Try to Remember

July 16, 2017 Leave a comment

 

The bumper sticker in front of Tom read, “Try to remember what you wanted to be.” Tom thought for a moment and then the light changed. He remembered that he didn’t want to be late for his date with Sherry. Pulling up to the next light Tom remembered that he wanted to be a missionary and a band conductor and a secret agent and a shortstop and an army guy and someone other-worldly, like a saint or an astrophysicist. At the next light he coughed as he said, “I never thought I’d end up as a welder.” 

Tom knocked and Sherry came to the door. “Dinner’s almost ready. C’mon in.”

“Wow what a day. How about that heat? I had to keep lifting my helmet to wipe the sweat off my face. I came home drenched.”

“You did take a shower, didn’t you?” Sherry joked.

“Yes, my dear. I see you did, too.”

“Yeah. I had the same problem you did. Welding that half-inch plate, I couldn’t see for all the sweat burning my eyes.”

“Maybe we should be welders in Alaska.”

“Yeah, and then could eat fresh wild-caught salmon and caribou.”

“You know the way to a man’s heart, don’t you kiddo?”

“As long as we are on the same path, I’ll know the way to your heart.” Sherry smiled.

Tom and Sherry sat down, gave thanks, and started eating the chicken tacos Sherry had prepared.

“I saw a bumper sticker on my way over here.”

“What did it say?”

“‘Try to remember what you wanted to be.’”

“I remember wanting to be Weather Woman on TV. I wanted to tell everyone what the weather would be while wearing nice clothes. I was ready. All my clothes were solids and not patterns.”

“You can tell me the weather forecast anytime you want Weather Woman. I hope I’m on your radar screen.”

“Yeah, you’re a blip.”

“Ahem. I remember wanting to be more than a blip. I wanted to save the world from the bad guys and run fast like Flash and play baseball like Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris. Look at us now. We are both welders. You know, I read in Welder’s Weekly that…”

“Welder’s Weekly?” Sherry looked puzzled.

“Yeah, I am the only subscriber. Anyway, the Bead Column said that welders should date welders. “

“And why is that?”

“They’ll carry a torch for you.”

“I see why you are the only subscriber.”

“And there were bumper stickers for sale, too: “Be the Bead” and “If the Weld Smells Like Pork You’re on Fire.”

Sherry choked on her food. “That last one is hilarious.”

Sherry cleared her throat and said. “Well, you had me at first arc. C’mon. Help clean up. We have work to do.”

After putting the dishes in the sink, Tom and Sherry went to the garage. They set up the gas welders and the welding rods. They worked together creating a sculpture for a nearby church garden.

After a couple of hours, they came in for dessert – Key Lime pie. It was then that Tom gave Sherry the ring and said, “many are called, one is chosen.”

 

Later that night, while sitting together on the front porch, Sherry asked Tom a question.

“Tom, have you ever wondered why you and I were born in this time and place?

“I usually ask that in the middle of laying a bead and the temperature is ninety-degrees. But, what are you thinking?

“When I think of the millennia of time which has passed and the millions of people who have gone on before, I think we were born here and now to be a who we are-man and wife-to continue what God has begun, to continue creation.”

“Well, when you put it like that, welding makes sense in the cosmos. Joining two metals to become one creates something greater than the individual pieces.”

“You’re a philosopher now, Tom?”

“A stitch-er of thoughts, more likely. When I was on the road in New York and Indiana and Louisiana MIG welding together these towering static mixers I told you about I had time to think. There inside a hollow eighteen-foot diameter shell of twelve-gauge steel I realized that I am here for a purpose greater than me and greater than me welding together something that will benefit somebody today but will fall out of use some day. I saw that I am. Why that happened right then, I don’t know. But after what you just said, we make sense together. I better get home. I am exhausted.” 

Sherry looked at the ring on her finger and then looked over at Tom. Tom reached over and gave Sherry a kiss and asked, “Do you know how diamonds are created?”

“No, Tell me.”

Diamonds are made from the residual carbon of the earth’s first land plants. The carbon is exposed to extremely high temperature and pressure in the earth’s mantle. They are pushed up to the earth’s surface by volcanic activity.”

“Did you read this in Welder’s Weekly?”

“No. I read it in A Brief History of Welding.” Tom grinned like Alice’s Cheshire cat.

“So, to reach our Diamond Wedding Anniversary we will be subjected to high temperature and high pressure?”

“There’s only one way to find out and we’re going to go through it together.”

Tom gave Sherry another kiss and said, “See you in the morning. Don’t forget to wear cotton. It’ll be another hot day. Oh, I just thought of another bumper sticker: “Welders keep you in stitches.”

“You are exhausted. Good night.”

 

A year later, Tom and Sherry began marriage counseling with pastor Dave. The wedding date had been set.

During the first session with Pastor Dave, he asked them, “How did you two meet each other?”

Tom responded. “We met at Marsh Technology Center. We were both in a welding class. She flipped my lid.

Dave laughed. Now you have my interest. Explain.

“Yep. It was the first time I put on a welding helmet and I was trying to adjust the tension. Sherry flipped my helmet up and showed me how to adjust it. The tension has to be just right. When you are ready to weld you need to flip the helmet down to cover your eyes. Your hands are full so you flip the helmet down with a jerk of your head.” Tom showed Dave “the flip.”

During that first session pastor Dave asked about their family back grounds. As the session was wrapping up, Dave said, “Everyone who gets married comes to marriage with a lot of baggage. Each of you can share the load of the other but don’t think that the other will somehow resolves whatever issues you brought to the marriage. You own those issues like you own your credit report. It is yours to correct. Your spouse is there to support you but is not there to fix you.”

The second session was about finances. “You each come to your marriage with a certain way of dealing with money. Marriages break apart over how finances are handled. Marriage is a coming together-an intimacy-of finances where you must hold each other accountable. Set up a budget spreadsheet. Set up an accounting of debits and credits using available software. Set up financial goals for a home, for children, for retirement and most importantly-for giving. Remember. You cannot give what you do not have.

Look at each other’s credit report now before you get married. Look and see what each of you has done with their money. Love covers a multitude of sins, but a pile debt sticks out on credit reports. Stay away from consumer debt. It will eat you alive. Become financially savvy.”

During the third session Pastor Dave talked about in-laws–keeping one’s marriage separate, away from meddlesome in-laws. He said that becoming one takes focus. What Tom remembered was “Location, location, location.” What Sherry remembered was the ache in the pit of her stomach.

The fourth session: “long live intimacy.”

“Intimacy is the every-aspect-relationship that you have with your spouse. You have to work this out together day by day, minute by minute. And, don’t compare. Don’t ever read a couple or watch a TV show and say to your spouse, I wish we were like that couple.

Your marriage will face a test of wills. Your goal is to become one. That doesn’t mean the one is dissolved into the other. It means that the understanding, forgiveness and love you each bring to the other is forged-welded, is the better word for you two-to become one stronger whole.

Intimacy is broken when there is no forgiveness. Do not got to bed angry. A root of bitterness likes to grow in that kind of harsh unyielding soil. Do not apologize and say, “I’m sorry. I said it because of what you said.” You might get slapped. Holding grudges will quickly destroy your marriage. If you are angry, take some time to cool off and think about why you are angry. Are you angry because of what happened reminded you of something that happened earlier in your life that your spouse doesn’t know about and had no hand in? Beware. Unresolved anger is self-justifying as means of protection. Unresolved anger places others into exile. True forgiveness removes people from exile and embraces them. You may feel strongly about some wrong done to you. If so, tell your spouse that you are angry and why you are angry. Tell your spouse that you need some time to process your anger and that you do not want to reman angry with him or her. See what happens next. And, deal with your past baggage now so that the present and future are given to your spouse.

Intimacy is not sitting in front of a TV with your spouse. As it says, “make the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.” Find a church community which supports this truth. I recommend staying away from TV. Don’t make TV a third person in your marriage”

Tom interjected. “Neither of us own a TV and we don’t plan on having one after we are married. I think of the irony that so many people will go buy organic foods or be vegetarian or try to eat healthy and workout and yet they fill their minds with all kinds of trash from the TV. There is too much in this world to explore and to wonder about for us to sit in front of a box.”

“Good.” Pastor Dave replied. “Now let’s talk about sex.”

Both Tom and Sherry looked at each other and then rolled their eyes up to look at the ceiling.

“My wife Karen will talk to you, Sherry, and I will talk to you, Tom, alone. Let’s go.

Sherry met with Karen. Karen talked about sexual intimacy with a man and how to prolong a man’s excitement.

Pastor Dave talked to Tom. He began by drawing a picture of a vagina and then asking Tom to draw in where the clitoris was. Tom had no idea so, Dave drew it in and circled it. Dave then talked about how women are in no hurry to achieve orgasm but men are. He said that the two becoming one must find a happy oneness.

During the fifth session Pastor Dave talked about having a faith community that will support your marriage. He said to find a church where truth and beauty are combined into the daily life of the church. A church which is all preaching and teaching is missing the inexplicable and the transcendent. Find a church, he said, that loves mystery and encourages adventures of discovery. Find a church where art, music and drama play major roles in worship and teaching and are not considered asides to some pulpit ministry.

Pastor Dave’s sixth session: “When children come, life is turned upside down. Be prepared. Your marriage will be put to the test because everything you are came about during childhood. Having children is like attending a therapy session: the past is brought up and you are forced to confront it as little Tommy Jr. decides he will not obey, no way and no how. Rearing children requires patience you don’t think you’ll ever have enough of. Rearing children requires discipline for yourself and for your children, so know what and how that looks like. Listen to other parents. Learn to set and enforce proper boundaries for your children. Children feel secure when they bump up against sure and solid.

Their wedding day was a month away when Tom and Sherry came to Pastor Dave’s seventh and final marriage counseling session. Tom wondered why he was sweating sitting in Pastor Dave’s air-conditioned office. Pastor Dave surprised the couple by showing them the Princess Bride wedding scene. Tom was no longer sweating. Instead, his Cheshire cat grin reappeared.

“Alright then. You’ll need a sense of humor for your marriage to survive all the stuff thrown at it. Now, I want you two to focus on what I am about to say: Marriage is a rose that enfolds the mystery of truth and goodness and being within itself and then opens for the world to behold its beauty. A Kingdom marriage means taking vows-a sincere and binding promise made with full understanding. Together you will help each other to flourish. You will witness and worship together. Together you promote the glory of God. Together you will discover and uncover the mysteries of the universe.

And you should know that God created the gender identities of male and female not just for procreation of the human race. I believe that God’s creation of two distinct gender identities, both rooted and fixed in sexed bodies, was also for the creation of mystery.  You see, men and women who come into a marriage relationship begin a journey of discovery. Men discover and grow into their maleness and women discover and grow into their femaleness. Within the give and take of a marriage relationship the mystery of your gender identity and the other’s gender identity is explained and affirmed. The same thing also happens for a single person in a healthy Christian community. God created mystery for us to discover Him and each other and His whole creation over a course of a lifetime. We should never be bored.

God, in His infinite-personal love, created mystery and romance. Look at how much we do not know about the universe. Our God is surrounded in mystery.  Clouds and thick darkness surround him. God does not do boring, to put it another way. Reason alone cannot tell you all you need to know. Emotions and your senses cannot tell you all you need to know. No, we discover what we do not know when we are in relationship with Him and with others. Your marriage, the dancing embrace of male and female, will venture off into God’s uncharted universe to go where no man or woman has gone before.

“Bead me up,” Tom replied.

Pastor Dave looked over at Sherry. “Do you really want to marry this corny guy.”

Sherry looked over at Tom who was grinning his cat grin, “Well, he does keep me in stitches. That’s his welding joke.”

“You two were made for each other. Now for the welding. I mean the wedding.” Pastor Dave prayed a blessing on the couple and then dismissed them after discussing the wedding details.

 

At the wedding Pastor Dave again prayed a blessing on the couple. As Tom and Sherry drove away from the church Tom noticed the same bumper sticker that he saw before: “Try to remember what you wanted to be.”

“I remember what I wanted to be. It is what I am with you.” Tom leaned over and kissed Sherry.

Their car’s bumper sticker read: “With This Ring, I Thee Weld.”

 

 

 

 

© Jennifer A. Johnson, 2017, All Rights Reserved

Filed under gender, marriage, Short Story, short story Tagged with , , , , ,

Form Should Never Follow Function

July 8, 2017 Leave a comment

 

 “I heard a loud voice from the throne, and this is what it said: “Look! God has come to dwell with humans! He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them and will be their God.” Revelation 21:3

~~~

Let me ask you. Where do you go “to get away,” to rejuvenate?  Someplace ugly or someplace transcendent, otherworldly, awe-inspiring and beautiful?

~~~

Cabrini-Green Housing Project

Form follows function:  the principle is that the shape of a building or object should be primarily based upon its intended function or purpose.

Louis Sullivan’s phrase “form (ever) follows function“ became a battle-cry of Modernist architects after the 1930s. The credo was taken to imply that decorative elements, which architects call “ornament,” were superfluous in modern buildings. However, Sullivan himself neither thought nor designed along such dogmatic lines during the peak of his career.

~~~

As a student of Moody Bible Institute in the 70’s, one of several mandatory Practical Christian Ministries (PCMs) offered to me was to go to the nearby Cabrini-Green Housing Project and witness to the residents. (I chose ministering to alcoholics who frequented Chicago’s Skid Row Rescue Missions on West Madison St., “a 12-block stretch of flophouses, gin joints and battered dreams.”)

~~~

Cabrini-Green: Chicago Housing Authority’s approach to the “urban renewal”

 

CHICAGO (AP) — To some, Cabrini-Green’s infamous high-rises were a symbol of urban blight — towering testaments to the failure of Chicago public housing to give safe shelter to the poorest of the poor.

But to the remaining residents being ousted from the complex’s last building, Cabrini-Green was simply home.

The closure of Cabrini’s high-rises this week marks the end of an ugly era in public housing. The 70-acre development was initially hailed as a salvation for the city’s poor that was emulated nationwide. But it quickly decayed into a virtual war zone, the kind of place where little boys were gunned down on their way to school and little girls were sexually assaulted and left for dead in stairwells….

The Cabrini-Green development began on Chicago’s North Side in 1942 with row houses named for St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, the Roman Catholic patron saint of immigrants. A few years later, high-rises and mid-rises were added. Eventually Cabrini housed up to 13,000 people.

The buildings, however, weren’t well-kept, and crime and drugs soon became rampant.

The complex drew national attention in 1981, after a gang war killed 11 residents in three months. Then-mayor Jane Byrne and her husband moved into a Cabrini apartment for three weeks to publicize her efforts to clean up the area.

~~~

Chicago is now reaping the ‘benefits’ of post-modern architecture, constructions built without reference to natural forms. And you thought deconstructionism only applied to literature and to the meaning of words. It applies to the de-humanization of mankind:

Cabrini-Green: Chicago History Museum / Getty Images

Filed under architecture Tagged with , , ,

Known in the Things Made

July 2, 2017 Leave a comment

 

“What can be known of God, you see, is plain to them, since God has made it plain to them. Ever since the world was made, his eternal power and deity have been seen and known IN THE THINGS MADE. As a result, they have no excuse: they knew God, but didn’t honor him as God or thank him. Instead, they learned to think in useless ways, and their heart grew dark. They declared themselves to be wise, but in fact became foolish. They swapped the glory of the immortal God for the likeness of the image of mortal humans-and of birds, animals, and reptiles.” -Paul’s letter to the Roman church

“A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense.” Zosima, the Elder, The Brothers Karamazov, F. Dostoevsky

~~~

Let’s start here:

 

Some observations, after debating pro-homosexuality Catholics on Twitter:

1/Appropriating Scripture to fit within your worldview is perilous. I see this happening all the time in Twitter replies to me: appropriating Christian love to accept homosexuality, to justify national health care and redistribution of wealth, aka, socialism. Of course, LGBT appropriated ‘love’ does not justify them loving a Christian or a Christian way. LGBT love is only one way.

2/Many preachers of Scripture use their own Post-modern and Epicurean worldview to template Scripture and then make life application love potions from that admixture.

3/The post-modern view is one of deconstructionism: nothing, including the Bible, has any authority because such authority has been up till now been viewed only through the eyes of dead white men who must, according to feminist ideology, have been Patriarchal to a fault. Professor’s claiming authority deconstruct meaning from any text offering you nothing or nihilism. In effect, one is told that your present experience is more than enough compared to the millennia of knowledge, wisdom and tradition passed down through the ages to present day.

4/ Following in deconstructionism’s path, language is being changed–emptied of meaning or meaning nullified-to promote homosexuality:  from “marriage” equaling the sacred union of male and female as understood for millennia to “marriage” equaling the secular union of two men or two women under the banner of “equal rights”, thereby equating male/female marriage to homosexual ‘marriage’, equating love for a different but complementary other to self-love narcissism.

5/Homosexuality has been around throughout Scripture’s long and many cultured history. Never once is it condoned and shown as normative in Scripture. Never. God’s rejection of such behavior-sexual immorality-does not change with the calendar, as God’s covenant with men has never changed

6/In Scripture, homosexuality is presented as a form of sexual immorality. Sexual immorality, like all sins, is a form of idolatry-placing a much-revered image between you and God. In spite of this self-serving and toxic myopia, today, many in the church give homosexuality a pass. They prefer to render homosexuality as an adaptation-a coming to terms-of one’s sexuality. Therefore, Scripture must be updated to validate this ‘enlightened’ position as another form of need-love ministry which is then on social media likened to what minorities, immigrants, the poor, the suffering, etc. must feel.

Practicing sexual immorality (idolatry of any kind) automatically keeps one out of the kingdom of God. Scripture is very clear and empathic about this. Yet, Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists, Universalists and a host of new age churches suppose themselves magnanimous with God’s grace. God’s grace is never cheap and affordable. His grace cost him everything to sanctify a people to himself.

As self-styled oppressed and hurting minorities, the LGBT community will tell us over and over that we do not understand them-their needy love nature bent towards the same-sex. They will call us (and me almost daily) “homophobic”, a pseudo-psychological term used to shut down further conversation and to claim that we have the mental problem and not them.

7/Three key New Testament passages concerning homosexuality: Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10

8/Romans addresses the aberrant nature of homosexuality and man’s wickedness in the context of first century Epicureanism. With the gods ‘away’ the men with men will play. The Roman church is surrounded by images, cults, idolatry, prostitution, and homosexuality, not unlike our modern-day “diverse” culture. Paul’s letter to Roman church outlines his vision of the church and of the Kingdom of God on earth. Jews and Greeks and Romans are to come to together in the unity of holiness and in their acknowledgement of God’s covenant faithfulness which now means that Jesus is Lord. The unity and diversity revealed in Romans are exactly what the culture is trying to fashion, on its own terms. The Satan is a plagiarist who then perverts what God has written on the human heart.

9/From Genesis to Revelation, Scripture presupposes that heterosexuality is normative (1 Corinthians 7; Ephesians 5; 1 Peter 3; et al.) and highlights such relationship:  The Wedding feast at Cana, Christ and His Bride. Jesus was not born out of a homosexual relationship. Mary submitted herself to God purposes, not to her own purposes, even though the social-media of her time-gossiping-would have condemned her.

10/ New age thinking, Oprah style, synthesizes all kinds of gnostic elements, elements of good and evil to form a theology they can ‘live with’. I find this thinking in many tweets, where a person tells me that homosexual marriages is as good as male female marriage: it’s “love” that matters, and “Isn’t God love?”

11/The LGBT-ers and their corporate sponsors demand that transgendered ‘women be allowed to use the women’s room. They posit that such person will have mental anguish if not allowed to do so. What they will not posit or acknowledge is that if males who are trying to look like a female enters the women’s room, millions of women would suffer mental anguish. Bottom line: the LGBT-ers demand that the common good be thrown away for the individual’s ‘right’ to pee wherever one feels, to lessen one’s mental anguish. For the LGBT, the needs of the one outweighs any consideration of others.

12/The Obvious:  nature alone reveals that homosexuality is anti-human. No homosexual relationship will produce offspring. The words of procreation– “Be fruitful and multiply”- was stated at the beginning of God’s written communication with us

Of course, homosexual advocates will posit that gay men and gay women can have adopted children, that such configurations, now denoted as “gay families”, are equal to male-female families. This appropriation of male-female families to connote equality with male-male families reveals the loss of meaning to the word “equal.” “Equal” now means: plagiarizing God to obtain a waiver from all accountability.

13/Fourth of July message: a nation which turns its back on Christianity and its coexistence with the neutral State to promote secularism’s “values” and individual rights will lose all its authority as a nation state. Radical secularism will induce governing paralysis. It is happening in Europe and we, in the U.S., are seeing this happen before our eyes.

To be continued…

 

 

 

Added 7-3-2017:

Here’s are interesting column:

Queer divorce in the time of Pride

“What does a lesbian bring to a second date?” my then-girlfriend joked early in our relationship. A U-haul.”…

 

“The complicated human experiences of LGBTQ folks often come at the cost of producing images that heterosexuality will accept. In places like Chicago, most LGBTQ folks are allowed to thrive as long as they follow the same rules as their progressive, straight-identified allies.”

Added 7-4-2017

https://twitter.com/bbusa617/status/879498946657353728

Resources added 7-8-17:

BORN OR BRED? Science Does Not Support the Claim That Homosexuality Is Genetic

Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth Paperback – February 1, 1996 by Jeffrey Satinover, M.D.

A Christian psychiatrist examines the latest research, refuting the alleged genetic basis for homosexuality and assessing the social power homosexuals have gained.

 

 

 

 

Filed under Homosexuality, LGBT Tagged with , ,

Dragon-Skin or What Not to Where

June 25, 2017 Leave a comment

 

Maybe you can relate. As often happens when I am out and about I come across a homosexual* waiter or cashier. They want to be queer-noticed. They present themselves with false feminine affected speech and limp-wristed affectations. I am immediately repulsed by such an unnatural demeanor as I am by the sight of graffiti-tattoos on the human body.

I do not find such behavior cute, charming or creative. Such behavior is not distinctive of the homo sapien species. It is actually of the animation genre – shallow, fabricated, meant for sale, a sham within a sham.

It doesn’t take much insight to see that homosexuals scream for attention, validation and for positive affirmation. Homosexuals compensate for their neurosis by idolizing their missing symbol-male or female, as the case may be, and by preening to gain the missing symbol’s attention. When I encounter such unnatural behavior, my impulse is to look away when I pay the bill. But, I have wondered about my response.

If I smile and act polite in these situations, is that encouraging them to continue in this behavior when I know such behavior depraves their humanness? If I look and act disgusted, does that incline them decide to harden their ways?

Of course, I am not responsible for their reaction. I am responsible for my Kingdom behavior. So, my Kingdom of God response is to look him or her in the eyes, human to human, and to pray in the spirit for the waiter, the cashier, for the boy or girl under the dragon skin. Under that ‘protective’ veneer of inhumanity is a human.

~~~

“C.S. Lewis put this so poetically in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. There’s a boy named Eustace, and everybody hates him and he hates everybody. He’s selfish, he’s mean, and nobody can get along with him. But he finds himself magically on a boat, the Dawn Treader, taking a great voyage. At one point this boat pulls in to an island, and Eustace wanders off and finds a cave. The cave proves to be filled with diamonds and rubies and gold. He thinks, “I’m rich!” And immediately, because he is who he is, he thinks that now he’ll be able to pay everybody back. Anyone who has laughed at him, stepped on him, slighted him, will now get their comeuppance. Eustace then falls asleep on a pile of treasure—which he doesn’t yet know is the hoard of a dragon. And because he falls asleep with greedy dragonish thoughts in his heart, when he wakes up, he’s become a dragon—big, terrible, and ugly. Soon he realizes there’s no way out. He can’t go on the boat, he’s going to be left on the island alone, he’s going to be horrible all of his life. He falls into despair.

One day the great lion Aslan shows up, leads him to a clear pool of water, and tells him to undress and jump in. And suddenly Eustace realizes that “undress” means “take off the dragon skin.” He begins to gnaw and claw off the scales, and he realizes that he can shed his skin. Working at it, he finally peels off this skin—but to his dismay, he finds that underneath he’s got another dragon skin. He tries a second time and a third time, to no avail; the same thing still happens each time. In the end the lion says, You’re going to have to let me go deeper”

-from Timothy Keller’s “King’s Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus”

 

“Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off – just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt – and there it was lying on the grass, only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me – I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on — and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again. . . .”

Eustace speaking about what he let Aslan do for him – C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawntreader:

~~~

Consider Jesus word’s in John 16: 8-11 regarding the Spirit and our indwelt mission:

“When he [the Helper] comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong on three counts: sin, justice, and judgement. In relation to sin-because they don’t believe in me. In relation to justice-because I am going to my father, and you won’t see me anymore. In relation to judgement-because the ruler of this world is judged.”

 

Any outworking of sin is idolatry. Idolatry replaces belief in Jesus and the Triune God with man-made symbols.

When Jesus, the perfect Israelite who had no sin-the spotless lamb-came, he came not to judge but to give his life as ransom for many. Those of us filled with the Spirit reveal Kingdom of God justice–the ruler of this world is judged. Jesus is Lord. No one has to live under dragon skin. We tell others that the skin comes off, as it did in our case, and that it hurt, but that abundant life is uncovered.

~~~

Consider that Jesus, who, though he worked many healings (restoring sight to the blind, making the lame to walk), talks about amputation as a form of deliverance to be done by the individual now or later by God. Choose your pain.

‘And if your right hand trips you up, cut it off and throw it away. Yes: it’s better for you to have one part of your body destroyed than for your whole body to go into Gehenna.” Matthew 5: 30

I’m sure some people felt bullied by Jesus when he said this. Others wanted the dragon skin to come off.

~~~

Once again, I am reminded of the pernicious nature of homosexuality and pornography. Within the last few weeks I sadly learned of a fellow Christian-an Anglican priest, a friend and former homosexual-who fell back into sin. He confessed to the trustees of his ministry that his fall was because of stress which led to pornography which then led to a homosexual encounter.

This man has ministered, in the U.S. and in Europe, to thousands of people who have desired to leave homosexuality. I have known this man and have worked in parachurch ministry alongside him. My son played with his son. This man left the homosexual lifestyle after twenty-some years, married and had several children. He developed his ministry into a full-time ministry to help others gain freedom from homosexuality. Now, according to his Board of trustees, he is on extended leave. According to a Facebook post, his wife is divorcing him

~~~

-*I do not use the LGBT disposed word ‘gay” for this human dysfunction. Homosexuality is a psychological disorder that is based in neurosis, a splitting off from the proper symbols put in place by God when He created us in His image.

Homosexual neurosis may include separation anxiety issues or abandonment issues. A homosexual response is a learned response towards the path of least resistance and the least amount of pain. Their response is narcissistic in that the individual choses to pamper their wounds instead of address them as wounds. Their responses are stoked in this Epicurean age where Pride Parades reinforce the idolatry of false, mentally engraved images

If you were to look up homosexuality on Wikipedia, you would find that everything is cool, homosexuality is a non-issue.  That revisionism is the work of LGBT lobbies who do not want the DSM to diagnose them as having a psychological problem. In fact, homosexuals will use the psychological sounding term “homophobia” to claim that you have the mental problem and belong in the DSM and they do not.

The insidiousness of homosexuality is now beginning at a very early age. Its promoters want to seduce middle age kids into thinking that they must be gay if they have feelings toward the same gender. You and I know, parents know, that middle school age kids deal with a LOT of feelings on the new social roller coaster they are on. Kids at that age are trying to define themselves and their relationships. Beware! The LGBT is right there to persuade kids that same sex feelings must be gay and must be validated as such. Beware! The schools, which are supposed to teach the three ‘R’s, are teaching your children LGBT ‘values’.

Why would a boy or girl come from school and say “I’m gay” if they were not informed of that word and that such behavior was promoted as an acceptable “variation” of humanness? There is nothing human about homosexuality. No wonder The Satan promotes the narcissistic antithesis of the image of God

 

 

 

Become informed…

Microphone cut after Mormon girl reveals she’s gay at church

Britt Jones, a bisexual Mormon who runs a podcast called “I like to look for Rainbows” that featured Savannah’s story, said the leaders should have allowed Savannah to finish.

“Queer issues don’t get talked about in the church enough,” said Jones, who is married to a woman and has children. “It was really brave and really admirable, particularly for somebody that young, that she not only wanted to talk about it herself but be a voice for others suffering in silence.”

All Sex, All the Time

“…children inhabit a highly sexualized world earlier and earlier, and social pressure upon them to exhibit sexualized behavior starts earlier and earlier. A schoolteacher friend recently told me how she had comforted a seven-year-old who was in tears because a girl in his class had insulted him, calling him a virgin. She asked whether he knew what the word meant. “

“No,” replied the little boy. “But I know it’s something horrible.”

Obituary of 15-year-old who committed suicide calls out school bullies

“For a young lady so excited about going to high school, things sure went terribly wrong for her.”

Filed under Homosexuality, LGBT Tagged with , ,

Father’s Way

June 18, 2017 Leave a comment

I would estimate that, over the years, my father took thousands of photos with film cameras.

My father wasn’t in most of these photos.

Most of what a father is and does is not captured in an image…

Filed under Father's Day Tagged with

The “Anything Goes” Flood

June 11, 2017 Leave a comment

 

“This is the lie that is at the heart of our society, the lie that encourages every form of destructive self-indulgence to flourish: for while we ascribe our conduct to pressures from without, we obey the whims that well up from within, thereby awarding ourselves carte blanche to behave as we choose. Thus we feel good about behaving badly.” ― Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass

~~~

Warning! Mixed Metaphors Ahead!

So last night I had a dream…

The past several days I was made hyper aware of the inundation of God’s world with a flood of “the world, the flesh and the Devil.” We know from Scripture that God promised to never flood the world again. His promise would be signified by a rainbow for all to see. God will keep his promise even as the level of man’s inhumanity and depravity rises again.

This last Friday in particular, I sensed the overwhelming “Anything Goes” flood waters of a world system that detests Jesus as Lord. I decided to take Friday off from work, as my workload had slowed. As usual I went to the fitness club to work out first thing in the morning. Inside, the background noise turned foreground noise – a percussive sound – was so loud and so overwhelming and so meaningless in content that I had to use ear plugs and listen to the TV on the elliptical machine to drown out its convulsive effects.

After working out I ventured over to my favorite breakfast restaurant, the one I visit every weekend. The waitresses know me. The service and the food are good. The background music, not so much. And then there is Liz. Liz has waited on me many times. When Liz fills out the check it is impossible for me not to notice the creeping scrawl of tattoos that cover her arms. Liz asks me if I want the usual (what I’ve ordered over and over for three years, now). I say yes. Liz repeats the order to me and gets it wrong. Every time, she gets it wrong. “OK”, I said to myself again, “life is hard”.

After breakfast I went to a large grocery store, a store like Target. I needed to pick up a few things before heading home. Again, the background pop music is flooding forward into the large cavernous room bringing with it cultural rot –lyrics (not the right descriptor) that slither around an accelerating tribal dance beat.

I go home to rest. I turn on the TV to check the stock market news and sure enough commercials flood the room with their raised volume level and carnival barker announcements of products that will fix whatever ails your modern life. Everything is for sale in our culture.

Later in the day, I decided to go out for dinner. The temperature outside was 90 degrees. And, I cook every day, so I tell myself, “Why not go out for a change?” I check out a new “Modern Japanese Cuisine” restaurant in town. I enter and see the hostess looking deeply into her Smartphone. Out of the corner of her eye she notices me at the door and picks up a menu while looking at her phone. She throws the menu onto a table that is between the only two tables in the restaurant where people are eating.  There are about hundred open seats elsewhere. No matter. I pick up the menu and move to a table I like.

Minnie, the tattooed waitress who looked barely 21, came to my table. I asked about a certain Sake. She couldn’t answer. So, I asked based on the pricing, “It looks like the smaller price is for a glass and the larger price is for a Sake carafe?” She couldn’t answer. I then said that I wanted to try a small (I used my fingers to show her small!) glass of sake. Five minutes later and she’s back at my table to ask me what size I wanted, of the two sizes. I go along and tell again, using sign language and words.

Minnie brings the Sake and takes my food order: a Bento box with teriyaki beef. (I like sushi, but I haven’t had teriyaki in a while and besides, I saw that the Sushi chef had tattoos.) Fifteen minutes later Minnie returns with my Bento box. She uncovers the box. The meat portion looks teriyaki-ish so I don’t think there is an issue. But then I pull off some of the meat with my chopsticks and realize that she brought me teriyaki salmon instead.

It took several attempts, in the almost empty restaurant, to flag Minnie down. When I told her my dinner order was wrong it was like I slapped her out of a trance. I was starting to see a pattern develop.

~~~

Last Friday I experienced only some of the effects of what I see as the flood waters “of man’s inhumanity and depravity rising again”. Look around, carefully. You will see TV shows called “Real Housewives of…” which depict mostly women clawing and fighting to be top cat. You will see TV shows of the Kardashians where women preen and fawn over themselves before you, the mirror. You will see sitcoms which trivialize God and exalt man (and his social science). If you watch such things, how will you transform your mind?

You will see movies of fantasies – superheroes who save mankind within two or so hours and who need to be recycled to save the world again and again (for profit). There is also the trio of leave-nothing-to-the-imagination-PC-approved characters who presume to speak for God in The Shack fantasy (see my previous post). If you watch such things, how will you transform your mind?

There is the upcoming Chicago Gay pride parade on June 25th with its flood of manmade rainbows meant to stave off judgment for its celebration of inhuman behavior. If you watch such things, how will you transform your mind?

Christians are so inundated by the world system that it is easy for them to take it in and accept its sashaying flirtations with evil as just “fun and peace and love”, to accept gays as being “differently ordered” instead of “objectively disordered” (a change in terms for the Catholic Church as directed by Pope Francis)

I could write a whole lot more about the rising level of inhumanity, about abortions, euthanasia, homosexuality, about Disney’s social justice animation, about climate change population control, etc. Suffice it to say, if the Spirit of God is living in you, you will experience the dissonance: the unrelenting and pummeling sounds of this world system demanding submission and the voice of God asking you to follow here and now.

 

One example of a response to the latter:

 

Important Note: In writing these things, I am not judging these people. I am observing that this world is hurting. I and all believers are a royal priesthood who stand between earth and heaven to intercede for a world that is hurting. When I see the tattoos, I pray for the person. When I hear commercials, I pray for those who are in pain, in need, who seek relief for the struggle of everyday life. When I tweet debate a homosexual I pray for their emotional and psychological needs and for the seed of the Word to be planted and to take root. Within every situation I encounter I am learning to pray in the Spirit for the person before me.

~~~

Keep in mind the words (and mandate) of those around the throne:

 

“With your own blood you purchased a people for God and made them a kingdom of priests to our God, and they will reign on the earth.” Revelation 5

 

Keep in mind this warning from the Apostle Paul in his circular letter to the churches around Ephesus (Chap. 5):

“So don’t get involved in the works of darkness, which all come to nothing. Instead, expose them! The things they do in secret, you see, are shameful even to talk about. But everything becomes visible when it’s exposed to the light, since everything that is visible is light. That’s why it says:

Wake up, you sleeper!

Rise from the dead!

The Messiah will shine on you!

So take special care how you conduct yourselves. Don’t be unwise, but be wise. Make use of every opportunity you have, because these are wicked times we live in. So don’t be foolish; rather, understand what the will of the Lord is. And don’t be drunk with wine; that way lies in dissipation. Rather, be filled with the spirit! Speak to each other in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and chanting in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks for everything to God the father in the name of our Lord Jesus the Messiah.

Note:  the “Wake up, you sleeper! quote Paul uses is likely from an early Christian poem or song.

~~~

So, last night I had a dream: I am sitting in the backyard of what I perceive to be my house. I am sitting next to someone I perceive to be my spouse. I look up and in the kitchen window of my house are two men in dark suits with guns. I perceive they have taken over the house. Next, I see them tearing up our passports. My spouse says to me, “You need to take care of this.” So, I get up and go look for my handgun which is in my car in the driveway, but then I sense that my car is parked at the train station. I then felt helpless against the two men. I wake up.

Filed under Christianity, Culture Tagged with ,

Take “The Shack” Out Back

June 4, 2017 Leave a comment

 

https://twitter.com/FoundationsRad/status/871353194181533696

(And yes, I know that each century since Christ, artists have rendered each person of the Trinity. For the most part they have done so being faithful to a Scriptural rendering of the Trinity, e.g., The Father as a voice coming from a cloud; the Holy Spirit as a dove or as wind. Artists portray their subjects through their worldview, hence there are Italian looking depictions of Jesus and of those around him., e.g., the paintings of Caravaggio.)

I do not want to read or see the Shack. I do not want those images in my mind when I think of the Trinity. Besides, there are no images of Jesus’ physical appearance. This, to me, reinforces the notion that Jesus came to show us the invisible God: “The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. Col. 1:15. So, what has been passed down to us about Jesus? His appearance or His words and actions which represent the Father? His appearance or His words and actions which represent true humanity?

Another reason I avoid The Shack: I have lived with loss. I lost a child. I have suffered other losses. A deeper understanding of Jesus came out of each loss. Each loss is unique. Each growth experience is unique. I learned about God as I turned to Jesus. The Shack would add nothing to what I have gained and would likely diminish that knowledge by its lack of reverence.

As best as I can tell, The Shack is not allegorical. Its disturbing ‘symbology’ of the Trinity is portrayed by three ready-made culturally ‘approved’ characters who are not unlike the emotionally ravenous people reading and watching. We are shown reality TV characters who portray a “diversity” promoting God, a God who would otherwise be irrelevant to modern sensitivities. I am not surprised that the ‘patriarchal looking Morgan Freeman was not used in The Shack. Instead, the goddess of feminism was served by an African-America woman who ‘manifests’ as God the Father (The Sugar Shack is so much more palatable for angry women). The Shack is a post-modernist’s collage of drippy feelings for the Age of Feelings. Title (and subtitle): “the house you build out of your own pain (and using your own fashioned gods).

Finally, I’d rather take in good fiction. Movies are, at best, vicarious roller coaster rides edited and enhanced to titillate. So, instead of ‘meditating’ on sentimental cultural iconography which does more harm than good, as in dumbing down ergo popularizing (a best seller) ergo offering schmaltzy messaging about God and evil, I’ll read The Brothers Karamazov…

“The Problem of Evil” by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Paper: “The Problem of Evil” by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Filed under Current events 2017 Tagged with , , ,

A Foot in the Door

May 29, 2017 Leave a comment

A Foot in the Door

A Monologue in One Act

 

Setting:  A small and very old chapel. A crucifix shrouded in black gauze is on the wall. There are three candles. Front and center is the Host and a candle. Midway up the aisle is another candle. At the door is the third candle. The light of the candles is the only light. Good Friday Vigil watch, 3 AM. The chapel is empty except for one parishioner.

Characters:

Bill Penny

Parishioner 1

Parishioner 2

 

Penny: (enters chapel from rear door, hobbling) Ouch, this hurts like a son-of-a… (Parishioner 1 turns around and glares at Penny, Penny puts finger to his lips, mumbles) Sorry. Sorry. (Penny hobbles to a front pew favoring his right foot; sits down; carefully takes off right shoe) Owww, ow, ow, ow.

(After a minute, Parishioner 1 leaves the chapel; Penny is alone)

(Grimacing in pain Penny slowly kneels down onto the pray bench. He makes the sign of the cross) Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me a sinner. (Beat) Lord, like the dumb sinner that I am, last night I ate Delores’s corned beef and I woke up with this gout. Every time I eat corned beef I get this blasted gout. And it hurts like…like…like you know what! But I am here like I promised You, like I promised her. (Looks at the shrouded crucifix on the wall for a time)  “Go or else!” she said to me. “You have issues,” she said to me. But, who doesn’t have issues? She has me going to marriage therapy to get “fixed”. I am not a dog who needs to get fixed! But, what’s to be done? I am married to her… or else! (Beat) You remember the time, Lord, when I was lonely and Delores made those cow eyes at me.  Now, I all get is bee bee eyes! (Beat) Well, I’m lonely again. What’s to be done? We both know that Delores liked to sit in front of the TV with her glass of wine and watch movies after the kids were in bed. I would have liked to go out to the garage and putz around and fix whatever is broken and listen to baseball. You know I can’t sit still not even with this awful gout. The universe isn’t static. Space-time isn’t static. I read somewhere that the galaxies are separating at the proportion of their distance from each other. That reminds me of my father. He never sat still. Even when he was sitting his knee would bounce up and down like he was pumping a manual sewing machine.  You know me. I have to be a part of something moving and not watching it move in some little box. I’d rather play baseball than watch it but ever since I pulled my groin muscle running to second base, I benched myself. Talk about pain.  Oh, that was miserable. (Beat) You know what else I read? That my body’s cells are replaced every ten years. That’s good. I am in need of new toe cells! (Penny lifts his foot to rub the area around this big toe) In the same article I read that after fifty half of my heart’s cells have been replaced!  Maybe that explains why I don’t feel the same way I did thirty years ago. Maybe that explains why I am so lonely – I miss those old cells. (Beat) When I sit with Delores she thinks my knee is bouncing because of too much coffee. We better keep that to ourselves. (Beat) If I don’t sit with her she says she doesn’t feel loved. So I do. But then, after two glasses of wine, she says to me “Bill, you have issues”. Between You and me, I think her mood bounces because of the wine. (Beat) “Well, Yes”, I want to say.  “Give me time. My cells are going to be replaced,” I want to say.  “I am not the same person I was or will be,” I want to say. But, you know I can’t go there with her. The wine doesn’t make her laugh and I can’t make her laugh anymore. Too bad the cell replacement thing doesn’t work on dispositions. (Beat) (Penny sings) When you’re smilin’, when you’re smilin’, The whole world smiles with you. Hah. We both know who else doesn’t smile: my sister the tattooed Atheist. According to her, we are evolving organic life that happened to develop on the edge of a minor planet in a universe that emerged from preexisting quantum foam derived from out of nothing. It amazes me how people create something out of nothingness. Then she tells me, “any narrative or language explaining origins came down to us from power hungry men who only wanted to oppress”. Besides, she says, “Christians think the world is six thousand years old, because some man in a pulpit told them it must be so.” So, I say to her, “Look, the earth is only 14.54 billion years old. Give them time.” And, when I mention You, she waves her hand in my face and says “let’s not talk about God. Let’s focus on the manageable world in the moment and not think about what we can’t manage”. “Live in the moment” she says to me, “in the unbearable lightness of being”, she says to me. It’s no wonder the whole world is not smiling with us. It’s been turned on its head. (Beat) (Penny sings) When you’re smilin’, when you’re smilin’, (The wind blows the door open, slams it shut. Penny turns to see. The candle by the door goes out.) …the whole world blows your candle out.

(Pause.)

(A passing car’s headlights shine though a stained-glass window; Penny looks up at the stained-glass window) Ah, there’s St. Mark at the window!  And the lion! Please pray for my big toe. It hurts like a… like…like I said. (Beat) As you know, St. Mark, Delores, she never forgets. I said something years ago. I don’t know what I said and it’s still echoing back as, how shall I say it in church?… You know, she keeps her distance ‘as far as the east is from the west.” St. Mark, she told me to come here tonight and confess my issues. So…. yes, I curse…I’ll admit that. Yes, I eat corned beef pretending it doesn’t give me gout.  But, I can’t admit to what someone holds against me if I don’t know what it is I did twenty years ago. St. Mark, Delores wants the marriage therapist to find an issue with me that fits her unhappiness!  (Beat) And, now, can you believe it!? Delores won’t forgive my brother, either. You know what happened. Sam turned fifty and turned into a woman. I knew that my hearts cells were replaced after fifty but I didn’t know that brother cells would be replaced with sister cells after fifty! (Beat) Well, my brother did try. He was married three times. Marriage does have a way of bringing someone to their knees. I get Sam. Life is hard. I get that he saw his change as a means to create, of giving birth to the art he wanted to create. But, I don’t get Delores after 35 years. She says that what my brother has done is absurd. “Compared to what”, I say. I pulled out my copper ore and showed her. “Now look at this copper ore which came from an exploding star that is hundreds of light-years away”, I tell her, “The universe of things does not happen in a box with a screen.”  Well, You saw the look on her face. You saw Delores roll those bee bee eyes and grit her teeth. And, You heard Delores’ mother tell me that You do not have a sense of humor! Well, she doesn’t think I am funny either! I told her the goldfish joke. You know the one. One goldfish says to another, “If there is no God, who keeps changing the water?” She just stared at me. Now, that does make me wonder. If You don’t have a sense of humor where did the goldfish get their sense of humor? (Makes the sign of the cross) Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me a sinner. (Stops kneeling and sits back in the pew, puts right leg carefully out straight, fishes in his pocket, pulls out a rock- copper ore – and looks at it) That reminds me. I read somewhere that a star’s intense heat and pressure fuses together new elements. There’s a shoving match between gravity and the energy released (Laughs) Maybe a star fused a new sister element. Maybe there was some inner gravity drawing Sam to be a woman and some enormous release of energy in trying to appear normal. “Wonders never cease”, my father would say to Sam. (Holds up the rock) Dad gave me this chunk of copper ore and said to me, “Bill, you are made from stardust from an exploded star. And to stardust you shall return.”  (Penny drags his finger along the top of the pew, looks at it) See. This stuff is everywhere. This dust probably came from an exploded star 100 light-years away and here it is on this pew waiting to be touched! My sister should get a bang out of this! I’ll write a technical paper:  The Physical Properties of Dust and Its Unearthly Edge of the Universe Origin. I’ll give it to my sister and include You as the main source in the footnotes. She’ll freak out. (Beat) Well, it’s no wonder that I sneeze all the time when I sleep on the couch. (Sits back in the pew and grimaces) And my back, Lord. You know that Delores has me sleeping on the couch. She says I snore. So, you see why I am in the doghouse? I snore. I bounce my knee. I have (drags out the word) Is…sues! (The wind blows the door open, slams it shut. Penny turns to see. The aisle candle goes out.) Whew, I thought Delores heard me… but it is the Winds of Change! (Beat) You know what I wanted to be when I was a boy. I wanted to be a conductor. I stood in front of my parent’s stereo and conducted all of the classical LPs my grandfather passed on to me. Now, I am an engineer and I conduct current flow. Hah! Wonders never cease. Speaking of wonders. The dream I had last night was a doozy. You probably saw it. I am conducting Dvorak’s New World Symphony and Delores is sitting in the percussion section holding a timpani mallet in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. She is watching TV and yelling at it so she misses my tympani cue. Then I see my sister off stage and she’s at a grocery checkout buying Oreos with a coupon. After each purchase, she gets another coupon for more Oreos. She eats the Oreos she just bought and then she goes and buys another bag of Oreos and gets another coupon. I watch her going back and forth and eating and then all of a sudden Delores stabs my right foot with her drumstick and says, “Who’s watching the kids?’  I wake up and… You know the rest. Must have been the corned beef. (Beat) (Penny looks around) The people who built this place 175 years ago, they knew that heaven and earth belonged together.  Priests of creation, that’s what I’d call them. They put a garden around this chapel, not a parking lot. When the windows are open, you can smell the lilacs and the hyacinths, the actual earth. (Takes a deep breath) Ah, nature, the fresh scent of rain, creation! (Beat) You and I agree. The best architects and artists and engineers and scientists in the world draw out all kinds of glory from creation. (Beat) Which now makes me wonder…churches today…many look like drab government buildings. It is as if those churches had to box up their faith and keep it earth bound so that people wouldn’t get carried away… at least not until they were “Raptured” away, as they call it in their fantasy books, to some nebulous cloud in the sky. To that my father would say, “everything done decently and in order.” Then he’d wink and say, “just like the big bang”. (Wind opens the chapel door and slams it closed. The candle on the altar is blown out. The light from a street lamp projected through a stained glass window is the only light. Penny pulls on his chin.) Damn, it’s getting dark in here. Oh! Yeah! You know me. I get frustrated with things. You know when I first started cursing? About a month after I turned sixty-five. Joints I didn’t know I had started aching. My knees retired. Little things started becoming big things, like trying to say a word I just had thought. And when I do curse Delores yells “Stop that! Little ears!” I don’t know what’s gotten into me. (Beat) I know. I know. What comes out of a man corrupts a man. But, Lord, the corned beef that my wife Delores gave me, I ate it and it went into me and corrupted me with this gout. How can anyone keep from cursing this awful gout! You know what else I read? Cursing helps to ease pain, but if you curse all day long, then it doesn’t help. (Beat) I’ll tell You one thing. I don’t want my whole life reduced down to shopping for cookie coupons. …And, I am not afraid of dying. I am afraid of cursing my life.

(Pause.)

(Parishioner 2 opens the door and stands there backlit; Penny holds his watch up to the dim entrance light) It looks like my time is up. (Makes the sign of the cross) Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me a sinner. St. Mark, a small request before I go. The next time Delores offers corned beef for dinner, could you have a word with my wife? And, maybe you know the answer to this? Did the apostle Paul have gout? You know. Was that his “thorn in the flesh”? And, the disciples? It would have been hard to be your follower, Lord, having gout: all that walking around and not being able to curse. (Carefully puts his right shoe back on) Ow…ow….ow…da…ang! (Gets up from the pew, turns to leave, sees Parishioner 2 in the light of the door, puts finger to his mouth, mumbles) Sorry, sorry. (Hobbles toward rear door; points to foot) Big toe… Wife’s corned beef… What’s that? …Why is it so dark in here? (Stops for a moment to rest) The wind came three times and blew out the three candles. Wonders never cease. (Begins hobbling again and then stops to listen) What? Where’s the light switch?… Did you hear the one about the two goldfish?

(Parishioner 2 opens door wider for Penny.)

(Penny exits)

 

Curtain comes down.

 

 

 

 

© Jennifer A. Johnson, 2017, All Rights Reserved

 

(Beat) =  beat – a break or space of air in between lines or words

 

Filed under Plays Tagged with , ,

Michael Novak – Catholic Scholar and “celestial philosopher”

May 21, 2017 Leave a comment

 

“Capitalism forms morally better people than socialism does,” Mr. Novak said in a 2007 interview with Crisis, a magazine he and the scholar Ralph McInerny founded in 1982. “Capitalism teaches people to show initiative and imagination, to work cooperatively in teams, to love and to cherish the law; what is more, it forces persons not only to rely on themselves and their own moral qualities, but also to recognize those moral qualities in others and to cooperate with others freely.”- Michael Novak, Catholic Scholar Who Championed Capitalism, Dies at 83

“At the heart of the Novakian vision is freedom—free people, free markets, free institutions. But Novak’s vision of freedom, like [Irving] Kristol’s, is not the doctrinaire libertarianism that the word evokes for many today. Much less is it the “me generation” liberal counterfeit of freedom that licenses people to do whatever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want, with whomever they want, so long as there is no immediate palpable harm to others.

Rather, it is the idea of unleashing the human spirit for the creative pursuit of excellence.”

” –Michael Novak, 1933–2017, by Robert P. George, On the life and influence of the prolific Catholic philosopher

 

~~~

On February 17, 2017, we lost a great Catholic intellectual and “celestial philosopher.”

This Acton Institute video introduces Ambassador Novak and offers a conversational look at his life and work. Novak’s valuable experience and his wealth of wisdom makes this video well worth viewing.

Novak’s masterpiece:  The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Pope John Paul II was one of many admirers of Michael Novak. It would be worth your while to read this entire encyclical written in 1991. It addresses social issues, Marxism, socialism and capitalism.

CENTESIMUS ANNUS, JOHN PAUL II

42. Returning now to the initial question: can it perhaps be said that, after the failure of Communism, capitalism is the victorious social system, and that capitalism should be the goal of the countries now making efforts to rebuild their economy and society? Is this the model which ought to be proposed to the countries of the Third World which are searching for the path to true economic and civil progress?

The answer is obviously complex. If by “capitalism” is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a “business economy”, “market economy” or simply “free economy”. But if by “capitalism” is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality, and which sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the core of which is ethical and religious, then the reply is certainly negative.

 

“New Things”:

43.…Man fulfils himself by using his intelligence and freedom. In so doing he utilizes the things of this world as objects and instruments and makes them his own. The foundation of the right to private initiative and ownership is to be found in this activity. By means of his work man commits himself, not only for his own sake but also for others and with others. Each person collaborates in the work of others and for their good. Man works in order to provide for the needs of his family, his community, his nation, and ultimately all humanity.

 

Centesimus annus

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Mother’s Day Limerick – Post Modern Partum

May 14, 2017 Leave a comment

 

 

There once was an XX who named itself YY,

(Being gender fluid made her mother cry),

Then YY had a baby,

And was no longer gender hazy,

Mother’s Day and Joy made her cry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

© Jennifer A. Johnson, 2017, All Rights Reserved

Mary Cassatt, Young Mother Sewing (1902)

Added 5-16-2017:

 

You won’t find this in a Hallmark card:

Feminist icon Gloria Steinem says lack of abortions caused climate change

“Listen, what causes climate deprivation is population,” she said. “If we had not been systematically forcing women to have children they don’t want or can’t care for over the 500 years of patriarchy, we wouldn’t have the climate problems that we have. That’s the fundamental cause of climate change. Even if the Vatican doesn’t tell us that. In addition to that, because women are the major agricultural workers in the world, and also the carriers of water and the feeders of families and so on, it’s a disproportionate burden.” Steinem (emphasis added)

OK, then. Feminism – Malthusian, barbarous and ungodly – is not for me . God said be fruitful and multiply. Steinem says be abortive to serve Gaia.

Added 5-17-2017:

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