Well, hello. I have been doing some new things in my life, which I'll fill you all in about. To say the least, Gail has been working on making it secure and loading all sorts of old files into it. I'll have to make next week an interesting one. Well, this is going to be a big change, what with having changed from my old HP to a laptop. Well, I'll talk some more later.

Regards,

Floyd F.
San Diego

Hi. I hope that you have all been blessed and given what you pray and work for. A lot of things have been under my responsibility the last week, so much so that I can certainly appreciate the meaning of the Biblical Parable of the Sower, particularly the metaphor of "riches, cares, and worries of the world" acting as thorns, "choking off" the very life of me. But even in what appears to be stealing my time, money, and hope, there seems to always be small gems of good that gives me plenty of reason to replace my resentment or frustration with gratitude and hope. I am hopeful for my immediate and long-range future, especially financially speaking.

It is now 19 days until the U.S. congressional elections, which happen every two years, including at the midpoint of the four-year presidential term. At the same time most of the states have elections for governors and other officials, so it's a really big deal. To those of you from the 'States who understand your civics, please be patient, I'm needing to fill in the info need for non-U.S. readers, those few who may see me.

And this election IS a BIG DEAL. With President Bush only possessing two years in his second and last presidential term of office, the center of power in Washington will move increasingly to the majority party in the Congress. There are myriads of reasons to retain the present majority in the hands of the Republican party, but I'll stay on just two.

First, we are at war. All argument to the contrary, we are most certainly in a struggle to the death with the most conservative wing of Islam. We cannot ignore it or appease it. Second, the Republicans are still the only major party that opposes the practice of abortion, and the world will be taking lessons from us. We can't let the destruction of innocent human life in the womb of their mothers become an enthroned right anymore, especially since God has taken a definite side there.

I'll have more to say in the next few days and weeks. Hope to meet some of you. God bless.

Well, this has been one very interesting day, sort of. I learned about some new foods at a neat Japanese restaurant. It was my first seaweed soup. Along with the wild salmon, it was really good.

I have some thoughts to share later about a friend in India, a new one I met last weekend. It is a neat challenge to my level of awareness about my spirituality, and an uplifter of the same. I'll say more later. Hasta luego.

I am not able to say very much today, but I have had a lot to keep me away from this site. I have been monitoring the war, and the present political situation in the U.S., dealing with the new scandal about the removal of Representative Mark Foley for what appears to be a series of IM messages and e-mails propositioning young boys for sex.

Bottom line? Mark Foley was an idiot. First of all, I disapprove of the homosexuality that drove him to be such a character willing to move into the dark side of sexuality. And especially disgusting was the fact that he was willing to cynically use his power as a congressman to engage in what was, in effect, recruiting young subjects to gratify his lust. It is, frankly, part of the dark side of the gay lifestyle, more often than the popular media would want to admit. Even though it is an embarrassment to my own political party what has happened, still under investigation, I am glad he's gone. God is just cleaning out the house. I just hope that the demented souls among the Democrats will get their just desserts, for I am convinced that for every Mark Foley among the Republicans there are ten among the political left, who have no remorse for their lifestyle and will no doubt have the backing of their whole party from any recompense for their actions. I am not careful to speak of this issue this way, because sooner or later their has to be a confrontation with truth, even though it is unpleasant in the minds of many and considered "politically incorrect."

As for the Republican leadership, the investigation goes on. If there is a coverup, then payday has come, irregardless of the cost. If this is a politically-motivated witchhunt, which is what I suspect it is, then let them, the Democrats, pay for their deliberate obstruction and manipulation of justice to gain political power and win the Congress back in the election next month. May this be their "opportunity lost." Hasta luego.


---Belisarius II---

Hello. It has been quite a while since I blogged on this particular blog (I have three). I have had a lot of experiences that have challenged me in a lot of ways. I don't want to be evasive about what I'm saying, but let's just say that I have had several different issues in my life, that while in apparent contradiction to each other, have had the effect of acting like a Hegelian synthesis on my character and emotional state. It's a good thing, actually. I have had an increase of the passion that I feel about issues that affect the world, about the state of my beloved country, about my concept of spirituality, my attitude toward people.

Most of all, and more than ever before, I realize that the battle for truth in the marketplace of ideas cannot be won with anger. It is as Solomon said long ago in Ecclesiastes: "The quiet words of the wise are greater than the shouts of the king of fools." I wince at the many times I have been the latter, I am leaving that place of self-deception. I am no longer interested in winning arguments at the price of losing friends and therefore, losing the hearts and minds I want to win. So, from this point on, all my blogs will be characterized by two common characteristics: restraint (hopefully), and empathy (also hopefully). Can't communicate without listening.

While reading a lot of different things that are notable in the news, I have to say that the Amish school shooting in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on this past Monday has to rate as the most challenging. How do you explain an apparently mild-mannered, perfectly stable head of a middle-class, church-going family, suddenly deciding to go, methodically, unpassionately, and enter a one-room school in an Amish community with the intent to mass kill?

School shootings and killings have become disturbingly common in both America and around the world in the last decade: killing of students in Germany, Besalan, Russia, Sulawesi, Indonesia, Israel, Iraq, recently in Montreal, Canada, and several places in the USA, beginning with Columbine in Colorado in 1999. Each had its own element of shock: the rage against women in Montreal, the jihadist insanity in Besalan that created a slaughter of hundreds in such a small town, the pre-planned execution of real or perceived enemies at Columbine (devout Christians, athletes, scholars). Each had something of an explanation for the apparently inexplicable. But this case, in Lancaster, the slaughter defies the understanding. The Amish probably go down as one of the most patently pacifist people you will ever meet. They live their 19th century style with an unpretentiousness that almost shouts at you to slow down and step away from the madness of modern life. I'm not about to join their way of living, or their peculiar interpretation of the Bible, which can be pretty repressive of education and healthy sexuality, but give them their due. The Amish have no crime, no welfare, no divorce, no illegitimacy, no abortion, no drug abuse, no alcoholism. It's big news when any of them fall into trouble, as in the case several years ago when one of them was arrested for possession of cocaine.

So, why would this 32-year old truck driver and married father of three just snap and go after killing young Amish girls in school? He phoned his wife and told her that he was reacting to molesting young relatives 20 years ago, when he was 12. Somehow that doesn't add up. The object of his "revenge" couldn't have been more misguided. Why these kids? The most gentle, the most unwilling to mix with the world outside, a people who practices the Christian concept of forgiveness better than any group I've ever known. Their elders made it a point to go to the home of the family of this killer the same night---to comfort the family and express their forgiveness! I was stunned to hear of it. So why? The act defies credulity.

I have only one credible answer, and it's not some psychobabble talk about what past abuse may have done, or about how his parents treated him, or the ready availability of guns--an inanimate object. The answer is the evil in the hearts of men. I think that Charles Roberts simply failed to deal with the dark side of his soul, never in his life, perhaps dating with the event he first gave himself over to perversion with his own young relatives. Living with guilt and shame, if unaccounted for, can give birth to destructive behavior. And that darkness is in all of us. As someone in a comic strip many years ago said, "We have met the enemy, and he is us." Or as Jeremiah of antiquity once said, "The heart of man is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can understand it?" It makes it so important to avoid judgmentalism, hypocrisy, fear, hate, to let God have His rightful place in our souls. In the end, it is the only way to face one's own demons, and win.

Well, time for me to go for now. I'll be back later. Take care and God bless.

---Cincinnatus---