Month: July 2009

Just one month ago, Kentucky Pastor Ken Pagano opened his church to gun-toting parishioners in a ‘celebration of the Second Amendment’.^[1]

In defense of this grossly irreligious act (in most other Christian countries of the world he’d be unfrocked for such behavior) he said:

If it were not for a deep-seated belief in the right to bear arms, this country would not be here today.”

On what evidence he based this hypothesis one can only conjecture, but for anyone with even a smattering of New Testament knowledge it’s obviously in stark contrast to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

Perhaps Pastor Pagano would argue the point, but in a truly Christian church, the words, “Love thy Neighbor,” and, “Turn the other cheek,” and, “Love thine enemies,” would negate further debate.

More powerful than words, two recent incidents – one in Las Vegas, the other in South Carolina – turn Pastor Pagano’s views on their head.

From the BBC today:

Two young children have been shot by their siblings in the space of 24 hours in the United States.

In Las Vegas, a two-year-old girl was in a critical condition after being shot by her four-year-old brother at their home, police said.

In South Carolina, a four-year-old boy was shot in the stomach by his three-year-old brother after the little boy found a gun…..”^[2]

While both incidents were accidental, they are further symptoms of the sickness gripping the United States today.

America long ago forsook its God, in favor of its guns.

^{[1] “US pastor opens church to guns” BBC, 28th June 2009}

^{[2] “Two toddlers shoot siblings in US” BBC, 25th July 2009}

Filed under: Holy gun law

It’s been a week since we returned home from Marquette. Our time on the Michigan Upper Peninsular was spent walking, sightseeing, and enjoying the blissfully fresh coolness of a Lake Superior summer. Wonders were sighed over, the clean air and friendliness of the natives enjoyed, and plans to move there with haste, as soon as our retirement date of May 2011 looms, were made.

Illinois hasn’t changed. Neither, it seems, has the rest of America. Our extended vacation took us away from that other world of Washington madness, power-crazed politicians, and a media rabidly slavering in its attempts to drag the American public towards its own frenzied arguments.

The debate over healthcare rumbles on. Can Obama succeed? He’s bitterly opposed by the rich, whose representatives in Congress are as wealthy and powerful as they are. Poor, and middle class, Americans would benefit enormously from fair, affordable, healthcare. Unfortunately, their representatives in Congress are as powerful and wealthy as those supporting the rich. Consequently, most politicians are on the side of the rich, even though they go to enormous lengths to disguise that fact, putting forward the most absurd arguments against a US health service in the hope it will sway some of the less intelligent among us, like – for example – employees of corporate media.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton wrings her hands over Kim Jong-il who just won’t do as he’s told. She accuses Iran of creating an arms race, then announces the US will flood the Middle East with weapons if Iran gets “the bomb” – such crass logic.

What primitive beings we mortals are. This week saw a lunar eclipse. We rushed halfway round the world to view it, jumped into sacred rivers, or beat ourselves with sticks, to ward off the evil spirits conjured by this event. The media thrashed it to death. For a brief moment we stood in awe of a routine celestial happening of no consequence whatever to the human race, then, having made our sacrifices to the gods, forgot all about it.

What fools we are. Viewed through the wrong end of a telescope we are no more than rats in an overcrowded cage, bickering and fighting over our bit of bedding space, squabbling over food, the biggest and strongest dominating while those who oppose are unmercifully squashed and trodden underfoot.

How long before some Universal event tips over the cage, and we all learn in one catastrophic moment that none of it matters?

Who knows?

Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake on the planet, by surface area. The statistics are stunning. It covers an area of nearly 32,000 square miles and its deepest point is over 1,300 feet. Superior is so big that, if it were emptied, it would take the water from all of America’s other Great Lakes, plus a further three Lake Eries, to refill it. It regularly produces waves in excess of twenty feet, and occasionally thirty feet.

To stand on its shoreline and ingest its vastness is a humbling experience.

Yet, a mere 10,000 years ago, it did not exist.

Filed under: Reflections

I’m in Marquette, on the Upper Peninsular of Michigan. It’s wonderful. If you don’t turn on the TV it’s possible to get through a whole day without hearing the name, Michael Jackson. Bliss!

The weather is terrific. While central Illinois steams in ninety degree heat, here the sun beams down generating a balmy seventy Fahrenheit, with nighttime temperatures dipping to a deliciously cool fifty degrees.

It was our intention to return home Saturday, but on Wednesday the car decided to shed its hydraulic clutch fluid everywhere and the garage can’t get the parts till next Monday, so we’re stranded with only a hastily-acquired rental car for company.

Darn it, I was so looking forward to that stifling Illinois heat again. Now, we’ll have to languish on the banks of Lake Superior, suffer sand in our chicken sandwiches, and quaff Chateauneuf-Du-Pape for a further three days.

Still, hopefully, by the time we do get back they’ll have buried Michael Jackson, in more ways than one.

Filed under: Wish you were here