English: Peter F. Rothermel’s “Patrick Henry Before the Virginia House of Burgesses”, a painting of Patrick Henry’s “If this be treason, make the most of it!” speech against the Stamp Act of 1765 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The American mindset on March 23, 1775: Give me liberty, or give me death. – Patrick Henry

The American mindset on November 6, 2012: Give me slavery, and give me debt. But don’t, just don’t make me have to do anything that is hard to do, makes me uncomfortable, or have to sacrifice my fun. Liberty is way too hard and comes at too great of a personal cost. 

Taraxacum aristum (iii) (Photo credit: Nuytsia@Tas)

I was taught from childhood that dandelions were weeds – but those fuzzy seeds were sure fun to blow on and watch them float all over the neighborhood!

Then, I was told that they are edible. Great. But I didn’t want to eat any.

Much later, my husband and I bought our own home and we began the traditional home owner’s war against dandelions every summer as they took root in our lawn and flowerbeds.

Somewhere along life’s journey I gained weight, went on a diet, lost the weight, and then got on a healthy eating kick. I read that dandelions are not only edible, they are super nutritious. This made me sit up and take notice of these little and sometimes not so little weeds. I began to think of them as plants, useful plants at that. I decided to purposely grow them in my garden this year. I didn’t need to buy seeds, though there are seed companies out there that sell them.

Not much else has come up in the garden as of yet but the dandelions have. I went out and picked a handful of fresh leaves yesterday morning. I made a smoothie with them. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a smoothie recipe using dandelions in it. So, here is my recipe. Sorry, I don’t use exact measures.

1 handful of dandelion leaves, washed

20-25 spirulina tablets, ground in a coffee grinder

1-2 cups of fresh or frozen berries

1/3 c. maple syrup

1 t. vanilla extract

a dash of almond milk (just because I had about 2 oz. left that needed to be used up)

enough purified water to fill the blender container

I pulsed everything until it was pureed. Blended on medium for a few seconds. Poured it in glasses and served it to my family. My son said it tasted like a popsicle and he was right about that. Yum!

Cover via Amazon

I just saw that one of my Facebook friends “likes” Nabisco cookies. Great. It has come to this. I am so tired of Facebook. I hardly post anything on it anymore and most of my friends do not either – but a few feel the need to “like” something as mundane as cookies perhaps out of sheer boredom.

Facebook aside, it has once again hit home with me how entertainment oriented our society is. Likewise, the Church has also become widely entertainment oriented. We can’t have simple Bible teaching, that would be boring. No, we must have teaching mixed with entertainment and there is such a wide variety of Christian entertainers to choose from.

If you want warm and fuzzy entertainment there is always Joel Osteen to fill the bill. Some gals say his smile is just dreamy.

If you want a little chick flick-esque drama, you can always watch a Beth Moore video. If you have ever watched her on video you can read one of her books and hear her dramatic Texan voice in your mind as you read. Yes, drama loving gals love Beth.

Maybe you’re concerned with your finances, but financial terms are just too boring for the American ADD prone mind to handle. What you need is someone to entertain you while you learn how to not rack up credit card debt. Then Dave Ramsey is the entertainer for you. For a hundred bucks you can spend the next 13 weeks listening to his jokes, watching his magic tricks and stunts, while he teaches you something you could have learned in one three-hour seminar minus the showmanship. Both gals and guys love Dave’s shows.

But I think I found the piece de resistance of the “Christian entertainment” world. Ed and Lisa Young, promoting their new book – Sexperiment: 7 Days to Lasting Intimacy with Your Spouse, spent twenty-four hours on the roof of their church in bed together. I don’t know if any Christian entertainer can top this, I really don’t – but I imagine someone will try. The premise of the book seems to be that the more sex a couple has, the better their marriage will be.

If that is true, why is it that statistics show that most marriages which end in divorce are the result of fights over finances – not sex? Well, of course that doesn’t really concern Ed and Lisa as long as you buy their new book – which is the real point of their whole stunt on the church rooftop anyway.

A thought occurs to me as I write this, because I’m trying to imagine what they could possibly write next which would bring a greater shock value. Perhaps they could team up with Dave Ramsey for their next marriage related intimacy book. Add Beth with her drama and Joel with his winning smile, and can you just imagine what kind of show they could put on? The Youngs covering intimacy, Dave covering debt, Beth covering all aspects of female insecurity drama complete with horrifying tales of abuse and debauchery which she has gleaned from her followers over the years, and Joel soothing everyone after Beth gets through speaking with his words of comfort about finding your best life now. It might be deemed the greatest show on earth. What would they title the book which would precede the show? Perhaps – Your Best Debt-Free Overcoming Insecurity Sex-Life Now in Seven Easy Steps to Ultimate Life-Changing Success

Meanwhile, just like it is now, it would have nothing to do with real Christian living.

Ha.Ha.Ha. Whatever!

This is perhaps the most fitting joke for OWS. I read most of the Dune series; Frank Herbert was a brilliant writer. His world building was intriguing if not disturbing. So dark and disturbing that I couldn’t bring myself to finish the last book in the series.  In Dune, Emperor Leto II rules with an iron fist, not because he is a power mad tyrant, but because he wants to collapse the establishment. He wants to be assassinated and grooms his own assassin to do exactly that. What the Occupy Wall Street buffoons do not realize is that they too have been groomed for their task as well. They think they are so very enlightened when – to borrow a phrase from Pink Floyd – they are just another brick in the wall. Maddening!

On the other side of the “bizarre” spectrum my fraying nerves have been tweaked by my mother’s hero: Myles Monroe. I admit I had never heard of this fellow before last week. I wish I had never heard of him at all. But my elderly mother maintained that he is a brilliant theologian whose books are too deep for comprehension. With her ringing endorsements I had to find out who this fellow is. So I googled him.

He is just another Word/Faith quack, not a brilliant theologian with deep thoughts or words. Quack isn’t quite the right word for him, blasphemer is more like it. He has one of the most extreme Word/Faith views I’ve encountered so far. He says God has to get man’s permission to do anything on earth. His teaching focus is on “the kingdom” but it is not the biblical view of the kingdom of God. His view makes mankind the rulers of the kingdom and Jesus is just a conduit (he calls Him the door to acquiring this kingdom) to bring that kingdom about. He says you don’t worship “the door (Christ)” which I think is proof that Myles Monroe is a vile, false teacher. The apostle Paul if he were still living today would probably have a few choice words taken from the book of Galatians to say to Monroe, Galatians 1:8,9 comes to mind.

My frayed nerves were restored to order when I read the following article on the true, biblical Kingdom of God, and it restored perspective and offered refreshment to my soul –>The Kingdom of God (What it is and is not) by James M. Renihan

I thought this was even more funny since we had briefly met Nurse Jim before my mom’s procedure. Later again we encountered him as he came out to tell us we could visit my mom in recovery. After he walked away my husband said, “That guy is a robot. You can tell he repeats the same thing to people a thousand times a day and he’s not even paying attention to you; his mind is elsewhere.”

Yes, that Nurse Jim is a real Gem…to the recovery nurse at least.

Later, I married a man who can do some pretty good accents too. But he has no great love for British television, none at all really. He just doesn’t have the patience for it. It seems to me that British shows take a long time to set up the main story. They introduce trifles which have no bearing on the actual plot. On the bright side this could give the viewer time to go get some popcorn and a beverage.

To please my husband, I try to avoid putting British shows in our Netflix queue. But Netflix does not always let you know if the film you are interested in is a foreign flick. And so it was that last night a British show somehow sneaked its way into our queue. The movie title is Knife Edge and it was touted as a thriller. All in all it wasn’t that bad as far as thrillers go.

But it did have British actors and I could sense my husband’s disappointment right away. What to do, what to do. Oh! I know! It was time to go into snarky mode.  Our family sometimes likes to watch Mystery Science Theater which deliberately shows “B” rated movies to its viewers with the added benefit of snarky commentary being offered in the background.

I personally think that the best MST movie ever shown was “Werewolf” which I think was made by some Estevez relation to Martin Sheen, Charlie Sheen, and Emilio Estevez. For most of the actors in that film, English was their second language. For the duration of that film the main character pronounced ‘werewolf’ as ‘were wolf’, they could have cleared up the confusion for her if they had just spelled ‘werewolf’ as ‘where wolf’ in her script. Then there was my favorite scene where the cameraman got bored with the dialogue and decided to slowly film the mural that was painted on the wall of the barroom in one scene. Yeah, that was a great movie! But I digress.

I determined in my mind to make “Knife Edge” work for our family. Perhaps I tried too hard, because at one point in the movie I actually screamed. I wasn’t startled or surprised by the scene I instinctively knew was going to happen next in the movie. I’m not really sure why I screamed; it was just a spontaneous event and it had its desired effect. My family starting laughing and soon we were all in full swing of our own version of MST with snarky commentary provided by our family.

The movie wasn’t as slow as some British movies I’ve watched. The customary trifle was a scene on a train which then faded into a view of Wall Street stock trading. The main character, Emma, is a wealthy and successful business woman. She is giving it all up to be a stay at home mom back in the UK.

We found the cast of the movie interesting and soon were wondering about their casting choices. ‘Emma’ was played by a homely redhead. As the movie progressed they made her look increasingly more plain to downright ugly. In the opening scene on Wall Street she is wearing makeup and is nicely dressed. There is one unintentional scary scene where she is looking down on her Wall Street minions; she smiles this creepy goblin-like smile. As she is the hero of the story I don’t think the director actually wanted her to look like a scary goblin, did he? As the movie went on, she lost more and more makeup and took on a downright pasty cast to her skin. Of course she was supposedly near to having a nervous breakdown by this point in the movie and I guess that could account for the pastiness.

In contrast to her plain to goblin-like looks, her cast mates were tall, thin, and exceedingly good looking. They towered over her throughout the movie. Their good looks made her plain looks stand out like a sore thumb, to use a tired cliche…sorry. I think this was intentional however, but I could be wrong. I think it was to cast doubt on her loser French husband, Henri.  Is the audience supposed to wonder, “Why is handsome and well-dressed Henri married to dumpy little Emma?” Answer: For her money! Duh!

Pronounced in a proper French accent, ‘Henri’ sounds just like the Texas pronunciation of ‘ornery’. This provided a perfect opportunity for a snarky comment from moi, “Never marry a guy named Henri, you’re just asking for trouble.” Of course if you don’t know the whole ‘Texan pronunciation of ornery’ thing it falls flat as a joke. My mom is a Texan and so I’ve heard ‘ornery’ pronounced as ‘Henri’ all my life.

Henri came through for Emma in the end however. What a guy! *Spoiler Alert!* With a two-feet long machete-looking knife sticking through his back (that has to hurt!), he crawls to Emma who is being choked to death by the bad guy, affording her the opportunity to rip the machete-looking knife out of her loser husband’s back and stab the bad guy to death with it. That was the only original scene in the whole movie. It was brilliant! Plus, Henri survived being run through with a two feet long machete-looking knife, giving the audience hope that maybe with A LOT of counseling Emma and Henri can work through their differences and save their marriage. THE END!

Now, when I married, I think if there were a class known as upper poverty, my husband and I probably fit in that category. We were both in college and lived off of beans, rice, and ground turkey. I felt positively rich when I could finally afford, at last, to buy chicken and beef to eat. Today, I would feel positively rich if I could afford to buy organic vegetables. Perhaps one day, but until then I’m putting in a garden next summer.

As a teen I had it made. My mom showered me with all the latest styles of clothing I could want. When I married I had to make the old styles last for years and years. We welcomed hand-me-downs and occasionally shopped at Wal-Mart for clothing. It’s nice to have hand-me-downs but the trade-off is that you don’t get to pick your own style if that is your thing, which I admit, is my thing. I do like to have my own style of clothing, colors that I like, etc.

At this point in my life I find that we do not have to wear second-hand clothing if we choose not to. How nice! I like shopping at JCPenneys. I haven’t done that since my early college days, before I was married, and my parents still paid my credit card bill. Yes, I shop at Penneys again. How nice! I’m quite satisfied with good old middle class JCPenneys!

I realize some people are not satisfied with that however. For instance, I recently re-connected with many of my old high school classmates on Facebook which is sort of like an unending class reunion. What was the inventor of Facebook thinking?!! Who wants an unending class reunion? Go home already and get back to living your life!

At any rate, there was this girl I met soon after my parents moved back to my hometown when I was fifteen. She was trouble and I knew it. I had just moved away from a school where the tension between the popular kids and unpopular kids was thick. I was an unpopular kid in that school. How unpopular? It went from being ridiculed for my hair color to being surrounded in the hallway and threatened with bodily injury. When we moved I didn’t want anymore of that and so I kept a low profile as much as possible. Thankfully the popular kids in my new school were not so intimidating. Some were quite friendly inviting me over to their house or out cruising the drag occasionally. One popular male student even flattered me once by telling his friend I had a sexy sounding name. But all in all I didn’t want to make waves and so I laid low most of the time. Except I had this troublesome friend which I have already mentioned.

She wanted to hang out with the popular crowd, but the popular crowd did not want to hang out with her. She grew angry over this, she had quite the temper as I recall. She made it no secret that she scorned ALL popular kids. Being her friend brought me under suspicion and one particular popular girl who had once been friendly to me saw me one day with this other girl and snubbed me because of it. Our friendship didn’t last very long because she got angry with me because I wouldn’t go to youth camp with her one summer. After that she got pregnant and dropped out of school. I didn’t see her much after that. I made other friends which I had things in common with, but all in all I laid low biding my time until graduation.

Flash forward to the age of Facebook. The angry girl sends me a friend request. I suppose that she is not still angry with me over not going to summer camp with her. I also note that she is sending friend requests to some of those popular kids we went to school with. Hmm, that’s interesting. I wonder why? Is she really letting bygones be bygones? Or…is she one of those people who come to the class reunion to gloat. Call me pessimistic, but I think she is.

She was poorer than my family as I recall. Today she is married to a man who apparently has some money. By his picture on her Facebook page I can see that he is quite a bit older than her, at least old enough to be her father I am guessing. He has adult children as does she. I’m curious to know where she found him and what he does for a living. I probably watch too many crime shows, but he has the look of someone involved in organized crime. That is uncharitable of me, I know.

So, a few days ago she posts on her Facebook status how appalled she is that Target is now carrying (she mentioned some designer name which I cannot recall) handbags. She’ll never look at one of those bags again without thinking of Target, she complained. Whatever! I don’t shop at Target either. But she better not ever say a word against JCPenney or I’m unfriending her.

I’m kidding! I don’t unfriend anybody. I just wait for them to unfriend me…and I lay low.

Discernment, Spurgeon summed it up well:

“Discernment is not a matter of simply telling the difference between right and wrong; rather, it is telling the difference between right and almost right.”

I found the above on a Facebook friend’s status and it really hit home with me. I’ve been pondering this very thing lately. Both quotes express a little recognized truth in Christian culture – which is why Christian culture probably has become so corrupted by worldly ideas, moving away from biblical truth.

Image via Wikipedia

I am not one of those people who can listen to a song without really listening to the lyrics. Such bliss it would be if I could be one of those people! But I’ve been this way since I was a teen so I guess I’m hopelessly stuck in this rut for life.

Lyrics can be beautiful and lyrics can be ugly, they can be uplifting and they can be irritating depending on who wrote them and what their intentions were. Sometimes the meaning is obscure and those can really drive me nuts at times. I think the completely obscure ones actually don’t bother me too much however. I can listen to them without concern because no one can figure out the meaning; such as the lyric which says, “I’m a scary gargoyle on a tower that you made with plastic power, your rhinestone eyes are like factories far away.” What does that mean? Nothing. So it doesn’t bother me like some lyrics do.

My all time biggest pet peeve is with Christian Pop Music. I try to avoid it as much as possible; but when you don’t like the sound of a ringing alarm clock and prefer a clock radio to awaken you each morning, well, what else can you do? Maybe I should just condition myself to listening to the buzz of an alarm instead.

Currently, my two least favorite Christian Pop songs are Someone Worth Dying For by Mike’s Chair and Human by Natalie Grant. What I dislike about these songs and virtually all Christian Pop songs is the glorification of man instead of Christ. Which brings to mind another, older pop song which illustrates this point so well: “You (God) make everything glorious. And I am yours. What does that make me?” – David Crowder Band

Now, I know that God will glorify his saints one day in Heaven, but still, here is a song that focuses mainly on God and His glory and then shifts ever so slightly, the focus is taken off God for a moment, and the singer seems to say, “Wait a minute! What does that make me? Oh glorious Me, Me, Me! I’m pretty Special! What’s that? Oh yeah, I was worshiping God and got distracted with myself. You’re glorious too, God! Let me try to re-focus on You.”

Enter the two newest songs to rise to the top of the Christian Pop charts. Someone Worth Dying For centers on mankind, telling the listener that Christ died for you because you are worth dying for, which means you aren’t THAT bad of a sinner, you are mostly GOOD and therefore worthy, and if you are worthy then God actually OWES you salvation. Glorious You, You, You! Except…the gospel of the Bible does not back up this human sentiment expressed in the song.

Speaking of human sentiment. Natalie Grant’s song Human is a human wonder in and of itself. It is simplistic, a gifted five year old could have written it, and yet it is a glorious anthem of Humanism.  God gets a small part, very small, as it mentions God’s children…once again the focus of the song is on man after all! The gist of the song is this and I quote: “I’m human. You’re human. We are human.” Do you see the simplicity of this lyric? The rest of the song encourages humanity to “do better than this“. Why is that, Natalie? “It’ll be what makes the difference. It’ll be what makes us human.” Oh, OK! But wait, Natalie! I thought God was the one who is supposed to make the difference through sending His Son to die on the cross offering undeserved mercy and grace to His children. It seems to me that the focus of the Bible is on God and His glory which He says He will not share with another. He seems to be the central character in the Bible and the central theme is about what He does, not about what we humans do. We kind of messed up long ago in the Garden of Eden and we’ve never been able to overcome that no matter how much we try to “do better than this“.

I was annoyed and amused by the dialogue at the same time. In the story-line the psychopathic killer was *gasp* one of those scary anti-social homeschool types.  I couldn’t believe I just sat through the whole absurd plot-line just to get to the actual gist of the show which was clearly to besmirch and scandalize homeschooling families.

I could laugh at the premise of the show simply because it is not true. But what made me angry is the certain fact that I know people watch fictional television and form their belief systems based on fiction. I know there are people who came away from watching that episode with a shiver going down their spines thinking about the scary homeschool family who lives down the street from them, wondering if one of those children might sneak into their home and murder them in their sleep. But what can you do? People will believe what they want to believe.

Meanwhile, there is homeschooling reality. I can’t speak for all homeschooling families but I know one family particularly well and that family is my own.  While we live in a small town, my children did not grow up in a bubble devoid of social interaction. That is not the intent of any homeschool that I know of.

Here is what I do know about my children’s social interaction with the outside world. They have their own businesses in which they have regular social interaction with their clients. Their businesses are thriving because they are well liked by their clientele. They regularly receive compliments from their older clients who are amazed at how polite and professional they are given their youth since their clientele are not accustomed to such polite and professional treatment from my children’s peers.

Do you see what homeschool interaction can do to a child? Shocking isn’t it?