I was responding to another thread in which I couldn't help but feel overwhelmed as I thought about the situation. I won't get into specifics, but the general gist of it was the situation put the individual in grave danger of becoming part of a cycle of anger. A cycle of anger is always destructive, and someone has to put a stop to it. I say this out of experience: I am the product of generations of dysfunctionality, and I finally came to the realization that it was up to me to put a stop ...

My needs are simple. I don't know what moron invented the idea that one's life should HAVE to be a quest for a continually grander existence rather than a peaceful, simple life, but they sure have helped further a lot of miserable lives. I look out over my "domain", and look towards the setting Texas sun and I see all that I could ever want or need, right where I am at. A wonderful family. A community that KNOWS the meaning of the word "community", a house that holds strong against the bi...

When I was a child, we used to spend a lot of time around small stock ponds in the Oklahoma countryside. We had tons of admiration for our older siblings who could skip a rock clear across the pond and fetch it from the other side for reuse. We couldn't do this, though. No matter how hard we tried, gravity overtook our efforts to cause the rock to successfully hydroplane across the pond's surface, much less, several times in succession. A single skip was regarded as pretty near akin to changi...

I'm going to apologize for rambling ahead of time, but a number of different thoughts have come out of the article on foreign aid to India, and it's kind of hard to remain topical and cover all of them in a single blog. So, forgive me a little repetition here, my integrity was challenged by a couple of our less tactful readers, and I feel compelled to defend it. The contemporary argument of the American liberal is to hold that conservatives are lacking in compassion because they want to cut a...

My last piece about what prolife means to me was meant to explain some of my moral standards a little more fully. In doing so,I shared some of MY values, based on my interpretation of how to most closely follow the tenets of my faith. Someone reading them would question why those values aren't the cornerstone of my political beliefs. It's a fair question, and one to which I feel inclined to respond. My values are based primarily on my reading and studying of the Holy Bible, which I hold as...

The recent hullabaloo on JU between certain atheist bloggers and certain Christian bloggers has brought one of my biggest pet peeves to the surface; that is, the inability of either side to acknowledge and/or learn from the other. On the Christian side, we have certain individuals who refuse to entertain theories such as plate tectonics, evolution, and other theories because those theories are not explicitly supported by THEIR INTERPRETATION of the Bible (doesn't mean they're not supported by...

I wish I was someone else I'm confused, I'm afraid, I hate the loneliness And there's nowhere to run to Nothing makes any sense, but I still try my hardest Take my hand Please help me man 'Cause I'm looking for something to believe in And I don't know where to start And I don't know where to begin, to begin If I was stupid or naive Trying to achieve what they all call contentness If people weren't such dicks and I never made mistakes Then I could find forgiveness Take my hand...

I have often been accused of being a borderline pantheist. It's true that I appreciate nature and all she has to offer, and can spend hours surrounding myself with her majesty. From the plains to the rockies, I have yet to find a square foot of ground that doesn't have some appeal when I walk in it; even the soft feel of the dirt beneath an Iowa cornfield and the smell of the ripening ears in autumn hypnotize me with their magnetic attraction. You see, I see God as the ultimate composer and t...

I am a multifaceted person, as anyone who knows me can attest. As a longtime holistic health practitioner, I have been exposed to a number of philosophies and beliefs that have helped my life and outlook immensely. Of the many concepts I have been exposed to, few have helped me, personally, more than the concept of "being present". While I am less than perfect in my understanding of Eastern philosophy, I have adapted the concept to my own highly bastardized form: that all we are able to dire...

One of my absolute pet peeves is evangelical atheists. You know the type; the people for whom even agnostics are viewed as religious extremists. It's not enough for evangelical atheists to not believe, they have to ridicule and mock the beliefs of those who do. And they give a bad name to the many atheists who really don't care what you believe. They're the type who will loudly complain when, at an event YOU are hosting, you bow with friends in prayer. In complaining, they will simply disrega...