Suscepit

Welcome to 2011

2011-01-04T10:38:00.002-06:00

Heralding the BEST of things, let's talk about the best people to ever represent their home countries:

England: Winston Churchill, who went many places and did many things; led his nation through its most challenging days.

America: James Madison, who poured his soul into the new Constitution, and then served his country, even after leaving the Presidency.

Persia/Iran: Neda Agha-Soltan, hero of her coming revolution, who was ten times the man that the slime were who ruled her country while she was alive, and those who murdered her and later repeatedly desecrated her grave.

France: Napoleon Bonaparte of France, whose country peaked centuries ago.

Canada: The person hasn't been born yet. Lots of socialists, singers and athletes, though.

India: Ghandi, who should make all those of the subcontinent proud even today.

South Africa: Nelson Mandela, whose bravery couldn't be transferred to his family, unfortunately.

Russia: Zhukov and those fighting men who served under him, only to be betrayed by their motherland, as it has betrayed every generation before and since. A salute to Yeltsin, whose lion's heart was in the right place.

Australia: The common man of America's steadiest partner and ally.

Sweden: I don't know who, but she's blonde.

Norway: Somebody NOT on the Peace Prize Committee.

A Wonderful Mission, & an Amazing Church

2010-03-26T13:19:00.003-05:00

You gotta go read a few paragraphs for me. You just gotta!

http://kerussocharis.blogspot.com/2010/03/mission-arlington-where-lost-are-being.html

Didn't you always feel gender melts in the presence of God?

Steve

Forgiveness & Restoration

2010-03-19T16:33:00.001-05:00

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” (Galatians 5:22-23)

Here I am back to add to this post on 3/26/10. I've been stuck on something for two years that just won't fly off my screen, so I'll be bold/stupid and ask God to help me move past my little thing from March 2008. Pls pray for me.

SA

The alabaster will come back

2007-10-16T00:06:00.000-05:00

I was so surprised to see, during the births of my children, how beautiful was the cord that fed them during their first nine months. It was the color, I suppose, of Caucasian human skin when bloodless - alabaster. I thought then that I had never seen and would never see that color again, since I was already into my thirties when I had married their mother, and sticking around until grandkids showed up would test my physiology - and willpower over gluttony.

Well, I did see it again. You see it when somebody dies, and I was present when a living saint I had loved for decades gave up her earthly shell to go Home for her reward. Man, there it was - the color, I guess, that we will always be if not for the blood and its oxygenated hemoglobin coursing through our veins.

I had known that leaves only show their true colors when they die, when the life-giving stuff is gone with the loss of sunlight on trees that must conserve their water after being so very free with it all summer long. So it is with us, that after practically swimming in oxygen for the whole of our summer of 120 years or less, we mark our end with its absence and recall that placenta which started us off on our splendid, brief journey here.

Can we say that the human soul marks its arrival here with this color, the hue of desert dust, and salutes it again as it passes into painless, youthful Eternity?

Kenucky 43 LSU 37

2007-10-13T19:15:00.000-05:00

I haven't seen such a hard-fought game since the last three Kentrucky NCAA Men's Basketball Championships. Every yard, every move, every call sweated out like a nervous marriage proposal. UK's blue-suited warriors are the real deal and have definitely arrived. As the ancient icon of Nashville sports-talk radio, George Plaster, would have put it, a torch might have been passed today. Or, probably not.

But what a feeling!!!!! A day will come when Kentucky fans will moan and cry, when the ironic fist of fate will knock UK off its stride, when the oft-humbled Wildcats will shake their heads in frustration walking away from the gridiron yet again. BUT THAT DAY IS NOT TODAY.

Something in the way she said -

2007-10-10T02:19:00.000-05:00

My favorite blog had great writing and great topics that I came to care for. The regular responders came to be almost like a family, and so I too became part of a societal study group - at the now defunct blog Attorney Notes. Dorcas Hawker is an Arlington TX Baptist shiny-pin (newly-gained status, you GDI's) lawyer who had a whole life going on with her real family, her church (led by an attention-getter himself, Ben S. Cole, now joining the staff of Emmanuel Baptist in Enid OK) as well as a circle of near- and far- friends in Southern Baptist circles.

This lady has a heart for writing that hits you like Emily D., or Papa, or the Man from Yoknapataupha (sp?) County. She can be zingingly brief like Bret Harte or O. Henry, or lyrically tear-wrenching like few writing commercially today, perhaps a new Pauline Kael. When she cared about a subject, you WOULD care about it too, with no time off for good behavior.

Unfortunately, an attorney in our legal swamp of a nation cannot be readable in public, lest some Patty Hewes of an opponent cook up a conflict or legal trick out of pure vapor, so we lose this dear jewel of a writer.

Dorcas, if you ever get enough of that trade and its people, you have a readable soul that many eyes would love to plumb.

Remembrance

2007-09-14T13:02:00.000-05:00

Suscepit Israel puerum suum recordatus miserecordiae suae.

He has helped Israel his servant in remembrance of his mercy.

From the Bach Magnificat, possibly the greatest piece of choral music ever written.

Sometimes we think classical misuc was carved on a stone someplace, never to be tooled around with; yet, Bach rewrote and transposed this to help instrumentalists play it. It took him three years to finish this step, doubtless while attending to a myriad of other things.

Dr. Robert Barr picked this out for my group to sing in the early 1970s at Murray State. He was one of those instructors who opened music up to dozens of future teachers, and he remains my fondest memory of my days at Murray (that didn't involve a lady, at least!)