we didn’t start the fire

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it
Billy Joel

(image courtesy ABC News / Santa Clarita fire of 2016)

I agree we didn’t start the fire,
but…..
I’m not so certain that I agree with Billy Joel that we’ve really tried to fight it.

I see the current images of protesters, marchers, demonstrators…
full of contempt and vile discord.
I see the looting, the vandalism, the cars overturned,
the broken glass, the fires started…
once again, in the name of cause.

I hear the rhetoric of anti this and anti that…
the blaming, the finger pointing,the divisive dismissal of one human to another…

Maybe your mindset is that none of this is your fault.
You didn’t cause any of this to happen.
For better of worse you and me, we’ve merely inherited this mess….
right?

As each generation bemoans the generation before it while present generations
opine about the future…

Rather than igniting new fires, fueling fires or fanning fires…
all of which this country has gotten really good at doing,
perhaps it would behoove all of us to simply start extinguishing the fires…..

The one who sins is the one who will die.
The child will not share the guilt of the parent,
nor will the parent share the guilt of the child.
The righteousness of the righteous will be credited to them,
and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against them.
Ezekiel 18:20

grits and magnolias

“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces,
I would still plant my apple tree.”
Martin Luther

“Dripping water hollows out stone,
not through force but through persistence.”
Ovid

(a bloom from the magnolia tree my grandmother and mother planted when I was a little girl/
Julie Cook / 2016)

Driving home late this afternoon from Dad’s I passed a car that was sporting a bumper sticker.
I enjoy reading most of the stickers that either I pass or those that pass me…
stickers which are stuck on the various vehicles throughout my commute…
Some of them are cute and clever,
some are benign and boring and some are flat out truthful and or offensive.

One in particular caught my eye as I barreled out of Atlanta late today.

“GRITS”

I for one am not a huge grits enthusiast…
although my Dad has always loved his grits each morning as a part of his breakfast regimen.
If the truth be told, I actually prefer the more northern fare of home fries rather than the
southern ground corn with my eggs and bacon…
I also love some good hash browns…not smothered or covered mind you—just a little salt is good.
Grits are just so so….despite being doctored up with salt and butter…I still prefer potatoes.

I do however love a nice cheese grits casserole or a hearty bowl of polenta with fresh parmesan cheese grated on top…but as far as breakfast, I happily forgo the grits.

Dad actually use to question my being a true Southerner as due in part to my less then
enthusiastic desire of grits with breakfast…
loving watermelon however did help me save face as well as my heritage…

So back to today’s bumper sticker…
GRITS is short for
Girls Raised In The South….

I like it….
as in there’s a little grit in that craw sort of thing going on.
As true southern girls are not all lace and petticoats contrary to popular belief.
I think more of Scarlet O’Hara’s raised fist stating that she will never go hungry again
sort of tenacity verses that demure “well shut my mouth fiddle dee dee”
cloyingly sweet honey dripping sentiment.

For Southern girls are fierce and tenacious….
much like my beloved Georgia Bulldogs—
cute and sweet to look at, even appearing a bit lackadaisical or slow,
yet mean and fierce, just like a junk yard dog when necessary.

Which brings me to magnolias.
Another true southern staple…
but in my case, I’m thinking more like a Steel Magnolia…

A magnolia bloom is a quintessential fragrant flower of the deep south.
Lilly white when unfurled to its full glory…and full of heady aroma…
Yet a magnolia tree is no demure little tree.
Supposedly they are trees that are older than bees.
How that all works, I’m not sure, but after looking at some of trees whose roots
have grown upwards out of the ground as in the trees are now sporting “knees”…
…I have also known a few of these trees that are well past the 150 year mark…
Well, I suppose I liken them to cockroaches….
in that they would most likely survive a nuclear event and simply keep on keeping on….

I say all of this as I’ve been reading recently a lot about the continuing business
of all things feminist…female militancy at its worst, raising its ugly head….
As in the latest being some boycott and march, yes another drole protest…as in how novel,
is to take place Wednesday….

Haven’t we marched and protested a bit much as of late…??
surpassing our quota for say…maybe the next 10 decades?!

Feminism.
Despite being of the female persuasion I’ve never cared for “feminism.”
The Gloria Steinem, bra burning, Hellen Reddy I Am Woman Hear Me Roar,
contraceptive swallowing, in your face militant feminism.

And whereas much of that may sound of a former time,
today’s feminists are not much different in their militant banter, male emasculating,
in your face nastiness, band of hidden agenda sisterhood, sign waving, fist raised,
unappealing anger group of gals.

I have grown weary hearing women chant that most males are misogynists.
Just as I am tired of hearing about gender choices, vagina hats, abortion rights,
reproductive issues, inequality…
yada, yada, yada…

If memory serves, there is but One who ordained gender, ordained equality
ordained roles, ordained all of life but I digress….

I grew up when good ol boy networks were very much alive and well.
I grew up in the work force where I was sexually harassed over and over long
before it was a popular catch phrase.
I endured and persevered…because here in the South, that’s what we all do…
male or female…
we persevere.
We don’t whine and most often, we don’t complain, not publicly anyway.
Yet we have been known to get a bit even when necessary….

For we Southerners have a determination and a steeliness that gets us through much of what
life throws at us.

Black or white, red or yellow…we preserve.
As we’ve often had to make do with less while equally sharing any of our abundance.

And respect has always been a big part of being raised in the South.

Many folks have always equated the South with being backwards, backwoods, ignorant and redneck.
Think Deliverance, while hearing dueling banjos, and that’s what other’s have mostly
thought of us.

Our speech pattern may be a bit drawn out but that certainly doesn’t mean that our brains,
nor are our hearts, are anything but quick and large….

I am proud of being a woman, and a southern woman at that,
because it means that I have a strength that many men do not.
No matter our point of origin, the strength of a woman is found in the heart of a fiercely
protective mother, yet one who knows that letting go is simply part of life.
Think Mary….

I am proud of being a woman who can appear perhaps a bit simple, unassumingly sweet
but who can be complicated, deeply profound and hell on wheels when necessary.
Think Mother Teresa

A woman who loves and appreciates men—men who are masculine…
and whose mothers imparted upon them a sense of decency and compassion.
Because I know real men can and do cry.
Just as I know real men can stand alongside a woman while defending their nation…
all the while never blinking an eye…
Think Joan of Arc

I like what it means to be a woman—
to be nurturing while strong, sentimental while determined,
and tender while tenacious….
Think Clare of Assisi

This isn’t intended to be a complicated or political discourse on women’s rights,
gender equality, or the importance of the solidarity of women….
for I have neither time nor strength for that never-ending debate…

This is merely the observation of women by a woman…a southern woman.

A woman who has more in life to worry over than protesting and marching.
A woman who has been busy being a wife, mother, daughter and caretaker.
A woman who was so busy working that she never selfishly thought that
demonstrating or picketing was ever a priority during the forging, caring,
teaching and living of life.

No….there is no real place for the militancy of feminism when a woman
is busy living her life…as she cares and works for all those around her…
it’s what real women do—
fiercely and tenaciously caring, raising, nurturing, honoring and protecting…

Here’s to real women everywhere…those too busy to protest and march….
Those women who are strong of body, spirit and soul…
those who understand the true importance of what God has entrusted upon
them….
that of living a life of a woman…..

No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind.
And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.
But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.
1 Corinthians 10:13

in all of our tears… there rests the Divine

“A sense of the divine presence and indwelling bears the soul towards heaven
as upon the wings of eagles.”
Charles Haddon Spurgeon

(ornamental cabbage / Julie Cook / 2017)

Obviously I am tired.
Not in a working-out sort of tired.
Not in the end of a really long day or week sort of tired.
Not in the sleep deprivation sort of tired.

I’m just weary.
And I am very tired.
And I am overwhelmed.

For such is the season of my life

And such is the life of a person who is caring for aging parents…
where one of the two is in the process of dying from cancer.

The daily commuting to and fro is hard.
The coordinating of the care, the medical issues, the groceries, the house…
that is all hard.
The lack of time for one’s own world and home is hard…

Life?
Who has one?

Friends?
What are those?

Clean house?
hahahahahaha……

Yet it is to the waiting and watching for the inevitable…
that is the hardest.
It is also the saddest.

For ever since mother died 30 years ago, it’s been pretty much, for good or bad,
just me and dad.
I took over the roll of parenting him when both mother and my grandmother died just
months apart.
I had just turned 26 at the time.
And despite his remarrying when he was almost 70, it’s really just been me and him.

Watching the body slowly failing and falling apart…
The moans and groans of pain…
The halting morphine induced thoughts and speech…
The sounds, sights, smells…
nothing good.
Especially when I’ve already done the same thing 30 years prior.

Add to that the now spouse…the one who suffers with the ever increasing dementia…
the one who has nary a clue as to who any of us are…
it makes things either really really comical or really really sad…
…and my money is on the comical.

Oh but I don’t want to waste our time here today bemoaning my life.
You really don’t want to hear about it anyway.
No one really likes a complainer…

Yet maybe we ought to try telling that to all those nutters out there who are currently
spending their time shouting, marching, demonstrating and protesting…
I bet they’re tired…
tired of fussing…
just as much as the rest of us are tired of hearing
and seeing it all…
but I digress….

I can’t even find respite in my sleep…
for in my sleep are the dreams of a mind that is over burdened.

In last night’s dream there was this scene of my mother’s funeral where my husband
decided to wear a Hawaiian shirt rather than a suit, rendering me mortified.

The reality is that my mom’s funeral was over 30 years ago and my husband doesn’t own
nor would he ever wear a Hawaiian shirt.

Or how about the other night when my husband had to shake me awake in order to get me to stop
“screaming” in my sleep…
all because I was dreaming that I had walked into the house that use to be our house years ago
and there were strange people, squatters, trying to take over the house…
I was screaming at them to get out.
A disconcerting moment at 3 AM when one’s spouse is sound asleep.

The reality was that I had flipped through the television and caught a bit of that alligator
Swamp People show…there had been a devastating flood in southern Louisiana last
year and one of the regulars on the show had to leave his home because it had flooded.
The episode showed him coming back to the house after the flood waters had receded…
leaving behind a house full of huge bullfrogs and a giant snapping turtle.

Or how about the other night when I was dreaming that I was trying to take my son,
who in the dream was a toddler but in real life is almost 30,
in order to seek safety because the planet was under attack by evil aliens…
space aliens, not the illegal variety…
and we were racing in a car, desperately trying to find safety as we were having to hit,
running over, the evil invaders in order to get away….

The reality was that I had flipped through, once again, the channels catching a brief
snippet of the movie Fury on the History Channel—
it was right when the Sherman tank, commandeered by Brad Pitt’s character,
went rolling over the heads and bodies of Germans in their fox holes, naturally crushing them…
I think that’s when I flipped it as I wasn’t up to the horrors of war that evening…
only to have them come flooding back oddly in a dream…sigh….

So not even in sleep is there a safe haven these days.

Yet…however…
no matter how bad things may be right now…
No matter how sad,
how heavy,
how hard…

I know I do not go this alone…
Despite often feeling very much alone.

I can’t make dad better, I can’t even make him feel better right now.
As this is now all pretty much out of my hands…

Yet I know that neither Dad nor I are alone in this.
Despite the naysayers cries, those non-believers who scoff
at the purported “fairytale” which is to be found at the center of all of this…
There is a Hand moving much deeper in all of this…

For this particular moment in time is but fleeting…
despite the seemingly never ending and endless melancholy
merry go round we now ride…
For there are blessings, there is Grace…
and there is the Divine…
the very hand of God…

“Rejoice in the Lord,’ said St Paul (Phil. 3 : 1).
And he was right to say, ‘in the Lord’.
For if our joy is not in the Lord, not only do we not rejoice,
but in all probability we never shall. Job, as he described the life of men,
found it full of every kind of affliction (cf. Job 7 : 1-21),
and so also did St Basil the Great.
St Gregory of Nyssa said that birds and other animals rejoice because
of their lack of awareness, while man, being endowed with intelligence,
is never happy because of his grief.
For, he says, we have not been found worthy even to have knowledge of the blessings
we have lost. For this reason nature teaches us rather to grieve,
since life is full of pain and effort, like a state of exile dominated by sin.
But if a person is constantly mindful of God, he will rejoice: as the psalmist says,
‘I remembered God, and I rejoiced’ (Ps. 77 : 3. LXX).
For when the intellect is gladdened by the remembrance of God,
then it forgets the afflictions of this world, places its hope in Him,
and is no longer troubled or anxious.
Freedom from anxiety makes it rejoice and give thanks;
and the grateful offering of thanks augments the gift of grace it has received.
And as the blessings increase, so does the thankfulness,
and so does the pure prayer offered with tears of joy.”

St. Peter of Damascus

the direction of bricks and mortar

Yet, taught by time, my heart has learned to glow for other’s good,
and melt at other’s woe.
Homer

(Julie Cook / 2015)

Currently feeling most grieved over the latest madness sweeping across this
great nation of ours…
what with the divisiveness and hateful discourse bombarding our daily lives…
Of the recent marches and demonstrations…
with now high school kids adding to the mix…

My thoughts shift to relationships…
meaningful and significant relationships…
To those components of mortar and to the building blocks…
to all that builds and creates a base
a community…

to those footings…
to the foundations…
and to the resulting communions we build…

Thoughts shift to those who have crossed my own life…
to those who imprinted and imparted upon me…
a betterment,
a lastingness,
an endurance..

where would I be without such…

Today I ran across a post I’d written 2 years ago…
oddly it was just sitting out there on the internet…
under a particular search word…

It seemed rather timely so I decided to borrow a portion it for today’s post…
because it recounts the importance of a life that helped to form my own life.

For I now see that our youth currently need individuals in their lives who are strong…
those who don’t mind taking time…
those who aren’t afraid of taking a risk …
Those who want to help…
to mould,
to shape,
and to guide.

For our kids need to hear the words “don’t” and “no”…
as well as “good” and “job well done”
they need to be loved and nurtured…
not ignored or simply turned out…
they need to be disciplined and held accountable
not left unbridled or excused…
they need to be given directions…
but not carried…

Because they will seek out those individuals…
that communion and community..

the concern will be to whom and to what….

excerpt–original date Jan 12, 2015…

Being able to express myself was always important.
I most often found that freedom in the process of simply writing.
First, as a young girl, in the form of a journal / diary,
then as I grew older,
it came through the writing of letters.

It was in the writing of letters where I allowed myself to fully express my thoughts.
It was the one place my often frustrated brain could and would be allowed to soar.

In the days before computers, emails and word documents…
I loved buying and sending cards.
I would spend hours writing letters–
especially the letters I’d write that bordered more along the lines of epistles,
those lengthy and meaty tome like lettes to my godfather–a long retired Episcopal priest.
He passed away late December at the age 94.
I have often referenced him and his influence in my life in many a previous post.

The letters were often written with a myriad of misspelled words,
despite the large dictionary by my side.
There were gaping gaps in the written thought… as I would think much faster than I wrote.
The letters were laced with outrageous sentence structure,
which in turn would make any english teacher cringe,…
yet they were letters written with passion, honesty and humility.
And despite the holes, the poor sentence structure or the youthful angst,
my godfather would receive each letter expectantly, happily, and lovingly…
all without a judgement of content or the editing of grammatical structure–
this from a man who made a living writing and speaking.

Our correspondence began when I was around the age of 15.
My early letters were laced with the pangs of innocence and adolescence.
Yet as I aged and matured those letters became more complex,
even troubling, as I fought my way, often with fraught emotion,
through the often tangled jungle of life.
I wrestled with my faith and beliefs.
Life was not always easy nor kind.
There were obstacles, illnesses, deaths, disappointments, poor choices, grave mistakes,
coupled with a few triumphs, glimpses of joy and moments of contentment.

Always with love and often, no doubt, with great frustration,
he would offer words of either encouragement or warning,
lessons or simply the “if I were you”…
yet his words were always laced with love.
It was here, within the correspondence of a young girl, now grown woman,
where I learned about unconditional love.

I never filtered my words or emotions yet perhaps today, looking back,
I see that it would have behooved me to have used a bit more restraint—
yet he never faltered or expressed disappointment.
My Godpoppa, the busy world at large Anglican leader,
would never specifically tell me what to do,
despite my often desperate queries.

He would never say “yes” or “no” but rather he’d offer wisdom woven with advice all of
which he hoped would allow me to eventually find my own way.
He was a signpost of guidance,
of the miles thus traveled and of miles yet to be traveled.

And so as I currently find myself surveying a sea of rising national angst..
My thoughts now wander to those meaningful and significant relationships that we form…
those unique and timely bonds offered by the mentors and the role models amongst us…

To what direction are they now pointing…
To what sort of guidance do they long to impart…
To what sort of mortar and foundation do they wish to use…
and does anybody really still care…

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord,
not for human masters…
Colossians 3:23

(The Very Reverend David Browning Collins 1922-2016)

read between the lines

It is hardly surprising that children should enthusiastically start their education at
an early age with the Absolute Knowledge of computer science;
while they are unable to read, for reading demands making judgments at every line.
Conversation is almost dead, and soon so too will be those who knew how to speak.”
Guy deBord

Chances are if you’ve ever received a text from me or even an email or…
ashamedly I confess, if you’ve ever read a post of mine…
you’ve most likely had to read between the lines….

Because between auto-correct, misinformed spell check and a life long issue with a bit of
dyslexia…what you see is often not what you’re meant to get…
Certainly not always what was intended…

However because you know me, or you understand the gist, or you are great at deciphering,
you understand what I’m saying without missing a beat….

Most of us are good like that.

I am heartened by the fact that I have a dear friend who has a automated tag line
on her phone’s messages that reads
“sorry if my iphone decided to spell words entirely on its own!”

What a relief knowing that someone out there understands me and knows
I’m not a complete moron!!!

Yet how good are we at reading between the lines of the times in which we currently
find ourselves living???

Yesterday evening I caught a bit of the news, coming in on a story about a staged walkout
in NYC among the city’s high school kids, with many of the kids appearing to be
Jr High age as well.

It seems that this protest was sent out over social media.
Not having seen the Facebook posts or tweets, I don’t know the gist of the alert but
it seems as if hundreds of kids headed the call at a particular time
to defiantly get up from class, file out of school,
filling and clogging the streets, carrying posters while laughing and chanting.

It seem the walkout was staged to protest President Trump’s travel ban.

A reporter was in the mix, stopping kids, asking them various questions.

Reporter: “What classes are you currently skipping?”

Student: “Calculus”

Reporter: “What happens if the teacher fails you for missing class or for missing a test?”

Student: “F*%k the A@$ hole”

I don’t know…
I taught high school for 31 years…

phrases like “F*%k the A@$ hole” …if I read between the lines, tells me that
this young person has really no clue as to what they’re doing or why they protesting..
they simply skipped Calculus, that’s all….
Plus….

If one of my kids had told a reporter such flippant garbage about me and my class,
well let’s just say the next day’s conversation would have been a bit one-sided…
with me being on the one side…

All the while reminding this young person about what it means to be an example,
how to carry of oneself in public,
self respect, along with a bit of a history lesson involved….
add to that, that I had never given this student any reason to speak about such
in said manner to a reporter,….
I would allow maybe a 10 second rebuttal before making a phone call home….

No reading between the lines on that…pretty frank, pretty clear.

Yet I wonder what the parent(s) would say….

Would the parent(s) defend their 16 year old’s “right” to walk out of a public school?
(public meaning the education is relatively free)
Would they be troubled about their child missing class, using profanity on national
television while addressing an adult…???
What about their child appearing as more hooligan than one who is educated,
well versed and mature ….

Maybe if they were attending a private school, where the parent was having to shell out
upwards of 20 grand a year, walking out might come with an entirely different reaction….

Would they puff up with bravado while supporting a child’s right to cut class and curse while
publicly disrespecting the President of the United States in a crude and crass manner?

Hummmm…

But then we’d get into that whole business about our youth and their self esteem issues
and God forbid that we should dare hold them responsible or accountable for their actions,
good or bad, with resulting repercussions for the bad…

Hence that whole “F#%$ the A$# hole teacher who’d fail me” mentality…

The student was holding a homemade sign.
The reporter asked about the sign.

It read “Punch Nazis”

The reporter reminded the student that she had just told him that she was nonviolent
yet is holding a sign about punching Nazis…

Reporter: “I thought you just said you were nonviolent”

Student: “Oh, uh, I’m against gun violence”

The reporter went on, continuing his off the cuff random interviews of about a dozen or so of
the hundreds of kids, with nary a one of the students interviewed being able to name the
7 countries on the travel ban.

When asked what was wrong with strong vetting of folks wanting come into this country from
known Terrorist nations one student quipped back that “we live in a Terrorist Nation…”

Sigh….

This walkout was just an apparent adolescent attempt to jump on
the currently very sad national bandwagon…

But who can blame them.

Didn’t it look absolutely thrilling when masked salaried anarchists were hurling bricks and
using hammers to smash the plate-glass windows belonging to banks and store fronts along
the streets of Washington D.C. all because an elected president was being sworn in?

And didn’t it look invigorating to see hundreds of women marching en masse while shouting
vulgar slurs while wearing “vagina” hats demanding their rights to abort babies while
cursing the reigning Nazis….

And so we wonder why kids now want in on the act…

So it might behoove us to get better at reading between the lines because the signs of the times
ain’t looking so hot….

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty.
For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive,
disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable,
slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous,
reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,
having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.
Avoid such people.
2 Timothy 3:1-5

the frenzieness of our times

“Not Bolshevism, which Stalin liquidated along with all the old Bolsheviks;
not Nazism, which perished along with Hitler in his Berlin bunker; not Fascism,
which was left hanging upside down, along with Mussolini and his mistress,
from a lamp-post—none of these, history will record,
was responsible for bringing down the darkness on our civilization, but liberalism.
A solvent rather than a precipitate, a sedative rather than a stimulant,
a slough rather than a precipice, blurring the edges of truth,
the definition of virtue, the shape of beauty; a cracked bell, a mist,
a death wish.”
Malcolm Muggeridge, The Great Liberal Death Wish

(Philip Dick’s 1962 Alternate History Novel)

According to Merriam-Webster the word Frenzy is defined as:

a: a temporary madness– a rage amounting to a frenzy
b: a violent mental or emotional agitation
2: intense usually wild and often disorderly compulsive or agitated activity

And according to Online Entomology Dictionary the word Frenzy first originated:
mid-14c.—delirium, insanity; from Old French frenesie; frenzy, madness (13c.),
from Medieval Latin phrenesia, from phrenesis, back-formation from Latin phreneticus
Meaning—excited state of mind; is from c. 1400

I always think it good form to know where such words come from when one currently
finds oneself living in the midst of said particular word.

As it seems… this current frenzied state, of which many Americans along with
their similarly bonded global brothers and sisters in arms,
is just about to tip us all as a human race over
the edge and down into the deep dark recesses of the bottomless nothingness of a
no return black hole.

I am still trying to make sense of what’s just taken place over the past couple of weeks…

From young children being interviewed in the streets after starting fires,
aiding and abetting anarchy over the election and subsequent inauguration of a president
of these United States while gleefully boasting to a reporter “screw the president”…

to women donning such apparel as “vagina” hats, and other vulgar attire, while carrying
Russian protest signs…

to “news” sources and agencies fraudulently and knowingly peddling false and unsubstantiated
stories as Gospel truth…

to Civil Rights legends confusing the fight for civil rights with the democratic process…

to infamous entertainers proclaiming, on a global platform, that they will burn down the
White House…

to confused actresses pulling out their best theatrical performances while channeling
their best Scarlett O’Hara impression in a sweeping diatribe about comparing
the United States of America’s president to Adolph Hitler….

hummmm…..

And it is to the latter that my thoughts remain.

What, if any, of the aforementioned lunacy is to be considered…
right,
prudent
or acceptable behavior…
is beyond my soul…

And it is to this troubling rhetoric,
rhetoric that I have heard over and over again in recent weeks,
this comparison to Hitler and the asinine notion that there is a rise of Nazism in America,
that has brought me to the point where I must not remain silent any longer.

One of the myriad inauguration protest march organizers, on the night of the
inauguration when interviewed,
told the interviewing reporter that at one of the balls taking place
she had seen the raised arms of Nazis hailing the new Führer.

Deadpan to the sardonic “Really??!!”

The rational part of me almost fell out of my chair when watching this woman being interviewed.

Yet it was also the rational part of myself that wanted to inform this young woman
that she had no idea as to what she was so ignorantly spewing out of her mouth to
this hungry for a story reporter…

As I am now left shaking my head over the constant cries of Nazis and
Hitler-like wannabes taking over America.
Shades of a War of the Worlds moment

In 1962 author Philip Dick wrote an alternativesque history novel based
on the notion of the what if scenario of Hitler and Nazi Germany actually
having been the victors of the war,
along with Japan,
as the United States and the Allied Forces were all defeated.

A fanciful story dipping deeply into an epitome of the ‘what ifs’…
had a world war turned out tragically and frighteningly differently.

Amazon Studios has in the last year or so turned this novel into a made for TV drama series.

I’m not keen on those ‘what if’ scenarios—
For the actual war and the reality of all that was and what happened to millions of people
over the course of the war…was horrific enough without having to reinvent it into a
made for TV melodrama…
Living, being maimed, tortured, raped, starved, tormented and dying was catastrophic
reality enough,
the metamorphosis into a current bizarre drama is far from warranted or even necessary
in my humble opinion.

And thus having many ill-informed, or more correctly, ignorant individuals daring to
make any correlation between Hitler,
along with his mad Nazi machine, and that of the democratic process
of this Republic nation is not only shameful but borders on the gravely and
recklessly irresponsible and is simply put, moralistically wrong.

Not to mention that it lessens and cheapens the true horrors that millions
of innocent individuals suffered.

Enough with the empty clamoring of stupidity, ignorance and deranged fanciful irrationalities…

Therefore rage not thou futile mortal man…
beating thy head against the empty idols
of your makings….

This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun:
The same destiny overtakes all. The hearts of people, moreover,
are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live,
and afterward they join the dead.
Ecclesiastes 9:3

Be not dismayed

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous!
Do not be terrified or dismayed (intimidated),
for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”
Joshua 1:9

(jellyfish on the beach / Santa Rosa, Fla / Julie Cook / 2016)

We are currently living in a boiling tempestuous sea.
A time of grave moral unrest.
A troubling time…

Some merely observe that it’s been bad before and it’ll be bad again…
Others note that it’s just a part of life…
an ebbing and flowing…
a swinging of the proverbial pendulum…

And it is true…
In my lifetime I have seen, as well as experienced first hand,
the upheaval of perilous unrest in this brave Nation of ours…

I have seen the continued growth and birthing pains of an ever evolving democracy.
I have seen the colliding of old verses new.
Young verses the elderly

I have lived under the dread and worry of nuclear annihilation for all my life…
beginning with the tuck and cover drills of elementary school…

I have sadly seen…
flags being burned
draft cards being burned
bras being burned
and politicians burned in effigy

I have seen protests…
sit ins
die ins
marches
hunger strikes
picket lines

I have seen clashes of ideologies, religions and beliefs…

Yet I cannot recall such a dangerously contemptuous time in my near 60 years.

We are perched on the precipice of what seems to be the death of life as we once knew it.
As a delusional group of “politicians” vie for control and power…of my life and of your life,
and of the life which we have known.

This Nation, united under the benevolent eye of the very God our pilgrim settlers and founding fathers each paid homage to,
is transforming and morphing under the cloak of a sinister shape shifting blanket,
that is barley detectable to the naked eye…

Some believe this is all for the good…
While other believe this is all for the bad.

Throwing the baby out with the bath water is never a good idea…
and yet that is what is slowing taking place.

Those of us of a certain age watch, as a deer in headlights, the daily news feeds…
wondering if there is anything left that is recognizable…
While others simply ignore the melee as they reach for another cocktail or numbing agent of choice.

The moral Judaeo/ Christian sector of this Nation has idly watched a slow yet deadly erosion…
an erosion of such catastrophic proportions, that shoring things up…is now nearly impossible…
As the very traditional family nucleus, the core center which has served as the lynchpin and underpinning of the history of humankind, is now ominously ready to cascade into a dark abyss.

So is it any wonder that so many of those who cleave to the belief in an Omnipotent God,
stand jumbled up and cast off to the side, in udder bewilderment and dismay….
as they are left wondering and shuddering at the strangeness now taking hold to all that they have known….

‘You are My servant,
I have chosen you and have not rejected you
[even though you are exiled].

‘Do not fear [anything],
for I am with you;
Do not be afraid, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you, be assured I will help you;
I will certainly take hold of you with My righteous right hand
[a hand of justice, of power, of victory, of salvation].’
Isaiah 41:9-10