Mark's Views, Perhaps — from behind my eyeballs
This is quite the sermon. 😥
Here’s one paragraph, as reported by the UK’s Telegraph
| I want to thank all of you who protect this blessing – who do this work every day: the health care providers, doctors, nurses, technicians, receptionists, who put your lives on the line to care for others you are heroes — in my eyes, you are saints; the escorts and the activists; the lobbyists and the clinic defenders; all of you. You’re engaged in holy work. |
😯
Three words spoke to my heart this morning. May they continue to echo there:
No, you didn’t know that. But now you do. And that fits in with this:
| Are you a twit if you don’t want to Twitter?
Last month, Alex Slater took it a step farther. He dumped his Twitter account and stripped the information on his Facebook page to a minimum. Though he has more than 600 “friends” on Facebook, he checks it much less often. “Being exposed to details, from someone’s painful breakup to what they had for breakfast – and much more sordid details than that – feels like voyeurism,” says the 31-year-old public relations executive in Washington, D.C. “I’m less concerned with protecting my privacy, and more concerned at the ethics of a ‘human zoo’ where others’ lives, and often serious problems, are treated as entertainment.” |
Yes, I have a Twitter account. No, I don’t have a raft-load of Facebook Friends. Yes, I think the above article is worth reading in full. No, I don’t plan to announce on Twitter that I had two cups of coffee and two Tylenol so far this morning.
Oh, and speaking of Facebook:
| Fast-growing Facebook’s user base hits 200 million
Facebook also updated its display of site statistics. According to these, more than half of its users log in to the site at least once a day, and the fastest-growing demographic is people over 35. About 70 percent of Facebook users are outside the United States (MySpace still claims to be the nation’s largest social network). For those itching to know if they are popular enough: the average user has 120 “friends” on the site. |
And speaking of friends, do friends let friends over-text?
| Hammer time for cell phone used to run up $5K billA cell phone used by a Wyoming 13-year-old to run up a nearly $5,000 phone bill will text no more thanks to her angry father and his hammer. Dena Christoffersen of Cheyenne sent or received about 20,000 text messages over about a month, and her parents’ phone plan didn’t cover texting. |
🙄
Meanwhile, some other “friends” are waking up around the globe:
| Huge worm stirring to life
The dreaded Conficker computer worm is stirring. Security experts say the worm’s authors appear to be trying to build a big moneymaker, but not a cyber weapon of mass destruction as many people feared. As many as 12 million computers have been infected by Conficker. Security firm Trend Micro says some of the machines have been updated over the past few days with fake antivirus software – the first attempt by Conficker’s authors to profit from their massive “botnet.” |
So, this post begins by featuring a Friend. (And what a Friend we have in Jesus!)
Now it ends featuring someone else’s friend:
| Woman finds cashiers check and returns it
But just as she was about to do her part for a cleaner planet and deliver the paper from the parking lot to a trash can, she noticed it was a real cashier’s check with a real signature. “I couldn’t believe it. I almost passed out,” Curtis, who works as a loan negotiator, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “I have never seen a check that big. Not in my possession, anyway.” She immediately set out to find its rightful recipient…. |
Good day?!
Toddler caught after falling 3 stories
| Two men were being hailed as heroes by police on Monday for catching a toddler who fell 40 feet from a home's third-story window.
Robert Lemire told the North-Andover Mass. Eagle-Tribune newspaper that he was talking on his cell phone Sunday evening outside a pizza shop in Lawrence, about 25 miles north of Boston, when he saw the toddler dangling from a window across the street. |
Inmates baby-sit tot found alone on highway
| A prison work crew kept a toddler safe after the child was found wandering alone on a rural highway, Maryland authorities said.
The six minimum-security inmates shared their lunches with the boy and played with him, while authorities spent hours trying to locate the 2-year-old’s relatives, a correction officer said. |
Thank you, Lord, for good news!
| The online version of a popular board game from many Americans’ childhood includes an option for players to choose homosexual marriage and child-rearing as a way of life.
Through the Shockwave.com website, even children can download and play a free trial version of The Game of Life, the first game ever created by Mr. Milton Bradley in 1860. The player’s first option in the online version is to choose a persona based on pictures that clearly depict men and women. Shortly thereafter, the game invites players to choose a spouse, regardless of the potential spouse’s sex. |
So that’s life.
But do they also create the option for skipping marriage altogether and just shacking up with your “significant other” (I despise that expression!)?
And the option to divorce?
Or have an abortion?
For the record, the board version of the game also allows taking a same-sex spouse.
So…add another point to freedom’s score. 🙄
And speaking of freedom….
| Index of Personal and Economic Freedom
This paper presents the first-ever comprehensive ranking of the American states on their public policies affecting individual freedoms in the economic, social, and personal spheres. We develop and justify our ratings and aggregation procedure on explicitly normative criteria, defining individual freedom as the ability to dispose of one’s own life, liberty, and justly acquired property however one sees fit, so long as one does not coercively infringe on other individuals’ ability to do the same. […] We find that the freest states in the country are New Hampshire, Colorado, and South Dakota, which together achieve a virtual tie for first place. All three states feature low taxes and government spending and middling levels of regulation and paternalism. New York is the least free by a considerable margin, followed by New Jersey, Rhode Island, California and Maryland. On personal freedom alone, Alaska is the clear winner, while Maryland brings up the rear. As for freedom in the different regions of the country, the Mountain and West North Central regions are the freest overall while the Middle Atlantic lags far behind on both economic and personal freedom. |
As I recall, Oregon ranks #27 overall.
For perspective, I expect many people in the world would say we don’t have anything to fuss about regarding freedom here in the States. Even if they would have to live in New York or Maryland.
Socialized and nationalized under the radar screen:
| If I told you that there’s someone in my very middle-class neighborhood who, rather than being upset with the high-speed re-direction of our culture toward a socialist mindset, is ready to pour billions of additional dollars into completing that transition, would it bother you?
What if I said that there’s someone just like that in your neighborhood as well? And someone with identical intentions in every neighborhood in America? You know, if you’re a regular reader of my columns, that I don’t truck in conspiracy theories. So I’m not here to tell you some dark and scary secrets. I will argue, on the other hand, how frightening it is that something can be so very out in the open and still escape our attention. And then I want to propose something of an answer. The sinister influence is… |
He makes a very good point.
Like frogs, we easily boil slowly. But we object to boiling too fast.
Oh…and what do you think I mean with this post’s title?
| According to the article below, the two remaining Beatles (the musical group from the 60s) will be teaching children around the world to meditate. But they aren’t the only ones who are putting kids in touch with their higher, mystical selves. From AWANA clubs, to Focus on the Family’s Odyssey to Eugene Peterson’s Message Bible for Kids to Rob Bell’s Nooma films in the Christian schools, Christian leaders and teachers are bringing kids to the contemplative, mystical waters as well. Please see our links below. |
So there you are.
The Trokosi: Religious Slavery Today
Slavery in the West has largely become a shamed subject of history. Most Westerners are unaware of the thousands of slaves still suffering and dying in various locations around the world. One such group are the Trokosi slaves of Ghana.
Guayo was never told why her family gave her to the fetish priest when she was a young child. Raped by the priest from the age of 12, Guayo gave birth to four children over the years. The priest had no obligation to provide for Guayo’s basic needs or for her children, who were also considered his slaves. The young mother has lived in constant despair, seeking to feed herself and her children while working hard long days for the priest. Now Guayo is 30 and has few skills and no education. Yet, since the priest has died, nobody will dare to help her, since the community believes she is owned by the gods.
Guayo’s situation is typical of the Trokosi slaves in Ghana. In the ju-ju religious system in Ghana, the local fetish priest is the mediator between the villagers and the gods. There is great fear among the villagers that if they do not abide by the priest’s demands, they will be cursed and die. If the priest says there must be a payment made for some sin in the family, families will give a virgin daughter to become his property and she will go to live at the shrine in the service of “the gods” – often for the rest of her life.
Click the link to see what some Christian groups are doing to liberate and restore these women and their children.
Jesus came to set the captives free!