78 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 4-29-19”

  1. Good evening Jo.
    Good morning everyone else
    I was laying in bed, holding her and waiting for time to get up.
    I thought ,”Why is it that I say she is the Sweetest Woman In The World””
    After cogitating a few minutes, I considered, “I have known her since 1955. I have never known her to say anything bad about anyone
    . Even to me.i
    Possible exception is Mr. Rudelheiber. He was her boss at New York Life Insurance in Fort Worth. They fired her when she went in wearing a maternity dress. That couldn’t happen today.

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  2. Morning, Chas.
    I like the clever wind chimes, Kizzie.

    Thanks for sharing that, Chas. Knowing someone never speaks badly of another, that leaves you with a sense of trust and safety with that person.

    I have a performance review tomorrow. Haven’t had one in four years. Last time there was a bit of a surprise as I think someone who didn’t like me must have been saying something. One never knows. But God knows.

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  3. Mornin’ Chas. Good thought about TSWITW.

    To paraphrase Chas: It’s Monday, and you know what that means!

    For me it means a full week of school. Saturday is a busy day with two graduations 90 miles apart. At 10AM is the ceremony at the small university where I teach a night class. Since 2 of my students are graduating, I’ll go. I get to wear my cap and gown!

    The other is at 3PM when my oldest great-niece walks in the homeschool ceremony. Since it’s family, we’ll go. Besides, it’s in the same city as the grandchildren live.

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  4. A family member had a baby late Saturday night. If my grandmother was still alive, she would have had three great-great-grandchildren in three months–one a month!

    That’s the joy of family.

    My husband’s side of the family will have a little boy in May–that’s four months in a row our wide-ranging family has grown by an adorable baby! A rich life, for sure.

    A devout feminist member of our family (a member of Emily’s List since the beginning), rocked the new little girl Sunday morning and cried. “She’s so beautiful!”

    Later when we spoke, she said mom heads back to work in six weeks. “That’s crazy! Why do women think they should abandon their babies and head back to work so soon? Don’t they know there’s more to life than work?”

    I kept my tongue with a noncommittal “hmmm.”

    There was so much joy, it hurt to point out the irony.

    There’s nothing new under the sun.

    Except for a new baby.

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  7. Janice – I have a small collection of teapots and teacups. Nightingale found this while shopping recently, and bought it for us. I love it! The spoons are a cute touch.

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  8. My post from last night:
    “My brother just told me some interesting history. He said that where we grew up (near what is now Peachtree Dekalb airport and formerly the Naval Air Station) was originally the old Army Fort Gordon from World War I. He said it was where Sargent York trained. We had woods behind our house that had these giant concrete structures that we had been told were used for watering the horses. We would get in those things when they were dry and play. My brother also said that our mother worked at the Army base and did discharge papers for World War Ii soldiers. I knew that, but I did not know that her brother, my Uncle, went through her to be discharged. She told the others in the typing group that if they saw her brother’s name to send him to her. I just think that is so neat.”

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  9. Morning! It is cloudy and 27 degrees in this forest and now the predictions range from less than an inch to 5-8 inches of snow…now how’s that for covering all your bases?! ⛄️ 🙃
    Kizzie the wind chime is beautiful and how appropriately so for you, a lover of tea!!
    Chas how blessed are we to read of your love for TSWITW….and I would say she is probably the kindest as well. Blessed indeed…the both of you….

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  11. So much sweetness on the blog today with Chas posting about the love of his life and all eternity and Michelle speaking about all the Adorables that the stork brings in month by month. ♡
    It’s a lovely day in the blog neighborhood.

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  12. Cheryl – This is a delayed response to what you wrote last week about grown children moving away.

    I do understand that. My own parents were the grown children who moved away from family (although Dad’s parents had already died before he married Mom). But it is different when your grown child lives in the same area, but you don’t get to see them often for one reason or another. NancyJill and Kim are in that situation, too, and it hurts.

    What would help a bit would be if Chickadee was more open to emailing or texting between visits (neither of us are phone talkers at this point), but she’s not. Recently, I’ve been trying to remember to send her a brief text or email at least once a week, with chatty stuff, just to keep the lines of communication open.

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  14. Yesterday we had our second annual After-Easter Brunch. The differences in these ladies, who all got along well, was interesting to me.

    Stephanie, Nightingale’s best friend, is a sweet Christian lady, 30 years old, with a very sweet, kind daughter (Grace), and tends to be quite protective and cautious. (My concern for her is that she is living with the father of her child, but they are not married. They have been together for many years, at least a decade, I think, and are committed to each other, but have not taken the step of marrying.)

    Stacey is another Christian lady, a mom of five (ranging in age from ten years to eight months) who didn’t start having her children until her early 30s (she is now 43, I think), and is more of a free-range mom. She and her husband are trying to have a “homesteading” kind of lifestyle as much as possible, and they homeschool their school-age children. She is a very down-to-earth lady, and a devout believer.

    Jackie is a friend Nightingale sees now and then, whom she met through Stacey. She has five goats and works for a lumber company, and has two daughters – one grown, one about 10 years old. (She is divorced.)

    Then there is Virginia, whom Nightingale is very close to. She is 36 or 37, I think, and single but in a “serious relationship” for the past three years, and doesn’t particularly want children. She has a six-figure income (she is an engineer), so to us she is rich, although she doesn’t think she is.

    Virginia and Stacey were at opposite sides of this spectrum of ladies. Virginia seems to be on the liberal side of social issues, and was “dressed up” in a skirt set with a little jacket and black nylons, with just-right make-up and gorgeous jewelry. Stacey is on the conservative (Christian) side of social issues, and was wearing jeans and flip flops, no make-up, and her jewelry was her wedding ring and another ring (on the same finger as her wedding ring). (She explained that those are the only two expensive things she owns, so she wears them to keep track of them.)

    We had some lively conversations and discussions, with some disagreement on some matters, but in a polite, respectful way. I was very pleased by how we all got along, and yet were not afraid to express differing opinions. A very nice time. All the ladies thanked us and told us they enjoyed themselves.

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  17. I mentioned that Stephanie’s daughter Grace, who is six years old, is sweet and kind. At last year’s brunch, she had a problem with one of Stacey’s young daughters (then four years old) who had taken a ball away from her. While Stacey was reprimanding her daughter, Grace showed up with another ball and offered it to the girl. I thought that was so sweet.

    Yesterday, Stephanie was telling us about a call she got from the mother of one of Grace’s classmates. The other little girl is one who tends to get picked on. One day on the school bus, she was singing a song, and some kids yelled at her to shut up. Grace told her to ignore them, and then sang along with her. What a kind and beautiful thing to do!

    As I said to her, it only takes one person sticking up for someone to help deflect the effects of bullying.

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  18. Oh! I almost forgot to tell you all the most important thing about our conversations yesterday.

    With three Christian women being a part of this group, talk about God came up a few times, in a very casual way. It was sweet to be a part of that, and not feel like we were trying to force the conversation in a direction to “witness”, but that it merely seemed a natural part of the discussion. Praise God! (This is what my prayer request was referring to.)

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  19. We had a smattering of rain last night, though a friend texted that they had a downpour just a few miles away.

    Carol didn’t take the van to go to church yesterday because (again) her “legs hurt.” I asked her when we talked by phone why she has been such an infrequent church goer all these years and she insisted oh, that wasn’t true at all, she went every week when she lived in Brooklyn. But she was a teenager & 20-something year old, that was a really, really long time ago, I said. As our pastor puts it, sometimes we need to get into each other’s “grill” about things we see that are amiss. Carol always joins a church whenever she moves to a new area but then hardly ever goes. Curious. She relies strictly on doing her “devotions” for an hour a day — although she has started going to the Bible study the one church brings to their facility on Wednesdays, so that’s a good step — if her attendance lasts, she’s generally not gone to that either.

    The dangly tea cups are really cute 🙂 And I have always liked wind chimes.

    I have a rather large, metal (black) wind chime re-creates the sound of a harbor buoy, but I’m not sure where to hang it since the house has been all prettied up. I have 3 flower baskets hanging along the front porch overhang and I don’t think that area can take another thing without looking cluttered, so I’m looking in the back, maybe on the patio overhang where I don’t have anything hanging.

    Meanwhile, I still need to deal with getting the peeling paint fixed on the one side of the house, but it’s still too damp out, for the most part. Maybe in a month or so the air will start drying out … I also have to get the window guys back to check on the one big side window (the new replica they put in) that’s now out of whack ever since the painters worked on that area. It won’t latch easily on the bottom (I can’t latch it at all, but Real Estate Guy managed to get it hooked); it looks like it just doesn’t fit right in the frame. Sigh. I called and left a message for them last week but I’m sure they’re very busy after all the rains. I hope all it needs is a simple “re-hanging.”

    The painters were cheap but they certainly left some new problems in their wake that I’m now having to deal with.

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  20. Kizzie, so good to know that Nightingale has some Christian friends. 🙂 And I also think the weekly or regular, chatty/friendly texts to Chickadee is a very good idea, whether they’re answered or not. Keep sending them.

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  22. Kizzie, when we lived up north, just about every Sunday after church my husband and I and the girls (and sometimes our son-in-law) would gather in a cluster in the pews and chat for ten minutes or so. It struck me as sweet, but also funny and odd. The reason we did it? We didn’t tend to see one another (us seeing the girls I mean) outside of church. Younger (single) daughter would drop by every couple of weeks, and she tends to call weekly, but we hardly ever saw the older one, and today we hardly ever talk to her by phone (about once a month). We know she loves us, but adult children live their own lives.

    Yes, when you live in the same town, you wish to see them more often. But it may or may not happen. And I can tell you from personal experience that having expectations of how often grown children seek you out can drive in a wedge. Especially when neither you nor the person you want to see more often drives, you are going to be limited. Yes, you want a closer relationship with her–of course you do. I have things in my own life I would dearly love to have be different–but we have to live with unmet expectations and desires. And when those expectations involve other people, unless they are actual sin that needs to be confronted, usually it’s safer to release them once we recognize them.

    For me personally, when I feel an “expectation” from someone else that is beyond my own desire, it drives me away from the person, not toward her. See, when a person has a certain expectation that is raised, it feels like you cannot possibly actually please the person. If they “expect” you to call every week, for instance, and you go eight days, you have disappointed her. If you call in seven days, you have merely done your duty. If you call in five or six days, you risk her changing the level of expectation to more frequency. Now, we can expect certain things from people: courtesy and respect, for instance. If a person sins against us, we can say so. But such expectations as how much they’ll spend on gifts, how often they will come to see us, how long they will talk when they call us–those put way too much pressure on relationships, and they risk pushing the other person away.

    Look for mutually enjoyable ways to get together, and be happy when you get to see her. You see one of your two children regularly, and your grandson, and you see the second daughter several times a year–many, many people on here would happily see beloved family members as often as once a year. I too wish you could see her more often, and that the times together would be sweeter, and that her living situation were better . . . but you are an empty nester, and empty nesters have to find ways to let their children be adults and to find other life interests besides their children. It isn’t good for anyone when they don’t.

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  26. I would go to my mom’s usually on Sunday nights for dinner, ending with walking her dogs together when I lived about 25 miles away — but I didn’t make it *every* Sunday night (though most) and I always knew when I skipped a visit that my mom missed it probably more than I did. I think parents retain a stronger connection to their adult children who move away than the other way around. But that’s probably the natural course of things.

    I was 38 when my mom died and I deeply missed those Sunday night visits, of course. 😦 But sometimes I was tired from work & a busy weekend, anticipating a new week starting just a few hours ahead, so driving 25 miles for the 2- to 3-hour visit wasn’t always something I relished doing, it was kind of more of a duty, although I always ended up enjoying the time we spent, especially the talks as we meandered through the old neighborhood with the dogs. When we got back, I’d usually stay only for a few more minutes, then take off for home by 8 p.m.

    I suppose all families are all different and it depends on distance and schedules and other circumstances, of course. The weekly visits with my mom probably would have been less frequent had I been married, for example, or lived even say 35-50 miles away. Lives for young adults get busy, married or not, while the lives of our parents are slowing down with retirement and becoming less busy and full.

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  28. So someone asked our pastor yesterday if he’d ever think about delivering a historic sermon, say from Spurgeon, from the pulpit. He said he’d probably only do that with one — Edwards’ Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.

    Actually, that sermon is excellent, although when I read it in our college American literature text (before coming to faith) I thought it was really quite awful 🙂

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  29. Cheryl – I guess I wouldn’t have let the “dinner once a week” thing become an expectation if Chickadee had not suggested it herself, which raised my hopes. I have slowly dropped that expectation. (But again, there are those times she has said that she misses us “so much”, which seems to show that she would like to get together more, too, at least at times.)

    But I have to say that I have been very careful to not let Chickadee know about my sadness about the situation, as I don’t want to drive her further away. I am light and chatty (within reason – not obnoxiously so) and encouraging when we are together.

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  30. This weekend it was mentioned that coffee is not good for hydration. Does that go for decaf coffee, too, or only caffeinated coffee?

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  33. Coffee can’t be too bad for you. When I was working, I always had a cup of coffee beside me. It was a “pause event”. When you are studying,on something, a moment to take a sip of coffee helped cogitate. ‘
    I drank a lot of coffee in those days.
    I got the habit of doing that in the AF, I always had. a cup of coffee with me.
    It can’t be hat bad. .

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  36. Kizzie, I had the thought that in your position, if possible, that a monthly family outing to see a movie, child-friendly, might be a good way to get everyone together. Here we have lower priced tickets for afternoon and dinner time movies. Or even having a weekly summer treat to get ice cream in an area closer to where the McK’s live might bring people together.

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  38. Also posted on the News Thread:
    https://world.wng.org/content/synagogue_shooter_was_church_member_dean_s_list_student
    ‘John T. Earnest, 19, is a member of Escondido Orthodox Presbyterian Church. His pastor, Zachary Keele, told the newspaper, “It’s a deplorable act of wickedness. I’m still in shock. … I’m kind of numb.”

    ‘California State University, San Marcos, also confirmed that Earnest was a nursing student there who had earned dean’s list honors. The school released a statement saying it was “dismayed and disheartened” that he was suspected in “this despicable act.”’

    More: https://world.wng.org/content/a_solemn_sunday_after_synagogue_shooting

    I have been seeing and commenting on a rising tide of hatred coming from conservative, professing Christians for several years now – I have a member of my own family who indulges in anti-semitic conspiracy theories and takes every opportunity he can to criticize the Jews, but I am well aware he is not alone in his views, as I have seen them elsewhere from those who claim Christianity and he gets most of his material from the internet. Jesus told us to love our enemies and bless them who curse us, and do good to those who hate us (Matthew 5:433-48); but what I see more and more from those calling themselves Christian in the West is a fleshly eagerness to justify their hatred of others. Love, Paul tells us, “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (I Corinthains 15); but I see an eagerness to snap up juicy news stories about one’s political/religious/idealistic opponents in order to increase one’s anger towards them. The angry words that I regularly read Christians spewing towards those they consider to be opponents of Christianity is truly horrifying, and sooner or later, that hatred brewed in words will spill over into actions. In the words of James, the brother of Jesus:
    ‘No human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water.’ (James 3:8-12)
    James’ analogy is from Jesus’ analogy about good and bad fruit in Matthew 7. What we say about others says volumes about who we really are. To revile others is a sin that calls for excommunication in the church (I Corinthians 5:11). He that says he loves God and hates his brother is a liar (I John 4:20).

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  39. Yikes and yikes.

    (Yeah, we ran a story, though I’m off and had nothing to do with it — the park is 3 blocks from where I used to live and I’d walk through there on my way down to the beach after work back in the day):

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  42. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/04/29/poway-synagogue-shooting-two-congregations-torn-apart/3613812002/
    _______________________________

    One Jewish, one Christian: How the California synagogue shooting tore apart two congregations

    ESCONDIDO, Calif. – Two religious congregations about 12 miles apart – one Jewish and the other Christian – were bound by tragedy over the weekend.

    One was a synagogue ripped apart by gunfire; the other was a church the suspected shooter’s family regularly attended. What both shared Sunday: an overwhelming sense of grief as worshippers grappled to make sense of the senseless.

    Their leaders, a rabbi and a pastor, did their best to show how they are rising above hate. …

    … The next morning at the Escondido Orthodox Presbyterian Church, also nestled in the picturesque rolling hills northeast of San Diego, the minister led the congregation in collective soul searching over how a 19-year-old, a member of one of their most respected families, could have allegedly carried out a crime so horrific, one that so flew in the face of the church’s values and teachings.

    At both congregations, the sense of horror was palpable. Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein endured the “indescribable” experience of staring down the barrel of a military-style rifle during a service in his own synagogue. …

    … Earnest struck many as being unusually reserved.

    “I tried to talk to John several times, but he just never said anything. I think it’s not good if someone is as quiet as that,” longtime parishioner Gerrit Groenewold said at the Escondido church.

    The pastor of the church, Zach Keele, was so disturbed by the shooting that he called a special session after the main service to talk about it with the congregation. Most worshippers stayed, and they allowed a USA TODAY reporter to witness the moment.

    … Keele, in emotional tones, prayed for the victims, the police investigators and the Earnest family. He decried the evil that had landed on the church’s doorstep. He prayed that the suspect’s soul “will be softened.”

    He reached for consolation, finding little except that the suspect, in a manifesto police said he published before the crime, didn’t blame his family for his radicalization, saying it was based on writing he encountered online.

    “There is no superior race. We are all created equal,” Keele said. “We are committed to loving all people.” …
    _____________________________________

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  43. He didn’t learn his hate at church, or from conservative Christians, so enough with the bashing Roscuro. Place the blame where it lies.

    https://amchainitiative.org/bds-debate-a-tale-of-two-universities/

    ————–

    https://mondoweiss.net/2018/06/student-unanimously-resolution/

    ————-

    And drama queen acts like this aren’t productive either.

    “The angry words that I regularly read Christians spewing towards those they consider to be opponents of Christianity is truly horrifying, and sooner or later, that hatred brewed in words will spill over into actions.”

    This is silly. People say all kinds of mean and hateful things every day. It doesn’t mean they’ll ever shoot up a school or church/synagogue/mosque. Just stop.

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  44. The shooter’s father, an advance placement school teacher, also is an elder at the church.

    From another news report:

    ~ On a message board site used by hate groups John T. posted a message 20 minutes before the shooting. “I’ve only been lurking for a year and a half, yet what I’ve learned here is priceless.” He added a link to his manifesto.

    The interview style document explains how he believes, “Every Jew is responsible for the meticulously planned genocide of the European race.” He said he was inspired by the Christchurch shooting in New Zealand.

    He added he wasn’t taught this ideology from his family, “I had to learn what they should have taught me from the beginning.”

    He’s facing a murder charge and three counts of attempted murder. ~

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  45. And the news thread is probably a better place for us to discuss it further, for those who prefer to keep it separated.

    Thanks.

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  46. The Real, it relates to what my sibling in-law, whom I have spoken about on this thread before, thinks about the Jews, and he, like Earnest, learned it online. Sometimes, news and private life intertwine horribly.

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  48. Chas, I suspect coffee is not a problem for most healthy people and can be a good thing. But for somebody who is dehydrated, a drink that causes one to expel moisture is not so good. And it is too acidic for some people. It is also supposed to be a cancer fighter and other healthful things But there is no one size fits all.

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  49. Well, since some of the news thread conversation leaked over onto this thread, I’ll share what I wrote over there:

    As she says above [in the comment right before mine on the news thread], Roscuro was not blaming all Christians, or saying that we all are hateful, but that there is a strain of that in some. If we’re not careful to call it out, it may spread.

    It brings an ache to my heart when I see some of my fellow believers on social media expressing contempt (bordering on hated) for Muslims or liberals/Democrats or whomever. Or calling those they disagree with various epithets. Sometimes, even if no epithet is used, contempt and/or disrespect comes through in other ways.

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  50. Kizzie. I have learned to love with an open hand. I let BG set the timing. If I push too hard she won’t respond. When she wants me she contacts me.
    As I have said if Chickadee wants to be with you she will find a way. SHE can ask the McK’s. She can ask her sister.
    I beat myself up for years. Then one day we were talking and BG said “I understand so much more now. You did the best you could and if I had been you I would have beaten my butt”. Eventually they get it. There used to be a phrase Let go and let God.

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  52. Roscuro,

    I think your personal experience is clouding your view and making you see a problem that’s really not present in most churches.

    ——–

    Cheryl,

    No one said we did. And just because someone doesn’t like something that’s said, that doesn’t make it hateful. Usually, it just means it’s true.

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  53. This has been a somewhat emotional day in the neighborhood (i.e. on the thread).

    We may have many differences among us, but we are all united in Christ and His word. I trust we are all trying to seek that cornerstone, in whatever issue we discuss.

    Like all groups of Christians from various backgrounds, we can sometimes be pretty dysfunctional, amen? But it’s all part of the way God teaches and helps each of us to grow. It can be painful, hurtful and very frustrating and irksome at times — but always good if we’re pursuing the truth and remembering that Christ is the only firm foundation on which we can build and grow.

    It’s His world, after all, and we need do what we can but also then trust in His sovereignty that he’s working all things according to his ultimate purpose.

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  55. DJ@2:55pm “I never understood the point of decaf”.

    I never understood the point of coffee. 🙂

    My father was the biggest coffee drinker I ever knew. I once met a lady who had worked with him 30 years earlier. She said, “The think I most remember about your father was what a prodigious amount of coffee he drank.”

    I take after him in many ways, but drinking coffee is not one of them. I’ve tried, but I just can’t stand it.

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  56. AJ, your 9:47 . . . by that line of reasoning, your dislike of Roscuro’s statement shows that it’s true. It certainly “pushed your buttons,” anyway . . . and that is often evidence that it’s time for some self-examination. If someone isn’t talking about you, but your immediate response is defensiveness, it’s a good idea to ask “why.” Seriously, brother.

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  57. “Hate” has been a much abused term in our political discourse in the U.S. It’s applied to opinions in a strictly politicized way and the term has actually just lost its impact for many of us.

    That doesn’t mean there aren’t ideas or arguments that actually do fall under that category that we need to be aware of. But politically, it falls (mostly) all under the First Amendment. Let it rip. We’ll survive it. Our country always has. It’s way more dangerous to start restricting speech and ideas, but I fear that’s a concept that’s being re-thought by some.

    For us, in terms of our faith, we ideally should have an additional filter to pay attention to, however, and that is God’s word.

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  58. Kevin, I’m not a daily coffee drinker, but I do like it when I have it. Did you see the article on Piper’s site? It really is kinda true, when I have a cup (almost always just “one”) cup of coffee in the morning, I’m much more alert. I think my editor appreciates that 🙂

    https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/god-caffeinated-his-world

    ________________________

    Scientists around the world have noted the effects of the drug — caffeine is a drug, and a powerful one. Caffeine “sharpens the mind,” and as Murray Carpenter adds in his book-length study Caffeinated, the drug “does not just increase acuity; it can also improve mood.” Unlike marijuana, caffeine (in moderate doses) makes us more awake to the world, rather than less. …

    … Today some 90% of American adults consume caffeine on a daily basis. How does caffeine work? It is not a direct stimulant but indirect. It’s like putting a block of wood under our body’s brake pedal. It doesn’t actually give us energy, but keeps our bodies from slowing down and getting tired. …

    … Reformation theology, complemented by caffeine (rather than morning ales), produced “the Protestant work ethic.” Coffee’s usefulness may go beyond assisting morning spiritual exercises (meditation and prayer) and help energetic efforts to serve others’ needs during the day. …
    ______________________________

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  59. Kizzie (8:04), yes, and what helps me most is remembering that all people are made in God’s image. They / we / all of us are “image bearers” and have infinite worth in his sight. That alone stops me (sometimes? mostly? maybe not always?) from going where I shouldn’t go.

    In non-campaign seasons anyway?

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  60. AJ – Roscuro is not saying that churches are preaching this antisemitism, I don’t think, but that some folks are picking it up in other ways. (And considering there are some wacky churches out there, there probably are a handful sprinkled here and there.)

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  61. My parents — must have been their WWII generation? — drank coffee, off and on, throughout the day also. I maybe have 1 cup in the morning, but then I’ll go weeks without any. Still, I do like it, with a bit of milk, no sugar.

    When my older cousin first moved out of her parents’ house, she found she and her roommate loved brewing coffee in the mornings but only for the smell. Neither of them liked to drink very much of it.

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  62. And I will say I’ve not seen the anti-semitism in church at all, but then I’m kind of cloistered right now in my own church and denomination. That comment surprised me. But it may also just be that I’m sheltered in a particular Reformed ‘bubble’ within the Christian community.

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  64. As just noted in the links just shared on the News thread, Earnest not only quoted the Bible to support his actions, he is not the first synagogue shooter to do so, as Robert Bowers, who killed 11 in a synagogue last year did the same.

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  65. I will say something. You tell me if it is hate speech
    When a Muslim shoots up a synagogue or a street or whatever, he is not denounced by the Muslims. There is general silence.
    When a church attender shoots up anybody, he is immediately denounced by the Christians. See the response of the Presbyterian church. We say it is not okay and not a Christian stance.

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  68. I have worked with Muslims who I’m sure would never have understood their religion to condone the atrocities that have been committed in the name of Allah.

    It becomes tricky when trying to judge a ‘group’ amid circumstances like these. But yes, I’d have liked to have seen more of a mea culpa from the faith’s authorities

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  70. What I do find encouraging (from what I read earlier), is that the rabbi and pastor have spoken and seem to be on the same page about what happened.

    I feel for the suspect’s parents, it stuck me that 19 years old is the typical age where mental disorders such as schizophrenia emerge and seem to cause at least some of these outbursts that otherwise seem unexplainable.

    I suspect that there are many layers to all of this, it’s not just a black-and-white “political” or “hate” act.

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  73. I met him on a Monday and my heart stood still
    Da do ron-ron-ron, da do ron-ron
    Somebody told me that his name was Bill
    Da doo ron-ron-ron, da do ron-ron

    Now try to get that one out of your head, Do….😴 🎶

    I love coffee….I drink a lot of coffee….

    Thank you Mumsee @ 10:41……

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  78. Well Cheryl,

    Your opinion… well, you know what they say about that.

    But hey way to misrepresent my point too.

    Since you seem to have missed what I thought obvious….

    The point was calling out people acting like barbarians is not hateful, it’s accurate and true. I feel no guilt, nor will I stop calling out the obvious. Evil wins when we stay silent. I won’t, and calling it out is gonna continue. If that upsets your delicate sensibilities, tough. The truth doesn’t need sugar coating.

    As for your snide comment about self reflection, maybe you need to look in the mirror too.

    I think we’re done here.

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