Driving all day on 9/11...remembering, thinking

If these jottings seem disconnected, the time frame is many hours over hundreds of miles.

I drove home following celebrations and reunions over a special long weekend. Another day, I may write the many joys and blessings of those recent busy days, but today is 9/11.

• A day to remember, to reflect, to pray
• A day to appreciate the extreme heroism, courage, and self-sacrifice of so many for the possibility of saving another's life
• A day to admire my son and his wife for immediately volunteering to give their blood
• A day to be proud of my teenage grandson who trains and serves with the volunteer firefighters of his community very near the field in Pennsylvania where United Flight 96 went down
• A day to thank God that crash missed his family's home
• A day to thank God my sister and her husband had declined an invitation to the Pentagon
  
• A day to mourn with survivors and with our Nation
• A day to remember where I was, what I was doing, and see some fruit of that work
  
• A day to turn away from selfishness and seek God's wisdom
• A solemn day...a Patriot Day
  

Religion and politics...

Growing up, we were cautioned about discussing religion or politics with our guests as being impolite. I realize these are most frequent topics on this blog, and today there is one of each.

First, the political -- Upon hearing the President's invitation to email "fishy" sounding claims regarding health care reform to "flag" at the White House, my first reaction was, "Wouldn't Tricky Dick have loved this technology?!" If you don't recognize Tricky Dick, you are younger than I am or unaware of historical power grabs. How about LBJ? Don't think he did not keep account of fishy-sounding opponents in his day. Compiling those emails is illegal, and deleting them is against federal law.
I suspect, if my remarks had been submitted, I would get the same page of talking points back from the White House that I get from the media, AARP, and my Congressman.


Now, my response from this morning Bible reading, Acts 2:37-47 -- What is essential?
My repentance at the preaching of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of my sins
My belief and identification with His Name (especially by believer's baptism)

The early church grew by devotion to
the apostles' teaching,
fellowship,
the breaking of bread,
prayer.

Believers felt a sense of awe in
their experiences,
togetherness,
their voluntary sharing of possessions.

They were day-by-day
like-minded in the temple,
sharing meals in their homes,
with gladness,
sincere in heart,
praising God.

Lord Jesus, I share their faith, and I would be more like them in day-by-day living.

Congratulations are in order!

Congratulations, Former President Clinton, for bringing out of North Korea the two imprisoned reporters! I hope to learn a lot more of the story.

Congratulations, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, on your confirmation to the Supreme Court! Yours is an inspiring American success story. I wish you health, long life and tenure, and much wisdom. I'll be praying for you as well as all the Court.

Twitter tweet...

If only I had twitter...or should I say if I had twitter only...how out of touch we would have felt for those hours today. The old admonition came to mind, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." I feel that caution against single-payer health care.

I'm blaming this post on the NG Mag...

The cover feature of the current National Geographic magazine prompts me to revisit a question I have had for decades. "Yellowstone SUPERVOLCANO what lies beneath the park" Is it just when we feel fairly secure that we like to scare ourselves?

"When Yellowstone Explodes...The future is anybody's guess." Some kind of eruption, a cataclysm plunging Earth into a volcanic winter, in our lifetimes, or 100,000 years from now, or perhaps never -- speculations taken from the article by Joel Achenbach.

It may seem disconnected, but here is my question: Where is the United States in prophesies of the Bible which have "all the kings of the earth" opposing Jerusalem? Is the U.S. to be aligned with all the nations or is it perhaps to become of no significance? What could cause such circumstances?
A) a cataclysmic natural disaster
B) an economic implosion
C) a surrender of national sovereignty
D) a man-made disaster
E) all of the above
F) none of the above

Just wondering...

Connotation

Listening to my Russian Intourist interpreter speaking over a period of days in Moscow in 1993, I slowly realized that her use of the English word "reform" had no connotation of improvement. She simply meant "change," as in the reform of one government program to another or one chairman reforming the programs of his predecessor. Having always thought of reform as improvement, I just made the mental note that this was not necessarily so in her narrative.

I sometimes wonder whether we are using the word "reform" too loosely now in describing sweeping changes in policies and programs, especially at the federal level of government, especially when a program is headed by a "czar."

"Approximately 50 slaves..."

Standing about this time last year on a grassy corner of a cemetery, I read a recently placed marker

"Here lie approximately 50 slaves, names known only to God..."

Next to it broken and time-moldered stones covered the graves of the slave owners. The master died (cause unwritten) in the first year of the Civil War. His widow died 12 years later at an old age. Trying to wrap my mind around these few facts oppressed my spirit as much and more than the high temperature and humidity of that day stressed my body. Enslaved people had worked the surrounding hills and fields in the same blistering heat and sudden storms we were experiencing. That day I could choose to push a lawnmower in the relative cool of the evening...or put the task off.

Growing up two states north, I had only known black people who were free: our family's dentist, the State Representative who had sponsored me as a House page, my first college roommate, others in the dorm, co-workers, numerous friends then (and now). My parents respected all people. The racial meanness and violence I saw in the '60's was on black and white television screens. Fast forward...

I had hoped with the election of President Obama that we are finally "post-racial" in the United States. Was I mistaken? Apparently.... For "sins of our fathers" and sins of our own, for past and present exploitations, some call for "restorative justice" and forms of reparations.

Here is my question. If there's hell to pay for slavery and injustice, what is to be our national retribution for accepting abortion as a means of birth control? For locating abortion clinics conveniently in poorer, ethnic neighborhoods? Can it really be true that there are 1,786 abortions on black women daily? (The number was cited by Dr. Stephen Meyer on "Prime Time America" recently.) What if the very same generation that excused, advocated, and celebrated abortion-rights -- my generation -- is euthanised in old age whenever we have become too troublesome or too expensive to bear by the younger?

This is not written in personal fear today, but in sincere sorrow at the past and present inhumanities of people to other people who -- I am instructed by my Judeo-Christian faith -- all bear the image of their Creator.

Advice from Abraham Lincoln...

..."You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong...you cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer...you cannot further the brotherhood of men by encouraging class hatred...you cannot help the poor by discouraging the rich...you cannot build character and courage by taking away a man's initiative and independence." Abraham Lincoln

This is among the quotations my Dad taught us in childhood and lived out himself. This was one of his favorites. While sorting through long neglected boxes today, I found a small poster featuring this quote with a striking photo of Lincoln's memorial statue profile. A heritage moment of truth for me....

a true proverb...

The borrower is servant to the lender.

We've learned this as individuals the hard way.
Oh, that our governments had taken it into consideration over the decades...and would do so today!

April, May, June, July...

Where has the time gone since my last post?
Foreseen and unforeseeable events, complications, many, many new friends, new skills, old-friends getting in touch again, actions on some old commitments -- weeks of living (and twice as long to tell the tales). I have filled two paper notebooks, then lost the second one, alas, with not much hope of ever finding it.

Lord, I would like to think that I have been about Your business, as well as my own.

Of failure and obsolescence...

If there had been bail-outs down through the years, might we still see on many corners a blacksmith ? A livery? A phone booth? Typewriters are curiosities, and the popular Polaroid camera a thing of the past. Teletype and line-o-type machines are noisy memories from my days working for a newspaper. Will newspapers themselves survive? Just wondering....

Who would have thought?

I did not expect to wake up one day last week and find myself on Secretary Janet Napolitano's potential terrorist watch list....Because I am

* pro-life
* right-of-center conservative...generally
* Christian
* a friend of many military veterans of the recent wars

Surely, she does not know any of my patriotic friends...or me, for that matter.
She might not know a domestic terrorist right under her nose. Probably she should flag the Hollywood writers and producers who have been graphically inciting violence for years. No, wait. Senator McCarthy tried that. Nevermind.

Sunday morning back talk ...

The Pastor's main text this morning was Acts 1:1-25. I respond to the Lord,

It is not for me to know times and epochs which You, Father God, have fixed by Your own authority. But, I am empowered by Your Spirit living in me -- a believer in Jesus -- to witness of my Savior wherever I am.

Right now, I'm on this blog.

Close encounters...

...standing silent in the predawn stillness of the house and yard, we watch a pair of river otters leisurely wait for sunrise. Soon after their ice flow has melted into the lake, perhaps the female will be raising pups in a den just a few feet from our house. I do know where she has lived through the winter.

A pair of Wood Ducks eyeing the trees, and a pair of Mallards looking for their own nesting site under the bank hold promise of fluffy flotillas of ducklings...the next generations.

Hours later and miles away -- up really close -- a herd of horses. Horses and good friends!...Finding a fence down, bringing horses in through a muddy ditch with a noisy food dish, grooming Coy, holding Fanny, staying out of Bud's way -- a wise strategy as he did not like the farrier's shoeing him -- learning he can jump, waiting while the cowboys outlasted Bud, lamenting the cowboys' little cuts and bruises. Knowing we'll go back...

Phenology report...

Today the lake ice is white and shifting shades of gray and blue. Water fowl are congregating in an open area over the river current. In warmth and stillness the ice melts. It remains to be seen if an east wind will come up in time to pile the floes on shore.

Rediscovering radio...

The back story: Out here in the rural landscape, two tv stations' signals usually came in. They and we were prepared for the switch to digital on February 17. One made the switch, and reception was great for a very few days, then the signal vanished! Problem? The station did not wait for the June postponement, so was forced to reduce the strength of its transmission...only until June, I hope. Not that I watched it very much....

In meantime, I have greatly enjoyed my radio listening, tuning in at various times to five dependable broadcast channels for news, talk, music, entertaining features, thought-provoking commentary, and -- of great importance -- weather forecasts. This takes me back to an earlier time when there was no tv and no internet. I like this.

Piracy...it's not Jack Sparrow in Disneyland...

Stand up to aggression, and expect consequences. Give in to aggression and experience different consequences.

Lord, lead President Obama and all our leaders, I pray.

Historic heroism, historic silence

During the six-day captivity of American sea Captain Richard Philips, until and since his rescue today, I have admired and marveled at his willingness to give up his own freedom to negotiate the safe passage of his ship's crew! It might have cost him his life. Occurring over the Easter week as it did, I could not help remembering the words of Jesus:

"Greater love has no man than to lay down his life for his friends."

What irony that the ship's cargo was food aide for Somalia and other African nations where people are hungry and even starving.

Ironic too is our President's silence on the standoff -- for days. I found it confusing and disheartening that he had no public reaction to the captivity of one American. No other President in history has failed in outrage, gut-reaction, heart-felt response of compassion, or threat...not when the situation was public knowledge to the whole world. There must have been confidential communications within the government, but to refuse a reporter's question in a "news conference", to issue no public statement? I do not understand the silence.

There is another one American in captivity under false charges in Iran. I believe she is to go "on trial" tomorrow. It's public knowledge world-wide. I pray she is released. Have we heard anything from the bully pulpit?

Change I do believe in...

"...when this perishable will have put on the imperishable,
and this mortal will have put on immortality,
then will come about the saying that is written,
'DEATH IS SWALLOWED UP in victory
O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR VICTORY?
O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR STING?'
The sting of death is sin,
and the power of sin is the law;
but thanks be to God,
who gives us the victory
through our Lord Jesus Christ."
1 Corinthians 15:54-57

In Christ, I am a new person.
Old things are passed away,
and new things have come!
(reference 2 Corinthians 5:17)

Elapsed time...

...recorded in little spiral notebooks day by day. Perhaps it is fitting that the next post is written on Easter Eve.

Somewhere near to my heart...

A young child learns by touching that the empty shell of a person -- however beautiful -- is hard and cold.

At the same age, I did not yet know that, but I too played a running, skipping game one day at another cemetery.

How thankful, Jesus, I am to you for your words to Martha as she grieved her brother Lazarus' death and burial!

"Your brother shall rise again...

"I am the ressurrection and the life;

he who believes in Me shall live even if he dies,

and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die.

Do you believe this?"

(John 11:23-26)

the blue barrel...

Sorting through the blue barrel in Grandma's attic brings to memory scenes from "Toy Story" and "Night at the Museum." It animates memories of our younger brothers Steve and Kurt playing games with their friends. It mixes the histories of peoples and nations and eras...warriors and adventurers of every time....metal figures, some sculpted and cast by Steve, colorful plastic figures, some flexible and some brittle and breaking with age...tall ships and covered wagons and torpedo boats, dinosaurs and a plastic arsenal of guns. With these, Grandma's yellowed warning note, "Hands off! (Steve's marionette project.)" as well as Daddy's cast-off reporter's memo book -- first entry dated 18 Sept 1948, a few blank pages nibbled by silverfish...some dust at the bottom of just this one barrel.