don’t mess with Texas….cheerleaders

(image courtesy Click 2 Houston News)

They say that everything is bigger in Texas…
and that also might mean badder…that is, if badder was an actually correct word.

Texas and Texans are known for being tenacious.
As in they can take a ‘licken’ and keep on ‘ticken’ sort of tenaciousness.

As in tumbleweed tenacious.

As in nothing much gets in their way to stop them from doing those Texas things
that they do.

I know this because I have a dear friend in Texas, a tumbleweed of sorts,
who has been fighting the good fight with cancer treatment.

It has not been an easy road, nor a peaceful road, but fight she has.

Unfortunately, life has been such that I have not been the active cheerleader for her as
I wish I could have been or really should have been.

Our ages are slightly different and we happen to currently find ourselves
at different life junctures.

Isn’t that always the way?

Just when she was getting bad news of diagnoses,
I found myself consumed in the care of a new grandbaby.

We were headed in opposite life directions…each going 90 to nothing…

Yet it never left my mind nor heart that she was in the throes of a battle.

I found that prayer was my best recourse because in the end, when all is said and done,
prayer was and is so much better than anything I could have or could continue to offer.

And at last word, she’s hanging tough…

Because that’s how they are in Texas, they are tough.

So just know that I’ve not forgotten you, Natalie.

And so as we speak of Texas and tenacity…I caught a story a few weeks back
about a group of real cheerleaders in Texas.
A group of high school cheerleaders to be exact from the small town of Kountze.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a high school football game but where I come
from, and obviously down in Texas, it is customary for the cheerleaders to paint
a giant run-through banner on a weekly basis as a pre-game ritual.

The banner is usually a sort of visual battle cry that is held aloft just prior to
the team running onto the field.
It’s a banner the cheerleaders hold up, standing on either side holding it taut,
so at just the right moment when the football team comes running onto the field,
they burst through the sign all to the sounds of a roaring enthusiastic crowd.

At this particular school in Texas, the cheerleaders decided they wanted to paint
words of encouragement for their team…Scripturally based words of encouragement…
as in words from the Bible.

The short of this 5-year long story is exactly as you’d think…
the cheerleaders were told by the principal and superintendent that they could not paint
those signs.
Maybe someone complained to the school authorities about a
violation of Church and state…as we all know public schools are state goods.
Or maybe the school administrators were fearful of complaints and they were the ones
to nix the signs.

And as a former teacher, I know first hand that if there is one thing that can strike fear
into a school administration, it is the fear of a lawsuit being filed…in particular
lawsuits that have the potential to be high profile.

And yet this school district’s administration actually decided to fight the girls and their
continued desire to make the Scripturally based run-throughs in court.

I’ve provided the link below to the story as the ending is not what I or you might have expected…
I was actually pleasantly surprised in this story’s end.

Five years have passed.

The girls have all since moved on…only to leave other cheerleaders to carry their torch.

There were filings and hearings in state courts which lead all the way to the Supreme Court,
who actually, just the other week, ruled in favor of the girls.

Ruling that yes the cheerleaders could continue painting Bible verses on the run-throughs
for the football team.

And as Todd Starnes, the author of the article so aptly notes…
“I reckon the Kountze cheerleaders have learned a very important lesson about perseverance
over the past five years. You really can do all things through Christ who strengthens you.”

Just as I know my friend Natalie is demonstrating better than most of us!

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/08/31/todd-starnes-texas-cheerleaders-win-victory-for-freedom-religious-expression-praise-lord.html

Utopia???

“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even
glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.
And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail.
Progress is the realisation of Utopias.”
Oscar Wilde

(a view of a portion of “the cove” Cades Cove, The Great Smoky Mountains National Park /
Julie Cook/ 2018—a little piece of utopia)

Many many years ago when I was but a wee lass in high school, our cheerleaders
would lead the crowds gathered in the stadium, ready for those fall Friday night
gridiron showdowns, with a rousing rendition of
“We’ve got spirit, yes we do, we’ve got spirit, how ’bout you!?”

Back and forth we’d chant…the cheerleaders and the fans…

So now tell me…
why after all these many years later do I hear that same chant resonating in my head,
albeit with a slightly different variation of wording??!!

…”we’ve got trouble, yes we do, we’ve got trouble, how ’bout you?”

I think it’s because this same story keeps popping up over and over again leaving me
nothing but unsettled.

It’s the story about the 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasi-Cortez Socialist Democrat who is
pretty much set to win the New York Congressional seat she’s chomping at the bit over,
come November.

Being 28 years old, she is two years younger than my son…and she is the same age as many
of my former students.
Those who are more idealistic while remaining totally unrealistic.

And I have no problems stating the fact that she, along with most of her millennial cohorts,
all have some unreal and lofty sorts of Utopian notions as to how life should be…
and yet they have no idea of how a Utopian society is to manage itself.

Because in part…there is no such thing nor will there ever be such.

This lack of reality is due in part because they have no real clue as to how many
past societies have attempted such…with each one failing miserably.

Many with tragic results.

Think Hitler, think Lenin, think any sort of cult leader…

All in part due to the fact that this unrealistic desired ideal has no true concept of
management nor of how history will, not if but will, repeat itself.

Physics teaches that any void left open will be filled.
It matters not how it is filled, but the fact is that it will be filled none the less.

Saying all of those wonderful pie in the sky happy words…words spoken because the one
speaking believes folks want to hear such…

Yet has anyone informed these kids that if it sounds too good to be true…
99.9% it is not and will not be true.

People are people and each person, like it or not, has free will—
they…meaning you, me, them and us all have the will to do such and to play along…
or…
we have the choice not to do such and not to play along…
the will to actually opt out of this whole cooperation notion of kumbaya living.

Reading a recent article by the freelance writer Lauren DeBellis Appell, I was alarmingly
reminded of how this democracy of ours is really teetering on a precipice.

Ms. Appell writes:
“The 28-year-old candidate acts like she’s the millennial version of Oprah,
except there’s one major distinction.
All the “free” stuff she’s giving away has to be paid for by someone–
and in this case it’s not her.
It’s you–the American taxpayer.”

And that’s the thing…so many young up and coming politicians, along with, sadly,
some of their senior mentor members, are touting some really grandiose ideas.
It’s a marvelously bright new sort of futuristic day waiting for you, me and everyone…
yet the problem is that money does not grow on trees, there is no fairy godmother,
and there are no magic hocus pocus words to zap all of these dreamy thoughts into a living,
functioning reality.

Pretty happy words remain empty when there remains no meat on the bone.
There must be the necessary finances and concrete plans to back up these futuristic
Utopian visions.

Burdens such that cannot be borne on the shoulders of the working middle class.

Hopefulness will always be a must, but reality is always the bottom line of necessity…

It is the requirement needed in order for any society to function successfully…
Idealistic dreamy sorts of ramblings offered by those seeking leadership roles will remain
merely dreamy notions for as long as these hoped-for leaders have no concept as to how
things work, how things are paid for, how monies are raised and secured and how people
are governed.
People will not remain mindless lemmings for long.

History teachers us such.
Thus it is mandatory that these young hopefull wannabes study the history of past nations,
governments and leaderships…

For a pig wearing lipstick is still just a pig.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/08/25/ocasio-cortezs-socialist-fairytale-could-destroy-american-dream.html

Now I urge you, brethren, keep your eye on those who cause dissensions and hindrances
contrary to the teaching which you learned, and turn away from them.
Romans 16:17