Monday, August 31, 2009

INSULA SERVO IPSUM

To avoid stress from conflict is

to avoid responsibility

to avoid responsibility is to

avoid accountability

to avoid accountability is

to avoid integrity

to avoid integrity is to avoid honesty

to avoid honesty is to avoid the truth

to avoid the truth is to avoid God's laws

to avoid God's commands is to hide

to hide is to admit guilt

to be guilty is to cover ourselves up in the Garden of Eden.

If you believe this you now have the justification to stand firm for what is true. This is different from "stand firm for what you believe." Why? If what you believed were not true would you want to know? (start over from the top)

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Story Time


One of the remarkable things about my brain is that it even works at all. It is limited in its capacity to concentrate when there are other distractions in the room. Just today was another reminder that the whole planet wants to make war as soon as I decide to curl up with a good book on the sofa. Here's a simulation of what it is like for me to try to read. In fact I told my wife this very thing and she didn't hear me. Here now is what it is like for me to read with distractions in the room:


"He raised his spear as the dragon's tail
He raised his spear as the dragon's tail
He raised his spear as the dragon's tail "What? I don't know where your other shoe is!"
He raised his spear as the dragon's tail swept across
"let's see" his spear as the dragon's tail sw "Try looking under the kitchen table. Yeah you have to get down low to the floor I know its a toughy to do that but BEND AT THE WAIST LOW and look"
the dragon's tail swept across the cave flo "No its not by me! Hey would you put that load of laundry in the dryer when it finishes!"
He raised his spear as the dragon's tail swept across the cave floor
"Okay drive carefully honey have you got plenty of dragon...I mean gas in the car?"
floor. Chenal watched in horror as the only man she ever lov "No I don't have much just $7 will that be enough? Sorry you can ask your mother if she has more." only man she ever loved was now in the cross hairs of the beast."


This was only a story line I made up to illustrate my point but if you'd like to elaborate let's collaborate by using the comment feature. Type!

Sunday, August 23, 2009

In The "Old South" [south church of Boston]

IN THE "OLD SOUTH."On the 8th of July, 1677, Margaret Brewster with four other Friends went into the South Church in time of meeting, "in sack-cloth, with ashes upon her head, barefoot, and her face blackened," and delivered "a warning from the great God of Heaven and Earth to the Rulers and Magistrates of Boston." For the offence she was sentenced to be "whipped at a cart's tail up and down the Town, with twenty lashes." Blogger's note- Sibyls were prophetess in ancient Greek and Roman times that were depended upon for advice of an other-worldly nature, like witchcraft. However in this case this Miss Brewster was quoting scripture, in this poem by John Greenleaf Whittier. Even Satan can quote scripture but he does not want churches restored, renewed or corrected. Therefore in this case I would say this 'Sibyl' was under God's authority.

SHE came and stood in the Old South Church,
A wonder and a sign,
With a look the old-time sibyls wore,
Half-crazed and half-divine.

Save the mournful sackcloth about her wound,
Unclothed as the primal mother,
With limbs that trembled and eyes that blazed
With a fire she dare not smother.

Loose on her shoulders fell her hair,
With sprinkled ashes gray;
She stood in the broad aisle strange and weird
As a soul at the judgment day.

And the minister paused in his sermon's midst,
And the people held their breath,
For these were the words the maiden spoke
Through lips as the lips of death:

"Thus saith the Lord, with equal feet
All men my courts shall tread,
And priest and ruler no more shall eat my people up like bread!

"Repent! repent! ere the Lord shall speak
In thunder and breaking seals
Let all souls worship Him in the way His light within reveals.

"She shook the dust from her naked feet,
And her sackcloth closer drew,
And into the porch of the awe-hushed church
She passed like a ghost from view.

They whipped her away at the tail o' the cart
Through half the streets of the town,
But the words she uttered that day nor fire
Could burn nor water drown.

And now the aisles of the ancient church
By equal feet are trod,
And the bell that swings in its belfry rings
Freedom to worship God!

And now whenever a wrong is done
It thrills the conscious walls;
The stone from the basement cries aloud
And the beam from the timber calls.

There are steeple-houses on every hand,
And pulpits that bless and ban,
And the Lord will not grudge the single church
That is set apart for man.

For in two commandments are all the law
And the prophets under the sun,
And the first is last and the last is first,
And the twain are verily one.

So, long as Boston shall Boston be,
And her bay-tides rise and fall,
Shall freedom stand in the Old South Church
And plead for the rights of all!
1877.

Sunday, August 09, 2009

What Does the Government do to Earn a Living?

My friend and I were talking after church today about jobs. She is an unemployed graphical artist and her laptop LCD display went bad. She can only search for jobs at places that have a wifi cloud and now she can't even do that because she has to have an external monitor. She cannot afford cable or Internet connection at home now. Her office will now be the public library for job search pursuits. "Fran" handed me a business card that was made for free by a benevolent friend. There was a huge list of chores she is able to do for hire: graphical artist, cleaning, closet organizing, babysitting, mowing, landscaping, concierge and the list went on. She said I do it all because I am doing it all already to pay bills.

Wow, I said, you are doing whatever it takes that's great! We laughed about the hundreds of silly psyche questions on job applications now- "If you met yourself somewhere would you become best friends?" Things like that. "Do you prefer to work slowly to think things through or do you kick your dog a lot?" That last one I made up but the questions often have a darned if you do darned if you don't answer to them. An HR person, with advice from a psychology major from a public university is responsible for the hour and a half it takes to fill out some job applications. My daughter filled out an application online for Wachovia Bank for Teller, she performed all the algebra problems correctly then after one of the dozens of silly psyche questions the program popped up "We're sorry but you are not qualified for the Teller position." then dumped her out. She can be thankful, I told her.

Fran, I said, you mow, you clean, you do computer graphics what do you think government employees do? What are their choices but to make government more complex and larger. By the end of the day a Pastor has started compiling for a sermon, written memos to staff, visited someone in a hospital or nursing home to give them spiritual encouragement and contacted a football coach to make plans for the upcoming year. By the end of my day I have cleaner carpets, chairs arranged in rows, wasp nests destroyed from the eves of the buildings, investigated an alarm security circuit fault and updated room diagrams and saved the campus money by patrolling thermostats. A roofer stands back with his men thinking about a shower and drinking something cold at home while looking at a brand new roof. A manufacturing engineer turns in a report to a production manager showing that rejections are down on the avionics wiring harness assembly line for Dassault-Falcon. A conveyor belt circuit board repair woman looks at a BNSF train moving off in the distance pulling a 100 cars of coal from the Powder River Basin that SHE helped load. What do the Executive and Legislative Branches in Washington D.C. have at the end of their day?

To show productivity in the government you HAVE to spend more, show larger more complex documents, and increase system complexity. You have NO other choice if you hope to keep your job. Kilobytes to megabytes, to gigabytes to terabytes of system documents over the years is what they have to show. Oh it talks about simpler government but talk is cheap. In the end whatever the government employee does will hurt someone somewhere in some small or large way that is just trying to meet personal life goals. Its getting that tight. Zero moves are available that does not compromise the constitutional rights of a once free people. Its a stalemate endgame; say hello to a goodbye.

If there truly were rewards in making government smaller then the Constitution Party would be in power in more instances than it is not.

Thank you and Good Day!

Thursday, August 06, 2009

Michael Jackson - The New Old Music

I had so much trouble logging in to Blogger using the Opera browser that by the time I logged in with Internet Explorer I just about darn near lost the flavor of my inspiration of what to write about. Kind of like writing a letter then having to re-write because it got thrown out. Do it from memory and it just loses its freshness.

So here goes. Everyone who is anyone has fairly stopped writing stories about the passing of Michael Jackson. The pastor that baptized me when I was 12 was named MJ Timbs so for the rest of this blog entry I'll refer to the musician as just MJ.

My youngest daugther is 15 years old and right after, I mean just about the day after the passing of MJ a CD appeared on the table of his music call "Number One". This was a huge departure from the music she usually listens to and I later found out the CD was borrowed from a friend. When I asked her about it she said "Dad he's really good. I like the music!" I just groaned and shook my head. Except for the years where MJ was still a musical phenomenon in his youngest years (my youngest years too for that matter because we are/were both 50) I have totally rejected his music. It was pretentious, it was disco, it was girly-man stuff and I just hated it. When he started looking as though he had reconstructive surgery from a tragic fighter jet accident and rumors started spreading I really...well just forget it. I'll take Thumper's advice and stop.

We were all driving out to the mall one day, my wife, and daughters and Emily began playing the MJ CD in the van. Emily said "No daddy he's really good I like it." as she pushed the skip button on the CD player to go from song to song. It landed on a song called "Earth Song" and she let it play. Something happened and I felt a little wall falling down in the back of my mind as I listened to it. I had to be honest it was good in my lexicon in musical tastes.

I said to Emily "Okay that's a good song.....okay he probably hired the finest backup singers money can buy.....okay the melody is probably one of the best rhythm and blues songs I've heard in a long time...and the song was put together by probably some of the best in the industry in the best studio money can buy. I admit he was good." Here I am the biggest non-fan of MJ there could ever be and I have a song of his on my MP3 player.

Which brings me to a rediscovery of music and musicians from "my day". The best place to find these are on YouTube. Fascinating footage of Jethro Tull concerts and Emerson, Lake and Palmer concerts, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughn on and on. Late 60's, the 70's and some into the 80's are what I would consider my generation and I am glad young people are rediscovering music that has merit. There's a great acoustic version of "Lucky Man" on YouTube. A version I didn't now existed of a concert in California.

I have always been the kind of Christian that isn't afraid of music. I filter out the music that is just filth and select the music that is praiseworthy. If we are created in God's image and God is a creator then He made us creative also. What we do with that creativity we will be held accountable for but in any case music is a manifestation of the nature of our Creator. My children are the same way. "Train up a child in the way he should go..." They police themselves and filter out the dregs of our musical society.

This is why one of my all time favorite movies is "Amadeus". The two main characters are, Wolfgang, a disrespectful, disgraceful man who is disconnected from the concept of responsibility. He is portrayed as an ungodly man. The other main character is the narrator of the story and is dying of old age. Antonio Salieri is pious, visibly believes in God, asks God to bless him in his musical work; also is talented. Riven with jealousy and outraged that Wolfgang is better than he is he becomes bitter and angry at God. If this story is true and I have no reason to believe it is not possible then it is a great example of the verse in the bible that says "God blesses whom He chooses to bless..." Wolfgang, as a vessel, holds as much as humanly possible, the creativity that God poured out onto him. Whether he recognizes this or not is his problem.

If you are a Christian and reading this and you come from the old school just remember where music comes from but remember also the fact that music comes out of faulty vessels as much as yours is faulty. But don't ever let go of your hymnal it is a wealth of inspiration and joy. If you are not a Christian and you are reading this I'm sorry but music comes from the God of the Jews but inspiration can come from God or Satan. Start by reading a chapter in Psalms once in a while.