good old days” are not really that good after all at least to me. But there are some things that take a hit as a result of … Continue reading The Good Old Days……
Source: Romney on ’47 percent’: I was ‘completely wrong’ – politics – Decision 2012 | NBC News. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has described his disparaging remarks about the 47 percent of Americans who don’t pay federal income taxes as “not elegantly stated.” Now he’s calling them “just completely wrong.” I am going to dive into the realm of politics once again. Call me a fool … Continue reading The Chameleon….
I am going to use a quote from one of my favorite authors and that is Philip Gulley from his book The Evolution of Faith: How God is Creating a Better Christianity: Some Christians have thus concluded that we are our own worst enemies, that our best option for a viable future lies in our determination to embrace a rigid faith in order to stave … Continue reading Own Worst Enemies…
RJ's Corner 