That picture is of my dog Snoop. The left side of the picture is before she got groomed this week, the right side is post grooming. I usually like her hair long for obvious reasons (she is hardly the most manly dog in the world), however, I may have waited a little long between hair cuts.
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Posted by paulconnors
As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them.
From Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton, Chapter 2
After my post of yesterday I came across this quote while listening to the Orthodoxy audio book. This quote does a great job of summing up what I was trying to get at. Mystery is not something to be scoffed at. There is a sanity and a healthy respect for God that comes when we are able to admit that we don’t know everything about God. If God is truly infinite, as we claim, how could we be able to capture God in the finitude that is human understanding?
The argument that I am making here may be an instant lame duck because of my belief in the Christian faith. I can only say that after studying other faiths, Christianity was the only one that made sense for me. However, as I have tried to give voice to on this blog, I am also convinced that Christian thought and practice may be in error in many ways. Part of the cause of this, I believe, is the Christian idea that we have God wrapped up in a neat little package we call the Bible.
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Posted by paulconnors
This is one of those posts that is bound to get me in trouble. Generally, after I write something like this I’ll get at least one email telling me that I should be in fear for my eternal salvation, or something to that effect. Regardless, this is an interesting idea, even if I’m not 100% sure how I feel about it.
Last night I was having coffee with a buddy of mine and we were discussing the concept of the Bible being Divinely inspired. My opinion on that matter is that while I believe that God did inspire the Bible, I also believe that ideas contrary to the will of God crept into scripture. In other words, I don’t believe that the Bible is meant to be sucked up uncritically.
From that point we continued on into the concept that the Bible is just a snapshot of who God is and that the reality is God cannot be fully comprehended by people, or nailed down by one book. This for me then begs the question, is it possible that other religion’s sacred books also provide a snapshot of who God is?
Now, I am not advocating syncretism. What I am advocating is a much less self aggrandizing understanding of this verse.
"Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me (John 14:6 KJV).
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Looking at them, it is hard to believe that those two little pills are as powerful as they are. But, as the saying goes, you can’t judge a book by its cover. Those pills aren’t just powerful, they have the ability to save and to change someone’s life. That someone being me.
For a month now I have been faithfully starting my day by taking two of these 300 mg capsules. Two is the magic number. For a couple of days we thought it might be three, but I found out the hard way that two is just right and three is way too much.
Lithium, or as the pills I take are more correctly called, APO Lithium Carbonate, is sometimes used to treat a migraine headaches and cluster headaches. It’s main use, however, is to treat a psychiatric condition called Bipolar Disorder. I believe I have had this disorder for a long time, much of my life even. For the last 5 years I took a drug called Paxil, an anti-depressant, which gave me some measure of control over it, but somewhere around early winter last year that control disappeared.
When the doctor diagnosed me with Bipolar Disorder I right away thought it made sense. After a few days I went through a period where I began to doubt his diagnosis. Surely I am not really that crazy, am I? I am now completely convinced the doctor is right. Now that the drug is beginning to do it’s work in me I feel well, a wellness I can never remember having.
Why write this? Good question. I mean, if I was taking blood pressure medicine or Insulin I might not be so quick to blog about it. At the same time, if I was taking Insulin or blood pressure medicine people’s attitudes would be different.
When my old doctor thought I had Rheumatoid Arthritis I was put on all kinds of crazy drugs. People would often ask me how I was feeling and I appreciated their concern. Now that I am on this new drug, I find that friends and family are much less likely to ask about it. Arthritis is easier for everyone to swallow than Bipolar Disorder, myself included.
The thing is, I am still the same person you have always known. The only difference is that my personal demons won’t torture me like they used to. It doesn’t change our relationship and you won’t catch Bipolar from me, honest.
Education is the only thing to stamp out fear. Congratulations, you’ve just been educated.
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It is official:
Helmand province, where the Taliban is most active, is now the biggest drug-producing area in the world, surpassing entire countries such as Colombia and Morocco. And in southern Afghanistan, where instability is greatest and Canadian troops are stationed, opium cultivation shows no signs of abating.
It would appear that the Taliban are funding their fight against Canadian and other troops with the proceeds of drug dealing. Once again it is glaringly obvious that their war has nothing to do with Islam, it is all about their twisted ideology. Osama bin Laden and his cronies have as much in common with the average Muslim as Pat Robertson does with me.
Extremists that we see on the news are not indicative of what the average person of faith is like. That is why they are newsworthy. Sadly, the perception by many is exactly opposite of the real truth. Sometimes this perception leads to prejudice and even violence against innocent people. My hope is that the media will explore this latest revelation in greater detail, showing how their drug dealing is anathema to what Islam teaches.
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Posted by paulconnors
My apologies for the blog being dominated by my gear headedness (is that even a word?) the last few days. This afternoon I will return to my regularly scheduled punditry (oh and speaking of gear headedness, did you read about Yates Racing offering the #38 for Junior to use next year?).
Today is a big day, one of the last links in the chain of the Bush presidency has snapped in a most unceremonious fashion. At this rate, the end of Bush’s presidency should see him and Cheney surrounded by recent college graduates and people who couldn’t get a job at Wal-Mart.
Alberto Gonzales, the United States’ first Hispanic attorney general, announced his resignation Monday — ending a nasty, months-long standoff over his honesty and competence at the helm of the Justice Department.
Republicans and Democrats alike had demanded his resignation over the botched handling of FBI terror investigations and the firings of U.S. attorneys, but President George W. Bush had defiantly stood by his Texas friend until accepting his resignation Friday.
Mr. Gonzales could not satisfy critics who said he had lost credibility over the Justice Department’s handling of warrantless wiretaps related to the threat of terrorism and the firings of several U.S. attorneys.
As attorney general and earlier as White House counsel, Mr. Gonzales pushed for expanded presidential powers, including the eavesdropping authority. He drafted controversial rules for military war tribunals and sought to limit the legal rights of detainees at Guantanamo Bay — prompting lawsuits by civil libertarians who said the government was violating the Constitution in its pursuit of terrorists.
Lawmakers said the dismissals of the federal prosecutors appeared to be politically motivated, and some of the fired U.S. attorneys said they felt pressured to investigate Democrats before elections. Mr. Gonzales maintained that the dismissals were based the prosecutors’ lacklustre performance records.
Mr. Gonzales’ personal story is very inspirational. It is wonderful to see someone coming from such humble beginnings rise to the heights that he did. As well, it is always good to see someone other than a Caucasian male in positions of power.
Sadly, his professional conduct is not nearly so inspirational. His time as Attorney General of the United States and as special counsel to the White House was marked by a disregard for the rights and freedoms of others. As well, his firing of several federal prosecutors was shady at best and criminal at worst. Given this track record, I think it is a boon to the American people that he is leaving.
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Posted by paulconnors
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Posted by paulconnors
Once again, Dale Earnhardt Jr. proves to be a class act.
"I hate to see somebody be crucified on the Internet and whatnot like Teresa has. She has a daughter that goes to school, that has friends. She has to put up with that stuff. It is just hard-core man. People have just been really really rude and really over the line, way over the line, on some of the things that have been said. I know Teresa doesn’t know half of it because won’t read it and she won’t put up with it. If anybody in their right mind knew that was going on, they wouldn’t be around it and deal with it.
"It still gets back to Taylor, maybe it does, I don’t know, but nobody deserves that and it just isn’t fair.
"I didn’t like how it was understood between me and Teresa. We obviously didn’t have a good line of communication. We obviously don’t understand each other. We obviously don’t know much about each other. You know. She underestimates my determination and my willingness to give it all I have got and obviously I probably know that little about her and her determination.
"But it doesn’t matter, I am going to do something different. I want the best for DEI – simply put. If there is opportunities for me to help them, or there are programs that they want to involve me in that are interesting and fun for me, I have interest there. I am wide open to doing those things because they will make sense.
"The relationship that I have with Teresa as an owner I didn’t like and I didn’t enjoy and didn’t want any more. That was the only single thing that has made all of this what it is today and that is one thing that I will avoid in the future when working with DEI."
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Posted by paulconnors
In a post I wrote yesterday I commented about how much of Western Christianity has become more about worshipping emotion rather than worshipping God. Not long after posting that, I came across this article on CNN’s site that only served to reinforce my opinion.
One part concert, one part Christian revival, the rallies seek to "stage a reverse revolution" against secular popular culture. They have the pull of headlining rock concerts, drawing thousands of people regardless of the region of the country, the month of year or the day of the week. The audiences are nearly always predominantly teenagers and young adults.
The organization is sprawling. In addition to its live stadium rallies, there are BattleCry shirts and hats, mobile screen savers, books and a television program. There are international mission trips — Hutchins attended one in Tijuana, Mexico, this summer. There is even a Teen Mania internship, a one-year program called the Honor Academy, based in Lindale, Texas.
On its surface this doesn’t seem so bad, in fact its almost admirable. But that’s the surface, lots of things seem good on the surface that aren’t really.
As the second paragraph I cited above shows, they are seeking to replace one version of pop culture with another one. Granted, this version of pop culture is dressed in the garments of Christianity, but is it a real alternative? What skills are young people given that will allow them to live out their faith "out in the world (other than of course, just "being really on fire for Jesus")?"
The reality of conferences like this is that they get young people on an emotional high. After a couple of weeks pass and the emotional high has fizzled out, they end up living exactly as they did before the conference. A small group of people make a lot of money putting these conferences on, but beside the monetary benefit to them there is no long lasting aftereffect.
You may be wondering at this point what makes me qualified to judge these events so harshly. My qualifications come from having lived in the evangelical Christian ghetto for the better part of two years. I read all the right books, said all the right things, and I went to church every week expecting to "feel a move of the Spirit."
I saw people spend hundreds of dollars (there are just as many conferences for adults as their are for kids) to go to conferences so that they could learn to be a better Christian, the only problem is that they never really got anything for their money. Oh sure, they heard some great speakers and got an injection of their favorite drug, the spiritual high, but as time went on they were still the same people struggling with the same things.
Learning to be a Christian is a process. It isn’t a one time thing and it certainly isn’t something you can learn in a weekend (no matter how loudly Toby Mac tells everyone to jump). It is a life long journey that will be full of stumbles and falls. No catch phrase, no T-shirt, no amount of tears cried in a 48 hour period can replace that reality.
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