Deja vu not intended and this is going to be a long rehab

“We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.”
Marcel Proust

(Percy, on the morning following his having found us when he was thrown from a moving car as a tiny kitten—
his injuries were severe but 8 years later, he’s been loved to both life and health…
yet a remnant and a torn tendon has brought the most traumatic surgery to date)

I thought I’d be all techy and try to put together a post to use yesterday on the evening prior,
via my phone.
I found the little quotes I wanted to use and picked out a picture…
then I hit the button to save the post.

Yesterday morning, I pulled out my phone, went into my drafts and hit publish.
But what was published was not what I had put together but rather as a previous post from a week
or so prior.

Huh?

So I’m just going with the idea of Divine Intervention…meaning
Someone greater than I thought a repeating was in order and repeat we did.

For you see, on Monday, I had taken my Percy over to a surgical vet’s practice north of Atlanta
for a joint fusion to help repair a near unrepairable injury.

I dropped him off and headed to stay the night with the Mayor and the new Sheriff,
who also had to go back to visit the doctor for his ongoing issues.
So needless to say, I didn’t have the proper time to write a decent post, hence the quickie from
my phone…that actually didn’t work.

If we can just get these two little boys on the track to good health, it’ll be a wonder!

Percy’s surgery was successful…
however, it’s not so much the surgery that I now worry about being successful
but rather this business of recouping and rehab time.

12 weeks he’ll need to be confined to a cage!!!
But oddly it seems Percy started out his life in a cage…healing from abuse
when someone threw him out the window of a moving car.
Dante would say there is a certain ring in hell for such folks but I digress.

So yes, deja vu in all sorts of ways.

But now let’s add in an “e” collar or what is known as an Elizabethan collar or more infamously, the cone of shame.
Add a splint as big boxing glove on his back leg and life is now a giant misery for all involved.

How he’s going to manage to get into the litter box is yet to be seen but I somehow don’t see any of this
going well.

He can’t stand on the giant splint.
He can’t eat with the cone.
I remove the cone and hold a bowl up to his mouth.
Spoon feeding didn’t work so well as more fell than hit his mouth.
And drinking water has been a no for now.

He is currently in the foyer just off the den so he can be near us.

He flops and flays, falling into the litter box.
I’ve had to fetch him out of the litter box twice.
But since he’s yet to “use” the litter box, we’re ok.

He gets meds twice a day.
That part is proving the easiest thus far.

We will make the pilgrimage back in two weeks for the sutures to be removed and
hopefully a cone removal and smaller splint…but that is if he doesn’t break his neck
flaying in the meantime, starve to death or make a terrible mess all over himself…

Living with an open wound, exposed bone coupled with the bleeding and oozing while having to
rebandage every other day, oddly is now a bit more appealing to this current slight fortune
of a surgery in order to bring, literally closure to a nearly year-long battle.

The new Sheriff is on doses of maintenance antibiotics to keep any and all UTIs at bay—
a regime that will last for months.
Balancing his digestion and guts throughout all of this will be a delicate balance.
His surgery will be in about 5 more months.

One day for a day…is now the motto of this family!!!!

“Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint
them with oil in the name of the Lord.
And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well;
the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven.”
James 5:14-15

a little update, in pieces…

“But the stars that marked our starting fall away.
We must go deeper into greater pain,
for it is not permitted that we stay.”
Dante Alighieri, Inferno

(a wedding day in 1983)

We’ve been talking recently about prayer…
but I thought we’d take a little break while I continue working on putting something uninformed for
us to use as our “prayer” tool
Heather, Salvageable and IB all added some great words yesterday, so I’ll compile our composite…
and throw something out to us next week.

I did want to offer an update on a few other sundries but first, a little back story as this
will be a two-part post–in part to keep things relatively brief.

You see that grainy picture up above?
Well, that picture is from a very hot late summer’s day back in 1983.

My mom is happily looking on as my godfather, the priest who was to conduct that day’s wedding,
came to the “brides” room, in the basement of the church, where all the girls were getting ready
for that day’s big event…

A 23-year-old me had stayed up late the night prior in order to write a long letter.
A letter of gratitude and love between a goddaughter to her godpoppa…

I had slipped the letter under his office door early that morning, long before the
big day’s event was to unfold.

He had read it and came to find me.

Ours is a long convoluted story of a relationship that began when I was barely 15.

It was a relationship between a father and daughter who were neither to the other…

He had 4 children and I had a father…yet we both knew God had a hand in this
mismatched union of two unlikely individuals—as I was considered a 5th child and he was
a surrogate father…a true God-parent.

It was a relationship that began perhaps as happenstance but was actually Divinely conceived.

I know that God knew I would need a guide…much like Dante with his guide Virgil—
Virgil leading Dante through his journey through hell—while The Dean guided me through my own
tumultuous life….that of adolescents, adoption, and dysfunction.

Something you should know…we were both adopted individuals.

And whereas that may seem coincidental, the relationship was God-given as there is a great
deal buried in the heart of an adopted individual….the Dean had lived that and knew
I was just in the middle of mine.

I needed not only guiding but I needed healing.
A literal laying on of hands with an anointing of oil and serious prayer.

Dean Collins had had his time of living with those holes in his life…and he helped
me to see, soothe and heal my own.

Shortly following my leap into blogdom 6 years ago…
I wrote a post about that very adoption.

I reread the post yesterday and went back in to clean it up a tad as I have hopefully
gotten a bit better at this thing called blogging and perhaps it flows a bit more easily …

It is a post that explains some of my life growing up adopted…with a nod to the story
(a different early post) of my adopted younger brother’s spiral into darkness and our family’s
sad dysfunction from that darkness.
He could never come to terms with having been given up for adoption despite having been
an infant at the time and yes, eventually committed suicide despite my parent’s desperation
to find every sort of help available—- up to granting him an annulment—
the first annuled adoption ever in the state of Georgia.

In the post, I also explain how I reached out to Georgia’s Adoption Reunion Registry
in order to receive nonidentifying information regarding my “case”…

Yet when the papers arrived, I received only a copious amount of bewildering questions.
More painful questions rather than fulfiling answers.

Here is the link to that previous post:

https://cookiecrumbstoliveby.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/who-in-the-heck-is-sylvia-kay-and-what-have-you-done-with-her/

And so now we fast forward to the present day.

DNA.

Something that wasn’t available nearly 10 years ago to the general populace wishing to glean
information regarding ancestry and or unknown medical issues.

And so I took the two tests that are available for the curious.
Ancestry and 23 and Me.

The latter’s results came in this week.

The genealogy is on the money…English / Scotch / Irish….nearly through and through.

The results also provide a list of those individuals in their pool of testers whose DNA
links to your own…
be it parents, siblings, cousins…on down the line…
meaning that there are relatives…relatives either known or unknown…

And here is where we will end Part I of this long and odd individual’s tale…

Oh—
the man in that picture up above, that man with that mischievous
twinkle in his eye…
well, he passed away two years ago and that young girl is now knocking
on the door of 60.

When I went to bed the other night carrying the burden of what
I should or should not do…
wrestling with the idea of initiating a search for my biological parents…
in large part because I want some solid information about my past to
give to my son and now my grandchildren…
I lamented how I wished my godpoppa was here to continue with his guidance…

And so the following morning when I pulled out those now 9-year-old papers
from my initial non-identifying adoption case packet,
out fell a printed copy of a 9-year-old email.
It was a letter written to my Godfather from a biological cousin
he had found when, in his mid 80’s, he discovered while searching for his
biological family.

The letter spoke of his long-deceased mother and the difficult decision she,
as a young unwed woman bore in the 1920s in having to “give” her infant son “away” —
but as to how one day…they would again meet…and she would embrace him with a lifetime of
love that had been stored away in her heart.

Seems my “Virgil” continues guiding me during this roller coaster journey of mine…
out of the Inferno and Purgatorio, as I work my way to the light of Paradiso…
always pointing me back to the place I truly belong–in the arms of
my loving Heavenly father—our Omnipotent Father…Abba

The Inferno

“When it became clear that the death warrant for hundreds of thousands
of Irish babies was about to be signed, it broke my heart.
When I saw the grotesque pictures of people dancing in the streets in
celebration it was like a scene out of Dante’s Inferno.”
David Robertson

(Dante)

Dante degli Alighieri was a 14th century Florentine who is most remembered for the epic
poems he composed into a collection known as The Divine Comedy…Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso…
in other words, Hell, Purgatory and finally Paradise.

The collection of 3 poems are as epic as they are brilliant.
An allegory for what Dante believed were his own dark days and yet sadly for us,
during these trying days of our own, his words are most timely as they remain as a
reflective mirror—reflecting the emptiness of our own darkness.

As noted by a description on Wikipedia,
“it [hell] is the “realm…
of those who have rejected spiritual values by yielding to bestial appetites
or violence, or by perverting their human intellect to fraud or malice
against their fellowmen”.

Our friend the Wee Flea, the Scottish Pastor David Robertson, continues in his most
recent post which piggybacks off of the post he wrote just following the passing of the
referendum in Ireland rescinding the ban on abortion, as a most troubling sign of the times.

David likens much of what we are witnessing coming out of Ireland, in particular
what is coming out of the capital of Dublin, with its now jubilant party-like atmosphere
following the passage of the vote,
as something that could be straight out of the pages of Dante’s Inferno.

David notes that the vote, which is in itself bad enough in its own right, almost pales in
comparison to the near-hysterical celebratory mania that has followed the referendum’s passage…
a frenzied jumbled hoopla that is more than disturbing, it is downright barbaric.

Think about it…
a vote passed with an overwhelmingly large percentage in favor of the right to
terminate pregnancies up to 12 weeks…meaning that a mother can decide to
legally kill her unborn child, and the people are celebrating as if some massive
and oppressive enemy has just been finally and thankfully defeated.

Some sort of David and Goliath moment but so utterly far from such.

Prior to this vote, women in Ireland who wished to terminate their pregnancy
had to travel to Britain.

Yet today, women from around the globe are now proclaiming this latest referendum as
a giant victory in the way of women’s rights.
It’s that whole notion of ‘it’s my body, it’s my choice’ nonsense.

But what of it no longer being just your body involved?
Technically it is no longer the choice of a single individual because there are
actually, two bodies now involved.

And if the truth be told, it is not merely a singular choice or even a choice of two…
but rather it is a choice that truthfully involves three…

Yet oddly we never seem to hear about nor count the male who was involved
and assisted in the occurrence of this now rather ominous choice that is proclaimed as
being a singular choice.

David startingly notes that the whereas the politicians and the media have each
joined in the festivities proclaiming this referendum as a victory for the people…
the collective body of Church families has remained eerily silent.

The Catholic Chruch, silent.
The Anglican Chruch, silent.
The Chruch of Scotland, silent
The Free Chruch, silent.
The Baptist Chruch, silent.

A few clergy members here and there have voiced their sorrow but as far as a collective
Christian body response, the voices remain silent…

My favorite quote by Dante:
“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis,
maintain their neutrality.”

Perhaps the Chruch needs a reminder of the volumes her indifference speaks…

The Irish Referendum – the Repercussions

Matt. 18:1 At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked,
“Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”
He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them.
3 And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children,
you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
4 Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in
the kingdom of heaven. 5 And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.
“If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble,
it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be
drowned in the depths of the sea.

fruits and umbrage

“Whenever anyone has offended me,
I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.”
René Descartes

The Bible, that powerful book, has many effects:
it comforts, counsels, instructs, and brings us into the presence of God.
But trying to erase offense as one of its functions is a fundamentally misguided task.
Frederica Mathewes-Green

The first and most essential means of making peace with those who offend and
persecute us is to pray for them,
according to the commandment of Christ.
–Saint Leo of Optina

(my first fig from my small tree / Julie Cook / 2016)

We are known by our fruits, just as we may know others by theirs…

By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.
Matthew 7:16-20

Meaning…
It is to the goodness and the positive…those good deeds, exploits and actions we do for
which we will be remembered and recognized…

And yet sadly on the opposite side of all of this, many of us are actually recognized by the bad fruits and the negative things that we do.

As we are more likely to remember one bad offense while forgetting the 99 good—

All of which is human nature I suppose…

And as I have stood watching all of this election business of ours..
the good, the bad and the very ugly…
Just as I have watched this racial unrest or ours,
This polarization of ours,
This ever deepening and widening chasm of ours…
splitting this Nation of ours in half…
All with both amusement and alarm,
sorrow and bewilderment,
disdain and even wonder…
I am left to ponder as to the fruits that we are to recognize in our fellow man / woman
That of which we shall see and be drawn to and remember….

I’ve never seen anything like all of this growing spectacle of ours.
This debacle of democracy.
It’s grown into something so laughable and so ridiculous,
that I want to stop everything and just ask one simple question…
can we simply start all over??

As we are about to have to decide between the two people who are currently
seeking the highest office in our Nation…

One has proven herself to be a liar who…
has spent a lifetime covering up so very much…
conveniently forgotting so much…
all the while…
living with spilt blood on her hands…

The other one lacks tact, decorum, civility and often decency of thought and word…
all the while forgetting to shut his mouth lest he shoves both feet in for a snack.

And yet I am being chided into voting for the woman of this pair for the mere reason that I too am a woman…

As when Madeleine Albright so ridiculously and even threateningly stated that “there is a special place in hell for women who will not for vote for a woman…”
It was shades of Dante’s Inferno…
however her motives were not nearly as pure or just as our dear Dante…

Is that not just another way of saying vote white because you’re white,
vote male because you’re male,
vote black because you’re black,
vote latino because you’re latino….

As ludicrous as that all is–that is exactly how many out there are coaching fellow
voters to in turn vote….

And yes, I have taken grave umbrage with such…

Why?

Because I am a woman and I can vote…
that is in itself the very reason why I can vote for someone other than a woman…

And at this rate, Charlie Brown is looking pretty darn good….

We’ve definitely got a mess on our hands and there is, I’m fairly certain,
neither divide nor doubt about that from either party or side.

So here’s the thing…
We can either honor God and His covenant to us, His children.
We can either honor the Nation of Israel, the land of God’s chosen inheritance
We can either turn back around from our wicked, yes wicked, ways…

or…

We can continue down our path of destruction…

So what are we to do?
Who are we to vote for….????

We pray……..

The Spirit of the Lord speaks by me;
his word is on my tongue.
The God of Israel has spoken;
the Rock of Israel has said to me:
When one rules justly over men,
ruling in the fear of God,
he dawns on them like the morning light,
like the sun shining forth on a cloudless morning,
like rain that makes grass to sprout from the earth.
“For does not my house stand so with God?
For he has made with me an everlasting covenant,
ordered in all things and secure.
For will he not cause to prosper
all my help and my desire?
2 Samuel 23: 1-5

fall of the legends

Some people hear their own inner voices with great clearness and they live by what they hear. Such people become crazy, or they become legends.
One Stab–Legends of the Fall

“History has its truth, and so has legend. Legendary truth is of another nature than historical truth. Legendary truth is invention whose result is reality. Furthermore, history and legend have the same goal; to depict eternal man beneath momentary man.”
― Victor Hugo

( Schönbrunn Palace Gardens / Vienna, Austria / Julie Cook 2012)

Each day, another individual who lives in our limelight, bites the dust. . .

A well known major network news anchor embellishes his in-field reporting (aka tells lies).

Another older well known and long married nationally syndicated news story reporter has been carrying on a tawdry and torrid, and now very public, affair with a much younger married woman.

A revered married and highly decorated Army General is accused of disclosing highly classified information to his biographer who also happened to be his key love interest.

Another news anchor fails to disclose his political contributions to a high profile presidential candidate which now clouds his “non biased” honest reporting.

A beloved actor and comedian is suddenly accused of a litany of sexual assaults spanning the past 30 years.

The hottest new NFL quarterback hopeful, who was living the life of the fast and furious, has spent the past 6 months of the off season cleaning up in re-hab.

Many an up and coming national political figure has been discovered to be leading a dubious double life—

Plug in any name from any state or any county and it would all sadly fit. . .

It seems that each and every day we read, we hear, we watch as another national and / or local “famous” figure falls quickly from grace.

And it’s not always a famous individual. . .

Atlanta is coming off of an unprecedented, and very nationally embarrassing, public trial of a myriad of its city school system educators who cheated on their students National Standardized tests.
Teachers going to jail for cheating.
The very people who stress to their students the importance of honesty.

It’s pretty obvious that we are living in a world that is less than keen on taking the high road.
Perhaps we’ve become a low road kind of people.
As in low is easy, cheesy and sleazy.

Morality seems to have hit the road long ago. . .moving on without leaving a forwarding address.
The current mindset is simply one of no remorse— but rather remorse comes only with being caught at whatever it was one was simply caught doing.

Mea culpas have become so common place that we have come to expect contrition as opposed to valor.

It sure seems as if man is a flawed and fractured creature.

One would think that we are a most hopeless lot.
That we are in such sorry shape that God has washed His hands of us and simply moved on. . .
And that would pretty much sum up what we deserve.
We’ve made our beds and are now destined to lie them.
Dante painted the picture rather vividly in 1337 with his 9 rings of hell. . .
Hell in a hand basket with no looking back.

And yet. . .

Within the dark days of our fallen ways, there remains a single ray of hope. . .

Grace.

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Ephesians 2:1-10

You see a dead tree, I see something beautiful

Nature is the art of God.
Dante Alghieri

We were out and about over the weekend wandering through some woods when a decaying tree, which had obviously fallen quite some time ago, caught my eye. There was something about this single tree mass that drew my attention. I think it was the “alienesque” feathery white appearance…”what is that” I mused. Daring to leave the relative safety of the worn and rocky path, I ventured into the overgrowth with its wealth of ticks, spiders and poisonous snakes. Taking my chances… I tiptoed oh so carefully over to the tree.

The creamy white fungus, known as a shelf fungus, covered the tree like a sheath. It was a visual wonder of texture, shape and pattern. It made me want to reach out to run my hand over it, but I restrained myself as I was not so inclined to be bitten or stung by anything around, in or on the tree. This fungus looked almost like crashing waves washing over the body of the tree.

I realize that this “living” fungus (aka of the mushroom clan) is now enjoying its home on this dead tree, as the dead tree has provided a temporary respite for another “living”… and I use the term loosely… thing. It was all rather otherworldly, creating a light airy feel for something that once was heavily grounded. So odd how nature works and yet how perfect.

On this new day to a new week, remember to be on the look out for the wonders of nature. Make time this week to wander out of doors if at all possible. Do not be afraid to venture off that trusty worn path going boldly, but carefully, into the overgrowth seeking the beautiful nuances of God’s most talented hand. Who knows what blessing abound that are most often passed by without any notice. Dante is right you know…nature is indeed the work of a Masterful Artist.

A life is suddenly taken– will there be redemption?

“In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost.”
Dante Alighieri

I think many times in life, even when it seems we have a plan, we have a direction, we have a “life”, we can still find ourselves feeling, well, a bit “lost” as it were. Spinning our wheels somewhat aimlessly, spiraling as if out of control, going nowhere and going there fast.

Oddly enough when I think of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, the body of work which gives us today’s quote, I think of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Two very different stories written during two very different time periods, written in two very different countries, in two very different languages and yet they are two stories intertwined, unbeknownst to each author, about the adventure of life which desperately needs a reality check—a reminder of what life has been and if things don’t change, what life could be, unless there is a drastic about face, a turing around with a change of heart.

Dickens’ focus is more on a life lived simply for self and for greed with little to no regard for those less fortunate— or in Scrooge’s case, a regard for no one, not even particularly himself, other than the dispassionate making of money at all costs.

Dante’s tale is also a story about life—or rather lives lived wantonly with little to no regard to the fate of living such morally devoid lives—complete with a vivid and sober reminder of the results of living with such “sinfulness” and of how that leads to the spiraling, and apparently hopeless, journey into the results of that “sinfulness”……..

Each story has a guide leading our characters on their journey of discovery. Each guide eventually leaves our characters on their own. The hope is that each character, having seen the ugly reality of such lost living, has time to bring about change, positive change.

In Dante’s case the change is actually left up to the viewer—live a life like these folks and you’re stuck in a ring of hell–it’s all just a matter of which ring. In Scrooge’s case it’s a matter of change so you don’t wind up like Jacob Marley with the weight of your sins hung on your neck for all of eternity.

And I suppose it helps if you believe in an afterlife– otherwise I suppose the consequences of your life’s action would be simply nil. And yet— believing in an afterlife or not, believing in a heaven or hell or not, there is always the effect your actions have with those of which you share this planet.

This past week a tragedy happened in our county. It actually took place in a neighboring city of ours.

My husband is in a business where he has several competitors in our town, as well as in the neighboring towns. These businesses, whereas they do compete against one another, there remains a mutual respect and cohesiveness amongst all the businesses. This week, on Wednesday, during the middle of the day, 4 men entered a competing business, in a neighboring community, with hammers in order to “smash and grab”—a brazen type of robbery during the midst of a busy work day.

But rather than just smashing and grabbing—stealing and leaving—something went even more terribly wrong. The store owner was shot and killed.

He leaves behind a wife and two sons. He went to work that morning and in a terrible span of 15 seconds, that’s how long these men were in his business, his life was cut short and he wasn’t going home to his family that evening.

This sort of crime, even though our county is but an hour away from a major metropolitan city, is unheard of here. Our communities are such where people grow up together, go to school together, raise families together, go to friday night high school football games together in order to compete against one another, attend church together, shop together, simply live together — but violent crimes such as this….no, certainly not here. Not when you can drive 3 minutes out of our communities and find cows grazing in their fields, children riding their bikes, fruit markets set up selling the latest harvest…………

As word spread of this heinous act Wednesday afternoon, my husband’s phone wouldn’t stop ringing. Customers streamed into his store wanting to just “hug his neck”—-people were suddenly and sadly struck by the fragility of life.

The police apprehend one of the “men” who was left behind by his fleeing accomplices—he was the 16 year old gunman. Yesterday another man was apprehended many many miles from our community. These men were not from here but from the major metropolitan city. Last night, on the nightly news, one of the apprehended men was being lead into a courtroom for a bond hearing where he proceeded to repeatedly shoot the news cameras “a bird”——a life is taken for nothing and he shoots a bird to the news crew……I just don’t understand.

Fear has now gripped our county, our neighbors, our business owners. I now look at my husband each morning and I wonder if he will come back home in the evening—or not.

My faith is such that I do believe in prayer, I do believe in hope and I must believe in forgiveness.

Did these men think about taking a life and of the ramifications of such? I doubt it. Do they now think of the consequences of their actions? I don’t think their thoughts are as mine would be—-I don’t even know if they care—maybe the remaining two “on the run” only care about not getting caught, maybe they all just care about being stuck in a jail–going through a trail, maybe facing the death penalty—do they think about that? Do they think about God and what may happen if there is no redemption on their part????? Do they think of this man whose life they stole?
Of his now bereft family? I doubt it.

These sorts of actions by a few make life forever different for many others.

I do believe in God and I do believe in Hope—-the flip side to not believing is pretty grim.

May we all stop and ponder the course our actions and of the effect they have on those in which we share this planet and may our thoughts now also be with one very sad family and community—as this is not an isolated event—this sort of thing is playing out all over this country of ours—violence serves no purpose, I wonder when we will ever figure that out……..will there ever be redemption in the hearts of these men???????…………