Rejected State Mottos

You'll not soon find these on any license plates! I stumbled across these in an ancient e-mail I'd saved.

• Minnesota: 10,000 Lakes... And 10,000,000,000,000 Mosquitoes
• Wisconsin: Come Cut The Cheese
• Alabama: Yes, We Have Electricity
• Massachusetts: Our Taxes Are Lower Than Sweden's (For Most Tax Brackets)
• Connecticut: Like Massachusetts, Only The Kennedy's Don't Own It Yet
• Kansas: First Of The Rectangle States
• Hawaii: Haka Tiki Mou Sha'ami Leeki Toru (Death To Mainland Scum, But Leave Your Money)
• Illinois: Please Don't Pronounce the "S"
• Idaho: More Than Just Potatoes ... Well Okay, We're Not, But The Potatoes Sure Are Real Good
• Arkansas: Literacy Ain't Everything
• Mississippi: Come And Feel Better About Your Own State
• Oklahoma: Like The Play, Only No Singing
• Maryland: If You Can Dream It, We Can Tax It
• North Dakota: We Really Are One Of The 50 States!
• South Dakota: Closer Than North Dakota
• Michigan: First Line Of Defense...From The Canadians

And last but not least...

• Texas: Si' Hablo Ing'les (Yes, I Speak English)

Shakespeare

I still remember wading through "The Merchant of Venice" in ninth grade English. At first, I was wishing it came with sub-titles. After a week of hating this foreign language, I found myself actually understanding what was going on and caught up in the story. After college, my mandatory with Shakespeare came to an end.

Then came my boys. Encouraging them to be well-read was one thing. Being well-read was something else. As such, I figured I best practice what I preached and about ten years ago, I began to reacquaint myself with the Bard.

All that to say I have just finished "Henry V" and what a story! If you haven't waded through Shakespeare in awhile, H-V has it all, drama, intrigue, combat, betrayal, love, courage, and best of all a hero who is worthy to be called a hero.

As an enticement, it is from H-V that Stephen Ambrose got his title for "Band of Brothers," a history of one US Army company during WWII. A number of stirring speeches by King Henry make getting back into synch with Queen's English worth the while.

Thanks, Neal.

Last June I believe it was, Neal left his family to begin training for an extended deployment to Afghanistan. He spent three months away from his family, returned home briefly, and then departed for the other side of the planet to serve his nation. Today, Neal came home.

Even as I type, I imagine the kids are still bouncing off the walls and the laughter won't subside until deep into the night. Daddy's home.

Neal's a pharmicist tech by trade. Who totes an M-16. And wears kevlar. There was a time that the Air Force's combat personnel consisted almost exclusively of its officers for they were the pilots and weapons officers and navigators. Not any more. My friend, the pharmicist has seen more life threatening situations in his last five months than I have now seen in twenty-three years.

Thank you, Neal, for serving our nation. Thank you for taking care of your family like a man so that they would be prepared to handle life without you for such a long time. Thank you for your sacrifice.

When I got their family Christmas pictures, I wept. Trish got herself all spiffied up and got the kids to all smile at the same time. It was a picture that was sent to lots of folks, but it was a picture truly intended for just one man. Her man. Neal, Santa-hat and AF shirt, returned his photo. Together they melded into the richest family portrait I have ever seen.

Thank you, Trish, for serving our nation. You have sacrificed immeasurable in allowing your man to travel to far away lands for something greater than yourselves. You knew the risks. You knew that life apart for the better part of a year would be harder than most anything you've had to deal with. Thank you for your sacrifice and for being an example of trusting the Lord to be for you what your husband could not in his absence.

A mutual friend of ours, Stephen, just returned from Iraq. His daughter was a babe when he left in August of 2006 if memory serves. He returned home just before Christmas. Stephen, Ashley, thank you for the incredible burden you shouldered on behalf of our nation.

Justin recently left his wife Heather and two children for the same pinpoint on the map where Neal found himself. Joshua, young man of eighteen, just left his mom, dad, brothers and sisters for Iraq.

In honor of my friends who have served, in honor of the men and women who continue to battle the forces of darkness on foreign soils, I would like to encourage you all to read Thomas Paine's small pamphlet titled "The Crisis." It bolstered and rallied a nation during the bleak winter of 1776. Our fight is a long way from ending. We must not give up. Here is the first paragraph of "The Crisis" in honor of Neal, Stephen, Justin, Joshua, and all those who are currently sacrificing so much on our behalf:

THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to TAX) but "to BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER," and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God.

The punctuation above is as Paine wrote it.

Agony

The serpent has claimed another victim. He chomps up and spews out men and women with a macabre and a disinterested glee.

In C.S. Lewis’ “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” the lost Eustace Scrubb stumbles upon a dragon carcass as he wanders further and further from his friends. Cold and damp drive him to move pass the horrifying mass and into its nearby cave for shelter where he finds the beast's enchanted cache. Eustace cannot resist the treasure’s allure and he begins to think of his future, a future where his friends are no longer necessary and where he will have mastery over them. He slides one of the golden bands upon his arm, and with his doom sealed, drifts off to sleep.

He awakes to discover that his lust (the treasure) has turned him into a dragon. Another one bites the dust.

On this side of reality, Heath Ledger has tragically become the serpent’s latest victim. Names like Presley, Joplin, Morrison and Hendrix, Hemingway, Monroe, Phoenix, and Anna Nicole litter the wake of this demonic juggernaut. “He was a murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44).

Each of these names weeps the cry of the cosmos. “Why am I here?” they scream. “Is there anybody out there?” beckoned Pink Floyd. “Why does this hurt so badly when it’s all I ever wanted?” they choke and sob. They have come to the point where they “have no fear of drowning; it’s the breathing that’s taking all this work” ("Work" by Jars of Clay).

In rebelling against his Creator, the one in whom he is meant to find deepest intimacy and in whom he is meant to find his purpose, Man has set himself adrift. His relationship with God broken, he finds his relationship with his fellow man broken, too. And his relationship with the world around him. And his relationship with himself. Man’s rebellion encases him in the skin of a lizard and destroys any hope he might have had in finding peace in the cosmos.

Eustace tried to abide his dragon’s skin but found only misery and loneliness. Flight was pleasant for a time and power for the moment, but what he longed for was returned intimacy with his friends. No longer able to relate to his kind, he escaped to the mountains. “He realized he was a monster cut off from the whole human race.”

And so the agony sweeps over Man. Unable to come to terms with reality, he makes his escape with the encouragement and applause of the serpent. Whether the false intimacy of sexual relationships, whether the numbing dream of drugs and alcohol, or whether the deceitful hope of false religions or Joel Osteen Christianity, man attempts to blunt reality by vaulting into what Francis Schaeffer calls non-reason. “He is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).

Many cannot handle the reality any longer and venture to the precipice. Death entices with lying tendrils. If not utterly destroyed , Man ends in despair, a wreckage of his God-intended stature. There he abides.

Lindsay Lohan. Paris Hilton. Brittney Spears. “Do you know what I mean when I say, 'I don’t want to be alone?'” ("Work"). Hope is gone. And we on the outside stare in, gaping, waiting for the train wreck.

And then the Lion appears. The terrible, mighty, powerful, ferocious Lion. “I wasn’t afraid of it eating me,” Eustace said. “I was just afraid of it – if you can understand.” The Lion encourages him to remove his skin. Like a molting snake, Eustace the dragon sheds a complete layer of skin. And then another. And then another still only to find more dragon beneath.

Only when Eustace submits himself to the terrible claws of the Lion is the dragon flesh ripped away. “It hurt worse than anything I have ever felt.” And, behold, all things were new. Eustace, once again a boy, finds he is able to relate truly to his friends to whom he had been such a ninny earlier in the story. Only then does Eustace enjoy the voyage. Only then does Eustace Scrubb come to know and to love the Lion.

For the Heath Ledger’s of history, it is sadly too late. They rode their despair away from the One who would heal their agony through His own. They rode it to their doom. Eustace in fantasy, and many others in reality, parked their despair at the cross of Christ and found true restoration.

The Twisted and Deformed Heart of Humanism

Mike Adams wrote a commentary on an essay by a married professor who wrote about how her abortion brought her and her husband closer together. It's chilling. Click here to read Mike's article. His style is often sarcastic. He's toned it down a bit in this piece and let the professor speak for herself.

A 35-Year Blight

50 million babies have died legally in our country since Roe was enacted by judicial fiat in 1973, 35 years ago today.

Cal Thomas summed up this horror in his TownHall article earlier this week. Follow the link to read it.

Then might I encourage us all to take some time to repent to the Author of life for our national sin?

Great Quote!

I'm purposefully going to omit the context from the quote. It's also from Schaeffer's "Church...20th Century." While the context would add greater depth, the quote still cracks me up all by itself:

"The difficulty with modern theology is that it is really no different from taking drugs."

Conservative No More

A cold and blustery day assaulted my morning as I filled up my second cup of joe in meager defense.

I have returned from a weekend deer hunt where this closing youth weekend saw my only deer-hunting son who hadn't bagged a deer (the other two have held this over him for over a year), nail a sweet doe from 80 yards with raw sights (no scope) ten minutes before sunrise on that first morning. You've got to like it.

Tyler and Bambi (Bambette?)

Anyway, I sat with my youngest son in his deer stand, we saw nothing but cardinals, squirrels and other mid-Texas fauna, all seeming to mock our safetied weapons. With little happening on our stand, I read through Francis Schaeffer's "The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century." It's a twenty-five year old masterful work by Schaeffer which does not stray from the title nor from his typical rigorous adherence to the Bible as his framework.

Much within it caught my eye and you'll likely see chunks of it blogged upon in the days to come. Here's the first:

"One of the greatest injustices we do to our young people is to ask them to be conservative. Christianity today is not conservative, but revolutionary. To be conservative today is to miss the whole point, for conservativism means standing in the flow of the status quo, and the status quo no longer belongs to us. Today we are a minority."

Whoa! As I'd always considered myself conservative (at least since my musings over Jimmy Carter in the sixth grade), I saw the group which I had always considered "conservative" moving further and further away from the biblical convictions I held. It is true. In a post-modern age, the Judeo-Christian ethic of our heritage has become a foggy memory.

Schaeffer encourages the Church to encourge the young to be revolutionary, not in the Islamo-fascist sense and not in the storming-of-the-Bastille sense, but in the Christian sense where no greater love has any man than this: that he lay down his life for his friends. This is often revolutionary within the conservative Church.

But even this is cannot be held within the contentless, Kumbaya feel of much of the social gospel. It takes place within the objective content of the entirety of the word of God. That is revolutionary within the liberal churches in America today.

Who'd have thought that Christianity would ever become "revolutionary?" So it has.

A Question for the Dinner Table

Should we (individual citizens) be allowed to fail?

Go ahead. Talk amongst yourselves. I'm not going to answer it in this post anyway. It's late and I need to get some sleep. But the Britney post and the nightmare of the presidential debates keep rattling around in my cage.

Here are a few amendments to that question: Does our government currently allow us to fail? Did they originally allow us to fail? Should they or should they not allow us to fail?

I'll get back to this at another date. I'm off to bed.

Pravda on China...this ought to be good!

Who better to comment on China's one-child policy and subsequent demographic shift than the society known for curtailing personal freedoms from the Tsars through the communists? Russia's newspaper, Pravda, has taken a look at what has become of China since the implementation of its "don't be fruitful, and don't multiply" mandate (link). It's a translated piece so it's a bit difficult to wade through but worth the effort.

And what did Pravda find? Surprise! China has indeed limited its population growth. In fact, Pravda lauds the Chinese for what they have accomplished. Some odd points of praise:

• "The nation's official number of prevented births equals 400 million." Is that a good thing or a bad thing? That's a number large than the current U.S. population.
• "The country evaded (sic) starvation, epidemics, and other social disasters...probably thanks to this program." Can you find the key word in that sentence? I colored it special just in case.
• The "seamy side" of China's policy, according to Pravda, is "unplanned children." Note that it's not what is done with the unplanned children. That would be my vote for "seamy." The travisty in the eyes of Pravda is the children. Yikes.
• They briefly touch on an evil wrought by this twisted policy: sexual slavery. But after a brief touch-and-go, they turn to something they see as more heinous: sexual selection. Excuse me? Okay, it's a bit off color to sell an unwanted child into sexual slavery but it's far more egregious to pick the sex of your child??? That would be like Time Magazine wrestling between Joe Stalin and Adolph Hitler for Man of the Year honors.

The article did not even address the social Frankenstein China has created by its reproductive tinkering. Even bastions of liberal spin like CBS News and MSNBC recognize the problem pointing to the fact that China has 40 million more men of reproductive age than they do women. The latter have been aborted, abandoned, and enslaved in horrifying numbers.

The population tilt also promises to bring higher crime rates to a nation already struggling with its crime problem. None of this is noted by Pravda.

In case you couldn't think about what to pray, here's a monumental chocolate mess that only an all-powerful and loving God could turn into something beautiful.