| November 2004 Newsletter |
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| America Today |
Words - ideas and
principles—are at the heart of our nation. Over the course of
history, our geography has changed massively. Our population has
grown many-fold, and as at the beginning we are a nation of
immigrants and their children. Yet somehow America has a definite
meaning, a meaning in principle that can be measured in practice.
We can see the meaning in the fact that we have a national
birthday. Ask yourself, what is the birthday of France? Or China? Or
England? One day every summer we celebrate the making of our
country. As John Adams predicted, this day is the anniversary of a
document that states the purposes of our nation. The Declaration of
Independence called this idea a "Self-evident truth." It
is the idea that each of us is equally a child of God, born the same
kind of creature, and so equal with respect to our rights.
We have these key terms—rights, equality, liberty. These words
do not refer merely to theories, detached from how we live and act
and think. These ideas live in our hearts, and grow up with us in
our homes and families. Americans are, after all, a distinctive
people. They start businesses more often than other people do. They
give to charity more often that other people do. They think, or they
have thought, that their own families and their own neighborhoods,
their own business and their communities, are their own things to
direct and to nurture. They do not look to others to tell them how
to manage their own affairs. They know how to compete with each
other and cooperate with each other at the same time, energetically
and with good will. They prefer doing things of their own volition
and by themselves. They do not like war, but when they are compelled
to fight they make good warriors for the same reason that they make
good business people or good neighbors, and they can be ruthless.
This is the American character.
That is the old idea of America. Now there is a new idea. According
to it, human nature is not fixed but evolves. Furthermore, this
evolution comes to be something that we ourselves control. To
believe that man can control his evolution is to believe in effect
that we can create ourselves. We can take the place of God.
Just as the old understanding of government implied a certain kind
of Constitution and a way of life, so the new understanding implies
a different kind of Constitution and way of life. Today, the
constitution hardly functions at all as a limit on the actions of
the federal government. We citizens expect different things from the
government, and tolerate actions by it that would have outraged our
fathers. Think, for example, what has become of our property rights.
The Founders saw property rights as a sort of summary of all our
rights. Where the right to property is protected, entrepreneurship
flourishes, and people are able to care for themselves. If it is not
protected, then for the same reason freedom of speech and worship
and equality of justice will suffer, too.
In the last 30 years the U.S. economy has grown in real terms 2 1/2
times, while the federal government has grown 8 times! What do we do
about this? Vote!
Know what the candidates stand for and choose the one you believe
to be the most qualified to get the job done. Ask for their views
via email; check out their web sites, read what their records say.
Ignore TV ads! Exercise your constitutional right and vote!
| Women of the Old
Testament |
Let's study together about
women in the Old Testament. What can we learn that applies to
our lives in 2004? What can we learn that will help us to tell
our own stories?
November - 4 - Ruth November - 11
- Marian |
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| Happy Thanksgiving |
| May time with
your families be fruitful and fun this thanksgiving! Please
remember to pray for those who are without family: our service
men and women, doctors and nurses, firemen & policemen. |
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| A
Thanksgiving Eve Communion Service will be held on
Wednesday, November 24 at 5:00 p.m. Pie and coffee will follow
the service. Please join us. |
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| Thanksgiving |
'Twas the night
of Thanksgiving, but I just couldn't sleep. I tried counting
backwards, I tried counting sheep. The leftovers beckoned—
the dark meat and white. But I fought the temptation with all of
my might. Tossing and turning with anticipation, the thought of
a snack became infatuation. So I raced to the kitchen, flung
open the door and gazed at the fridge, full of goodies galore.
Gobbled up turkey and buttered potatoes, Pickles and carrots,
beans and tomatoes.
I felt myself swelling so plump and so round, 'til all of a
sudden, I rose off the ground. I crashed through the ceiling,
floating into the sky, with a mouthful of pudding and a handful
of pie. But I managed to yell as I soared past the trees...Happy
eating to all—pass the cranberries please. May your
stuffing be tasty, may your turkey be plump. May your potatoes
and gravy have nary a lump. May your yams be delicious may your
pies take the prize. May your Thanksgiving dinner stay off of
your thighs. |
| Two Questions? |
Question 1: If you knew a
woman who was pregnant, who had 8 kids already, three who were
deaf, two who were blind, and she had syphilis; would you
recommend that she have an abortion?
Questions 2: It is time to elect a new world leader, and your
vote counts. Here are the facts about the three leading
candidates:
Candidate A: associates with crooked politicians, and consults
with astrologists. He's had two mistresses. He also chain smokes
and drinks 8 to 10 martinis a day
Candidate B: He was kicked out of office twice, sleeps until
noon, used opium in college and drinks a quart of whisky every
evening.
Candidate C: He is a decorated war hero. He's a vegetarian,
doesn't smoke, drinks an occasional beer and hasn't had any
extramarital affairs.
Which of these candidates would be your choice? |
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Answers: Candidate A is
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Candidate B is Winston Churchill
Candidate C is Adolph Hitler
And by the way: Answer to the abortion question if you said
yes, you just killed Beethoven. |
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| What A Great Answer
|
In case we
find ourselves starting to believe all the anti-American
sentiment and negativity about our government and its policies,
we should remember England's Prime Minister Tony Blair's words
to his own people.
During a recent interview. Prime Minister Tony Blair of Great
Britain was asked by one of his parliament members as to why he
believes so much in America. And does he think America is on the
right track?
Blair's reply — "A simple way to take measure of a
country is to look at how many want in ... and how many want
out."
| ATTITUDE |
The
92-year-old, petite, well-poised and proud lady, who is
fully dressed each morning by eight o'clock, with her hair
fashionably coifed and makeup perfectly applied, even though
she is legally blind, moved to a nursing home today. Her
husband of 70 years recently passed away, making the move
necessary.
After many hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the
nursing home, she smiled sweetly when told her room was
ready. As she maneuvered her walker to the elevator, I
provided a visual description of her tiny room, including
the eyelet sheets that had been hung on her window.
"I love it," she stated with the enthusiasm of an
eight-year-old having just been presented with a new puppy.
"Mrs. Jones, you haven't seen the room.... just wait."
"That doesn't have anything to do with it," she
replied. "Happiness is something you decide on ahead of
time. Whether I like my room or not doesn't depend on how
the furniture is arranged... it's how I arrange my mind. I
already decided to love it..
"It's a decision I make every morning when I wake up.
I have a choice; I can spend the day in bed recounting the
difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer
work, or get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that
do. Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open I'll
focus on the new day and all the happy memories I've stored
away ... just for this time in my life.
Old age is like a bank account... you withdraw from what
you've put in .. So, my advice to you would be to deposit a
lot of happiness in the bank account of memories . Thank you
for your part in filling my Memory bank. I am still
depositing.
Remember the five simple rules to be happy:
1. Free your heart from hatred.
2. Free your mind from worries.
3. Live simply.
4. Give more.
5. Expect less.
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| A short history
lesson on the privilege of voting... |
The women
were innocent and defenseless. And by the end of the night,
they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs
and then-warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33
women wrongly convicted of "obstructing sidewalk
traffic." They beat Lucy Burn, chained her hands to the
cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night,
bleeding and gasping for air. They hurled Dora Lewis into a
dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked
her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was
dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits
describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking,
slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women. Thus
unfolded the "Night of Terror" on Nov. 15, 1917,
when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia
ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists
imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow
Wilson's White House for the right to vote. For weeks, the
women's only water came from an open pail. Their food—all
of it colorless slop—was infested with worms. When one
of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike,
they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and
poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured
like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the
press.
So, refresh my memory. Some women won't vote this year
because—why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have
to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining? Last
week, there was a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new
movie "Iron Jawed Angels." It is a graphic
depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could
pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am
ashamed to say I needed the reminder. All these years later,
voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act
of voting had become less personal for me, more rote.
Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a
privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient. My friend Wendy,
who is my age and studied women's history, saw the HBO
movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it,
she looked angry. She was— with herself. "One
thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie,"
she said. "What would those women think of the way I
use—or " don't use—my right to vote?
All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women,
but those of us who did seek to learn." The right to
vote, she said, had become valuable to her "all over
again." HBO will run the movie periodically before
releasing it on video and DVD. I wish all history, social
studies and government teachers would include the movie in
their curriculum. I want it shown on Bingo night, too, and
anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn't our usual
idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers
that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in
order. It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies
try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane
so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it
is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was
strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy. The
doctor admonished the men: "Courage in women is often
mistaken for insanity." Please pass this on to all the
women you know. We need to get out and vote and use this
right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous
women.
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| Quotes About
Money... |
What this
country needs is a good five-cent nickel. —Frank Adams
A study of economics usually reveals that the best time to
buy anything is last year. —Marty Allen
I hope I don't sound like an old-fashioned
stick-in-the-mud, but when I hear about people making vast
fortunes without doing any productive work or contributing
anything to society, my reaction is:
'How can I get in on that?' —Dave Barry
Credit cards are VERY dangerous. Every time I try to use
one somebody starts chasing me with scissors. —J.
Bothne
Many speak the truth when they say that they despise
riches, but they mean the riches possessed by other men. —Charles
Caleb Colton |
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