College Students at N.C State U, just don't get it.

Take a read at the link below and tell me they aren’t as militant as those they are targeting! Rather more so. You don't see the ROTC Cadets rampaging and vandalizing the campus now do we!

We don't see them running their moths off with false information either. So, who exactly is the bad guy here then?

AN ATTACK ON THE ROTC: "The anti-military punks are at it again. Reader Nora. A. e-mailed me photos of vandalism yesterday at UNC-Chapel Hill's ROTC armory taken by her son, an ROTC cadet on campus:





This has got to stop. (Hat tip: Sister Toldjah) Via the Raleigh News and Observer:

Vandals staged attacks early Wednesday on the buildings used by the Reserve Officers' Training Corps at N.C. State University and UNC-Chapel Hill, echoing similar assaults on three Triangle recruiting stations last month.

As before, vandals sprayed anti-war slogans and profanity, splashed red paint and claimed responsibility with a mass e-mail message to area media outlets.

Lt. Col. Carol Ann Redfield of the Army ROTC program at N.C. State was caught off guard. 'This is the first time I know of that anything like this has happened here,' she said. 'I certainly appreciate that people have different opinions, and they should be able to express them, but I have a problem when they damage property.'

The e-mail, from someone calling himself 'celest ialbeing' said, 'Stop th"

Religion in Public Schools, some just don't get it...

Why does this come up again and again, and again. it can not be spelled out more clearly. This should never make it to court in the first place, it is detrimental to our communities and waste valuable resources for the School.

I refer to this case.

However, this pops in the news over and over again. Though I can not say I was a great fan of Former President Clinton, he did do this

And he did say this "Nothing in the First Amendment converts our public schools into religion-free zones, or requires all religious expression to be left behind at the school house door." --President Clinton, July 12, 1995

However, before such a case ever reached the courts anyone could simply refer to the "Finding Common Ground: publication for clarity. Especially read Chapter 6:

14. May students express religious views in their assignments?
“Religious Expression in Public Schools,”
guidelines published by the U.S. Department of
Education, offers the following guidance about
religious expression in student assignments:
Students may express their beliefs about
religion in the form of homework, artwork,
and other written and oral assignments free of
discrimination based on the religious content
of their submissions. Such home and
classroom work should be judged by ordinary
academic standards of substance and relevance,
and against other legitimate pedagogical

Kind of a no brainier as the saying goes!

This is of a concern to me in that eventually my son may be heading to a public School, and he will now his rights and responsibilities. But why is that many teachers remain confused about it! Well I have my theories but will save them for now.

This issue will never go away, i have come to realize that. it will keep coming up for one reason and one reason alone. There is an "agenda" that most public Schools maintain, and has nothing to do with Christianity!

If you are a teacher reading this and do want real answers, read the pamphlet. It will teach you how to address religion in School.

Bigger means better? Northway Fellowship does NOT get it...

This is a hard post for me, but feel compelled to do this. Having been to Northway a few times and meeting the Pastor personaly, as well as having friends there, I can say I am NOT impressed.

Pastor Buddy Cremeans is after one thing as far as I can tell, and that is growth. From his own words "by then a church of 10,000. I will be starting strategic churches throughout the Northeast, authoring several books, traveling the world" Where is God in this, you can read the full story here.

It is not for me to judge, but it is for us to be witnesses for Christ, and I can say that I know of several folks who helped build Northway are felling a bit left out. Left out in seeing where Gods place is in Northway.

When wanting to ask Pastor Buddy about these concerns they are simply pushed aside, left feeling used and betrayed. Perhaps they misunderstood why they branched out from another Church in the first place.

Growth in a church is one thing, but when that growth comes at such a cost, is it Godly?

Manual labor…

Over the past several weeks I have been doing some serious manual labor. It was not to busy myself so as to relieve some stress from these past events, but something that came about.

I woke one morning and got out of bed and turned on the light. Well, I thought I did. Switch didn’t seem to be working. So I moved to another light, no luck there either. Hmm, something funny here, did a break a circuit or something.

So I head to the basement and all breakers are fine. This is starting to get me concerned, so I look out the window as the sunrise is approaching so I can see if the neighbors have lights. They all look fine, I see lights all over.

Back to the basement to look things over and I cannot see anything out of place. So I wait for a respectable time and call my neighbor and ask about their power. They say nothing going on all is well.

Next thing was to call the power company. They will dispatch someone sometime. That was their response, someone at sometime. Four hours later a van arrives. She tests the power to my meter and tells me that there is a problem. I am not getting power to my meter, well, not a lot of power, some, not enough to mean anything.

She goes out and tests the power at the electric box on the curb, and says there is plenty of power there that my line from the box to the house is bad. My line bad, what does that mean I ask her. She says someone will be out, hopefully today to look at it.

So I wait. Another four hours pass and he shows up. He drops a line on the ground from the box to my house and connects this new line to the house. He asks me to sign, and I ask what am I signing. He tells me it is an agreement that I have five days to replace the power line!

What, there is some mistake you are the power company you replace the power line. He says they are not responsible for the underground power line from the street to my house. That is the homeowners problem, and in five days they come back and roll up the temporary one if I have a new one or not.

I call my son-in-law as he is a certified electrician, he pops over and takes a look. He says I need to get a trench at least 18” deep from the box to the house, and at least a three foot perimeter around each box for working room to attach the new cable that I have to go buy. He tells me what type of cable and where to get it and the connectors and the best place to get a trenching machine.

He tells me that he does a job like this for a starting price of $1500. As I know he is busy making money to support my three grandchildren I tell him I will get all the manual work done and all he will have to do and certify the work and call the power company back.

We call a company called DigNY as required in NY State, so they will come out and mark everything, TV, telephone, Gas line and so on. They did, they came out and marked everything. So I ripped a 100’ trench across my lawn. 24” deep 12” wide. Ugly mess.

I buy the power line, and get it all set. My son-in-law shows up and installs the connectors and calls the power company to tell them we are all set. However, a neighbor arrives home and tells me her phone is out. Hmm I don’t recall hitting any telephone line or anything like that. So we crawl into the ditch and start rummaging around. There at the bottom is a spaghetti mess. It seems we tore out the entire neighborhoods phone lines, a 200 line phone cable.

We call the phone company they arrive the next day and start talking about how much it will cost me to have them repair it! I show them where they, the phone company, marked the line. I was clearly at least 20’ from the markings. They looked and finally agreed I was indeed a good 20’ from the markings and repaired the line.

It took two technicians all day to repair the line. I stayed home and offered them coffee and so on as it was a cold windy March day though it was April.

After the repair we waited for the power company to arrive and waited and waited. They arrived the following week, not the five days I was told. It was ten days until they came back, I was not happy as I took several days off to meet their timeline.

Well we have power now, and I can say it was more manual labor than I have done in quite some time. I think of myself as being pretty fit, granted I can stand to lose a pound or two and maybe spend more time in the gym, well, spend some time there anyway. But I am no slouch just the same. It was good to get in there and dig and then bury the cable.

All the labor I did myself with my sons help of course, a five year old can move some dirt with a shovel. He had a blast playing with it anyway.

Hard lesson learned. I had no idea that I was responsible for the power cable; I had always assumed the power company was for everything to the meter that is attached to side of my house. But that does not seem to be the case.

I also learned that I do miss working with my hands and body. I miss felling that close to the ground, the earth and my environment. My work has me in an office all day, and having been raised on a farm, it is becoming hard to resist the pull to be back outside. At the time I hated farm work, it was work relentless and all consuming. Today I find I miss that hard work.

All five of my brother’s work outside with their hands, and for years I have been riding them about it. Why don’t they get inside, and earn more money and not work so hard. Perhaps my goal for that was more self-centered than I thought, perhaps I wanted to justify my choice and needed at least one of them to do so.

I am the one missing out, not them. Maybe its time to reconsider some career choices, and look back to see where I came from. Maybe it’s just that midlife thing people talk about.

Finding a road

This season of sorrow as I have come to call it, is taking a toll. It’s not like me to dwell on sorrow or let it pull me down.

Perhaps it’s my age, maybe I am mellowing and seeing things differently or feeling my own mortality I suppose. Perhaps it’s a cumulative thing, and I cannot process these things as aptly as I once could.

Last years scare with the Docs, and these deaths seem to be bringing a feeling of my own life to light. Normally I don’t’ dwell, and have the ability to move forward. Hard to explain what I mean to say, not being that literate.

When I talk to friends and acquaintances, they all agree that one day I should write a book. But then everyone can write a book about his or her life, as everyone has a story to tell.

My mind seems to be moving backwards now, instead of forward. I seem to be comparing things I see and experience with things of the past and not with new eyes.

I guess I am looking for the road again, the road that leads me forward, the one I have been on since leaving home as a teen. I have always forged ahead with my own sense of direction and my own lead. When I left home I was like a coiled spring, and shot out of there with such force and momentum I was sure it would never wane.

However the momentum is waning. I believe that is part of the problem, I left with such speed and velocity and wouldn’t look back, that perhaps now I am starting to turn and see what I left behind.

Lately I feel like I am reliving the experiences, the nightmares, the good times, and they seem so real. It is as if I am back there again reliving it again, and the fear of wondering if I am still there or have I moved on so real it paralyzes me at times.

I saw my father three times since leaving, once at a family event I ignored him pretended he wasn’t there, second time, I was driving a freight truck and he was at the loading dock and unloaded my freight, again I pretended I didn’t know him, and the third time when he was dead.

None of those times did I have any feelings toward him at all. Now however I am looking back and trying to see what made me run so fast from home and not stop until now 26 years later. Why now? Have I lost my steam have I lost my way. Will I be able to find my road again that had led me this far?

My walk with God has been growing stronger as each year passes. Can I lean on God, can I trust in that, or should I continue with the tried and proven by leaning on myself. Can God pick me up and carry me, and will I allow that anyway.

Since leaving home I have had only myself to lean on and only myself to trust. But then, letting go of self is THE human struggle isn’t it.

So back to writing a book, maybe it is something I should consider doing in that it may help to understand or process some of the feeling cropping up lately. Maybe its what has to be done in order to continue the drive forward and fall backwards, and perhaps even allow for giving it all over to God.

Some time back I did start a separate blog for just that, but it is not accomplishing what I had hoped, so a book needs some more thought. Is it the right vehicle to get me back on the road again, or just another detour?

Where have I been...

Well, it's not where have I been in the physical sense but where have I been otherwise.

Several things, rather several life changing events have caused me to reflect on life and try to understand where my faith is.

My niece went missing last June. She was 19 and she was treated as a runaway by the authorities, though at the time that did not make much sense. There are reasons it did not add up but I wont discuss here or now.

Her remains were found. She was found in the woods not too far from her home. There wasn’t anything left, just a skeleton and a few strands of hair and tattered clothing. Her bones were scattered over an area, indicating she was there on the surface for quite some time. Small animals most likely moved her bones around.

My brother is beside himself with grief. Writing this right now I struggle. She was murdered, stabbed to death they say and it happened most likely the same night she disappeared. They know this because of markings on her ribs I guess, at least that’s the theory right now.

No suspects, nothing. No one seems to know what happened. She lived with her mother as my brother and her have been separated for many many years now.

This is an agonizing thing to see my brother in such a place. His pain is raw and he has anger that I know only God can sooth.

This forces me to ask why, but I know I cannot ask why, but i must ask who. Who do we turn to in this time of grief? God is who.

This post took many weeks to write, and still I agonize over it. I know it is a time when Jesus has risen and I know my sins went with him. But what about the sins of the person who murdered my niece? Can I let them go as well.

My dear dear friend lost her triplets. She asked that I carry one of the coffins, and have to say it was the hardest thing to do. Again I have to ask why? Why did those three die, and why does my friend have to suffer so.

This seems to be a time of great sorrow right now. it is hard to see joy in the world at this time.