I feel good about myself

I think the following is accurate, but find it interesting that my ex-wife would characterize me as an over-the-top Type A, while D. would classify me as bordering on being a lazy bum.

I guess it just depends on your vantage point.

You Have A Type A- Personality

A- You are one of the most balanced people around Motivated and focused, you are good at getting what you want You rule at success, but success doesn't rule you. When it's playtime, you really know how to kick back Whether it's hanging out with friends or doing something you love! You live life to the fullest - encorporating the best of both worlds

- posted by The Drake @ 6:35 AM 1 comments

 
Today is Take Your Child to Work Day
I'll bet the mother of the 5-year old Tasmanian devil-girl from St. Petersburg passed on that opportunity for parent/child bonding.

Assuming she has a job to lose, that is. Of course, she could always sue her employer for failing to make 'reasonable accomodations' for a person with the disability of brattiness.
- posted by The Drake @ 6:54 AM 3 comments

 
Quickie
I love Ann Coulter. She is my dream woman. Smart, conservative, eloquent and hot.

She's also a great writer and apologist for what's right about the Right. Here's a nice little summary paragraph from her WorldNetDaily.com column that puts the whole judicial controversy into a right perspective.

If the details helped liberals, I promise you we'd be hearing the details. Most important, if liberals could win in the court of public opinion, they wouldn't need the federal courts to hand them their victories in the first place. The reason liberals refuse to elaborate on "extremist right-wing ideologue" is that they need liberal courts to give them gay marriage, a godless Pledge of Allegiance, abortion on demand, nude dancing, rights for pederasts, and everything else they could never win in America if it were put to a vote.

Anyone who's ever spent time debating in the blogosphere knows exactly what she's talking about. Facts are irrelevant or biased to support the positions that libs cling to so desperately. Ann goes on to make the point that Republicans are simply wasting time and energy by focusing on the whole filibuster issue. Get the Dems on camera and make them put it to the people.

Politicians in general, and Dems in particular, live and die by the proposition that we, The People, are too stupid to understand what all the fuss is about. In reality, they all know that if they had give a real accounting to us for what all the fuss is about -- complete with detailed explanations and facts -- there'd be a whole lot of seat-changing going on in 2006.

And guaranteed that liberals of every stripe would be the losers.

For the rest of Ann's article, go here.

Shalom!
- posted by The Drake @ 6:41 AM 6 comments

 
The Lessons of James
I've been struggling with a few issues lately, mostly concerning my walk with the Lord. Circumstances have come up in my life to cause me to really focus on the teaching in James. The apostle opens up with this humdinger of a statement:

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him." (vv. 2-5)

Well, I've been having a few trials, but I've hardly been considering it 'pure joy'. D. and I got into it over the IRS tax bill to the point where she started packing boxes last Friday. The good people here in HR discovered a 'derogatory' flag during my employment verification process that threatens to rescind my job offer. This flag was placed somewhere out on the Internet where HR people do whatever it is that they do by my last full time employer, from which I was fired for not being a total suck up to a bunch of abusive big fish in a small pond. Which, of course, brought up the whole nightmare of that injustice which greatly contributed to my need to file bankruptcy six months later.

To top it all off, I have been so thoroughly fatigued that I can barely get out of bed or stay awake much past dinner.

So I find the words of James extremely compelling. One thing I know for sure, perseverence is being practiced. Joy? Eh, I'm working on it.

Then James goes on to say: "My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires." (vv. 19,20)

There's a bit of advice I would have been wise to remember last week when D. sent me an email blaming me for our tax problem (mostly true) and deciding that she was being screwed in our division of financial responsibilities (definitely NOT true). But, instead, I went off about how if she was going to make the relationship about money and power, what was the point. Then I went on the next evening to correct her assumptions with the real numbers and proclaim myself the majority stakeholder in this 'partnership', with all of the decision making power over shared assets. That's when she started packing.

Also, "If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." (vv. 26,27)

If only liberals would get this concept, they'd have a heck of lot more to offer the country. But what gets my attention is the whole 'tight rein on the tongue' thing. Not my strength, by any stretch of the imagination. I just need to learn to shut up when confronting things that piss me off. When I'm indignant, anything is likely to come spouting out of my piehole. I've found it has a tendency to set a bad tone for any ensuing discussion.

And finally, "As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead." (2:26)

This is the bottom line in my struggles. I do some things consistent with my faith, but am far, far, far from where I want to be. More embarassing is the amount of things I do and say at home and at work that make me indistinguishable from the pagan horde. Very depressing.

So I began to develop a habit of prayer during my ride into work each day. Rick Warren, author of "The Purpose Driven Life", devotes a whole chapter to the 'pray without ceasing' habit and 'practising the presence of God' throughout one's day. It's been pretty interesting to see how simply giving more time to just talking about what's going on in my life, my head and with those around me helps me be more focused throughout the day.

Although I still catch myself making the off-color joke, or checking out a woman's ass, I seem to be much more aware of God being there with me. This has the effect of making me think, "Oh yeah! Right! Probably shouldn't be doing this. Sorry, God."

This finds me still a long way off from exuding the Shekinah glory, but it feels like progress.

So I guess that I should consider this process 'pure joy.'

Lord, may it be so!
- posted by The Drake @ 12:09 PM 4 comments

 
It's been 12 days since my last post!
A lot's been happening in the life of the Drake. Busy, busy, busy. The new job responsibilities make daytime blogging impossible, and I am just too friggin' tired (not too mention embroiled in other stuff) to be consistent at night.

Anyway, I heard something on the radio yesterday on the drive home that I wanted to comment on. The Marty Minto replacement wanted to get the listener's take on the apparent discrepancy between the Liberals ongoing mantra that they are NOT in the minority, and the absolute utter failure of Air America and other new Liberal media projects to try and offset the plethora of conservative talk radio show successes.

He quoted Mario Cuomo as assessing the dynamic by claiming that Liberals are too smart to fall for slick media campaigns, even from their own side.

Hah! I think it's a little bit closer to reality to say that most Liberals THINK they're too smart to listen to anyone else.

The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Why else does every Democrat Presidential primary season look like a Chinese Fire Drill? By the time they settle on a candidate, they're so beaten down and tarnished by the depths that they've sunk to discredit their compatriots that the whole world knows that the Convention is really little more than the offering up of the latest sacrificial lamb to the Republican juggernaut.

The new pope made a comment about fighting against the "dictatorship of relativism", and it seems like that's really what's at the root of this sad, pathethic disintegration of what used to be a proud, dominant political party. When everyone's vision is just as relevant as anyone else's, and no common foundation can be found, then all you have is a bunch of wannabe emperors savaging the public's credulity just so they can be the next one to get blow jobs in the White House.

And everyone loses.

I pray that a new voice would arise in the politics of this country to keep the Republicans honest, because there's a whole lot going on in this government that gives me pause. Deficit spending, ill-advised and ill-timed stumping for issues that are probably not at the top of everyone's agenda, the slow movement towards ending judicial tyranny and the national stain of abortion on demand.

Heck, I'd like to see Bush take on the IRS before tackling Social Security. Seems like legacy building to me, and not a real working on the mandate that he was given in November.

Can anyone explain to me why this President is wasting our time trying to push SS reform when it ain't gonna happen? At least, not on his watch. Why isn't he stumping for term limits for federal judges and Supreme Court justices or Congressional override capabilities for dealing with bench legislation and arrogance?

Why is it that Judges Greer and Whittemore weren't arrested for defying a Congressional order?

Why is it that a final term President, who postures as both a cowboy and a righteous believer, isn't making the issues that got him elected his first priority?

I'd just like to know.
- posted by The Drake @ 8:10 PM 2 comments

 
Lament for the Dying Hippies
The first order of business in this post is to issue a public apology for some of my recent behavior on this and other blogs. I am an opinionated, critical, sarcastic asshole, and much of what I've said in my posts and subsequent comments has been demeaning and uncharitable. I regret any role I've played in inciting any feelings of animosity or hurt.

It is rightly said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

My intentions in posting some of the things I do IS to incite debate, but civil debate. Furthermore, I strive to prod those whose misguided, but overall good intentions, are leading them down the broad, smooth way to their own destruction into a sincere reflection on what's really important in this life. God, family, country and service.

What I have lacked is compassion for the plight of these poor souls. For that, I am deeply sorry.

It was with the best of intentions that our fathers, fresh from the trials of the Great Depression and WWII, produced and indulged the largest, most self-centered and spoiled generation our country has ever known. As this generation swarmed into adolesence and young adulthood in the 1960's, our country was faced with a reckoning of the sins of our forefathers from generations past. And these youngsters, some of them now grandparents, had their idealism and energy harnessed into a vital and imposing social force. Like their parents, they had good intentions. After all, world peace, free love and getting back to nature all sound wonderful, don't they? And the institutionalized racism of Jim Crow was a great injustice, was it not?

I came into this world at the tail end of this population explosion, born into a moral vacuum of parental neglect and guilt-induced indulgence. Into this vacuum stepped the forces of consumerism, materialism and hedonism, all cloaked in the 'virtues' for which the '60's are nostagically remembered. My parents, like those of many of my peers, espoused a hollow morality, based on status, appearances and social graces. I, like many of my peers, took this all too obvious hypocrisy and used it as excuse to reject the Judeo-Christianity ethos out of hand. It was all about the sex, drugs and rock-n-roll, baby.

Fortunately, God chose to have mercy on me, allowing me to come to the end of myself by the end of the '70's. Having stripped away the facade of my 'high' ideals, I was given the sight to see the reality of this world, my place in it, and my only hope to experience real love and peace. Not just some drug-induced fantasy, but deep, penetrating, restorative illumination.

It's hard for me to remember sometimes how radical was the change in my thinking. Like many of those with whom I debate in cyberspace, I bought unquestioningly into the whole liberal, hedonist agenda. I had no doubts or concerns about the life I was living until God starting dealing with me and putting situations and people in my life to get my attention.

It hit me hard a couple of nights ago as I was reading John 6. Verse 44 records Jesus saying, "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him..." No wonder I've been feeling as if I'm beating my head against the wall and getting very little satisfaction! It's because I am!

I don't want to win debates here, or beat down and humiliate liberals. I want to see people get free from the anger, bitterness and demanding expectations that life be something different than what it is. I just need to stop trying to convince corpses to get up and live.

What I heard this morning on the ride into work from a guy by the name of Dr. Michael Yusef made much more sense. Apparently, there was a massive revival around about 1904 in the UK and US. Businesses would close in the middle of the day so that community leaders could gather and pray and weep over the sorry state of the nation. Newspapers began to publish the names of new converts. The city of Atlanta recorded over 70,000 such conversions. Can you imagine? The thought of a major metropolitan newspaper deeming Christian revival newsworthy is mind-boggling in and of itself.

So I'm asking my brothers and sisters who read and participate in this blog to join me in praying and mourning for those lost souls who stop by once in a while to denounce our beliefs and lifestyle. They really need us to show them the better way, and all too often I lapse into arrogance without realizing that they have no capacity to know what we know. Neither did we, once upon a time.

I stand ashamed to have forgotten how desparately I needed what I was graciously given, but did not earn.
- posted by The Drake @ 12:23 PM 1 comments

 
A Child is a Terrible Thing to Waste
I'm writing at night! Aaack! I can barely hold a conversation, but I am going to try to write anyway.

Tonight's theme is drawn from Psalm 127:3-5:

Behold, sons are an inheritance of the Lord,
The fruit of the womb wages.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior,
Thus are the sons of one's youth.
How blessed is the warrior who has filled his quiver with these;
They shall not be ashamed,
When they speak with their enemies in the gate.

Even during my years of depraved hedonism preceding my return to the Lord last winter, my greatest joy in life was that of being a father to my five children. Of course, it was also my greatest source of sorrow, not being able to be as much of a daily fixture in their live as I wanted to be. Overall, however, I have been very blessed in the lives of my children. They've given me so much more than I have them.

D. has two children, boys,currently aged 6 and 7. These poor little fellows have not known stability from a father figure for most of their lives. Their biological father split from D. split over four years ago, has seen them once in the nearly three years I have known D and rarely calls them. In between, D. brought these little guys into a six-month live-in relationship with a corrections officer in eastern Ohio who cheated on her and blamed her children for the collapse of their relationship.

Sadly, my own involvement with these lads has been marred by both my inability/unwillingness(?) to accomodate their damaged little psyches and our 5 month separation last year.

The seven-year old, A., has been particularly troublesome -- destroying things around the house, stealing money (he even tried to forge a check!), and getting in trouble at school. Most recently, he was suspended for bringing a knife into school.

Now, I am a pretty strong disciplinarian. My children learned early on that I meant what I said and that resistance was futile. With these ground rules firmly established, I have been able to relax with them and enjoy them as they plunge into adolesence. Sure, they get lippy and whiny once in a while, but they know when it's time to cut out the nonsense and do what's required. When you have to deal with four children by yourself, you don't have time for debates and explanations.

D. has not established such an understanding with her boys, and I am having a very difficult time experiencing the same level of success I enjoy with my own children. Part of it is because they are too old, too scarred and stunted to respond well to my methods. But another part of it is that they are too firmly bonded to their mother, who is so totally inconsistent and
non-attentive that they understandably do not take anything she says seriously.

When A. got suspended from school, I fiercely advocated making the experience as miserable as possible 24/7. D.'s solution was to have me give the poor kid a beating every night of his suspension. While I certainly am an advocate of corporal punishment for disobedient children, I saw this proposed punishment as unnecessarily cruel -- not too mention grossly
ineffective. Rather, I saw the need to continually put him in mind of the utter wrongness of his behavior -- to generate through endless lecturing, revocation of privileges and unpleasant consequences a state of regret deeper and more profound than anything he'd ever known in his young life. I wanted to systematically tear down his intricate defense mechanisms and get at the living, breathing little boy who had been stuffed inside years ago. Then, and only then, would I have something to work with.

However, over the course of the past sixteen days, I have become increasingly concerned with trying to insert as much positive interaction with him, so that he wouldn't become discouraged and broken in spirit. What I determined, over against much resistance in my mind, was that I needed to spend a heck of lot more time with he and his younger brother. Even if that meant that other things didn't get done.

As I became more willing to give more of myself to these boys, opportunities arose. Baseball season started this week, and they need help learning how to throw and catch. So when I came home on Tuesday, I spent an hour before dinner showing them the ropes. They ate it up!

Last night, after having dinner with the family, I put A. to work cleaning up the kitchen, making sure that I was directing him all the way. He goofed off at first, but a swift paddle from Big Red (my hand-crafted red oak Board of Discipline) put him back on task. Tonight was garbage night, and as we were filling some bags with scraps, he began to talk to me. Nothing earth-shattering, just questions about why we were doing things a certain way. But I realized that he was looking to me for knowledge, for direction.

When we got back in, it was bath time. So I decided to sit up there with them and keep the talking going. The usual nonsense and chaos was kept to a minimum, and we even had a little bit of fun. They seem to find me talking about making sure that they washed their butt cracks absolutely hilarious. The classics never go out of style!

'Tis a very strange place I currently inhabit. I feel like I've just become a single father of kids who I barely know, living with a roommate who sometimes seems like a life partner. Overstated, I know. D. has borne the brunt of the day-to-day stuff longer than I've been on the scene. And it's not like I've been much more than a weekend Dad for most of my kids' lives anyway. But, still, I seem to be standing in the gap here. And to be honest, it's kinda scary.

Feelings suck anyway. I know what I have to do.
- posted by The Drake @ 8:30 PM 4 comments

 
The Pope, Sin City, and Transubstantiation
A new page has turned in my life. I am once again a full-time employee of an IT department -- the evil, money-grubbing, Fortune 500 corporation having coughed up the shortfall of their initial offer.

This means that my posting frequency will likely continue to be lower than it once was, as my days will be spent fulfilling my new duties. I haven't been able to make the transition to night blogging as of yet, but will try to squeeze in some quality time with my thoughts from now on.

I have had a few things on my mind, however, that I wanted to put together in my own inimitable way.

First, I'm having a real hard time jumping on the whole Pope bandwagon. Evangelicals the world over are being very, very nice towards the memory of this man, and I guess I don't have a real problem with that. It seems clear that his ministry gave voice to real issues to which Christians worldwide need to give heed. I admire his stances on poverty and terrorism. I've seen nothing more Christ-like from a world leader than his visit to his would-be Muslim assassin in prison to offer his forgiveness and comfort back in the early '80's. His last days and emphasis on dignity in dying will forever stand in stark contrast in my mind to the senseless, brutal, state-sanctioned murder of Terri Schiavo. Finally, his stance against capital punishment has caused me to think long and hard about my own views on the subject.

However, I've got serious issues with the Catholic Church in general, and the Pope's infatuation and confirmation of erroneous, if not heretical, dogma concerning Mary in particular. The elevation of Mary by the Catholic world, while possibly well-intentioned, is totally unbiblical and very, very dangerous in my mind. The teaching of the Immaculate Conception -- that Mary was born redeemed, without sin, and continued to be without sin during her entire life -- is total crap. The fact that this dogma was not even introduced into the Catholic Catechism until 1854 by Pope Pius IX should be the first clue. There is no Scriptural justification to believe this, and to believe it is to diminish the uniqueness and exclusionary claims of Christ as the only sinless person to walk the planet in all of human history.

Catholics will claim that this is the only possible explanation of how a human woman could conceive, carry, and give birth to God in the flesh. Nonsense. Scripture states that Mary was overshadowed by the power of the Holy Spirit and conceived without ever having known a man. His 'DNA' in the conception is the vehicle by which the very essence and a personality (that of the Son) of God became flesh. While Scripture leaves no doubt that Mary was righteous because she believed God and submitted joyfully to His call on her life, there is no justification for believing her to be sinless.

Additionally, the dogma of the Assumption of Mary is also crap and without Scriptural basis. There's a reason why Scripture makes very little mention of Mary beyond the Annunciation. It's because she's not the important one! Jesus is. In fact, the last recorded interactions between Mary and Jesus clearly show that He was separating Himself from her in order to accomplish His Mission.

Now, to completely do a 180, I went to see Sin City this weekend. I hadn't really wanted to see this movie. The wife and I had a date planned to celebrate our anniversary, but Guess Who was sold out when I went online to do the Fandango. Anyway, a very disturbing, but well crafted movie.

One of the vignettes had to do with a grotesque re-telling of the Beauty and the Beast story, with the Beast being an ex-con framed for the murder of a high-class hooker who showed him the only kindness he'd ever known. What we find out is that the killer is a part of a very wealthy, powerful and sick family. This Bible-toting sicko dismembers and eats his victims while they are still alive, keeping only the head -- which he mounts on his wall. This young man is possessed of amazing agility and speed, so that even the nearly indestructible beast is easily defeated in their first encounter.

Once the 'hero' figures out how to catch this killer, he learns later that his 'powers' come from the way that his cannabilism 'absorbs' the souls of his victims. This causes him to appear luminescent, peaceful -- even beautiful. Even during his own dismemberment at the hands of the Beast, he does not scream, but smiles beatifically.

This leads me to where my own somewhat twisted mind ties these events together. Yesterday, I was reading John 6, where Jesus gives His 'I am the bread of life' sermon. The wording in my translation of several verses began to sound oddly cannabilistic, putting me in mind of the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, where they believe that the priest's blessing of the sacraments transforms them into the actual body and blood of Jesus. Verse 56 says, "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in Me." Creepy, huh?

Most Protestants take this to be a figurative statement based on Jesus' statements during the Last Supper. "Take, eat. This is my body that was broken for you." And, "Take, drink. This is my blood that was shed for you." But I am wondering today if we are missing the real impact of this concept. We humans are given to bloodlust, unless the person being killed or injured is someone we care about. Those of us who were sickened by the forced starvation of Terri Schiavo could very easily turn around and cheer wildly should we be given the opportunity to watch a gruesome execution of someone like Mohammed al-Zarqawi. With Jesus, I think we all must come to the realization that our sinfulness, particularly prior to having an encounter with the Living Christ, puts in the same class as the people who couldn't get enough of witnessing His suffering during the Passion.

Without Christ, I am little better than an animal, and I have fed my bloodlust carnivorously on His Willing Body, tearing at His flesh in my rage and lapping up His blood for my pleasure. But my savagery was the opportunity for my restoration when I came to my senses and saw my guilt contrasted with His love for me despite my abuse of Him.

From now on, when I received the sacraments in Communion, I will not only remember His suffering and sacrifice on my behalf, but also how much I was/am responsible for that suffering.
- posted by The Drake @ 8:26 AM 11 comments

 
Come on, baby! Light my fire!
Wow, it feels to me like this is the least amount of posting I've done in a week since I started this blog. I feel guilty. Not like anyone really cares all that much about what I write, but I am a closet people pleaser.

Part of the reason is that I'm a bit tired of writing about such heavy and incendiary subjects. So I'm going to end the week on a lighter note.

First, I saw a really good movie on DVD this week - Eulogy. This comedy about four siblings from a highly dysfunctional family who come together with their children on the occasion of their father'sudden passing is a real hoot. My favorite characters are these two barely teenaged identical twins whose libidinous antics are in stark contrast with their physical maturity.

Not to ruin the ending for my faithful readers who will no doubt heed my recommendation by rushing out and renting this movie tonight, but one of the funniest bits involves the dead father's wish for his remains to be floated out from the shore (the story takes place in Rhode Island) and incinerated Viking-style. Contrary to every known law regarding the disposing of the dead, the family actually does it, with the twins taking total charge of the pyrotechnics by drilling holes into the cheap pine coffin, filling it with gasoline, and shooting flaming arrows at the rowboat-turned-funeral-pyre once it's out in the middle of the lake, lagoon, whatever.

That's how I what my funeral to go. Let my grandchildren have fun blowing up my corpse while my kids tell funny stories about what an enormous goofball I was. Screw the solemnity surrounding our WASPish burial rites! My family had better have a barbeque and bust my chops just like they do now. No tears. Jokes. Side splitting laughter. That's what I want.

I'm going to be having a good time, why shouldn't they?

Have a great weekend!
- posted by The Drake @ 3:14 PM 1 comments