Evolution is occurring practically right before our eyes. Continue reading “Puppy eyes”
Andy Kessler: Guilty as charged
I participate on a certain online discussion board. My premiere antagonist is a man who got trounced by a playground bully in fifth grade. He never fails to seek to re-enact that battle with me (or any of certain others), hoping for a different outcome this time. He casts his opponent by turns as the bully he wants to be or the chump he fears he was; and interacts with those projections. It has nothing to do with me. He might as well be playing with his G.I. Joe dolls.
Andy Kessler’s 07/08/13 Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Summer Jobs for the Guilty Generation,” is little different. In his quotations of others’ expressions, I hear compassion; he hears guilt. I hear gratitude; he hears guilt. I hear hope; he hears guilt. What’s up with this?
Kessler projects his own guilt feelings onto his son’s generation. That’s easier than owning them, but solves nothing.
Continue reading Andy Kessler: Guilty as charged
Contrary vibes
Sunday, May 26, I arrived at church after the sermon. We had a guest preacher; she’s been here before, but I missed that sermon, too. Her bio, printed in the bulletin, says, “Her work focuses on dismantling white supremacy.” Those words trigger me. But in fact I don’t know what they mean — TO HER. I know what they mean to certain other people, but I don’t know what they mean TO HER. I have never heard her speak on the subject. I am in no position to judge — or prejudge.
Related: Deal with exactly what the person says.
Related: Don’t presume to be a mind reader.
What to do with my triggeredness? At BK after church, I prayed for her health, happiness and prosperity; that she would succeed at every task to which she puts her hand. I did not pray that she change her mind — about anything. In my view, such prayers have no positive effect, and would only perpetuate the darkness I want to change to light.
Monday morning, May 27, I was in Starbucks. The table where I sit faces the door. In came a man pushing a woman in a wheelchair. I know this man; he’s thoroughly demented, but you’d never know that without talking with him. He makes money selling these toy balloons that he twists into animal shapes. He’s really good at it. As to the woman, I perceived that she strove diligently for many years to get into that wheelchair. She’s dedicated her life to becoming helpless.
In seeking my own upward mobility, I am again at the stage where I’m tempted to look down on people whose lives are headed in the opposite direction. It’s as if the vibes they emanate are dissonant to my own. In the end, I need to accept them as they are; to live and let live. I’m not at that point yet.
Related: Coming abstractions
I had to find some way to sublimate my anger. At this writing, I don’t recall exactly what I did. It may have been as simple as to visualize them surrounded by a brilliant cloud of light, feeding my energies into that cloud, loving them as they are.
Obama and race: why Eric Holder’s words stirred such anger
MSM lies
Mitch McConnell: We paid for ‘sin of slavery’ by electing Obama
Nowhere does the article actually say he actually said that.
Related: 11. Deal with exactly what the person says.
The cosmos is not broken.
Sin and death don’t have the last word.
x Prayer primer
All my life, I’ve been fascinated with things that glow in the dark. Where does the light come from? This is now fundamental to my understanding of prayer, and of my vocation.
The picture shows what I take for the latest advance in the world of fluorescent materials. Here are germanium nanoparticles in a colorless colloidal (gelatinous) suspension, being irradiated by ultraviolet light. By virtue merely of where they are and what they are, the invisible light that shines on these particles is changed into visible light.
The nanoparticles catalyze that process: they do no work of their own, expend no energies of their own, and take no active part in the process; but it won’t occur without them.
Continue reading x Prayer primer
Another case for the death penalty
Value judgments: Feminists doing science?
Facts are neither good nor bad. They just are.
Was there a Jesus? If so, what was he like?
In many cases, you can strip away the fictions surrounding a legendary figure, and discover the historical original.
For example, there probably was a King Arthur.
Troy was a real place, and the Trojan War a real event. Achilles, Odysseus and Agamemnon were probably real people.
What about the Jesus of the Bible?
Circumstantial evidence exists to suggest there probably was such a person. Textual evidences are available to suggest what he may have been like. He may or may not have been as Christianity presents.
Continue reading Was there a Jesus? If so, what was he like?
The Homeless Blogger 