one of my new heros…out of the mouth of babes…

…and said to Him, “Do You hear what these are saying?”
And Jesus said to them, “Yes. Have you never read,
‘Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have perfected praise’?”
Matthew 21:16 NKJV

(Liam Morrison, 12, reads a statement during a Middleborough School Committee meeting on April 13. (YouTube / Middleborough Educational Television)

I admit that I’ve been rather sporadic here in blogland for quite some time…
ever since my personal world took a major turn.

My time is now different.

It’s a busy time…but in a much different way than it once was.
Busy good.
Busy sad.
Busy full.
Busy new.
Busy different…but all busy just the same—
…and like I’ve always said, busy hands keep the devil away…
or I think that’s something more like ‘idle hands being the devil’s workshop’…
or something along those lines…just meaning,
keeping busy, you don’t get in trouble…

I should also add, that over the past year,
I’ve been quite remiss with my traditional overload of all things news and politics.

During my time of ‘exile’ and divorce, I basically quit watching the news…
or much TV for that matter.
At the time, life was pretty glum as it was, why would I want to pepper that with
the sordid details of the real and unreal happenings within our now very
upside down world??

And so now that I’ve been on a more even keel for nearly year,
I still don’t watch the news, but I do keep up via various news apps.

I say all of this because I caught a story the other day that sparked my interest.

I’m not sharing this story so much because I feel the need to repeat my
feelings regarding the current two gender drumbeat…
because in my mind that’s a no brainer…I took biology…
I may not remember everything that was taught back in the 8th grade but I do remember
that there are two genders, end of sentence.

I don’t share this story because I’m still rather clueless in not understanding
the growing letters found on some rainbow flag and the need to keep adding letters
and symbols…
I tend to be a one flag nation kind of gal—red, white and blue you know.

I share this story because there’s a seventh grade young man from Massachusetts
who seems to know a lot more than most of most of us adults…

By Ashley Carnahan / Fox News:
A 12-year-old student was allegedly sent home from school after he refused to change
his T-shirt that said, “There are only two genders.”

Liam Morrison, a seventh-grader at Nichols Middle School in
Middleborough, Massachusetts, said he was taken out of gym class on March 21
and met with school staff who told him people were complaining about
the statement on his shirt and that it made them feel “unsafe.”
His comments were picked up by popular Twitter account LibsofTikTok.

“Yes, words on a shirt made people feel unsafe.
They told me that I wasn’t in trouble,
but it sure felt like I was. I was told that I would need to
remove my shirt before I could return to class.
When I nicely told them that I didn’t want to do that, they called my father,”
he explained during a Middleborough School Committee meeting on April 13.

“Thankfully, my dad, supportive of my decisions, came to pick me up.
What did my shirt say? Five simple words: There are only two genders.
Nothing harmful. Nothing threatening.
Just a statement I believe to be a fact,” he said.

Morrison added that he was told his shirt was “targeting a protected class”
and was a “disruption to learning.”
“Who is this protected class?
Are their feelings more important than my rights?” he asked.
“I don’t complain when I see Pride flags and diversity posters hung
throughout the school.
Do you know why?
Because others have a right to their beliefs, just as I do,” he said.

“I was told that the shirt was a disruption to learning.
No one got up and stormed out of class.
No one burst into tears.
I’m sure I would have noticed if they had.
I experience disruptions to my learning every day.
Kids acting out in class are a disruption, yet nothing is done.
Why do the rules apply to one yet not another?”

The student said “not one person” directly told him they were bothered
by the words on his shirt and that other students had told him
they supported his actions.

Morrison told the committee he felt like the school was telling him
it wasn’t OK for him to have an opposing point of view and that he didn’t
go to school that day to “hurt feelings or cause trouble.”

“I have learned a lot from this experience.
I learned that a lot of other students share my view.
I learned that adults don’t always do the right thing or make
the right decisions.
I know that I have a right to wear a shirt with those five words.
Even at 12 years old, I have my own political opinions and
I have a right to express those opinions.
Even at school.
This right is called the First Amendment to the Constitution,” he stated.
(my emphasis)

“My hope in being here tonight is to bring the School
Committee’s attention to this issue.
I hope that you will speak up for the rest of us,
so we can express ourselves without being pulled out of class.
Next time, it may not only be me.
There might be more soon that decide to speak out.”

Fox News Digital reached out to Middleborough Public Schools for comment but has yet to receive a response.

spam

“Suffering, gracefully accepted, refines the human heart,
and the experience of darkness sharpens the vision of the spirit.”
Paul Glynn, A Song for Nagasaki:
The Story of Takashi Nagai:
Scientist, Convert, and Survivor of the Atomic Bomb

According to Wikipedia Spam is (stylized SPAM) is a brand of canned cooked meat made
by Hormel Foods Corporation.
It was first introduced in 1937 and gained popularity worldwide after its use during World War II.
By 2003, Spam was sold in 41 countries on six continents and trademarked in over 100 countries
(not including the Middle East and North Africa).

According to its label, Spam’s basic ingredients are pork, with ham meat added, salt,
water, modified potato starch as a binder, sugar, and sodium nitrite as a preservative.
Natural gelatin is formed during cooking in its tins on the production line.
Many have raised concerns over Spam’s nutritional attributes,
in large part due to its high content of fat, sodium, and preservatives.

I also understand it’s the “national” food of Hawaii as “Hawaiians sometimes call it
“Portagee Steak” oddly my money was always on the pineapple.

And also according to Wikipedia Spam or rather Spamming is:
Electronic spamming is the use of electronic messaging systems to send an
unsolicited message (spam), especially advertising, as well as sending messages repeatedly
on the same site. While the most widely recognized form of spam is email spam,
the term is applied to similar abuses in other media:
instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam,
Web search engine spam, spam in blogs, wiki spam, online classified ads spam,
mobile phone messaging spam, Internet forum spam, junk fax transmissions,
social spam, spam mobile apps, television advertising and file sharing spam.
It is named after Spam, a luncheon meat, by way of a Monty Python sketch about a
restaurant that has Spam in every dish and where patrons annoyingly chant “Spam!”
over and over again.

I must confess that I have never tried Spam.

I never cared for bologna so I kind of figured I wouldn’t care for Spam.
I’ll just stick to ham.

However that other kind of Spam…
well let’s just say I’ve had my fair share of that unappetizing mess.

We all get the e-mails, the phising (not fishing), the viruses (electronic and not physical),
the phone scams etc…
and yet we must admit it happens here in blogland as well.

Ever so often I’ll go into the comment section on my admin page in order to see if anyone
has been earmarked as spam.

I know that some of my blogland friends will make comments on posts and I will receive
an email notification along with the regular WP notification.
Yet every once in a while a friend’s comment is deemed spam by good ol AT&T.

WP is also prone to throwing friends into the black abyss of either ‘awaiting moderation’
or simply delightfully chunking them to spam. I too have been the victim of being chunked.

So yesterday I went into my site in order to check the spam allotment while
trashing what was indeed a bunch of junk as I sought to rescue anyone who had been
sorely misplaced.

Yet I stopped long enough to skim over one offering in particular that was about as vulgar
as it gets…and to think they were targeting poor ol Taylor Swift.
Not being one who stays up with the music scene…I don’t know why Ms. Swift should be so
grossly vilified, but gross it was.

My knee-jerk reaction, before pushing delete, was to simply bemoan the level of sickness
and vileness that runs rampant across our senses.

But then my thoughts shifted to the evil that is actually at work…
Evil found in something such as mind-numbing as the prevalent swarth of spam
on a simple little blog…

And so I was struck by the contrast of such thoughts of spam..thoughts for its reasons,
its uselessness and its dark and evil agendas countered by the thoughts of one who
lived to survive chaos and evil and came to know both peace and worth…
hope and salvation…

All of us will have to render an account of our lives when we die.
God will not be interested in who or what we were.
No, only in this: how did we live?
That will be the sole matter for judgment.
A company director won’t be able to pull rank on a waiter,
and a fisherman’s wife will be on a par with a millionaire’s wife.
Ships’ officers will receive no preference over ships’ cooks.
All will be judged by exactly the same measure:
did we use our talents well and for his glory?
Takashi Nagi
from A Song for Nagasaki
(Takashi Nagai, a survivor of the atomic bomb and convert to the Catholic faith
who lived a life of heroic virtue in the face of great tragedy)

The words of Takashi Nagai pointedly reminds us that we must consciously choose how it is we
wish to use our ‘talents’…those abilities bestowed upon us long before our birth…
gifts, abilities, and talents endowed upon, and found within, each of us—
given to us all by grace form the Father and the Creator to His created and children.

Will we opt to use them for the betterment of others and to God’s glory or will we use them
for the detriment of others and of self?…
Detriments much like the annoying spam folks are wasting their precious time over by creating and
sending to tiny little blogs like mine?

As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another,
as good stewards of God’s varied grace:
1 Peter 4:10

A stranger in a strange land

“We are Christians, and strangers on earth.
Let none of us be frightened;
our native land is not in this world.”
St. Augustine

(a surprise flock of deer in the middle of surburn Atlanta / Julie Cook / 2018
talk about strangers in a strange place)

Many years ago my aunt and I were taking an overnight flight from Atlanta to Milan.
This was not our first trip to Italy and I proudly figured that I knew just enough
conversational Italian to get us through any real language barrier.
All would be well I confidently told myself.

Yet in the back of my mind, I knew my aunt.
A panicker if ever there was one.

She knew the word equivalents to hello, yes, no, good-bye and stop.
She depended on me just as a blind person would depend upon a service animal.
I was to be her eyes and ears and mouth while navigating all over Itlay for the
next 3 weeks.
She was simply happy and content being along for the ride.
No thinking, no working, no figuring…just eating, drinking, shopping and seeing.
That was the extent of her comfort level when travelling.
No real thinking—just enjoying…while leaving the details to one more savvy
and experienced.
And in this case, that simply left me…

So what could possibly go wrong?

Arriving early morning in Milan, which was middle of the night Atlanta time,
and having flown for nearly 9 hours in a tin can in the sky with absolutely zero sleep
and limited nutrition…
We deplaned, made our way through the terminal, found our luggage,
then when trying to figure out where the train was located that was to take us into town…
well, I might as well have been hit on the head, suffering from complete amnesia.

Exhaustion was hanging like a thickly spun cobweb in my brain.
Panic was creeping up through my now rapidly and tightly closing throat.
I stood in the middle of the terminal looking around, trying to make sense, trying to translate
signs directing us where we needed to go.
It was as if my brain had gone blank and all that practice of asking in Italian where
the train station was located…as was now gone the time spent memorizing the map of
the airport…it had all instantly, completely and totally left me.

Yet I had to get a hold of myself as I didn’t need my 70-year-old aunt turning into
a wailing Henny Penny.
“GET A HOLD OF YOURSELF” I mentally screamed at myself.

And just as quickly as that sense of panic of a blank brain had engulfed me,
I clamped down on that boiling panic and calmed down… as I casually sauntered over
to the information desk asking the nonplused airport employee if they
“parli inglese”
and DOV’È LA STAZIONE CENTRALE?

And no that was not the end of our adventures during that particular trip…
but those are stories for another day…

It does, however, remind me of today’s quote by St Augustine.

A bold reminder that we Christians are strangers on this rather strange planet.

For we are indeed a strange people in a strange land.

Just like my aunt and I when we first arrived in Milan.
Strangers, much out of place, most uncomfortable and seemingly lost in what
was a new strange land.

I am currently grossly far behind reading and listening to both my two favorite
‘across the pond’ clerics, that it isn’t even funny.

This new role of grandmother, dashing around on the fly, with little to no sleep while
being out of pocket from my usual routine and home…
has me terribly out of sync here in blogland.

Yet I did manage to look over Bishop Gavin Ashenden’s latest musings which
actually starts off with a tale about Meghan Markle of all people—
that soon to be bride of Prince Harry.

It seems that Ms Markle has “agreed” to be baptized and subsequently confirmed
into the Anglican Chruch of England…as a gesture of graciousness for her soon to be
Grandmother-n-law who, as Queen, is known as the “Defender of the Faith” and “head”
of the Chruch of England.

The good bishop smells something a bit odious.

Not so much because of Ms Markle herself, who is obviously trying her best to now “fit in” into
her fiancee’s most British world as well as into his family…
but rather odious because of the Chruch of England itself.

As a Christian, I find it a bit odd, awkward and simply wrong that one would want to be
“baptized” as a child of God and in turn confirmed into a church body simply for the sake
of “fitting in”…
Not to mention the notion of a church body that sees such a life-altering decision as a mere
technicality.

I wonder if Ms Markle actually understands the implications behind what it means to
be Baptized–or as to the requirement of what is required of one who “joins” the church?

I wonder if the Church of England actually understands the life-changing and deeply
mystical experience that resides within the act of Baptism.

When we have a church body baptizing individuals as a means of helping one to fit in
or as a technicality…then I know we as Christians are indeed treading in a strange land.

And here is the dilemma for the Church of England.
A state Church wedded to a state that hates Christian virtue and Christian ethics;
a state that has begun to criminalise Christian witness as hate speech,
where police arrest street preachers and have them thrown in prison at the push of
a SJW’s phone button;
a state that has begun preparations to remove children from their Christian homes
if social workers detect what they improperly label ‘homophobia’ in the parents;
a state where Christian teachers are expelled and sacked if they do not endorse
the secular brainwashing on the fluidity of gender.

Meghan Markle, Justin Welby & The Use And Abuse Of Baptism.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men,
who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
For what can be known about God is plain to them,
because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes,
namely, his eternal power and divine nature,
have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world,
in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
Romans 1:18-20