From Athens to Alexandria This Year

In the midst of a lot of graduate school, Sunday School blogs, etc., there has also been a necessity this year in particular as far as travel is concerned, and so far this year we have traveled a lot.  Given my previous role of leadership in the House of Laity for our diocese, I was once again priveleged to attend our fourth (and regrettably last) Synod for the Diocese of the South for our church at St. Stephen Pro-Cathedral in Athens.  We were up there during the last week of April, and as usual it was a good Synod - got to see a lot of familiar people and it was just a great visit.  On the way home from that, we stopped over in St. Simons Island and Brunswick, where I spent a lot of my childhood with my dad many moons ago, and I also got to meet up with a dear friend of mine from elementary school days by the name of Sim Taylor - it was a great blessing to get to see him after all those years.  It was also new for Barbara as well, given she had never been to Brunswick or the Golden Isles before, but she enjoyed it as well.  This trip was an important first step for us, as a lot of new things are beginning to open up and I want to share that briefly here.

2015 was a rough year for us, as it almost cost us our house and we struggled with so much - lack of employment hurt our income, and despite an attempt to work at a couple of at-home schemes (both of which were actually scams) the year was pretty bleak last.  As 2015 ended and a lot of things started coming to a head, it forced us to see the importance of relying on God's will and His direction, and as we did so, things started to happen.  To begin, God provided in an abundant way for a great need we had, and we saved our home.  But, in the process, Barb and I talked, and we decided that we needed to follow a greater vision and plan on moving out of Florida for good after living here almost 27 years.  So, we began to explore options, and what happened in the coming months was a whirlwind of things that began to fall in place for us, and one of them occurred at the Synod this past April.

One of our diocesan bishops, Bishop Donald Lerow, actually has jurisdiction over what is called our Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic States, or DMAS, but he also pastors a parish in Jacksonville, NC, which is in the Diocese of the South.  While at Synod, Bishop Lerow and I began to talk, and as it turns out he had been praying for years for parish work to happen in my home state of West Virginia, and he really got fired up that a native of the state who was also a part of the Church wanted to go back north and do something for the Church, so as we talked, a lot began to happen, and in the coming weeks after Synod things came together quickly.

Bishop Lerow, in his wisdom, thought I would do best in Church work as an ordained deacon, and just a couple of weeks after the Synod I got this email from his secretary with the application paperwork to start the process.  As I completed and submitted everything required, I also got on with the business of taking my summer term coursework, and all went pretty quietly until about two weeks ago when another email from the diocesan secretary came with an official summons to meet with the diocesan Commission on Ministry in Alexandria, VA.  This was, on the outset, an extremely short notice, but just a few days after hearing from that we get checks from a class-action settlement we were part of in the amount of $350 between us, which supplied the need for the trip.  So, on the 19th of August, we took off at around 1 in the afternoon and headed north, and now history started to take shape for us.

The trip up was long, and having worked a partial day, traveling straight through on that 12-hour trek was not possible, so we decided to stop and get a few hours rest in North Carolina at this place in Dunn called the Highway Inn.  That was a big mistake!  It was kind of late, and we were looking for a convenient and economical place to crash for a few hours before getting back on the road, and the desk man was decent about it, and surprisingly up-front - he essentially told us that if we didn't like the room, we would be refunded with no problem, and he suggested we see it first.  That was a red flag there, and we should have really taken the good man up on that offer!  We get up to the room, which stunk, was overheated, and the carpet looked hideous due to the fact it appeared to have never been introduced to a vacuum before.   The bathroom also had no towels, and a shower was an impossibility at that point.  This motel was the stuff that bad horror movies are inspired by, and it was a disaster/nightmare of a lodging to be sure!   I managed myself to get about 2 hours sleep, with the fact that the sparse blind was letting in glaring lights from the parking lot and upon taking a visit to the restroom, I was greeted by the sight of two copulating cockroaches on a door hinge - they were dispatched and buried at sea, but considering what they were doing at least they died happy!  Not being able to sleep, I was up by 3:45 AM, and I let Barbara rest until 4:30, at which time we got up and got back on the road.  I was very thankful to get out of that crap-hole of a lodging, and would not recommend anyone staying there ever.  Usually though, with a motel like that, the lack of maintenance is a sign that it may be about to close permanently, and to be honest it probably wouldn't be a bad idea.  Dunn is a significant place regarding Christian history as it is the location of the headquarters of a very unique church denomination called the Pentecostal Free Will Baptist Church.  But, that stay didn't reflect any enthusiasm for that, and we were both relieved to kick the dust of Dunn off after that experience.

The Highway Inn in Dunn, NC.  We stayed in the room where that first window on the second floor is, the "room from hell." 

Bad motels aside, we made great timing getting to Alexandria, even with a breakfast stop in Rocky Mount, NC.  We arrived at All Angels Church, which meets in an office building just off Exit 2B on I-395, at around 9:30 AM, about a half of an hour before the Committee meeting.   There were two other candidates besides myself, and the whole proceeding took about 2 hours, which was fine.   The meeting produced good fruit, and a lot of both the priest and lay members of the Committee were very nice folks, and Bishop Lerow also provided over site - it was good to see him again as well. The outcome of the meeting was that I was accepted as what is called an Aspirant, meaning that the next stage of the process involves an MMPI test, a background check, and some paperwork submissions, which will not be too hard to do.  If all that goes well, I will be then accepted as a Postulant, and it looks as if I will be assigned to Fr. Pothin of the Frederick, MD, parish as a mentor priest who will oversee my diaconal preparation.  There is an excitement about all this happening, but also I am understandably a bit nervous too - there is a lot to do ahead of us, and it requires commitment on my part, but I can do it. 

All Angels Parish, as well as Bishop Lerow's office, are located on the third floor of this office building at the intersection of Edsall and Cherokee in Alexandria. 

The altar of All Angels Church in Alexandria - they did a tremendous job creating a beautiful parish in an unorthodox location.

After the meeting, we decided to go explore the neighborhood near the we stayed at - the Days Inn on Bragg Road, a much better place to visit than that Dunn place!   We grabbed a bite of lunch at the Royal Palace Kabob House on Beauregarde Street, and then went and checked out an Ethiopian market.  At this point, it is worth mentioning that Alexandria is noted for a couple of things, one being the Masonic Monument downtown and the other for hosting one of the largest communities of Ethiopian-American people in the nation.  Alexandria is rightly called "Little Ethiopia" because in practically every shopping center there is a shop of some sort with Amharic lettering on the sign, and that proved to be a blessing to me personally.  The first Ethiopian place we visited was the Dire Market and Deli on Chambliss Street, just across the street from our hotel.  Although a small market, it was still an experience to visit it, and I was able to stock up on both berbere and on some delicious but volatile Ethiopian biltong jerky.  I was really wanting to buy some injera, a flat pancake-like bread which is a staple of Ethiopian cuisine that is made from teff flour, but I was also a bit apprehensive about that being I feared it would not make the trip back.  But, if all goes well, we will be visiting again.  I also have a bit of a humorous story to relate about this too.  The market also has a small cafe-type eatery incorporated into it as well, and Barbara was curious about the injera bread.  Well, goofy me, with only about 3 hours sleep, noticed a plate of injera pieces sitting on a counter and thought they were samples, so I told Barb to check it out.  Turns out, the plate was a dirty plate being taken away by the wait staff for a customer, and luckily Barbara figured that out before she "partook" of it, and she wanted to shoot me!  We did get a good laugh from it later, and it is a story we can amuse ourselves with for years to come. 

The Dire Cafe and Market (now called Time Market) on Chambliss Street in Alexandria - two doors down is the Enat Restaurant, an authentic Ethiopian eatery we didn't have the privilege of trying this visit.

Visiting that market was exciting, but not as exciting as it was when we got back to the hotel.  Just across the street from our hotel is the Hamere Noah Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and being it was right there I just had to check it out, so I walked over there.  Now, Ethiopians don't just relegate church to a one-hour timeframe, but they go all day, and a lot was still happening at that little parish despite the fact the official Liturgy was over a couple of hours earlier.  The beauty of a Marian shrine at the entrance of the parish was the first thing that struck me, and in back I was also able to get some good pictures of some beautiful Ethiopian icons as well as of the ceremonial drums they use as part of their worship.  I actually was welcomed into the sanctuary, but declined due to the fact that in their churches, it is a requisite to remove your shoes, and I had holey socks on and didn't want to do that.  Maybe another day for that.  Over the next day before we left, we watched as tons of devout Ethiopian Christians parked quite a distance away and made their way to the church, ladies clad in the white traditional headcoverings in particular.   That had to be one of the neatest experiences I had ever encountered, and is one I will always treasure. 

The exterior of Hamere Noah Ethiopian Orthodox Church, facing Bragg Road - the Marian shrine is in the middle.

An up-close picture of the Marian shrine.

An array of Ethiopian liturgical drums laid out on carpets in back of the church

My experience in "Little Ethiopia" was not quite ready to be over yet, as that evening we went across the street to a Chinese buffet, but prior to going we decided to check out some of the local shops.   One of them was a 99-cent store which, judging by the Amharic signage over the door, was Ethiopian-owned, so we stopped in.  While in there, I got to talk to a nice Ethiopian gentleman who gave some insight about the "Broad Canon" of the Ethiopic Bible, which contains 81 books, including Enoch and Jubilees.  That turned out to be a stimulating conversation, and I actually learned a few things from this guy that even I didn't know, and I have been learning about Ethiopic Christianity for years!  The whole experience was a blessing, and afterwards we ate and then relaxed at the Days Inn we stayed at for the night.

The Days Inn on Bragg Road in Alexandria, where we lodged during our visit.

Sunday morning got off to an interesting start, as we got a really good night's rest and decided to attend Mass at All Angels before hitting the road back to Florida.  The folks at All Angels were a nice congregation, and they have an awesome vicar in Fr. Clarke, their Jamaican-born priest-in-charge.  We got to talk some to the folks, and the priest prayed his blessing over our travel, and we headed back.  Other than a few gas fill-ups and some Bojangle's Chicken for lunch in Petersburg, VA, the trip back was smooth and uneventful, but it also gave us a lot of memories too.  We now have all in place for a new chapter to start in our lives, and this trip sort of got that process started.  In coming months, I will document other developments as they happen, and thank you for visiting with me here on my virtual "front porch."

Random Ponderings on Top Issues

Given the title of this article, in reality this will focus on one major issue for the remainder of this year with different posts, as there is a lot to discuss and much of it will be impromptu, drawing from things I have written in my personal journals and other sources.  I want to begin this random series of perspectives by saying that one thing most of us need is a systematic statement of our world view on different issues and situations, and in studying a lot of different things this past year - G.K. Chesterton's writings, as well as the writings of such people as Ivan Ilyin and others - I have come to the conclusion that there are several things that need reform in this nation, and as I have come to that conclusion it has made me more resolute in some long-held positions I have had, but also given more clarification as to views I have held but may not have been able to classify by name.  In many cases, much of what I say will no doubt tick off people, as I am not guaranteeing "political correctness" on some things, and also I will not always even march lock-step with those who call themselves "conservative" either.   No one is perfect, in other words, and what we need to do as critical thinkers is to sort out what doesn't sound right and instead focus on the virtues of a given position.  In doing so, this means a radically new way of looking at things in some cases, even for me personally.  That being said, why don't we open this by way of introduction by stating some simple facts about where I stand politically and philosophically.

Some of the material I have been exposed to recently has included Hillaire Belloc's The Servile State, as well as Chesterton's The Everlasting Man.   Both of these books have something in common which has more or less given form to ideas I have had before, and that is both of them advance a socio-economic viewpoint called Distributism.   Also espoused by other well-known writers and activists such as Dorothy Day, Distributism is a viable alternative, with a strong Judeo-Christian foundation, to much of the nonsense that both Corporate America and big government espouse, in that a Distributist model starts at grassroots and doesn't serve the establishment well.   The tenets of Distributism stress things such as the right of all to property ownership, the importance of the family as the cornerstone of a society's economy, and also this position would be much friendlier to local business interests in contrast to corporate conglomerates.  Having a solid grounding in Judeo-Christian faith too, it also affirms the role of faith in business practices, something that the ethics-deficient corporate world needs these days.  Critics of Distributism say that it is promoting an agrarian society at the expense of technology, but it really is not - as a matter of fact, technology should be utilized properly as a tool to aid the stability, both socially and economically, of a society.   While Distributists often do romanticize agrarian life as the ideal, Distributism as properly understood applies just as equally to the small-town and even urban culture.  The reason many people associate Distributism with agriculture is probably due to the property ownership emphasis it has, but people can own properties in towns too.  The real impetus behind Distributism is to promote a greater self-sufficiency among families and individuals, while at the same time allowing for charitable effort where needed and also the interdependence of each self-run business regarding the success of the local economy.   So far in this year's Presidential race, it is unfortunate that none of the major candidates, Republican or Democrat, have the interests of the family in mind;  one candidate is a major figure in Corporate America, and espouses a "crony capitalism" in which smaller businesses suffer in order to advance the large corporation.   The other candidate is about more centralized government, and subsequentially more government control in daily life, and this is depersonalizing as it detracts from encouraging people toward self-sufficiency.  Neither the corporate executive nor the bureaucratic socialist have a clue as to what makes the average family tick, and that is why I will support neither of them.

Another idea I have in relation to this is the reinstatement of a system of guilds and co-ops to aid communities.  I want to focus on the co-op, in that I believe it is the key to benefitting everyone in a given community.   The way I perceive a co-op to work is quite simple really - a system is set up in a community, and the members of that community contribute as they are able, and then the system is there to benefit those who require its services.  Take for instance a medical clinic which is run on a co-op principle.  As part of the community ordinance, people would be encouraged (not coerced) to contribute an amount they are able to give to a pool fund, and that pool fund would aid in the operation of the clinic.  If some become financially unable to contribute at some point due to loss of employment or other situations, then the co-op would provide for them anyway via a discretionary account set up for that purpose.  In this way, people could get the care they need without having to stress about bills and insurance rackets.  In essence, a system like this would be a true insurance policy in that all members of a given community could benefit from it.  A system like this would quickly do away with the oppressive system of "Obamacare" as well as health insurance rackets which charge exorbitant premiums but then deliver little in return to those paying into it.  This is one idea I have among many, although it would take much more thought and planning to really iron out the details.

Another area that would be a target of reform is community upkeep.  In a truly Distributist situation, the community is the responsibility of those living in it, and what this would mean is volunteer-based beautification projects which would eliminate the need for overpaid and underqualified government workers.  One part of this would be resurrecting the old "Adopt-a-Highway" programs which were very effective years ago.  Also, planting things such as community vegetable gardens and other projects would aid in achieving the goal as well.   One thing for projects like these too would be to target younger people - if young teens are put to work, it would keep them out of trouble and they could have a sense of accomplishment for what they do.  For poor teens from low-income households, a fund could even be set up to pay them a minimal rate for their work, thus helping them contribute to their family's income too.  If more communities would do stuff like this, it would cut down on crime, and if such programs were made mandatory in problem areas (dare I say Black neighborhoods in many cities, which are notoriously crappy-looking and crime-ridden, although it is probably not "politically-correct" to say so and may get me some badmouthing from loudmouths like Al Sharpton), it would cut the need for entitlement programs and instead encourage the development of a responsible work ethic.  It could also be made part of the school curriculum for local high schools, colleges, and universities as well, given past success rates with such things.  Known as "cooperative education," such programs benefit both the young person and the community, in that it also helps the young person develop practical work experience to make job searching less stressful later.  College and even high school credit could even be given in some instances for participation.  It is programs like this, which are at their core essentially Distributist, which will revitalize many communities if people would just take such things seriously.

The key to something like this working is a change in attitude on the part of so much of the American public.  We have been, by and large, swept up in a post-modernist "feelings-centered" mentality where encouraging hard work and self-sufficiency is viewed by such people as "racist" or "offensive."  It is so much easier for the detractors (many of whom are radically left-leaning in politics and morality) to throw money at a problem rather than fixing it at the fundamental level, and hence the problem.   Distributism understands that often it does more good to temporarily hurt someone's feelings in order to motivate them to do better, and although the person may not find getting his toes stepped on too endearing, in the end such a person, if receptive, will be thankful for the assertive approach.  This is why also we need to get the wimps, pansies, and sissified career politicians, many of whom will say or do anything to keep their cushy jobs (another reason why Congressional term limits are a great idea, but that is for another discussion), out of office and elect real leadership which is more about correct action and motivation than political rhetoric.   Good candidates with a more Distributist approach to economics and who listen to those who voted for them will in time be able to even resolve the national debt if we cut some "fat" regarding entitlement programs from the Federal budget.  Until we do, America's fate is questionable at best.

Those were a few thoughts today on Distributism and economics, and hopefully I can share more soon.

Random Ponderings on Education

I grew up, as many know, in rural West Virginia.  I also grew up without a lot, coming as I did from being raised by a single mother in poverty.  Depictions of West Virginians in the media are often of us as being backward hillbillies who sit around drinking moonshine and plucking out "Dueling Banjos" on ratty-looking stringed instruments while we date our cousins, and the lamestream media (not a typo, as most media is lame these days!) seems to love to caricature people who hold to traditional values and firm religious convictions as being like this in general.  Yet, when I look at today's educational system, I am actually thankful for how I was brought up, because I learned something.  Many kids in today's schools cannot make that same statement, as they come out more ignorant than they went into school.  Let me give a couple of examples I read about recently, as it just proves how stupid the really ignorant are, and the really ignorant are often the teachers standing in front of public school classrooms.

Just this past June, a little boy in New Jersey got into some trouble over what is really a stupid reason.  The little boy either brought brownies to class or was talking about brownies to another student, and the idiot teacher calls a fully-armed cop into the class to interrogate the boy!  As a result of the incident - which was abuse by the teacher of a dumb New Jersey 'hate-crimes" law that really needs to be taken out of the books - the boy was traumatized, and his mother was upset (understandably!).  The mother (who is of Brazilian ethnicity) is exercising her right to take her son out of that stupid school, and she should.  What is bizarre about this whole incident is that a Black thug can kill cops and get called a "hero" by that incompetent ding-dong in the White House (that would be Obama, whose equally idiotic wife launched a crusade against peanut butter sandwiches for the same reason), yet an innocent child is punished over brownies (this story is at http://patch.com/new-jersey/collingswood/third-graders-racist-brownie-comment-prompts-police-response-new-jersey.  Accessed July 25, 2016) .  If teachers were to focus more time on teaching kids how to count, how to write, and how to be intelligent human beings rather than being agents of a "politically-correct" dictatorship, we might have a better educational system in this nation.  I want to contrast that with what I learned in our little three-room "ignorant" West Virginia school.

The little elementary school I went to, Grassy Lick Elementary in Kirby, WV, only had three rooms, and we had two grades taught by one teacher in each room of the school.  The high school I went to - East Preston Senior High School in Terra Alta, WV - was not much bigger, but both of these schools (over 2 hours apart from each other) have some things in common.  In these schools, one thing that could be guaranteed was that our teachers were strict!  When you were in class with them, at the time you would probably hate them, but years later you really appreciate them so much because they dedicated a lot of effort to making sure you learned what they gave you effectively.  One such teacher that comes to mind was my 10-grade math teacher at East Preston, Dorothy Schwer.  If you know German, you may pick up that her last name meant "difficult," and she did live up to that!   As I had German at about the same time, the joke that was quipped among some of us then was "Ist Frau Schwer schwer?"  But, I will tell you something about Miss Schwer that I would not have admitted when I was a 16-year-old high school sophomore over 30 years ago - she was a dedicated teacher who took her job very serious.  She wasn't there to make friends of her students, but rather to make them apply their brains God gave them to learning how to work with numbers in their future jobs.  She was definitely a challenge as a teacher, no argument there, but at the same time she was challenging us.  In retrospect, she was being an effective teacher, and God bless her for it.  Miss Schwer is now long retired, and on occasion I still say hello to her on social media, and I appreciate her dedication to us as her students.  And, I should consider that, as should all of her former students, a blessing - she imparted to us a great gift, but it was up to us to learn how to use it.

Grassy Lick School, Kirby, WV - as it appears today

Another such teacher I had like this was my 5th and 6th-grade teacher at Grassy Lick, the late Guy Dispanet Jr.  Back then, especially as a young kid of 10, I was actually intimidated by Dispanet and his character - he was huge, had the demeanor of a Marine boot-camp sergeant, and he went by a strict regimen in his classes.  At the age of 10, I was sort of in a state of flux - I was living in a poor household, and I wasn't really applying myself as I should.  So, that particular year Dispanet did me a huge favor - he flunked me in 5th grade, and I had the privelege then of having him as a teacher for three years instead of two.  The retention to repeat the 5th grade was my own fault, and Dispanet was only doing his job - like Miss Schwer, he was dedicated to his students, and they were going to learn something out of him come hell or high water.  And, God allowed it because Dispanet was ordained by Him to get my act together and be the person I am called to be.  In the following two years though, something very neat took place - thanks to Dispanet, I was able to really draw out a lot of my own talent and giftings, and I earned both his respect as well as his guidance.  His motivation was something I honestly needed, and God knew how to get me where He wanted me, and Dispanet was His instrument for doing that.  I am now completing graduate school as a result of Guy Dispanet's strict but caring guidance, and although he passed away in 1992 from an unfortunate illness, I was truly blessed to have the opportunity of learning from him.

Another such teacher was one I had in first grade, Mrs. Frances Harper.  Mrs. Harper was a young teacher back in that first school year of mine in 1976, but she too took her job seriously.  One thing Mrs. Harper saw in me that stood out was that I had the capacity for learning in a way that was sometimes eccentric, but she knew just what to do.  It was from Mrs. Harper that I learned two things - one an appreciation for reading, and the other learning to organize things systematically, which I still practice to this day.  She was another one of those teachers I owe much to, and recently I was able to get in touch with her - she remembered me very well too!  As a rambunctious kid of 6, I was also prone to getting into mischief, and I must have driven that poor lady to distraction, but at the same time she also knew how to challenge me in order to channel my energies in more productive ways.  Do current educational standards reflect the stellar education I received?  Let's talk about that.

In our parish church we have a gentleman named Dick who serves as the parish Senior Warden, and he is a retired teacher as well.  One day I was talking to him about education and its current state, and what he told me echoes the sentiments of many good teachers who are often deprived of their vocation to serve as glorified babysitters in classrooms.  Dick was substitute teaching in a neighboring county just prior to his retirement, and one Sunday he came to church really frazzled - the school he was working in the previous week was nothing but gang fights and goof-offs, and Dick said he spent the majority of his time breaking up fights and doing other duties, and his position entailed very little actual teaching.  In his own words, he more or less said that he didn't spend all the time and money on tuition to go to teacher's college to be a glorified referee and babysitter, yet that is what he was essentially having to do.  His frustration was understandable, as today most of the educational system is run by corrupt politicians who are more concerned about students knowing about "diversity" rather than teaching them to actually spell it and pronounce it correctly.  These politicians are often fueled financially by a wealthy lobby of professional educators with radical agendas which we now call the NEA.  The result of much of this has been a dumbing-down of the educational system in order to promote "tolerance" and other BS, and let me now talk about an example of that.

Thanks to the Obama Administration and its own radical agenda, many disciplines taught in schools have been dumbed-down to the degree that it is almost ridiculous for a real educator to even waste time teaching them.  A perfect example of this is what is called "Common-Core Math."  For many of us who are from earlier generations, we remember how rigorous math was, and it was a hated subject - constant memorization of multiplication tables, etc.  But, you did learn from that, and it enhanced one's educational experience.  Instead of learning multiplication tables, "Common Core Math" has students do math the stupid way.   Let me give you an example.  For anyone taught math like it was supposed to be taught, you can do this equation in your head:

32 + 24 = 56

That is really not that hard for most of us, is it?   However, here is what "Common Core Math" has students to do, and it is just nuts:

10+10+10+13-5+2+20-10+10-4 = 56

Although you eventually come to the same answer, it is so ridiculous how they do it, and it wastes a lot of time.  The primary reason for "Common Core Math" is just like the rationale behind why a lot of things are taught weird in other disciplines - it is not about students applying themselves to learn anymore, but rather about them feeling good.  It is likewise true in literature as well - most of your average high-school graduates in Florida schools these days know less than I did when I was in the 6th grade in a little "backward" West Virginia school.  For instance, to have classic stories like Joel Chandler Harris's Tales of Uncle Remus banned as "racist," as well as banning my good friend Robert Newton Peck's book A Day No Pigs Would Die because it accurately sums up how life is on a farm, especially during the Depression, is the height of lunacy considering the same people who banned those would allow their first-grader to read "Heather Has Two Mommies" or their junior in high school to read Alfred Kinsey's sick theories on sexuality.  The "idiocy factor" among so many of our youth has grown astronomically due to hippie burn-outs teaching radical politics in place of basic skills in classes, and it is a scandal on Western civilization.  As D. James Kennedy, Kent Hovind, and even generations earlier with G.K. Chesterton have noted, when you remove certain things from public life, it causes problems.  Let's consider what has happened in the past 53 years:

1.  1963 - Prayer in schools is banned.

2.  1973 - Roe v. Wade legalizes abortion as an industry and radically alters how people value human life. 

3.  2015 - Under Obama, the Obergefel ruling of the Supreme Court mandates recognition of  "same-sex" marriage, undermining the family.  

These three fundamental actions of our own leadership have assaulted and attacked three fundamental areas of human development - the home itself, the family unit, and the value of each individual human life.  Let's think about that really carefully - when a bunch of radical academic elites (many of whom don't know their keisters from kickstands) start dictating to people that God doesn't exist and that human beings are mere "evolved apes" with no more value than a common garden earthworm (some of them value worms more than their own kids!), it doesn't bode well in the classroom when you start teaching kids they are mere "animals," for in time they begin to act like animals.  We see the consequences of that mentality now - the Columbine shootings of 1999 were a very serious and tragic example, but when you have to walk through security checks and have your bags checked for metal detectors before entering home room at school, there is something amiss.  And, that is why we have so much violence today.

Patriotism is another virtue that has suffered because of this.  All through school, we always recited the Pledge of Allegiance before every class day started, and it was something that was considered honorable to do.  Also, once I was in sixth grade, it was considered a privelege when those of us who were older kids got to put up and take down the American flag each day, and we were taught to handle that flag with the utmost respect.  I was shocked recently when my wife received a medical certification at a technical college she studied at for a while, when at the graduation ceremony the National Anthem was sung but the majority of the people in the auditorium just sat on their fat rumps and disrespected the whole thing - in my day, when the Anthem was sung, you stood up, put your right hand over your heart, and you respected what was going on as proper protocol.  When I saw that shameless display of disrespect in that auditorium a couple of years back, I wanted to literally flog the whole lot of those slackers.  We need to respect the flag, and honor the National Anthem when it is sung - patriotism is a virtue and a fundamental traditional value, and by taking it away it compromises who we are as a nation.  

That all being said, we need to get back to teaching our kids not only academic excellence, but also moral and social etiquette when it comes to certain customs which define us as Americans.  Until we learn that, we will never be the nation we once were, and we will also cease to exist as the America we know.  Considering who is now running this nation, maybe that is not such a bad thing either - perhaps the dissolution of the United States as a political entity will preserve in its remnants what it means to be truly American.  Any rate, thank you for allowing me to share. 

The artwork in this article was painted by a gifted artist named Jim Daly.  

Summertime Reminisces

A couple of years ago, I wrote an article for submission in an Appalachian literary magazine called Summer Nights, but it was never published.  I wanted to work on it some, and was able to, and I want to share here a little bit of an updated version of that article with you.

Growing up poor in rural West Virginia, it required a creative imagination to keep myself busy in the summers, and over the years some things changed.  One of my earliest memories though was catching bugs, salamanders, and frogs in the yard surrounding my great-grandmother's house in my hometown of Hendricks, and also commandeering the swinging bridge beside the house where I would often either scare the crap out of local women who wanted to cross it or I would cook up schemes to make a quarter or two in order to buy a soda or some candy up at Sonny Hedrick's store just down the street from the house.  Of course, on occasion, I would wander out too far and that would get me in some trouble - you see, I was not allowed near the river behind the house, as of course I couldn't swim and I was much too young to deal with things like the occasional copperhead snake that would occasionally be lurking in the bushes.  Probably more frightening though was the old couple who lived in a ramshackle old house just at the other side of the field, Jake and Corey Phillips.  The Phillipses were an eccentric old couple, and would even pull a shotgun on local kids that got too close - rumor had it that old Jake had shine stashed in the springs nearby, and he didn't want them to be found.   Whether that was substantiated or not remained to be seen, but it made for good local legend and would explain why those two were so cranky!  If I got too close to the creek, it would be guaranteed that I would suffer the consequences of that decision - Mom at the time worked at the Kinney Shoe Factory in Parsons, and Granny babysat me most of those days.   One time, as a matter of fact, I decided to venture down to the river, and in short order here came Granny with a large spatula, and she herded my little butt back to the house with it quickly!  That incident lives on in family legend as my famous "Skillet Spoon Encounter," and it has become the object of much laughter even to this day.

All of that happened around the year 1976.  Approximately one year earlier was the setting of my famous "Pentecostal Peeper"story that took place in a little church outside Falling Waters, WV, called Little Falls Chapel.  When my step-grandmother Goldie became terminally ill with cancer, she underwent a major religious conversion and devoutly followed her faith by attending that little church.  However, being I loved to catch critters down near Hoke Run close to their house outside Martinsburg, I often ended up taking some of my little friends to church with me, and that caused excitement.  But, you can read that story elsewhere, as it has already been told.  But, here is the little church, both inside and out, as it appears today:

Little Falls Chapel, interior - that was the center aisle I ran down to show "Preacher Jake" the huge toad I caught.

The exterior of the church.

Catching frogs and toads was only one of many activities I had during the summer months, as I grew older I was allowed to patrol the creeks myself without supervision, and then my focus shifted to crawfish, "miller thumbs" (a small creek sculpin), and other creatures I would find.  Most of that happened when I was around ten years old and we moved to Kirby, WV, and through the center of town flowed Grassy Lick Run.  We at the time lived in a mobile home just about a couple of hundred yards from the creek, and I would spend hours on end down there messing around in the creek, being careful to avoid neighborhood bullies and nosy neighbors.  I began to also take an interest in reading more in the summers at that time, and that fueled my imagination more (I will be talking about that in-depth shortly too), to the point I decided to build my own "island" in the middle of the deep hole just below the town bridge in the creek - in reality, all the deeper it got was to my ankles, so it became easy to heft big rocks and pieces of sod to my "island" to fix it up.  I also had gotten the family passion for fishing a year earlier when I spent the spring of 1979 with my dad and step-mother in Brunswick, GA, and in the deep holes of Grassy Lick Run there were two types of large fish that were fun to catch but of no nutritional value - one was creek chubs, which were large minnows that grew to about 9 inches, and the other were 1-2 foot mudsuckers.   The mudsuckers were really fun to catch, as you often had to snag them with a hook as they would not bite, but the challenge of catching them became a sort of personal accomplishment.  Although regrettably I haven't fished in years, I still love to fish, and look forward to doing some more fishing later on. 

Another thing that I found fun to do in the summers was picking berries and other fruits that came in season.  As a young kid, I came to know well when the various edible berries ripened, as my great-grandmother would go every July at least once to pick huckleberries, blackberries, and a luscious red raspberry we called "mountain raspberries."  When she picked all the berries, she would spend at least a week canning them, turning the harvest into jars and jars of jams, jellies, and also delicious pies, dumplings, and cobblers.  Granny's favorite places to pick blackberries and raspberries was over in what was called Shaver's Fork, which was accessed by a dirt road on the east bank of the Shavers Fork River just south of my hometown of Parsons.  Back in there, she was able to go to a couple of abandoned farms which were owned by relatives and pick all the berries she wanted. Later, it would be a trip to Stony River just northeast of Thomas where a large plateau sat just above the dam there, and the place was abundant with huckleberries.  I always liked the huckleberries the best, as they had a good flavor to them - elsewhere in the country they called these "wild blueberries," which technically they were, but we always called them huckleberries.  Another berry in close proximity which was similar was a reddish berry with a cherry-like flavor called a serviceberry.  Often, we would just pick them together, and they somehow ended up all mixed in the same bucket.   Seeking out a delicious delicacy like that had its risks, in particular venomous snakes such as rattlers and copperheads, but it was worth it to have those delicious berries.  As I got older and we moved to Kirby, I was able to find a small huckleberry plain just outside of town, and often frequented that as well as picking the ton of tiny wild strawberries that grew in the big field behind Grassy Lick School. Those berries often ended up in a small pie I had a local woman named Goldie bake for me.  There is a certain satisfaction one gets in harvesting wild food like that, and throughout the year during the summers there was always something to pick or dig up, and I got to master all of them. 

Once I hit fifth grade and my own pursuits became more varied, I also spent a lot of time, especially at night, reading books.  I grew to love and identify with so many of the characters in the books I was exposed to, especially thanks in part to a large stack of old Cricket and Readers Digest magazines that we got from Aleida, a classmate of mine, as well as some of the local people.   But, I also had a lot of other reading material, and it was pretty diverse - Robert Newton Peck's Soup books, as well as Louisa Shotwell's Roosevelt Grady and William Armstrong's Sounder.  I also still found a great deal of pleasure in reading the Olive Beaupre Miller My Book House set that Mom had originally gotten me as a gift when I was born, and through that I was exposed to so many other things, notably William Makepeace Thackaray's classic short story The Rose and the Ring, which still amuses me to this day.  Reading books like that (including the World Book Encyclopedia set and the large gourmet cookbook I "inherited" from my late step-grandmother when she passed away in 1979) helped me to rise above the poverty that we lived in then, and in addition to having a certain identification with many of the characters (ironically, this is why I cannot be prejudiced today, because in reading books like Roosevelt Grady, Sounder, and Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, all of which had as central characters Depression-era poor Black children, I saw myself), it also fueled my hunger for knowledge and I would "experiment" with doing things those books said by going outside and sort of reenacting some of the stuff, of course adding my own twist.  I did have many neighborhood kids as friends then too, and we would build forts and other stuff together too, and they must have thought I was out of my mind with some of the stuff I would come up with!  However, I am thankful for that experience, as it broadened me in so many ways. 

As I grew older, however, I found my interests expanding quite dramatically, as all of a sudden at around the age of 12 I began to develop an interest in music.  It was on one of those lazy summer Sunday nights, and Mom was messing around with the radio, flipping through the dial, when I heard this great sound coming through - the song I can remember vividly, as it was a 1949 recording by Benny Goodman's orchestra of a song called Moonlight on the Ganges, and as I listened more to this, I became hooked, and that began a 35-year love of a music called big band.  I didn't know what it was all about then, but I knew I liked it.  In a short time, I found out that the station Mom tuned into was WBT-AM, at 1110 on the dial, out of Charlotte, NC.  On Sunday nights back then, WBT had a music show that went from 10 at night till 1 AM that was hosted by late radio personality Henry Boggen, and as I have already told the specifics of that story, I won't indulge that here.  Needless to say, over the next couple of years afterward, I would sit at our kitchen table in our mobile home in Kirby, WV, with that radio on, and in the summers when I was allowed to stay up later I would sit and drink sugar-sweetened coffee while listening to that show on Sundays, and that also began to fuel my imagination.  As I loved to draw, I began drawing pictures of orchestras and such, and that music was adding a new dimension to my already-active imagination.  And, so that would be all the way into my high school years.   I still listen to that music today, and collect it - with almost 1000 LP records and over 1200 CD recordings, I would say that in 30 years I have a good handle on the music now, and it is solely entrenched as a part of my own identity.  When I hear a song like Keely Smith's rendition of Lullaby of the Leaves, or Sinatra's very iconic recording of Summer Wind, it hearkens back to those balmy nights of sitting at our kitchen table with the windows open and the radio playing, often with only the light over the stove on.   On occasion, Mom and I would play Yahtzee or dominoes too when she had trouble sleeping, and all of that just evokes so much.   

As I entered my teenage years, many changes took place as we moved out of Kirby in the summer of 1985 and in the next few summers my whole summer routine would change.  I still loved my music, still read a lot of good books (at this time I became passionate about Armenians and Assyrians, and was introduced to William Saroyan's writings), but I also began to diversify my tastes a little.  In my sophomore year of high school, I got into Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, and later Shostakovich, and Russian composers became something I liked to listen to.  Also, after my conversion in 1986, I also became more involved in church work, and I spent a lot of summers doing things such as teaching Vacation Bible School, attending denominational conventions, and other such things.  I also had learned to play the saxophone, and in high school I was active in the marching band and that had me out and about as well during a lot of weekends in the summer months.  A more active social life meant a little less of my earlier childhood activities, as my interests were changing - I didn't catch as many crawfish or frogs in the creeks anymore, but I did still gather plants.  When Mom took care of a nonagenarian lady on Salt Lick Road between the towns of Terra Alta and Rowlesburg, we were out in the country, and there were a lot of woods around.  So, I would explore the woods above the house, often taking our old dog Jill with me, and while in the woods I harvested stuff such as ramps, wild garlic, fiddleheads, and berries.  It was around this time too I began to dabble more in cooking as well as short forays into minor agriculture, and I kept a little vegetable patch above the house as well as using the wild foraging items I found in recipes.  Listening to Stravinsky or Mario Lanza while experimenting with a homemade pizza recipe or making bagels (I was becoming more aware of my Jewish roots, and found a Jewish cookbook in the local library, so I experimented in the kitchen a lot!), as well as making a sort of stew concoction I liked to cook was comforting to me, and it made me feel creative and productive.  I also was able to spend more time with my dad's family in Brunswick, GA, and loved fishing for gar and dropping blue crab traps in the river with my cousin Michael off my aunt and uncle's houseboat near Blythe Island, as well as messing around Saint Simon's and Jekyll Islands. That was also my first opportunities to earn a little cash too, as I worked with the construction business my dad had in Brunswick to pick up a little extra cash in the summer, and that felt good as well.  Once I graduated high school and went off to college though, a lot of that faded away, especially as the responsibilities of married life, keeping up with school work, and later jobs took up much of my time.  And, for most of my adult life, living in a more urban environment didn't help either, as a began to gain weight and just succumb to Corporate America's demands rather than indulging some childhood passions I once had.  The fading away of much of that also caused a part of me to sort of die as well, and in the past few years I really started to realize it more as I get older.

However, I do have good news.  Over the years, I have began to do a little bit of rediscovering who and what I am, and doing a personal journal for over 20 years has helped a lot.  Additionally, recently the opportunity has presented itself to move back home after over 26 years in Florida and the "urban jungle," and I see much possibility for recovering some of what I have lost.   Of course, not all is lost in Florida though - being able to grow my own tomato and basil plants, as well as having the joys of seeing the sandhill cranes and their families as well as feeding bread to the large flocks of white ibis that visit our yard every so often have put me in touch with some of that early passion, and I think that the more I recover some aspects of my youth, the more healthier it will make me physically and spiritually too.  One part of being a West Virginian by heritage is  mastering the ability to "make do," and oftentimes the worst wildernesses to survive in are not the ones with creeks and woods, but rather the ones with asphalt, concrete, and pollution - that has been a big struggle for me.  It also has helped in recent years to see shows now in TV such as Swamp People and Duck Dynasty, as they also serve as a reminder of who I am and where I come from.  However, at this stage in my life I see myself more of an Ike Godsey than I do a John-Boy Walton, but Ike's character had a lot that was admirable as well.  So, whether it be the rural creeks and woods of my home state of West Virginia, or even the occasional "Florida Cracker" towns that grab my attention here, they all resonate with something deep inside me that reminds me of carefree yet busy summers of my youth.  And, as I write this now in the Florida heat of mid-June, that fact becomes more real.  If you grew up the way I did, my advice to you is to remember those good things, even if you did possibly grow up poor economically and in a rural or small-town environment. Never think of that as a curse, but as a blessing, for you will begin to find it has impacted you in more ways than you imagine.  Thank you for allowing me to ramble and share, and enjoy these summers and make the most of them while you can. 

Many of the art pieces I have included in my article are endearing prints created by a talented artist by the name of Mark Keathley.  I recently became acquainted with his work, and his paintings have in large part inspired this article too.   I hope you can appreciate this remarkable artist as much as I have come to appreciate him.

Ponderings Part II - Conflicting Worldviews

I am on this "kick" to extract from my journals some insights on some things that have gotten my attention, and recently I found a replacement copy of a book by Charles Colson I had many years ago entitled A Dance With Deception (Dallas:  Word Publishing, 1993).  To give you a little of Chuck Colson's story, he was a former Nixon aide who was caught up in the Watergate scandals of the early 1970's, and as a result he had to do some time in prison.  While in prison, he became a born-again Christian and began what would later evolve into a very effective ministry organization called Prison Fellowship International.  Prison Fellowship has impacted a number of inmates, and one of my old school friends from years ago works with a ministry in Orlando affilliated with them today.  Up until his passing a few years back, Colson wrote a lot of good material, and this book I have at hand that I will be basing a lot of my own insights on is for me one of his best - it is not an extensive reference work, as it consists of transcripts of his commentaries on the radio over a period of several years, but it is packed with rich information.  Colson also represents a strain of Evangelicalism you rarely see anymore - he was one of a great company of committed, conservative Evangelical leaders who stood for traditional values and truth, people like Jerry Falwell, the late Dr. D. James Kennedy, Bill Bright, Francis Schaeffer, and others.  Almost all of these great men of principle have now passed on into their eternal rewards, and their successors often don't have the same fire and passion these great leaders had, and the past 15 or so years of what has happened in America is evidence of that issue.  At any rate, there is a section beginning on page 203 of A Dance with Deception that got my attention years ago, and it is one of the main reasons I got this book again to begin with.  Let us just launch into it and see where it goes.

The section I am talking about is entitled "The Difference It Makes," and it is a transcript of a radio commentary broadcast by Colson on December 22, 1991.  The commentary recounts the story of the Humaita Penitentiary in Brazil, which is privately administered by Christian volunteers who worked with Prison Fellowship at that time.  As a prison, it was a little different in that there were no guards, and once an inmate was brought in, the shackles came off and a rather radical system of actual rehabilitation that works with the inmates in stages to recover their freedom - at its center though is a Christocentric focus that integrates faith into the rehabilitation process, something the yapping mutts at the ACLU would never let happen here.  I am also sort of struck by how much this program resembles St. John Bosco's educational philosophy in that it emphasizes that the purpose of correction is not necessarily punishment, but rather rehabilitation, aiding the offenders to regain their place in civilized society by educating and disciplining them.  There is a huge contrast in the system at the Humaita Penitentiary in Brazil and the penal system we see in the states - I have also been reading over another book entitled The Kennel by Kent Hovind (under the pseudonym "Elijah Green"), and the fictional account of Hovind's own unfortunate incarceration exposes a corrupt, corporate-run prison system that markets incarceration as a commodity.  In the marketing of incarceration, prisons in the US these days don't necessarily have as their objective rehabilitation, but rather they encourage bad behavior to boost business - this usually is marked by ungodly sentences for fairly minor offenses that don't even give a corresponding punishment to the offense.  Anyone who keeps up with what has been happening, in particular the past 20 or so years, understands that something is not working well in the American justice system, and essentially what that is has to do with corruption in government as well as the sharklike behavior of "Big Business," as Soros, Trump, and all the other movers and shakers are pressing an agenda with a bunch of pansy-keistered politicians aiding and abetting them.   Contrasting the model of Humaita with the current penal system in the US has made me come to the conclusion that maybe the "under-developed" Third World may have more common sense on things than our supposedly "sophisticated and enlightened" Western culture does.  Take a look at even the churches over there - they are fairly traditional (with the exception of some pockets of "Liberation Theology" sectarians, who are often egged on by apostate Theology professors in the West anyway), vibrant, and once many of them do embrace Christianity, they do so with a conviction and devotion that should shame us here; a lot of times, that decision could even cost them their lives!  So, why is it then that the "Third World" is poor but vibrant, while the "First World" is rich and in moral decay?  Good question, isn't it?  It begs another question as well - are we really as "enlightened" as we think we are in the US and elsewhere?   That is where the question of "worldview" now comes into the focus of this discussion.

If you seriously take the time to sit down and ponder about how worldviews change, and how these views impact even those professing Christianity, it immediately raises some concerns.  One thing Colson points elsewhere in his book is something that has become more evident in the 25 or so years since he originally authored this stuff, and what it addresses is how we as Christians have allowed blatantly  non-Christian influences to impact theology and philosophy.  For instance, let me go back to my alma mater, where I had originally planned on doing my graduate work.  After only a few weeks there, I came to realize that something very odd was happening in the Religious Studies Department at this particular university, and as I noted this odd "something," I also began to feel very disturbed in my spirit about some issues.  Many of the professors in that particular Religion department were quite fond of quoting people such as Martin Heidegger, which in itself is disturbing, and to explain why let's first talk about Heidegger a little, shall we?  In the early part of the 20th century, Heidegger was a German philosopher who openly supported and endorsed Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, and it is something he had never relented of even at the day of his death.  Heidegger unfortunately had a seriously negative impact on theologians too, in particular Jurgen Moltmann,  a theologian who exerts an unhealthy influence himself over this recent and odd new generation of Pentecostal and Evangelical academics out there.  Even much of the exegetical/hermeneutical technique these younger academics use and are teaching on Christian college campuses has at its root Heidegger's influence, as well as that of the theistic evolutionist/transhumanist and apostate priest Teilhard de Chardin.  Both of these figures have wreaked havoc on Christendom to such a degree that it has radically redefined what Christianity is on many Christian college campuses.  Of course, we all know that Satan has no originality - the same crap he fed Eve in the Garden of Eden is the lie he feeds people today, and humanity is too blinded to even see it.  Satan is shrewd enough to know not to tamper with an effective system, so he just repackages the same old deceptions in more "relevant" language of the day and it still deceives a lot of people, including the "smart ones" among us.  Many so-called "Christian" academics have fallen prey to what G.K. Chesterton called "the cult of scientism," and what he means by that is that often scientism, with all its picking apart, over-analytical prattling, and its worship of facts and figures has robbed the world of its wonder, and has dulled the natural sense of wonder God endowed us with (Thomas Peters, The Christian Imagination - G.K. Chesterton on the Arts.  San Francisco:  Ignatius, 2000. p. 56).  In other words, many Religion Departments at professing Christian colleges actually do more to destroy the faith of a student rather than helping them grow in faith, and as such I would not be adverse to doing away with Religion Departments in some universities - there are, however, bright exceptions to that and I am proud to say that Franciscan University of Steubenville, where I am working on my Masters currently, is one of those shining examples.  There is a reason why this is the case - at Franciscan (unlike some other - ahem! - schools I could name!) the faculty are faithful to the Fidei Depositum of the Church, and they know it is their job to help their students spiritually grow as well as intellectually develop.   So, in doing that, many of my professors at Franciscan have actually rekindled a sense of wonder that Chesterton extolled so much in his writings within me.   However, the lies of Heidegger, Moltmann, and others who have apostatized and are leading other academic elites to do so are being repackaged today in what sociologist Christian Smith calls "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism," or its more simplified name, "Christian humanitarianism."  I am about to make some enemies with what I am going to say next, but so be it - it wouldn't be the first time honestly!

I am about to give some background on some disturbing things I saw on a certain Evangelical university campus, as it will show that my concerns are not merely speculative or alarmist, but they can be proven by just walking on that campus and sitting in the classroom of one of the Religion faculty there.  One professor in particular there taught a graduate-level Hermeneutics course I took at the time, and he is a prime culprit for what I am about to share.  For some years, I had been keeping up with some of the faddish ridiculousness going on in Evangelicalism, as I was no longer part of it but still wanted to keep up with things.  With the rise of people like Rick Warren (who, ironically, is now considered "conservative" compared to what came after!) and the later "Emergent Church" movement, there came a general postmodernist shift away from what used to be fairly sound doctrine from an Evangelical perspective.  Therefore, when I first came back to the campus of this particular university almost four years ago, I sort of expected some change, but I was really not prepared for what I actually did witness.  Now, this particular professor I am discussing now is, as a person, a genuinely nice guy - he has a decent personality, a quiet demeanor, and he's approachable and easy to engage in conversation with.  But, as with anything, looks can be deceiving. It didn't  take long at all to see what really made this guy tick, and almost from cracking the very first textbook in that class a well-informed and seriously-discerning observer could know that something was not right in Dodge.   This particular professor relied heavily in his hermeneutical lectures on a couple of books that frankly had very little to do with the subject of Biblical interpretation.  One of these books was by a post-modernist "Christian" philosopher by the name of Merrold Westphal, and was entitled Which Community, Whose Interpretation?  The second was a book by an "Emergent Church" proponent by the name of Scot McKnight entitled The Blue Parakeet, which essentially raises doubts about the Bible's authority in the reader's mind rather than affirming it, as Aquinas taught, as a book of divine authorship that in its dictates is to be taken as true (for a more in-depth analysis of the errors of McKnight's book, I would recommend Baptist apologist James White's review of it found here - http://www.equip.org/article/the-hidden-agenda-of-the-blue-parakeet/).  Now, some of the other texts utilized in this class, including Kevin VanHooser's mammoth reference book published by Baker Academic, are good material; I still use VanHooser's reference book today for projects.  And, even in this professor's own books - one of which was a textbook used in the class - there are some good nuggets of things I utilize today.  It is important to understand that good scholarship does attempt to find something useful in the most disagreeable of texts, and this professor's own text was analoguous to a fatty piece of bacon - there were some good bits of lean meat in it, but also a lot of pungent, disagreeable fat as well.  In contrast, there are books by my profs at Franciscan - notably those of Drs. Regis Martin, Mark Miravalle, and Scott Hahn - which are like feasting on a good porterhouse steak; there may be minimal fat around the edges, but you walk away from the plate satisfied and well-nourished.  Still others - McKnight's book, as well as Westphal's come to mind - are like cheap salt pork - there may be a tiny morsel worth salvaging here and there, but you have to render a lot of disagreeable, unhealthy fat to find them.  So, let's talk a little about this Westphal guy now, shall we?

Merrold Westphal is by all intentions a philosopher - he is a committed postmodernist, and why his material is even considered for a Bible course is beyond me, because it really is not suited for it.  Looking at his CV (accessed at http://faculty.fordham.edu/westphal/vitamw.pdf) he is an alumni of Wheaton (1962) and got his Ph.D. from Yale in 1966.   He looks to have been influenced a lot by people like Heidegger as well as Kierkegaard (enough said there!) and he attempts to even "Christianize" atheism in many of his writings and speeches.   He also tends to idealize people like Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud, none of whom can be said to be friends of traditional Christian doctrine.  Even as a philosopher though, Westphal is actually quite sloppy - while it is definitely possible for philosophy and theology to be compatible (as demonstrated by Aquinas, St. Lawrence of Brindisi, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Romano Guardini, and so many others) Westphal doesn't complement either well.  In a similarly-themed text by Lutheran theologian Jaroslav Pelikan entitled Fools for Christ's Sake,  although I would disagree with a lot of that too at least Pelikan has the discernment to distinguish between a fundamental Thomistic principle of being vs. nature, which Westphal neglects in order to press his own agenda.  His heavy reliance on Jurgen Moltmann's "Theology of Hope" also warrants concern too, as Moltmann was essentially a panentheist who failed to distinguish between Creator and creation, and all the while claiming to promote "gospel values."  Although Moltmann claimed a "conversion" as a German POW in an American camp in WWII, his theology doesn't reflect a sound conversion experience, unlike that of his supposed mentor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whom I believe was a true martyr for Christ.  Moltmann is essentially inclusionist, panentheistic, and well, just liberal!  When one reads good theology, such as that of de Lubac, Guardini, von Balthasar, or orthodox Reformed Protestants like Francis Schaeffer, you see a abysmic difference between the faithful theology they wrote about in contrast to the bereft theologically-themed philosophical babble of Westphal.  A true theologian doesn't seek to alter doctrine, but to affirm it, and a true philosopher doesn't try to redefine morality and natural law, but affirms it as well.  Westphal fails miserably in both areas.  That leads to one final note before we wrap up about Westphal's idea of "prophetic revelation."

Westphal tends to assume God can use anything or anyone to be a "prophetic voice," and for Westphal his idols Marx and Nietzsche are "prophetic voices," which he says very clearly in his own book.  On the outset, Westphal appears Thomistic - after all, Aquinas taught that all of us by virtue of being (being qua being) are essentially good, right?  If Westphal would have affirmed just that, he may have been on the right track.  However, it is evident that Westphal would fail to see what Aquinas really meant by that affirmation - Aquinas taught that man in his being was created good by God, but in nature man was corrupted by the Fall, which is orthodox theology.  Westphal avoids that altogether and basically just baptizes these guys as "God's prophets" and that is where he went horribly wrong.  A true prophetic voice is one that is yielded to God - Nietzsche and Marx rejected God, and therefore would have forfeited being willfully used by someone they hate.  When I made a point of this in a reading reflection in that particular class, the professor commented "Well, God used a jackass in Numbers 6, so why couldn't he use an atheist too?"  First, to answer that we rely on Aquinas - God could use a jackass because of the Law of Non-Contradiction;  God authored the "Book of Nature," and therefore Creation was subject to Him and could be used.  God used a talking jackass to actually perfect Nature.  In the case of people, we have a little thing called "free will" which - and, I will discuss the theological aspects of this elsewhere later - in which God allows us to make the choice; this is why we pray "Thy Will Be Done" in the Lord's Prayer, for heaven's sake!  Nature is not subject to the same responsibility or privelege of free will as humanity is, which is why God used the jackass in Numbers 6 instead of Balaam - think about it, guys!   That therefore is a moot argument by virtue of the evidence alone.  Summarily, Westphal's reasoning is based more on his own subjectivism rather than being grounded in the Fidei Depositum, and his reasoning is sloppy, faulty, and anemic.  This was not a discussion per se of Westphal, but he is an example of the postmodernist nonsense floating around out there, often in the name of "Christianity," and it presents a conflict in worldview for the true Christian as well.  More to say on something else next time.

Pondered Thoughts - A Series: Part 1 - How Adversity Shapes Us

As I have been doing Sunday School lesson series on my Sacramental Present Truths page, I wanted to maybe begin a series of introspection on various aspects of my own worldview as analyzed and honestly stated, something I have had some trouble doing over the years as expressing one's honest thoughts is not an easy task.   A number of things inspired this over the past several weeks, including having to sit for long periods (three to four hours) after my workday was over in the company cafeteria waiting for my wife to pick me up on her way home from her job.  Sitting there, I was able to spend a lot of time writing, and it more or less motivated me to talk about some things I normally would not address, but was able to lucidly write about extensively in my personal journal.  I figured that experience was as good of a place to start regarding these reflections, so we'll go with it.

Over the years, I have had to be put in some odd positions, including long periods of waiting in offices, at bus stations, and in lobbies of hotels and restaurants due to divergent work schedules that Barbara and I have had to manage with one vehicle.  Often I let her take the car, and what that sometimes means is either getting to my office way early or staying way late, long after my work shift is over.  At other times, it meant waiting in restrooms, or sitting for hours on a bus in order to ride hours to get home on a bus, or it meant being at weird places at weird times.  Often, while I am waiting around, I take the opportunity to write in my personal journal I have been keeping consistently for about 20 years, and despite the circumstance I am thrust into, I often get some of my best insights from those circumstances as I am sitting and writing, waiting and watching.  You observe a lot, and at times working observations into my thoughts yields some interesting perspective.   I want to share some of those moments here at this point, and there is an important lesson - Dolly Parton once said that when life hands you cow patties, you grow a garden.  Well, a lot of rich, stinky manure produced bountiful fruit in my case, and looking back on it, there were valuable lessons to be learned in such situations.  Now, mind you, I hate those types of situations, but again to use another analogy, I have learned to take the lemons and make a good lemonade out of them.  Now, I want to serve you some of the lemonade!  So, enjoy the bounty of my "garden of thought," and hopefully you will appreciate how much manure produced it!

I am currently looking at a fairly recent entry I penned on February 25th of this year, as some good insight began to be shared at this point.  At that time I was pondering some stuff I was dealing with, and the one realization that hit me was that I needed to learn to take a more balanced approach to my own particular "story" - the good should be preserved as best as it can be, and the bad should be seen in lieu of the good.  The resulting fruit of doing this would be to come away from a given situation of any sort with more self-awareness and a motivation to let the real me begin to blossom as God intended while at the same time thinking of how this experience would be used to benefit someone else.  Negative things in one's past are a given, and they are inescapable.  The issue is not if one has negative situations or adversity, but rather how one handles them.  Take the manure analogy for instance - manure will not do much good except make you stink if you allow it to bury you, but if you can manage to make something useful of it by letting it nourish the soil of your imagination, it will bear abundant fruit.  It is important to note here that "manure" is metaphorically speaking of life's adversities, and not the falsehoods and "Walter Mitty Syndromes" some people like to construct around themselves.  A Pentecostal televangelist once said that "your present position doesn't determine your future potential," and he was right.  It doesn't mean that you become blissfully unaware of it in some quasi-gnostic fashion, but rather taking the adversity and using it as a growth tool.  At times it is hard to do in certain situations when you are in them, because it is so easy for any of us to focus on the present situation, but we need to grow beyond that.  I want to now use a story from classic literature I am fond of to illustrate the point.

Prince Giglio meets the Fairy Blackstick on a coach, from "The Rose and the Ring"

In 1855, the British writer William Makepeace Thackaray wrote an amusing little story called The Rose and the Ring which I became acquainted with when I was a kid myself.  My mother had bought me, when I was just a baby, a set of story books compiled in 1925 by an educator named Olive Beaupre Miller entitled My Book House, and excerpts from Thackaray's book were included in one of the volumes.  Although a humorous story, it had a great moral to it.  The story centers around the lives of four young monarchs in two fictional kingdoms, and two of them - Princes Giglio and Bulbo - were given by their mothers an enchanted ring and rose respectively that rendered anyone who possessed them desireable to the opposite sex.  However, Giglio, along with the Princess Rosalba, also received something else from an enigmatic personage called the Fairy Blackstick (who also gifted the two queen mothers with the rose and ring too) when at their christenings the Fairy called upon them and gave them the gift of "a little misfortune."  As it ended up, Giglio's and Rosalba's fathers, who were both kings of their respective nations, were overthrown and the two youngsters were greatly diminished in their upbringing - Giglio's father was succeeded by his ambitious uncle, Valoroso XXIV, and Rosalba's father was overthrown by a rebellious vassal by the name of Padella, who was Bulbo's father.  When Padella overthrew Rosalba's family, she was very young and ended up getting lost in the woods where some lions raised her, while Giglio ended up being totally neglected in the palace and almost disowned by his contemptous uncle.   However, when it all came to a head and both of them ended up in trouble, the Fairy showed them what that "little misfortune" taught them, and in the end they became the rulers of their kingdoms as well as being married to each other.  On page 113 of the story, when Giglio and Rosalba are reunited and the Fairy pays a visit to them, she said the following to them about the circumstance: "Bless you, my darling children!  Now you are united and happy, and now you see what I said from the first, that a little misfortune has done you both good.  You, Giglio, had you been bred in prosperity, would scarcely have learned to read or write - you would have been idle and extravagant, and could not have been a good king as you now will be.  You, Rosalba, would have been so flattered, that your little head might have been like Angelica's, who thought herself too good for Giglio." (William Makepeace Thackaray, The Rose and the Ring.  London:  Smith, Elder, and Co., 1902.  p. 113).   When I read that, I think to myself, "what would I have turned out like, had circumstances been different - better or worse?"   Many who know me and my story know I grew up very poor for most of my childhood from about age 9 onward, and it was not an easy way to grow up.  I had to learn early about how to creatively deal with adversity - my application of an Appalachian trait of  "makin' do" - and the way I did so was to educate myself.  I read a lot when I was a kid, being in a small town in West Virginia where you have little money and not much else to do I found a lot of solace in reading a wide diversity of material at an early age.  Some of my elementary school classmates I still keep in touch with have an amusing memory of my fifth-grade year when I read the whole set of World Book Encyclopedias through at least three times.  Reading books was a sort of escape from the rather grim surroundings I had to grow up in, and a lot of what I read then actually inspired me, gave me a lot of clarity, and fueled an active imagination - I wanted to apply what I was reading in an active, practical way, and you would not believe some of the experiments I got into!  I think too that is one reason why I have always liked that one movie Matilda that graced the cinema several years back - I watch that movie, and I see a female version of myself in that little girl (who was well-played by child actor Mara Wilson).  If you recall the movie, Matilda faced a lot of adversity - she had two deadbeat parents (Danny DeVito and Rhea Pearlman played those roles well too), a school with a butchlike headmistress who despised children and only wanted to set up her own little despotic kingdom in order to satisfy her own insecurity, and on top of all that her dad was into illegal activity and was under surveillance by the authorities.  But, young Matilda discovered the joy of reading, and it changed her life, and like the fictional Rosalba in The Rose and the Ring, a "little misfortune" cultivated character and motivation in little Matilda too.  I was a lot like that when I was around the same age - I never got to know my father, and my mother was often so immature that her idea of life was to sit around passing gas, drinking beer, and listening to depressing honky-tonk records (we also didn't have a TV when I was a kid either - in a way that is not such a bad thing though!).  So, I had to mature earlier than I probably should have then, as we went through a lot of diversity where we lived at the time and my only escape was in reading as well as in time listening to Henry Boggen play vintage big band records on WBT-AM out of Charlotte, NC.  However, I also had some other help then too, although I didn't fully appreciate it at the time.  My fifth and sixth-grade teacher was a large jar-headed man with the demeanor of a Marine drill sergeant by the name of Guy Dispanet Jr., and although initially I hated him, in time he brought my potential out of me and after three years with him in the classroom - he flunked my butt in the first year, so I had to repeat fifth grade, but it was good for me - I gained his respect, and in turn I came to really respect him as a teacher, as he ended up being one of the best I ever had.  God used Dispanet to give me the swift kick in the keister I needed to begin to develop my potential, and it paid off richly in later years.  Although much of this was there before I even encountered Guy Dispanet in that small classroom in Kirby, WV, in 1980, I credit him with guiding me to channel the assets I possessed in such a way that it made me shine like I was intended to.  Although he passed away in 1993, I still have a special place for Dispanet in my thoughts, and I owe him a great deal for helping me to be formed and shaped in such a way that I could begin to reach the potential I had.  Thank God for good teachers, which these days are a rare commodity.  If you had them, and they are still with us, please reach out to them as they can use the encouragement of knowing they helped shape someone's life.

Adversity is never pleasant when you face it, but in the adverse circumstance there is a lesson to be learned that will make it count for something later.  Do you remember, for instance, Genesis 3:17?   Adam and Eve had really screwed up, but they refused to own it - people who read that account in Genesis 3 often focus on taking the bite out of the fruit as the mortal sin, but that really was not it - Adam's sin was self-justification, for instead of having the stamina to take ownership for what he did and petitioning God's mercy, Adam instead chose to attempt to explain his way out by "passing the buck" first on Eve, and later on God Himself (read this later on Sacramental Present Truths, as it is part of a recent Sunday School lesson).  So, in verse 17, God handed down sentence to Adam, and part of that was that God cursed the ground for Adam's sake.  Like the Fairy Blackstick in The Rose and the Ring, God "cursed" the ground for the purpose of building in Adam character through his adverse condition of all that backbreaking labor he was going to have to do just to survive, and ironically God was telling Adam this - if he does labor, then the fruit of the labor will be more satisfying, so instead of a "curse" work would actually be good for him!   So, although adversity is unpleasant, it actually may be to our advantage to go through it when we do because it grows us, much like stinky manure grows beautiful roses and delicious tomatoes.   The problem with adversity though is that often we don't see how it is good when we are experiencing it, and often it is only in hindsight that we can say "aha!" to the whole situation.  But, that's fine too - at least we got the message, albeit late!   But, it doesn't have to be totally that way, because in adversity it is important to stay focused on the bigger picture, and if you can do that, then you will be surprised at what will result from it.

There is much more - oh so much more, as I had three hours to write journal entries on this subject! - that could be said, but the bottom line is actually quite simple.  Adversity builds character in that it challenges us to use a negative circumstance to a positive advantage, and in doing so we see for ourselves what we are made of.  If everything were all "lollypops and rainbows," we would never be challenged to stretch ourselves, and thus a lot of things we could do would never even be thought of.  As a concluding thought, I think also of Jacobo Timerman, the Russian-born Argentine journalist who was imprisoned by the Peronist regime in the late 1970's for speaking out against atrocities.  Timerman wrote a great book about his experiences called Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number, that was originally published in 1980.  I first became familiar with the book when I was ten years old, during one of those long, poverty-stricken summers in Kirby, WV, where mostly all I had to do then at times was read many times over several past issues of various magazines that people gave us, and one of those was an issue of Reader's Digest that had an excerpt from this book of Timerman's in it.  As I eventually got the book and read it more thoroughly, something struck me about what he said on page 36 - "Memory is the chief enemy of the solitary tortured man - nothing is more dangerous at such moments.  But, I managed to develop certain passivity-inducing devices for withstanding torture and anti-memory devices for those long hours in the solitary cell."  (Jacobo Timerman, Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number.  New York:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1981. p. 36).   Timerman was an agnostic unfortunately, and unlike others who were unjustly imprisoned such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he unfortunately didn't know how to use adversity to his advantage in this case - far from being the enemy of the  "solitary tortured man," the memory at times may be the very thing that maintains sanity in adversity.  Our memories, both good and bad, can be a great classroom for us if we allow them to be so, and having the time to reflect on them can help one make some sense out of a situation and instill a resolve to overcome it.   Growing up as I did - and unfortunately I don't have the liberty to share that entire story for a variety of reasons at this time - I valued memory and imagination, and it was something I believe God used to develop what He gave me personally.   As G.K. Chesterton remarked in his various writings, humans were created by God as both creatures and creators, and as such it is the poetic, or imaginative, view of existence that keeps a person sane (Thomas Peters, The Christian Imagination - G.K. Chesterton on the Arts.  San Francisco:  Ignatius Press, 2000. p. 44).  If it hadn't been for an insatiable desire to read and learn, I would have been just another Appalachian statistic rather than being able to rise above circumstance and go after what I felt God called me to do.  Timerman fails to admit it, but in reality something drove him to maintain sanity in that dank Argentine prison, and thankfully for his sake it did!  

So, as I now conclude this discourse, my advice to anyone facing adversity is to do several things.  First, utilize the adverse situation as a learning experience, and if you are a God-fearing person, you need to ask Him "what is it I am supposed to come out of this with?"  An applicable verse in that instance is Romans 8:28 - God orders all things for our good, in essence.  Second, it is important to maintain focus on the greater picture - if you have a job or a hobby, school, or anything else, don't let the adversity derail you, but rather focus more on the task and excel.  You may actually surprise yourself if you do!  Third, adversity is a good condition to begin writing - write down anything that comes to mind in a journal preferably, and as you do so, it helps sort a lot out that may be going on in your mind due to the situation you are facing.  If you take those three steps, you will not only learn about yourself, but you will also discover that you may have more strength than you give yourself credit for.  It is also important to remember that adversity is not a question of if but rather of when - no one is immune from life's crapstorms, and at some point one will inevitably blow through your life.   Rather than letting it blow you away though, it is important to root yourself, and I cannot think of any better way than prayer and a consistant religious faith to do so - and, don't do it alone; pray with your husband or wife too, because adversity may be something you are facing together and you need each other too.  If you do that, not only will you be strengthened, but also your religious conviction, your marriage, and even your knowledge will be strengthened as well.  Hopefully this insight will help someone, and I have more to share on another subject next time.