the hows and the whys…

Truth will always be truth, regardless of lack of understanding,
disbelief or ignorance.
W. Clement Stone

(wildflower / Julie Cook / 2016)

Look at this amazing tiny wildflower…
it grows wild along the edge of the woods.

Looking at it closely, it really is amazing isn’t it?

The coloring…
those tiny magenta like spots demurely dotting a milky center…
along with those soft yellow streaks…
offered by what seems to be the errant brush stroke of an artist’s paint.

Those fine tiny little fuzzy hairs,
surrounding each gentle and tender petal…
ready and waiting to tickle the foot of any visiting bee….

Absolutely amazing…

Such attention to detail…

A microcosm of beauty that sits for no one in particular,
randomly along the edge of the woods….
Except say for the birds, the deer, the coyotes, the armadillos…
and chances are, it is only the bees that pay it any heed…

A delightful detail to be marveled over.
A sheer tiny portent of beauty….
offered freely to any passerby to gleefully behold…

Yet I do not see such a tiny marvel as mere happenstance.
I do not find it to be some random mix of atoms that swirled together
over the eons, then popped out as this flower…

I do not look upon anything on this earth as mere happenstance…
the oceans and all that they harbor and hold…
the sky with it’s endless cosmic delights…
the earth be it verdant growth or sandy dunes…
Nothing has happened without the knowledge of the Creator…

But…
there are many who would beg to differ.
There are those who will cry foul over such thoughts…
Those who will fight ardently, tooth and nail, to wipe away any such notion…
because for them, that’s all that such is…
mere notions of the uneducated, the simple, the naive and the misinformed…

So when I hear all of this up and arms wailing and gnashing of teeth over all
of this impending election mess of ours….
as in an exclamation point and question mark screaming after the statement…

THE CHOICE IS JUST THESE TWO CANDIDATES?????!!!!!!!

As in…
That’s it??????
That’s all we’ve got??

The anguished lamenting that is currently taking place over the fact that
out of the hundreds of millions of legal Americans,
not counting our illegal population,
we are left wondering how it came down…
to these particular two????!!!!

Down to a woman who has quite the checkered past…
Do you remember White Water???

A woman who was in charge of the this nation’s top security yet continues
to claim “no recollection” as to how that e-mail businesses got so messed up…
A woman who’s job it was to defend and protect our National security interests
around this globe yet chose to willfully ignore the continued pleas for help
by a United States ambassador…

A woman who now has blood on her hands…

Never mind she is married to the man who helped to usher in this ‘no holds bar’
lack of decorum, dare we say morality, in our press…
let alone in our highest ranking office in this nation…
as we disgustingly recall that infamous little red dress…

And there was that famous presidential address to the Nation…
you remember the one…the one in which that famously ridiculous lie was uttered
to both you and I…
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman…”
Only to come to find out that, well whoops, he did…

And then there’s the other of the two…
the fellow with the equally checkered past…
Lest we remember each and every wife, gaffe, boast, profane and vile remark…
A man who has made millions by always putting himself and his interests first…
Remember “it’s not personal, it’s just business”
cold, callous and calculating…

A man who has treated his fellow man and woman as less than and as mere objects…
A man who’s line, “you’re fired” has became a common household phrase…
as he can cut ties faster than we can bat any eye….

So yes, it is sadly, oddly, bizarrely down to these two,
out of all of the millions who could have been…
we’re stuck with these two….

So I’m of the thought that this is what happens when the Divine is removed from life.
When the Miraculous is coldly cast aside…
When He who is Greater than is cheaply rendered less than by the mere created?
When the Word of God is rewritten, ignored and replaced…
When we have decided that we are more important than everything and anyone else…
and that we obviously don’t need nor want God in our lives….

So should we really wonder how or why we’ve gotten into this mess…?

For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” …
Hebrews10:26-31

culpability

“Alas, human vices, however horrible one might imagine them to be,
contain the proof (were it only in their infinite expansion) of man’s longing for the infinite;
but it is a longing that often takes the wrong route.
It is my belief that the reason behind all culpable excesses lies in this
depravation of the sense of the infinite.”
Charles Baudelaire

(Truman Library)

Any one of a certain age is no doubt familiar with the images of President Harry Truman and of his famous sign, kept on his desk in his office, within the Oval Office.

The Buck Stops Here

President Truman came into office wearing a very heavy mantle weighted down by grave responsibility.

The Nation was wading through the throws of WWII, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the longest serving US president, had died suddenly in office, resulting in Harry Truman, who was the current vice president, being sworn into the highest office in the land.

It was Harry Truman who had the final word in the decision to bomb Japan…
A decision which decisively ended the war…
Yet it was to be a haunting decision laced with grave and costly repercussions for generations to come…

However it is not to nuclear weaponry or WWII that I wish to cast today’s thoughts but rather to that solitary desk plaque.

The Buck Stops Here.

We all know what it means.
We all expect our leaders, as well as anyone charged with the responsibility of overseeing others, to know what it means.

On more than one occasion President Truman referred to the desk sign in public statements. For example, in an address at the National War College on December 19, 1952 Mr. Truman said, “You know, it’s easy for the Monday morning quarterback to say what the coach should have done, after the game is over. But when the decision is up before you — and on my desk I have a motto which says The Buck Stops Here’ — the decision has to be made.”
In his farewell address to the American people given in January 1953, President Truman referred to this concept very specifically in asserting that,
“The President–whoever he is–has to decide.
He can’t pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him.
That’s his job.”
(Excerpt taken from the Truman Library)

Meaning that a leader, a person in charge of other people, a person who is to cast definitive decisions and choices which effect others is to be the last and final word…
and that in turn, he or she must live with that final word…as in own that final word.

People who where the buck stops can either be lauded for their decisions or held culpable when those decisions run amuck.

Wikipedia states that the word Culpability means…

A person is culpable if they cause a negative event and
(1) the act was intentional;
(2) the act and its consequences could have been controlled (i.e., the agent knew the likely consequences, the agent was not coerced, and the agent overcame hurdles to make the event happen); and
(3) the person provided no excuse or justification for the actions.[1]

Culpability descends from the Latin concept of fault (culpa). The concept of culpability is intimately tied up with notions of agency, freedom, and free will. All are commonly held to be necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for culpability.

Today’s news has been rife with the latest findings from the various “powers that be” committees, those of men and women tasked with the Congressional reports, which are being issued regarding the Benghazi Embassy attack.

In that fateful 2012 attack, in which four Americans–the US Ambassador, an informations officer and two CIA operatives, were maliciously and brutally killed, the Obama Administration has been found guilty of being “lax” in providing the necessary security for the Embassy. The Administration was also cited for being slow to send in military response to defend the deadly attack.
An attack which Americans were helpless to prevent and stave off.

Culpability….

The deaths of these four Americans were brutal to say the least.
When the Embassy was overtaken, Ambassador Stevens was seized by the militants and was sexually assaulted, his body mutilated, cattle prodded and burned before being paraded through the streets where he was left for dead.

In announcing the conclusion of the committee’s investigation, chairman Trey Gowdy, a Republican from South Carolina, said: “Nothing was en route to Libya at the time the last two Americans were killed almost eight hours after the attacks began.”
US help was too slow because of “an obsession with hurting the Libyans’ feelings,” he said.
(BBC)

Americans were brutally tortured and murdered…their bodies were savagely desecrated because…
an Administration didn’t want to hurt feelings….

Culpability.

Secretary of State Clinton has been cleared in the latest report of any wrong doing although the administration of which she was a pivotal member has been found to be negligent concerning the attack and subsequent deaths of these four Americans by its overtly slow response to the intel concerning the growing animosity toward the Americans in Libya at that time, especially regarding Benghazi’s unrest…in particular, that of the Embassy, as well as being too slow to send in military reinforcements once the attack was under way.

This is a story that has left me deeply troubled since first being reported.
However my troubled mind and heart pales in comparison to that of the families of these victims….
The wives, the children, the mothers, the fathers, the brothers, the sisters….

And now that time has passed, and millions of dollars have been spent “investigating,” while leaders and people who, where the buck should have stopped, have instead gone on with their lives, their campaigns, their jobs, trying to forget…seemingly trying to ignore this awful attack that was and remains so bad and so heinous…pretending that it never took place… we’re all left wondering….

Maybe President Truman’s sign needs to be returned to the Oval Office….