Musings for a Monday Morning

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Many thoughts today…

Yesterday was  about the most beautiful day I can remember, one of those “It’s great to be alive” days. Wonderful morning in church,  a nice nap afterwards, some basic housecleaning, and then a fabulous afternoon and evening outside in absolutely perfect weather. Even spotted an Orchard Oriole on our property, a bird that in checking was not on my life list. How about that? Then my wife and I settled in to watch the second DVD of the Haibane Renmei anime series as part of a project for a friend. Even got to bed by 11:15. Just a superb day.

Which makes it all the more difficult to segue into current events…

While it may not have been the infamous History Eraser Button, Lee Grady of Charisma magazine claims “God Has Pushed a Great Big Reset Button.” In part, he says the charismatic movement is kaput.

You know it’s pretty bad when the Russians are claiming they’re now less Marxist than the United States. (For ultra-irony, the linked article was also featured in Pravda.) For further proof of the claim, perhaps we need look no further than this amazing bit of proposed legislation.

If you want to be really depressed, while also seeing how bad the economic situation is in our country (or your county), check out this animated, interactive map of spreading job losses.

Oxymoron of the week: A doctor who specialized in late-term abortions was gunned down in his Lutheran church yesterday as he handed out bulletins.  (So much for loving the sinner and hating the sin.)

Meanwhile, holding a Bible study in your home may now run afoul of local laws.

Risking brickbats and charges of heresy, the iMonk wonders if something is lost by being too God-centered. He also weighs in on the above San Diego Bible study issue.

CCM recording artist Shaun Groves postulates what the world would be like without the CCM business.

If you want to know how to write a compelling story, this serves as a perfect example of the craft.

Meanwhile, I watched 20 months of work on a novel I was writing, The Dying Day, go down the tubes thanks to J. J. Abrams.  Though I promised not to get dragged into an ongoing TV series again, having been a devoted follower of The X-Files for far too long, I got snared by the similar Fringe this year. To my horror, the final two episodes for the season mirrored the events in my novel’s plotline and the lives of my characters so thoroughly that the novel may be a complete loss. This is the second time this has happened, and this one is even worse than the first. A fellow writer tried to console me by saying that it shows that my ideas are marketable (online scuttlebutt was calling the Fringe finale “genius”), but that’s little comfort right now. Argh.

Did I mention that yesterday was just a stunningly perfect day?

5 thoughts on “Musings for a Monday Morning

  1. Not too long ago, one of the local churches set up a youth concert that had very high-powered speakers in the park. I could hear the rock from my house quite a walk away. They must have spoiled the mood of the park for most people there. On the other hand, a young man, a singer, from the Baptist church up the street rented out a picnic shelter, set up his simple karaoke machine, and had the shelter packed out with listeners. The karaoke music did not carry far, so you could move about much of the park without having to listen to it if you wanted to avoid it.

  2. lodebar

    Is the contradiction that the abortionist got killed in a church or that the abortionist was in such good standing in the church???

  3. I have to say, when I saw the title of Grady’s article, I thought, “Oh great, he’s gone and flaked out on us again!” But in reading it I have to say I think it’s dead on. My 20-somethings small group just discussed the patterns we’re seeing develop in the church, and he hit on many of the points we did (a few we hadn’t considered). Glad he seems to be getting his act together.

    Only partly related to the post, I apologize. Just really happy to see a brother seemingly wake up.

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