I spent my high school years in a small rural town in Indiana and when I retired from corporate life my wife and I chose once again to return to that small town living. One of the highlights of small town life is the annual county fair. This picture was taken in 2002 so I guess all the kids shown here are now young adults making their way in the world. I hope they are all doing well…. Continue reading County Fairs…..
Source: Deal Or No Deal? Creed Or No Creed? – QuakerQuaker. “Friends have no creeds.” We Quakers often say that. We are committed to no human words but rather to following the Holy Spirit. We believe God speaks to us today – speaks to all who still their hearts and listen. “No official words can substitute for a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ.” We believe that commitment to creed would be a kind of idolatry. Most Christian denominations, on the other hand, do have a creed. They have an official statement of faith they use to distinguish their beliefs … Continue reading About Those Creeds….
Its time to lighten up a little and what better way than to make fun of old people. :) Being a collector of quotes I have an arsenal of them. So, here goes: You are over the hill when you back goes out more than you do. — R.J. Walters (I think?) Old age is always 15 years older than you are — Oliver Wendell Holmes You know you are getting old when all the names in your black book have M.D. after them – Arnold Palmer Just remember that once you are over the hill you begin to pick … Continue reading Over The Hill….
Be forewarned that I am getting on my soapbox now. I know there are numerous times in our history where civil liberties have been severely threatened. Various groups and individuals have been attacked by our government without due process. One glaring recent example is putting Japanese-Americans in prison camps during World War II simply because of their heritage. But it seems like this is almost becoming common place in our country today. Mr. Obama’s kill list is one example. It sounds as if one or two high-ranking officials think that any person, including a U.S. citizen, is a threat to … Continue reading Innocent Until Proven Guilty…. Or Is It The Other Way Around??
I have always regretted that I didn’t live about 30 or 40 years earlier, and in the same old Country, the Indian Territory. I would have liked to got here ahead of the ‘Nestors,’ the Bob wire fence, and so called civilization. – Will Rogers I have mentioned on the right column of this blog that I am part native American and proud of it. Sometimes these roots seem to come to the surface on this blog. This quote from Will did that. Many times in my life I have dreamed that I was a mountain man in the … Continue reading Ahead of Civilization…
I have now spent several posts on the emergent church. It is time to get back to the red letters to see what Jesus wants to teach us. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from … Continue reading Away From Me!!!
I want to add one further thought about fear while it is fresh on my mind. There is another basic emotion that outweighs fear as being more destructive to any person or society and that is hate. What little hate I have been exposed to in my life truly scares me. It is a dark side of life that I don’t ever want to get to know on anything but a superficial level. Every once in a while I will glance through my spam queue on this blog to get a feeling of what the trollers are ranting about. Ninety … Continue reading About Fear & Hate….
I want to pencil in my first thoughts of the State of the Union address last night before I start reading what the pundits say. Overall it was a good address – He covered much of what I deem important to our country. I wish he had mentioned something about work to rein in healthcare costs. Single payer system like much of the rest of the world has is the most efficient. But since that is not yet possible here I wished he had targeted something to control our current system. Education for the 21st Century – I liked what I … Continue reading First Thoughts….
This is my last post about fear at least for a little while. It has run its course in my mind. I want to finish up here with some personal thoughts about fear and the consequences of fear. I will then close out with a fear that I just can’t seem to understand. I must say that I am generally not a fearful person. That is I don’t rise each day being in fear for what it will bring. I don’t anticipate the bad things that could happen to me each day. Don’t get me wrong, I know fear has … Continue reading About Fear….. Some Closing Thoughts
I couldn’t help but laugh out loud when I saw this cartoon. Thanks Gary Varvel for the laugh. And an Indiana guy at that. I know the GOP is desperate to rebrand their party into something with a broader appeal. But for some reason the Democrats just don’t seem to want to cooperate in that endeavor. :) Continue reading LOL……..
I want to close out this series of posts with some unfounded complaints about the emergent movement. This list is mine and therefore might not align with the leaders of this movement. Emergents don’t have a foundation, they allow their members to believe anything — While it is true that emergents don’t, as most common denominations do, try to prove anyone wrong about their current beliefs they do have fundamental things that guide them. They believe that Jesus is God and gave us the Great Commandment to love him and to love each other. They believe that God intends us to … Continue reading Common Complaints About Emergents…..
This is a continuation of the topic of fear and how it drives so much of our country and world. I have been cruising some of the “gun rights” websites lately. The reason I am paying attention to this group is to try to understand the thoughts and mentalities of the people in them and how fear appears to play such a strong part of their adamant refusal of any kind of gun regulation. It appears that many from this group have a basic fear of their fellow citizens. They just don’t trust anyone they don’t know. They see bad guys … Continue reading About Fear…. One of Many Manifestations of Fear
Source: TV icon Dick Van Dyke: ‘I don’t get the comedies today’ – TODAY Entertainment. “It seems to me that relationships are what’s missing. I think back to ‘All in the Family,’ when you knew what those relationships were and the comedy that came out of that. Today it’s just one line after another, and they seem to try to cover too much in the way of story in a short time. Then I think they signal when they’re trying to be funny, and the minute I catch someone trying to be funny, then I won’t laugh.” I am not one … Continue reading ‘I don’t get the comedies today’….
Fear is as engrained in us as any of our emotions. I guess it goes back to our caveman days of fearing for our lives in a very dangerous world. For some odd reason I have been thinking about fear lately and how it affects so many parts of our lives. So, I decided to spend three posts here talking about this subject. Lets start of with the basic definition of fear: 1. a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid. 2. a specific instance of propensity for such a feeling: an abnormal fear of heights. 3. concern or anxiety; solicitude: a fear for someone’s safety. 4. reverential awe, especially toward God: the fear of God. In the first post I want to get into some recent history and current conditions that maybe foster this … Continue reading About Fear…. Its Causes??
I am a collector of quotes. That is just who I am at this point in my life. I look for quotes that are short and to the point. So I thought for this “inspiration” Sunday I would compile a list of quotes that are central to my life. I apologize for the long letter but I didn’t have the time to write a short one. ~ Thomas Jefferson Essays should be like miniskirts. Short enough to be attractive, yet long enough to cover the main parts. ~ Unknown None of us have time to listen to one-hundred words … Continue reading The Menagerie of Life
This post will be about the commitments of the emergent church as outlined in the book The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier by Tony Jones. Appendix A: in the book carries the title above. This list seems in a nutshell to fairly characterize the emergent movement as it now stands in the U.S. Here is a list of commitments from that text: 1. COMMITMENT TO GOD IN THE WAY OF JESUS — We are committed to doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God. In the words of Jesus, we seek to live by the Great Commandment: loving … Continue reading Emergent Village Values & Practices….
Source: Georgia man, 69, accused of fatally shooting 22-year-old who drove into wrong driveway – Crimesider – CBS News. (CBS/AP) LILBURN, Ga. – A 69-year-old suburban Atlanta man faces a murder charge after authorities say he shot and killed a 22-year-old man who had mistakenly driven into his driveway. An arrest warrant states that Rodrigo Abad Diaz of Duluth, Ga., was fatally shot in the head Saturday as he tried to drive away from Phillip Sailors’ home in Lilburn, northeast of Atlanta. According to Diaz’s friends, who were in the vehicle at the time of the incident, the 22-year-old had … Continue reading Defending His Property….
This is one of my favorite pictures from our Canada trip of 2011. My friend here was in an Acadian village in Nova Scotia (I think) Continue reading My Canadian Friend
Source: ‘Just us’ wedding trend: Couples ditch the guests – The Look. “We just wanted it to be about us,” said Eustice, a 29-year-old dental assistant from Orlando, Florida. “At big weddings, I noticed the bride and groom are entertaining the guests and don’t get to spend a lot of time with each other — we love spending time together. And, it’s really about [us] at the end of the day.” Weddings-for-two, as bridal planners call them, are a growing trend, says Kelly Karli, owner of Frosted Pink Weddings in Vail, Colorado. “It’s been popping up more and more,” I am … Continue reading ‘Just us’ wedding trend: Couples ditch the guests
Lets continue on with some more quotes from the book by Tony Jones entitled The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier “I’m humble,” an emergent might tell you, “because I don’t know what I’m wrong about today. I’ll speak with confidence, and I’ll speak with passion, but I won’t speak with certainty.” Being humble/uncertain in any area of theology is very intimidating to some within the church. They say we must believe everything in the Bible comes from God. They say we will invariably go down the “slippery slope” if we question anything in that document. They say if we … Continue reading Humble Emergents vs. Absolutists….
I know I have a sizable percentage of women who follow this blog so I thought I would spend this post telling you about how guys bond. At least the guys I know. I’m sure you all know and that guys bond differently than women. When a woman feels emotional about something it is usually very obvious. Not so much for us guys. I think I am more girly, as Arnold puts it, than most guys. I readily admit that I shed a few tears during some movies and such when something bad or even good happens to a … Continue reading Guys Bonding….
RJ's Corner - Having My Say 