Yet another picture of my favorite vacation place and that is Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. You get good exercise hiking to the many ruins and when you get there it has a definite spiritual quality. I enjoy just sitting at the ruins and taking it all in. Continue reading My Favorite Vacation Place…
Some Christians believe that absolutely everything that happens in your life was totally planned by God and is His will. They cite a verse here and a verse there to back up their claim. I am one who is a firm believer in free will so I am not going to put all the mistakes I have made in this life on God’s back. If God is totally responsible for everything that has happened in my life then I really don’t have any choice in the matter. That seems a strange way to rationalize life to me. I am just … Continue reading Don’t Put It All On God…
via Gun control: Why the US military is fighting with the NRA – CSMonitor.com. US military commanders are trying to cope with an epidemic of suicides within the armed forces. Officials say they are frustrated by a recent law, backed by the NRA, that makes it difficult to talk to soldiers about personally owned firearms. The NRA typically comes out in the full attack mode anytime they come across someone who disagrees with the total unfettered right of people to have as many and any type of weapon they might desire. It is quite amazing that the NRA is picking a … Continue reading Why the US military is fighting with the NRA…
I got another of those wrenching emails from my friend Jim Wallis over at Sojourners. He sends out a weekly email entitled “Hearts & Minds”. Here is part of the content: In the past 20 years, the world has witnessed the death of social contracts. We have seen a massive breakdown in trust between citizens, their economies, and their governments. In our own country, we can point to years of data painting a bleak picture of the confidence Americans have in any of our traditional institutions. Former assumptions and shared notions about fairness, agreements, reciprocity, mutual benefits, social values, and expected futures … Continue reading A Call for a New Social Covenant
This is a continuation of our study of Thomas Jefferson to discount the belief that he intended the United States to be a Christian nation. He started out and spent much of his life as a deist. That is he believed in the presence of God in the world but did not proclaim it as a Christian presence. Later in life after he was president he undertook a serious study of the Christian Bible and other religious documents. He took this study to the point of making his own version of the New Testament. Many are confused by the Jefferson … Continue reading Jefferson And The Gospels….
I just got finished reading a blog post with the above title. The conclusion that the author came to was therefore to do only those things that make you happy. While this very narcissistic world view is pretty prominent today it all comes down to “what makes you happy?” That question alone could fill a library. Happiness is a very transcendent term. I have lived on this earth longer than many and I have come to the conclusion that when you focus your life totally on yourself you will never reach any significant level of true happiness.
Everyone, especially those of us who are beyond mid-life are very aware that death could be just around the corner. Maybe that is the only thing we “have” to do but there are a lot of things in our lives before that inevitable condition. When I originally saw the post I immediately pre-supposed that the author would continue the sentence with “Everything else is a choice”. The author of this post it turns out is a young girl currently attending college so I guess I should excuse her for taking what I consider a pretty shallow approach to this deeply philosophical statement. I’m pretty sure that as she accumulates knowledge she will see quite different answers to this question. Continue reading “The Only Thing We Have To Do In Life Is Die…..”
Source: Obama’s Speech Is Urgent Call for Progressive Values – NYTimes.com. Mr. Obama came to office four years ago all but consumed by what he inherited: two wars and an economy in free fall. He then confronted an exhausting series of crises and political problems at home and abroad: budget showdowns, a huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Middle East turmoil, the rise of the Tea Party movement. Through it all, he chose to wage additional battles of choice, most notably his successful push to overhaul the health insurance system. But not until this point, with the economy gradually … Continue reading Looking Back…. And Forward….
All followers of Jesus should be regular readers of Scripture. This is the primary place where we get our lessons from Jesus Christ. Learning how to read scripture is at the heart of learning what Jesus intended for us to do. The topic of literalism came up very early in church history. Origen, who was one of the first church theologians, warned us not to take much of what is in scripture as literal. That seems to be a lesson lost on so many in the fundamentalist’s organizations even today. They insist that everything in the Bible is literal and … Continue reading Reading Scripture….
I want to warn you up front here that I am putting on my “green” hat now. I don’t mention the fact that I am green often on this blog but it is yet another thing that I have at least a degree of passion for. I try to do my part in energy conservation. One part of that is to daily follow my wife around the house and turn off the lights she constantly leaves on. :) But another more serious part is preaching to anyone who will listen about our dependence on fossil fuels and how it is hurting the earth. Continue reading “The Sun…..”
The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. Mahatma Gandhi It is obvious to most of you that I think Gandhi was a very inspirational person. The above quote is certainly an example of that. Of course the bible has many quotes with the same message. The ultimate example of this is when in Matthew 20 Jesus himself said he came to serve, not to be served. I looked up the phrase “to serve” in my bible app and it returned 150 occurrences. That tells me that to be a Christian means … Continue reading In Service Of Others……
July 2009 – Bent’s Old Fort One of my favorite places to be… Continue reading Bent’s Old Fort…
One thing that seems so hard for many fundamentalist Christians is the idea that much of their religious traditions and beliefs come from man, not God. They seem totally unable to even conceive of that idea. Without that acknowledgement they have doomed their version of Christianity to the trash heap of time. Science, that they generally deem as the enemy, will eventually become just be too convincing for them to deny. Before I was excluded from a Lutheran church for my belief that the Bible is not totally literal or inerrant I had a lengthy discussion with a clergy leader … Continue reading Man’s Fingerprints…..
There is one rule that works in every calamity, be it pestilence, war, or famine: The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The poor even help arrange it — October 31, 1929 Will Rogers The quote from Will above just shows us that this saying that “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer” has been around for quite a while. It has been a fact of life for longer than we can imagine. But the last sentence is pure Will. I just can’t wrap my mind around how so many of us poor folks around … Continue reading The Poor Get Poorer….
Source: Fiscal cliff deal includes at least $67.9 billion for special interests – U.S. News. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was less diplomatic. “It’s so incredibly disappointing that members of Congress saw fit to add hundreds of millions of dollars in special-interest handouts to the recently passed ‘fiscal cliff’ bill, which had the simple purpose of avoiding massive tax rate increases on average Americans,” McCain said Thursday. “It’s hard to think of anything that could feed the cynicism of the American people more than larding up must-pass emergency legislation with giveaways to special interests and campaign contributors,” he said. “And this growing … Continue reading About That Pork…..
There is an awful lot of difference between reading something and actually seeing it, for you can never tell, till you see it, just how big a liar History is. — 1926 Will Rogers I doubt if there is a thing in the world as wrong and unreliable as History. History ain’t what it is; it’s what some writer wanted it to be, and I just happened to thing I bet ours is as crooked as the rest. I bet we have started just as much devilment as was ever started against us — maybe more. — March 12,1932 … Continue reading About History…
RJ's Corner - Having My Say 