Bound By Grace

My baby - I mean, My Baby! My very first - turned 21 this past Saturday.

Tim & I treated him and his girlfriend (they’ve been together for more than a year and a half) to dinner at a very nice restaurant. We had a lovely time. We dressed up quite a bit - girls in dresses, guys in ties.

My son said he enjoyed it very much.

I even managed to surprise him at the end with the wait staff bringing a slice of cheesecake bearing a single candle as they sang “Happy Birthday.” He didn’t expect that. I enjoyed seeing him blush.

Oh, yeah.

I turned 42 yesterday.

My firstborn is now half my age.

JUSTICE OF THE WASHINGTON SUPREME COURT 

This man sounds like someone I would like to know more about, so I’m posting about him for my records.

We are having a bit of a “controversy” here in Washington [the good one]. It seems our libertarian Supreme Court Justice Richard Sanders heckled U.S. Attorney General Mukasey. While the AG was at a Federalist Society dinner discussing how the Geneva Convention did not apply to our torture of prisoners in Guantanamo and elsewhere, Sanders stood up and yelled “Tyrant!” to Mukasey, and left the dinner.

Found here.

This article helps to give some clarification to quite a few things I’ve known for a very long time.

All around me, young mothers are stretched, and stressed, and struggling. Mommy burnout is rampant. And while, I’m sure that to some extent, it’s always been hard to manage a house full of young children, I also have a sneaking suspicion that it’s worse today, that the women of modern generations face handicaps our foremothers didn’t have to.

There was a time in the not too distant past when families worked together toward common goals. The day began with Pa and the boys doing the chores while Ma and the girls got breakfast. Everyone ate together, and then the men folk went to work in the fields or the shop downstairs, while the ladies set about the baking, or washing, or gardening, or whatever else was needed that day. The family was all together again for the midday meal before heading off to their afternoon’s work, divided only by gender lines, and then it was back together again for the evening meal and a little family time before bed. Everyone grew up watching their parents train younger siblings to help with the work, and possibly did a fair amount of training and tending of little brothers and sisters themselves. Work was done together for the good of the family business, whether it was a farm or a blacksmith shop, tailor shop, or dry goods store. Society was family centered.

Enter the Industrial Revolution. Individuals left the family unit to work in factories for the good of their employers. All day long they gave their best to further the company, and at the end of the day they brought home a paycheck that enabled them to buy food and clothes and other things that families used to make for themselves. Life became individual centered, and individuals became peer focused as they spent the majority of their waking hours with co-workers rather than with family. Read the Rest.

Done? OK, then.

My past had some differences. I never quite fell neatly into school or work. I found much of it very dissatisfying. My mom did seem to try to get me to learn to do some chores. But I was the youngest of six kids (under 10 years apart), and she never did seem to get much joy out of being at home. When I started school, she went to work.

I just never could quite figure out what my “thing” was. I could find things to get very excited about, and be quite determined that a certain direction was the right way to go. So I turn my face toward it then, Crash! Boom! All the nitty gritty consequences of it comes tumbling down on top of me. Yet, I never really figured out how to even get off on the right foot, so I never got around to being at all prepared for the unexpected things.

Someone in the comments of the article linked suggested lack of community as another reason so many of us have found motherhood difficult to handle (”difficult to handle” just does not describe it, it sounds too negative - how do you describe an indescribable joy meshed with frustration and desperation that you just know it should be possible to manifest nearly daily productive fulfillment in the caring for these fascinating and beautiful eternal souls you’ve been given as you enrich and make lovely your home and grow in your relationship with your husband, but too often when you look for it, the best you can find are cheap trinkets).

I also want to suggest that our society has taught us to avoid real relationships. Friendships are often shallow. Committments are too easily broken. Greater loyalty is shown to favorite actors, ball players or politicians. And that’s when our loyalty is (sort of) directed to an actual human being, and would likely end if we actually got to know them. We use doctors, lawyers, and insurance companies (or government aid) to help us with our ‘real’ problems today.

I don’t know if this makes any sense, but I wanted to get something out in print. I know it could be said better and there’s lots more I could say, only this is all I can manage right now.

This was encouraging.

This looks like it might be interesting and informative: BugBios

An interesting perspective.

Thomas S. Szasz Cybercenter for Liberty and Responsibility

So far I’ve just listened to the podcast (first link above), but it gives some articulation to some things I’ve been thinking about the subject for quite a few years.

As a Christian, I may find I diverge from Dr. Szasz’s line of thought at times, though because I’m a Christian I also have serious concerns with the whole profession of Psychiatry and the general angle taken in the idea of “Mental Illness.”

Under the way it is described today, we all suffer from some form of mental illness or the other. In other words, we all sin. We all have our biases and obsessions and suffer from limited perspective, which is additionally twisted and thrown off-course because of our sin. We also have our own priorities and do not think about absolutely everything in just the same way as any one other person.

I think there is a way to seek to be firm on God’s Truth, while still being open to the possibility of error without forsaking that Truth.

God is the only true healer of “mental illness.” By which I mean that any man or accumulation of men who presume to seek to understand the psychological mind of human kind is attempting to possess the mind of God. It is not possible.

Yes, I think there is such a thing as ”unhealthy thinking,” but the real hope of healing comes through the Truth of the Gospel and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Nietzsche is an example of true madness which results from an utter rejection of God and objective Truth.

(The profession of science in general today suffers from a god-complex, a lack of appreciation of the limits of one’s own understanding or the limits of accumulated knowledge, and of the utter complexities of nature and the human body. It is idol worship to think science and central planning can fix the world. His thoughts are far above ours, even if we could ever manage to put together every thought from the beginning of time to the end - which we can’t. Our society today is showing symptoms of the maddness of Nietzsche.)

Their are times when God may individually gift us with a special understanding in particular circumstances, but the key is that it is limited and we will do well to remember that and to give all the Glory to God.

Anyway, I’ve strayed a bit from the topic of conversation in the podcast. I hope you will listen and consider sharing with me your thoughts on it and/or what I’ve written.

It’s nice to know some communities still do things like this. It shows personal and emotional (relational) investment in the family’s needs, along with the financial. Me thinks such efforts will go a long way in giving real support - in more ways than one.

From the Buffalo Reflex:

Benefit music show, auction

for Frazier family to be Dec. 6

 

Wednesday, November 19, 2008 4:05 AM CST

A benefit music show and auction for the Jessie Frazier family will be held Saturday, Dec. 6, at the Buffalo VFW Hall, 419 S. Locust. Doors will open at 5 p.m. with the country and gospel music at 6 p.m. Featured are the Flippin Family — Shirley, Ron, Roxie and Ross — and gospel music by Shepherd’s Voice — Russ and Skyla Weeks and Bob Guymon.

Jessie, a 2004 graduate of Buffalo High School, is a patient at Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis and is undergoing treatment for a rare form of sarcoma. He has insurance through his employer, Polar in Springfield, but medical disability payments will end soon and the family will lose their home. Travel expense to and from St. Louis is a major concern.

His wife, Carrie, works at Wal-Mart in Buffalo. They have two daughters, ages 2 and 10 months. His parents are Randy and Linda Frazier, Buffalo. His dad works for Copeland in Lebanon, and his mother is the nurse at Buffalo High School.
Anyone who would like to donate a new or good used item, or dessert for the auction may call (417) 345-5071 or (417) 345-0184.
A special fund for the family has been established at O’Bannon Bank in Buffalo.

We rearranged the furniture in our bedroom over the weekend.

I think I’m going to like it.

But the first night I didn’t sleep very well at all.

Does anyone else have trouble adjusting to changes in their bedrooms, even when dealing with all the same furniture?

It still feels very strange to me.

 I think this idea has potential - if we are to have any hope of preserving the Union along with our liberties. I’m not saying for certain, I only just found this today, but I thought it was definitely worth directing my friends to. For us to give some attention to; to investigate.

 

The primary purpose of Thirty-Thousand.org is to conduct research on, and increase awareness of, the degradation of representative democracy in the United States resulting from Congress’ longstanding practice of limiting the number of congressional districts despite the continuing growth in the nation’s population.

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The framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights intended that the total population of Congressional districts never exceed 50 to 60 thousand. Currently, the average population size of the districts is nearly 700,000 and, consequently, the principle of proportionally equitable representation has been abandoned.

The historical trend relative to our federal Representation is illustrated in the charts below. The vertical bar chart illustrates that the total number of congressional districts was increased every ten years from 1790 to 1910 (with a single exception). These increases were a direct result of the growth in total population as was intended by the framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

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Without exception, every influential political and economic special interest operating in this nation will strenuously oppose enlarging the House to the extent necessary to return political power to the citizens. The investment in the status quo is extensive and deep. Powerful special interest groups as well as the federal lobbyist industry depend on their ability to influence a very small number of House members (and Senators) in order to affect legislative and policy outcomes. It will become impossible to effect the same level of influence upon the House when it consists of thousands of Representatives, especially if those many Representatives are living back in the real world — among their constituency — rather than being concentrated in the surreal parallel universe known as Washington, D.C.

Consequently, there is a long list of powerful institutional forces that will oppose this amendment: multinational corporations, most industry trade groups, labor unions, the Republican Party, the Democrat Party, the House of Representatives, the Senate, the federal executive branch and last, but not least, most foreign governments. These disparate forces, which normally do not collaborate with one another, will be united in defending the oligarchy in the federal House of Representatives.

Source: Thirty-Thousand.org - Return the House of Representatives to the People (Home Page)

Hat Tip: The Lew Rockwell Show. Click to listen to a short interview with Dr. Mark Thornton, at least one of the guys behind this idea.