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?