Today has been filled so many good little things! I just feel the need to share my gratitude for these tiny blessings...
Derek's mom loaned me her car for the weekend while she's out of town attending JazzFest in New Orleans. Freedom. Independence. IT. NEVER. FELT. SO. GOOD. Plus it's a pretty cool car! She drives a 2011 (I think) black Chevy Cruze. I like the way it handles. I like it a lot. I actually told Derek I could get used to having a little sedan like this instead of another SUV... which has been my stated preference for ease in hauling dogs around when we can get stable enough to replace my vehicle. But now I'm thinking I can crowd them into the backseat and they'll be just fine.
I went to pay the note on his car earlier in the afternoon. The nearest branch of the bank that holds the note is inside a Kroger not terribly far from the house. They were doing Customer Appreciation Day so I got hor d'oeuvres (aka over-cooked chicken nuggets from the store's deli and nibbles from a fresh veggie tray) and a bright blue frosted cupcake. Hey! That's meat, vegetables and dessert... that counts as a FREE lunch!!
And while I was inside Kroger I remembered to pick up the garlic that I forgot when we grocery shopped earlier in the week and need because it is one of the absolute necessary and key ingredients in the marinade for the Cambodian Chicken Skewers I'm planning on making for dinner tomorrow. And it was on sale so I got 2 with the thought I'll have at least one full head to break apart and plant in the garden and then hopefully we can be "garlic self-sufficient" starting this fall.
When I came out of the store, I found $1 in the parking lot. Woohoo! Mad money!!
Thinking they're crappy but will do the job I need it to I stopped at the Dollar General by my house and got a broom. Last time I noticed they were $2. But now the same brooms cost even less... today it was priced at $1.75.
Ace Hardware shares their parking lot (for now, but they're moving when the new building is finished) so I walked over there to look at their plants and picked out a 4-pack of really good looking 'Beefsteak' tomatoes. When I got home I noticed there's 5 plants in the plastic tray. Score!! Now I just need to get me outside and get a spot to plant them prepared. I think I'm already just a little on the late side for getting a garden in but it should be ok since the growing season is quite long.
A nice man at Church has offered me strawberry starts from his garden. I'm hoping to go get them Monday afternoon... but while I was looking at plants I noticed the strawberries there. Holy moly! 6 scraggly little plants are priced at $3.99. Getting pretty much all I can use for FREE... major SCORE!!
Considering all the doom and gloom of my recent past, I think today isn't just good, "IT'S GGGRRREEEAAATTTTTT!!" (I bet you thought that in the voice of Tony Tiger... of Frosted Flakes fame. Yes, I blatantly and unashamedly stole that quote... sorry Kellogg's.)
Showing posts with label Freedom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Freedom. Show all posts
Friday, May 2, 2014
Saturday, December 21, 2013
Just like all of us...
Bristol Palin blogs that free speech, and freedom, are sometimes uncomfortable.
She goes on to quote a Time Magazine article who's author's name I missed talking about the political stance one takes when they are offended being to silence their opponent rather than engage in a conversation where both sides may learn something. This is the concluding paragraph she quotes: "G.K. Chesterton said that bigotry is “an incapacity to conceive seriously the alternative to a proposition.” If he is right — and he usually is — then I wonder if the Duck Dynasty fiasco says more about our bigotry than Phil’s."
The past year has seen America ripped apart with polar opposite ideas on race, religion and lifestyle choices -- think Paula Deen, Trayvon Martin, and now Phil Robertson -- with even close friends finding themselves arguing bitterly over who is right.
Or more often, who is wrong.
And yet, I'd guess that, amongst my friends, most believe in God and that the Bible is His recorded word. There we are told one of the greatest of all the commandments is to "love thy neighbor as thyself." I say that loving someone, even unconditionally, doesn't mean you like or approve of everything they do. In that light... I think we'd all do well to stop and consider just what is spewing forth from that hole in our face.
I don't mean only the rabid comments both in support and condemnation for Mr. Robertson though that is what I'm thinking about today. We don't know him. Or at least I don't know him. And one outrageously coarse comment with no context doesn't give me the right to label him as anything.
Who or what he is, is between him and God.
I am among the part of the population who finds the show wildly entertaining and the characters engaging. I know I've seen all of them say stupid things and then turn around and utter the most profound wisdom. They may seem extreme. That's what sells on TV. But if you look at the overall picture, the Robertsons are pretty normal folk - a mixture of good and bad.
Just like all of us.
She goes on to quote a Time Magazine article who's author's name I missed talking about the political stance one takes when they are offended being to silence their opponent rather than engage in a conversation where both sides may learn something. This is the concluding paragraph she quotes: "G.K. Chesterton said that bigotry is “an incapacity to conceive seriously the alternative to a proposition.” If he is right — and he usually is — then I wonder if the Duck Dynasty fiasco says more about our bigotry than Phil’s."
The past year has seen America ripped apart with polar opposite ideas on race, religion and lifestyle choices -- think Paula Deen, Trayvon Martin, and now Phil Robertson -- with even close friends finding themselves arguing bitterly over who is right.
Or more often, who is wrong.
And yet, I'd guess that, amongst my friends, most believe in God and that the Bible is His recorded word. There we are told one of the greatest of all the commandments is to "love thy neighbor as thyself." I say that loving someone, even unconditionally, doesn't mean you like or approve of everything they do. In that light... I think we'd all do well to stop and consider just what is spewing forth from that hole in our face.
I don't mean only the rabid comments both in support and condemnation for Mr. Robertson though that is what I'm thinking about today. We don't know him. Or at least I don't know him. And one outrageously coarse comment with no context doesn't give me the right to label him as anything.
Who or what he is, is between him and God.
I am among the part of the population who finds the show wildly entertaining and the characters engaging. I know I've seen all of them say stupid things and then turn around and utter the most profound wisdom. They may seem extreme. That's what sells on TV. But if you look at the overall picture, the Robertsons are pretty normal folk - a mixture of good and bad.
Just like all of us.
There is hate enough to go around in this world... I'm not sure why we talk about wanting love and acceptance for ourselves and then show our most vile contempt for anyone who makes different choices about their life than we do for ours. Now and then we hear people say horrific things about women. And I've heard the most outrageously untrue and hateful things about Mormons. And Muslims. And Jews. And Blacks and Hispanics and... Everybody hates somebody! I'm not saying that as justification or to downplay anyone's pain. It's hurtful to be on the receiving end of hate no matter who you are.
But back to Ms. Palin's premise that free speech can be uncomfortable...
Yes, it can. Free speech is Constitutionally protected in the First Amendment. Having an opinion is legal. But this isn't even a free speech issue. In Mr. Robertson's case, no one has been arrested. It's an employer telling an employee that their behavior reflected so badly on the company's image that their services are no longer needed. A&E is well within their rights to make that call. Mr. Robertson is entitled to his views, even to give them voice. But that right doesn't protect him from the consequences of choosing to do so.
It's convenient to forget that with choices come consequences. Consequences that are usually set before the choice is even made. How often have I been taught that good choices bring happy consequences and bad choices bring unpleasant consequences?
I reap the consequence of each choice I make in a day. And in any given day some of my choices are good and some are bad. So do you.
Just like all of us.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Politics and The Sunday School Lesson
This morning I took the unprecedented, for me, step of giving both presidential and both vice presidential candidates running this year a "Like" on Facebook. I did that, not because I particularly like any of them, but because I want to see what they have to say for themselves. Will they address the issues that are important to me like adults or lapse into the childish name calling that has me so frustrated with some of their followers?
Related to my struggle to decide on who to vote for, I had a brief discussion with a friend over this advertisement produced by the Catholic Church.
He had made what was probably intended to be a smart-ass remark about the Catholics burning Freedom and Marriage. I tossed back an equally sarcastic "Why not? Everyone else is jumping on that bandwagon." Then the conversation turned a little more serious and he asked what I meant by that comment. In large part, this was my reply:
Since it's Sunday, I bet you're wondering how I'm going to tie this back to a spiritual thought...
Our Sunday School lesson today was about possible locations related to military events in the Book of Mormon. It included one of my favorite scriptural analogies from Alma 43 about Amalickiah tempting Lehonti down off Mt. Antipas. Three times he tried, and three times he failed, to get Lehonti to meet him at the bottom of the mountain but for his fourth, and finally successful attempt, he came part way up which reduced Lehonti's fear of an ambush enough to agree. Amalickiah proposed a traitorous plan to capture his own men in exchange for the place of 2nd in command and from that position of trust he slowly and almost imperceptibly poisoned Lehonti to death and gained full control of the army. Brilliant military strategy! And an equally brilliant way to convince each of us to give up what we want forever so we can have what we want right now.
In simplest terms, sin is deceit. And it is easily and conveniently veiled from our conscious notice when it's spun as good the same way that freedom is eventually lost when it's spun as small concessions and labeled as honest, tolerant, safe, creative, or efficient or any number of other desirable sounding adjectives.
Related to my struggle to decide on who to vote for, I had a brief discussion with a friend over this advertisement produced by the Catholic Church.
He had made what was probably intended to be a smart-ass remark about the Catholics burning Freedom and Marriage. I tossed back an equally sarcastic "Why not? Everyone else is jumping on that bandwagon." Then the conversation turned a little more serious and he asked what I meant by that comment. In large part, this was my reply:
"....we're not free. We keep giving up little bits of our basic freedoms under the guise of 'you wouldn't object if you had nothing to hide.' We get farther and farther from the traditional values that have underpinned the achievements and prosperity of our nation in the name of tolerance and saying the politically correct thing to the currently politically correct minority of the populace. We let people with evil intentions dictate the conditions of our travel and allow government-mandated invasive searches of our bodies to gain the privilege. We (or least I) pay more and more toward education every year so that schools can turn out ever less functionally educated students. We've lost the ability to treat each other with basic civility and let our language degenerate into a continual stream of f%$# this and f#*^ that to grant everyone the right of personal expression. We allow our government and agro-business/corporate farms to offer up poison [for food] and wonder why we are sicker and fatter while we allow them to shut up anyone who objects. We're not free. That's just [an ideal] we aggrandize on the 4th of July with fireworks, parades and backyard BBQs. So why not just toss it all on the fire and be done with it?"
Since it's Sunday, I bet you're wondering how I'm going to tie this back to a spiritual thought...
Our Sunday School lesson today was about possible locations related to military events in the Book of Mormon. It included one of my favorite scriptural analogies from Alma 43 about Amalickiah tempting Lehonti down off Mt. Antipas. Three times he tried, and three times he failed, to get Lehonti to meet him at the bottom of the mountain but for his fourth, and finally successful attempt, he came part way up which reduced Lehonti's fear of an ambush enough to agree. Amalickiah proposed a traitorous plan to capture his own men in exchange for the place of 2nd in command and from that position of trust he slowly and almost imperceptibly poisoned Lehonti to death and gained full control of the army. Brilliant military strategy! And an equally brilliant way to convince each of us to give up what we want forever so we can have what we want right now.
In simplest terms, sin is deceit. And it is easily and conveniently veiled from our conscious notice when it's spun as good the same way that freedom is eventually lost when it's spun as small concessions and labeled as honest, tolerant, safe, creative, or efficient or any number of other desirable sounding adjectives.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)