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In the 1960s as a teenager, I stood with my fellow Democrats outside a segregated restaurant, because African-Americans were being denied the basic rights of human beings in my own country (many even dying as a result).

In the early 1970s, I marched with many of my fellow Democrats to end what had become an immoral war, a war that was killing not just innocent Vietnamese, but also many of my fellow Americans.

In the 1980s, I stood with my fellow Democrats to protest capital punishment, because institutional killing is wrong and because we can never be 100% sure the guilty are the ones being executed.

In the 1990s, I found myself standing against killing the unborn, guilty only of the crime of inconvenience. As with capital punishment, I could never convince myself that there was a point of 100% certainty at which I could know that an innocent human being's life wasn't being taken. But I found myself standing (at first) in a small corner of the Democratic Party's "Big Tent." Soon, I found myself pushed outside that tent.

Today, I am a man without a party. There are many things wrong with the GOP... but defending the lives of the helpless unborn isn't one of them.

That was then, this is now.

Then:
"One who is a slaveholder at heart never recognizes a human being in a slave."
Angelina Grimké (1805–1879), U.S. abolitionist


Now:
"One who is a murderer at heart never recognizes a human being in a fetus."

What's rocking?

Where do we go from here?

Bible or Bard?

From whence it came?

Bible or Bard? | OxfordWords blog

Diana Collier

Is this it? Is this all there is?

Crash and burn.

This finishes it.

Isaiah 53:6

  We all, like sheep, have gone astray,

    each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all.

New International Version (NIV)

This just about sums it up.

Various people, spurred on by peer pressure from the Human Rights Campaign (a disingenuously named organization), have changed their Facebook profile picture to a pink on red pro-same sex marriage logo, as a way of showing support for the case being heard before the United States Supreme Court this week. Many have customized it as their own expression. The sample above (I will not name the individual) is my favorite, as it succinctly exposes the fallacy of the same-sex-marriage debate.

If you believe in some form of evolution (as I do), then you must realize that it requires swimming in the gene pool (and in the deep end at that). If you don't intend to swim in the gene pool, how do you intend to evolve? And if you believe homosexuality is completely genetic (I don't), how does one 'pass it on' with their same-sex partner?

Marriage has always been about children, family, and even property, but it has not always been about romantic love. The 20th century's popular basing of marriage solely on romantic love is probably (along with readily available and effective birth control, and abortion as birth control) why divorce rates are staggeringly high.

Beginning the festivities.

LAMENTATE
Arvo Pärt
Alexei Lubimov, piano
SWR Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra
Andrey Boreyko, conductor

ECM New Series

Buckle my shoe.

1.  
"We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered."
– Tom Stoppard


2.  
"A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin."
– H. L. Mencken


 

Weighed in the balance.

"The repeated promises in the Qur'an of the forgiveness of a compassionate and merciful Allah are all made to the meritorious, whose merits have been weighed in Allah's scales, whereas the gospel is good news of mercy to the undeserving. The symbol of the religion of Jesus is the cross, not the scales."

– John R. W. Stott

My name.

The Name. The Movie.

The name.

Name twelve.

Name eleven.

Name ten.

Name nine.

New year.

Name eight.

Name seven.

Name six.

Name five.

Name four.

Name three.

Name two.

Name one.

Mercy and Truth have met together.

Advent posts

Wexford

Going up?

Bottomless cup

Twenty eight years ago today, November 28th, 1984, I drank from a cup that quenched my thirst, a cup that is never empty and always flowing. It caused my hair to stand on end.

It remains a big deal.

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet.  That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me.  In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.  I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms.  The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet.  But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape?  The words compelle intrare, compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy.  The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.

C.S. Lewis

O Xmas Tree, O Xmas Tree...

Creeping Socialism in the New Testament.

 

2 Corinthians 8:13-15

"You don't own my body."

Slaves as Property

Plantation owners in the Americas were dependent upon slaves to ensure high profitability. In Britain, 18th-century laws were designed to support a trade in slaves that was sanctioned by the king and parliament. A decision by the Solicitor General stated that 'Negroes' ought to be 'esteemed goods and commodities within the Trade and Navigation Acts'. Such a ruling permitted slave owners to use property law with regard to their slaves 'to recover goods wrongfully detained, lost or damaged' as they would any other property.

The use of property law meant that the enslaved were considered not humans, but commodities. This view of Africans would have a detrimental and lasting effect on the Black community well into the 20th century. The historian James Walvin concludes that 'the State, as an institution, dehumanized African men, women and children for its own ends'.

During the recent foolishness that passed as a national campaign for the Politics of the United States, the claim of a "War on Women" came to the front. Among those claims was that the Republicans wanted to interfere with a woman's "right" to destroy a life in her womb, a right essentially because it was "her body" and what was in it was "her property."

I was struck by how similar the language used by an anti-GOP woman was, who posted a video on YouTube called "You Don't Own My Body," to the language used by English slave traders regarding their property, and their right to destroy it if it was inconvenient to them.

Liberalism has come a long way since the likes of giants like William Wilberforce.

See the sights (updated)

As seen and noted on my morning walks.

• River Cooter Turtle
• Guadalupe Spiny Soft-Shelled Turtle
• Yellow Belly Water Snake
• Eastern Yellow Racer Snake
• Cotton-tailed Rabbit
• Jack Rabbit
• Great Blue Heron
• Crane
• Sandpiper
• Cooper's Hawk
• Crested Duck
• Mud Hen
• Egret
• Alligator Gar
• Bream 
• Rat
• Eastern Grey Squirrel
• Woodrat
• Coyote (spoor)
• Horned Owl 
• Chaparral
• Beaver (sign) 
• Deer (tracks)
• Raccoon (tracks)
• Purple Martin
• Tilapia
• Barn Swallow 
• Kingfisher
• Scissor-tailed Flycatcher
• Pill Bug
• Oriole
• Cow Bird
• Crow 
• Cardinal
• Raven
• Red Harvester Ant
• Prickly Pear
• Spanish Moss
• Bois D'Arc 
• Cat Tail
• Thistle
• Black-eyed Susan
• Texas Blue Bell
• Mockingbird
• English Sparrow
• Mourning Dove
• White-wing Dove
• Red Peppered Moth
• Dragon Fly 
• Gnat
• Mosquito 
• Caracara (Mexican Eagle)

This list is updated as things stand out.

The Mark of the Beast

With Meaning and Intent

ON THE TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS
John Adams
New York Philharmonic
Lorin Maazel, cond.

Nonesuch

Lutheran Distinctives: Exhibit A

Realizing the hopelessness of their situation, and their inability to save themselves, these Germans decided to surrender to a force greater than themselves. Others, however, in their pride and fear, fought on to the death. That too was a decision.

Decisionism.

Redux DeLuxe

All-In-One.