Cause and Effect: No Margin for Error

July 5, 2011 Leave a comment

Read first:

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/07/05/india-health-minister-calls-homosexuality-disease/?test=latestnews

Certainly the spread of HIV/AIDS in India, Africa, the US and throughout the world is, for the most part, due to unrestrained homosexual activity, activity promoted by the homosexual community. The proliferation of HIV/AIDS does not come from marginalization.

Yet, as seen in the above article, the Indian homosexual advocate Anjali Gopalan does not address the cause of HIV/AIDS.  He, in instead, blames the homosexual’s supposed marginalization as the reason that HIV/AIDs treatments are not happening fast enough to keep pace with the unnatural sexual activity.

Anjali offers two points countering the health minister’s statement that homosexuality is an unnatural disease: the marginalization of the homosexual and the need for community building. He does not address, of course, the prevention of AIDS.  Instead, Anjali deflects the problem on to others, seeking to shame them and to make them responsible for homosexuals not having HIV/AIDS treatments readily available. There is no mention by Anjali as to why the disease continues to be pervasive in the homosexual community.

News Flash:  HIV/AIDS marginalizes people through its own destructive means.  Social marginalization does not cause HIV/AIDS in a person.  Lack of self control on the part of the homosexual causes the spread of HIV/AIDS. Does anyone not believe this?

Other than having received a tainted blood transfusion or having had sex with an unfaithful partner, HIV/AIDS is a self-induced disease. You do know this don’t you?

Further, homosexuality does not lend itself to community building and certainly not through the reproduction of its citizens. Homosexuality marginalizes its practitioners into a group which practices unnatural sex, apart from the rest of society.  A community, diseased from within with homosexuality, will soon destroy itself, much like HIV/AIDS destroys the immune system of the one who has permitted it to come in.

The above article shows us once again that the homosexual community’s projection of its own lack of caring (consider the obvious transmission of AIDS from one person to the next) and its own need to feed its sense of self onto the healthy community is typical of narcissism.

You watch the news. Homosexuality gives nothing back to the community.  It only demands and takes.  An activist will tell us that will have “Diversity.”  Diversity was around long before homosexual community took over its meaning.  Diversity in the past was often used, with  positive connotations, to mean a choice of options or variety.  But the term has now been obfuscated to mean having homosexuality around as a good thing. Diversity now means a variety of what? Of sexual options?  Of sexual partners? Of sexually transmitted diseases?  Of mental and emotional illnesses?

Certainly a diseased diversity adds nothing of value to our community.  Today, a “Diverse” community is one with homosexuals many of whom have HIV/AIDS – a horrible disease propagated over and over again by homosexuality itself, spread across a self-marginalizing group of people. These people were once part of a healthy community before they ever contracted HIV/AIDS, before they ever engaged in the act of homosexuality. We are told that this “Diversity” is a good thing by homosexual activists. (Accept it or be called a homophobe by their bullies).

Someone should tell Anjali that the spread of HIV/AIDS can be mitigated with the cessation of homosexual activity.  In other words, stop doing what is unnatural, stop spreading the disease. Control yourself and stop blaming others.

Believing a lie only marginalizes truth and makes us a community of dupes.

Filed under Life As I See It, Political Commentary Tagged with , , , , , , ,

The Fourth of July

July 3, 2011 Leave a comment

The star-spangled sky is having a birthday party, after hours. Batteries of anxious fireworks try hard to contain themselves while hiding in the bushes. Aluminum chairs, stiff legs unfolded, carefully situate themselves to view the cyclorama of America’s unfolding Birthday, any moment now…

Into the height of twilight, a single whistling flare finds its way up to center stage – KA-BOOM! The crowd whoops, rattled babies cry and children run to huddle on blankets at parent’s feet.
Swoosh-swoosh-swoosh, a hunting, hinting sizzling goes upward and then another and another. Silence is paused mid-air. A cork popping whisper and then KA-BOOM! KA-BOOM! KA-BA-BOOM! Elemental colors burst above the crowd: Reverberation Red, Winter White, Brilliant Blue, Gushing Green, Poised Purple, Sparkling Silver, Yackety Yellow, Gracious Gold, Outspoken Orange.
Garden Roman candles shoot stars, spinners and colored peonies, Summer Heat fountains erupt into splashing fiber optic light. Whistlers – Sky Highs, Whistler Chasers, Scream Dreamers, screech through the sky. Cannonade artillery shells and mortars, bombastic breath takers, shock the air waves. Atomic Thunder Lords pummel the ears of men and women, boys and girls, the young and old, black or white, echoing its thunderous proclamation: “Attention: Liberty and Justice for all.”
Ashes rain down. Apparitions, Spirits of the American Revolution, waft through clouds of sulfur smoke and then disappear until next year.
Heaven’s gazers are photographed. The popping flash bulb sky captures moments of wide-eyed wonderment.
The birthday party continues on the ground. Sparklers arcing on sticks, splash light onto the faces of slack-jawed kids. Smoke bombs fume, the fog making conversation sputter. Snakes coil out of their black dot cages. Bottle rockets shoot straight up defying gravity, fizzling seconds later. Cherry bombs and M-150s snap like bull whips everywhere.
Earlier today, there has been preparation for the birthday party. Parades canopied streets. Marching bands with bugle and drum marched in 1-2-3-4 cadence. Drums called “Rat-A Tat-Tat, Rat-A Tat-Tat” and fifes whistled Yankee Doodle and slow scotch. The Stars and Stripes marched to Sousa while Uncle Sam walking on stilts made children’s fingers and toes point.
Vets sworn to protect now present the Colors: Red, White & Blue. With alacrity caps are removed. Grandparents, Liberty’s Old Guard, stretch out tired legs from lawn chairs. They stand as the High Flyin’ Grand Old Flag passes by, liberty recognized in the woven tri-color fabric.
Pies, apple and blueberry, were swallowed ala mode. Picnics popped up in city parks. Lemonade soured some looks, smacked some lips, returned youth to some in a swallow. Potato sack races tripped up with laughter. Horseshoes were flung at neighbors. Old Glory was displayed on porches and draped on banisters, her stripes and stars unfurled for anyone who will look her way. Families gave way to each other for an afternoon.
We say, “America, you are beautiful, from sea to shining sea beautiful.” Every year we see your birthday smile, your youthful ear-to-ear grin revealing your dazzling braces. We also see the wear and tear on vets standing with tattered flags, wanting to pass the torch to a deserving generation.
America, each year we return to celebrate the beauty of your unbridled hope and your pragmatic ways. Tonight, especially, the dreams of many Americans will reignite and shoot skyward adding more dazzling light to the already blazing torch of Liberty: “America is a shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere.” Ronald Reagan
© Sally Paradise, 2011, All Rights Reserved

Our Banner painted by Frederich Edwin Church

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Rotation

June 24, 2011 Leave a comment

It’s early Friday morning and my two feet are now shuffling along on the circumference of the earth moving at a tortoise’s pace even though I am told that my land speed is actually the product of the cosine of my latitude times the earth’s equator’s circumference speed of just over 1000 MPH – not as fast as High Speed Internet but faster than the speed of sound. And speaking of sound, I woke up early and shut off the alarm clock before its due diligence was required.  Hiding under the covers I was moving less than a centimeter an hour but thinking about work. OK, I had to get up.

After the morning ritual of making coffee, feeding Henry my Parrolet, feeding myself, showering and listening to the weather lottery numbers I head to the train. (If the train heads east at 40 MPH and the earth is rotating east at 1000 MPH will my accumulated speed be 1040 MPH and why are the trains always late?)

I stand behind the yellow line waiting for the train. Today the commuters are standing waiting at the south side track.  The train traffic lights indicate this but there has been no announcement. Headlights appear around the bend.  Everyone around me starts running around the gate to the north track.  I stay put with this super good looking guy who is not married and standing right next to me.

I tell him that it looks like the train is on the south tracks.  He says, “Yeah it is.”  Then someone yells “There’s a freight coming”. We run and catch up with the others and we meet up on the other side. The freight finally passes and the guy says, “Watch, the train will probably come on the south track.”  I say, “Yeah, right”, wanting to agree with anything he said.  At this point I didn’t care which track the train came on. I just wanted to stand waiting with him thinking that if he and I were polar opposites we would be virtually standing still, moving only centimeters an hour, very slowly, taking our time…

I had this all the physics worked out but then the train arrived.  We boarded the train and I walk to my seat in the front car and mystery man heads off to his usual seat in the next car. (Love and Schrödinger’s cat:  dead or alive?).  We reach the train station and I start walking the six blocks to my office.

It’s chilly this morning.  I’m glad I wore a jacket. This summer’s been in the cooler but at least today the wind off the lake is giving me a break. Good. I won’t have a ratted hair style by the time I get to work.

Then I see them – red and tan men in white tee shirts and blue jeans walking with red and white lunch buckets, pulling red hand-trucks loaded with tool boxes.  We pass each other on the sidewalk with knowing glances:  me – the good ones aren’t gay; them – she’s no teenage dream.

I walk past Polish cleaning women holding cigarettes at clichéd angles and large peg-legged women getting out of taxis.  Homeless men say ‘Good morning.”  They offer me StreetWise and the SunTimes.  I say, “Good morning” and smile. I always buy the SunTimes from the guy outside the Corner Bakery who says “Good Morning, Lovely” every time when I walk up.

Along the way there are whiffs of sewer gas mixed with the aroma of fresh baked bread and the homey smell of the daily brew. I see young girls behind counters busy filling cupcake display cases. I see lettuce being chopped, bacon being crisped, deliveries being made and bums waking up. I finally get to work.

At noon I will go to the Taste of Chicago with my friend Deon.  I’ll find the Billy Goat’s Tavern booth and order my usual: “Cheezborger with no fries, cheeps! No Pepsi, Coke!”  She’ll order her usual: cheesecake with Caramel Pecan sauce.   We’ll come back to work smoky, smelling like Robinson’s No. 1 barbeque rib pit. I’ll be sleepy, too.

But tonight is Friday Night and in my head the dance mix is just revving up.  Later, its rhythm will move to my feet and I’ll be moving and dancing with a speed that is the product of the cosine of my latitude times the earth’s equator’s circumference speed of just over 1000 MPH.  Rocket girl.

They also say… love makes the world go ‘round.

I’ll let you know.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUSPIPFEImg&feature=related

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Father’s Day Under Wraps

June 20, 2011 Leave a comment

Sunday morning: My lunch plans with my two youngest, R18 and R14, changed to breakfast plans. My daughter’s new place of employment asked her to work from noon to five.

I am happy for my daughter. She has just graduated from high school and has now landed a job in a matter of days – a job which pays $10.00 an hour in a workplace surrounded by cool knickknacks and fun art objects. It is one of her favorite stores.  R18 is a graphic artist (designed her senior year high school yearbook cover) and she may soon get an internship with a local graphics arts company. She wants to learn the business side of things, she told me. She’s just like her dad.

I made breakfast for my two youngest: pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon. R14, my youngest son, doesn’t do well in the morning. He’s slow to come around but he did find the orange pop hiding in the fridge. I wanted him to drink the orange juice that I bought for our breakfast but then I conceded, as fathers do when confronted by the magnanimity of Father’s day.

At breakfast, R18 & R14 gave me a $50.00 gift card to Barnes & Noble. This was totally unexpected: my kids get money from me. R18‘s first paycheck must have covered the cost. I was completely wowed by such generosity. I didn’t cry till later, another father’s day concession.

I told my kids that I had been coveting a book at B & N: David McCullough’s The Greater Journey, Americans in Paris. The book was priced at $37.98 less 30%. The reduced price was still too much for me to pay during this Obamic depression so I kept saying No, hoping the price would descend to a pauper’s price. The gift card covered the reduced cost of McCullough’s book plus Mario Livio’s The Golden Ratio and Mario Vargas Llosa’s Death in the Andes. The unexpected gift told me that I was loved.

On Sunday afternoon I purchased these books. The day before, Saturday, I had been at B & N browsing as I always do after a weekend breakfast. I ended up purchasing an inexpensive CD: Joe Cocker: Icon. I brought the CD to the counter to pay for it and the short grey-haired woman behind the counter said that she had just purchased Mad Dogs and Englishmen. I said, Lot of memories there. She said, Yeah that’s why I bought it. Our smiles said the rest.

After B & N I went to a local Mexican restaurant, a new place founded by a chef who had worked with Rick Bayless. The restaurant is only three blocks from my place so I figured margaritas could have their way with me (while I stimulated the economy). I ordered a Mora-rita and Blue Marlin Ceviche. Authentic Mexican food is great. I am not crazy about Tex-Mex.

After finishing another Mora-rita I felt pleasantly pacified so I took my order of De Panza tacos home and situated myself in front of the TV. I had hoped there would be something of value on the tube. As it turned out Life With Father was on TCM and Steven King’s (Rita Hayworth and the) Shawshank Redemption was on another channel.

Feet went up, food went down. I settled into the end of Father’s Day 2011 believing that love and redemption go a long way, from one year to the next.

Filed under Life As I See It, short piece Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Rants and No Raves

June 8, 2011 Leave a comment

*George Soros dumped $48 million worth of influence into the vending machine called the Liberal media (Think Progress, Media Matters, MSNBC, etc.) in hopes of pulling out a Western European style liberal utopia in America or at least world domination.  Isn’t that special!

People do know that we left Europe for a better way life, don’t they?  More importantly, we came to America in order to separate church and state. Why would we want to become spiritually and financially bankrupt like Western Europe, anyway?

*Why do America haters insist on living in America? Venezuela, Cuba, Iran all take in dissidents. They could also join the jihad in Yemen.

*Why would someone burn the Koran? Because hate is easy and Love requires God.

*What kinds of people have time on their hands and watch Oprah?

*Does Obama know that America is in a deep financial crisis while deciding which iron to use on the green? Stay away from a foolish man, for you will not find knowledge on his lips. Proverbs 14:7

*Does Michelle Obama still think the White House is hell?

*Sheep & Goats DEPT.:  The PC message of Evangelical Rob Bell’s (pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church) new book Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived attempts to assuage fears by inculcating nonjudgmental mainline liberalism/progressivism into cozy non-fiction.  It turns out that the book is fiction.  There is a hell. Hell, among other things, is the absence of the living God while generating book sales, making friends and influencing people.

The Apostle Paul, when speaking at the real Mars Hill in Athens, let his listeners know immediately that they were worshipping false gods and idols. He also said this to the Ephesian church:  “Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.” – Eph 5:5-6.  Here’s a Journal List of those who do not enter the Kingdom of Heaven:  Ephesians 5: 3-7, I Corinthians 6: 9-10, Galatians 5:19-21.  “There is a way which seems right to a man…”

More to follow…

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D is for Divorce

June 7, 2011 Leave a comment

Divorce

Devastates,

Divides,

Devours,

De-vows,

Devalues,

Denigrates,

Decouples,

Destabilizes,

Denatures,

De-energizes,

Deviates,

Distasteful,

Disables,

Disappoints,

Disenchants,

Disheartens,

Deadens,

Disputes,

Dashes,

Diverges,

Disintegrates,

Disrupts,

Disperses,

Disbands,

Displaces,

Dissolves,

Distresses,

Distorts,

Disdains,

Diseases,

Destroys,

Demolishes,

Denys,

Deflates,

Defines,

Demands,

Deprecates,

Damages,

Divests,

Defeats

And

Disillusions.

Done.

© Sally Paradise, 2011, All Rights Reserved

Filed under Christian character, Christianity, Depression, family, Life As I See It, Poems, Poetry Tagged with , , , ,

Ping Revelation

March 29, 2011 1 Comment

Over the years my position on what I consider some major life issues has changed. This is one of those issues:

Born into an Evangelical/Baptist home I soon came to understand that communion, as it is called in the Bible Church, is to be celebrated about once a month. I was told that the church didn’t want to wear out its meaning by having the Lord’s Supper every week.  Later, I would understand this to mean that the Free Churches wanted to be different from Catholic churches.

As a student at the Moody Bible Institute, my Personal Evangelism teacher, Mr. Winslett, taught us that Catholicism is a cult much like Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witness, Seventh Day Adventism and even demonism. I remember the teacher telling us that Mary, iconic Mary, was an idol. So, like many of my Free Church brethren, I became rather smug when it came to Catholics. They were beneath our Free Church ways. Besides, the Catholic Church had too much going on and the Free Church, striped of any vestige of symbol and ceremony was “Free” (and sterile) of all the trappings of Roman rigamarole. There is, of course, more history to the reformation than what I am describing here. One can read Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses for more information. But, indulge me, please, (and not as Johann Tetzel would) for the moment.

At the Bible Church I had attended you could come and get your spiritual fodder for the week. A sermon or two and a banquet here and there would deem to hold you over. Forget liturgy, we were free to stand up for a hymn, sit down for the announcements, listen to the organ during offering, stand up again for another pre-sermon hymn, sit down for the sermon and then walk the aisle – to the pulpit or out the door. Voilà, church. And, for me, church for fifty years. Throw in the opposing Continental and Analytic worldviews in modern thinking and I became sans joie d’vivre. My Sola fide needed not only to hear the Word of God, it needed to intuit God’s presence with me. And, this wasn’t happening for me at this church despite all of the contemporary emotive songs invoking God’s presence.

After this half-century of spiritual famine I came to realize that this poor diet – the Diet of Words – wasn’t sufficient for my life. And, the abundantly stocked shelves of Abundant Life Christian self-help books were of no help to me. I needed substance. Substance. Substance and Symbol.

At age fifty I began attending an Anglican church. Now, I regularly eat the Real Food and Drink of Life – the Eucharist. And, hearing the spoken Word of God, praying from The Book of Common Prayer, reciting the Nicene Creed, seeing the symbol of the cross and participating in the liturgy which points to the Great Feast of Thanksgiving (and not the sermon), my spirit has revived. I meet the Lord at this Well of Sychar where deep springs of Living Water come to the surface.

Phyllis Melanchthon (aka, Sally  Paradise)

http://anglicansonline.org/basics/thirty-nine_articles.html

“When Christians say the Christ-life is in them, they do not mean simply something mental or moral. When they speak of being “in Christ” or of Christ being “in them” this is not simply a way of saying that they are thinking about Christ or copying Him. They mean that Christ is actually operating through them: that the whole mass of Christians are the physical organism through which Christ acts –that we are His fingers and muscles, the cells of His body. And perhaps that explains one or two things. It explains why this new life is spread not only by purely mental acts like belief, but by the bodily acts like baptism and Holy Communion…There is no good in trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.” C. S. Lewis

Filed under Anglicanism, Christian character, Christianity, Life As I See It Tagged with , ,

As Seen On TV

March 18, 2011 Leave a comment

Buy it or not: I was caught off guard this morning when I happened to see a TV commercial for a baby food blender. The target audience for this product, I assumed, was mothers with newborns. Or, was it? 

The ad was for the Baby Bullet – a small food blender in the shape of a…bullet?! Whoa, that gives you pause! Maybe this ad is a subliminal message from the NRA: imagine a happy baby eating his pulverized greens as they are being spooned out of the smiley-faced bullet shaped container. No wonder there are so many gun loving Americans! Someone, please tell Mayor Daley!

Now, I would definitely call this product something besides the Baby Bullet. And not Baby Blender, either.

Name suggestions: the Mason Jar-Like Juxtaposer or Baby’s Busy-As-A-Bee Blender or Newborn’s Highfalutin’ Incredible Meal Mulcher.

Bullseye!

Filed under Life As I See It, Non-fiction Tagged with , ,

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