Recalling Nero's Fiddling

A. Unabashed Pacifist:

In Britain they still celebrate Armistice Day, when a war ended. What happened to ours?

B. Unabashed Christian:

Holy One,

I like the modern spiritual that asks you to “guide my steps while I run this race.” I don’t think of that as determining my steps. You set some boundaries that keep me safe. Aside from that, there are probably a number of paths open to me, and you will continue to guide once I’ve moved along a path. If it’s not a path for me, I’m sure to run into obstacles that move me in a different direction, no matter how hard I try to overcome those obstacles. All of it is worthwhile, even the dead ends.

It always interests me to hear when people look back over their lives and see how you’ve been guiding them along their way. It could, of course, be our assigning to you what is merely a matter of chance. And I don’t know, either, what to say about hose whose lives seem to go nowhere, or to places of destruction and death. I know it’s not simply a matter of them choosing wrong paths. There is a call to us who have felt your guidance to offer some guidance ourselves. I know that I look back over my life and feel that your guidance has kept me on safe paths, paths that have taken me to good places of learning, growth and service. This remains true where I am today. Thank you for guiding me. Help me be alert to opportunities to help others on the paths that will provide blessing to them.
Amen

C. Un-quoting Jesus:

“I stand corrected. A mustard seed does not grow to be a large tree.”

[Even if He made mistakes, He never said this.]

D. Blog: Health Care Reform

Random Thoughts

Since 2003, over 5,000 US military personnel have died in Iraq and Afghanistan in moves to change governments there, to suppress the threat of terrorist attacks, and to keep supplies of oil flowing to the US to support our “way of life.”

Meanwhile, within the US, according to the American Medical Association at least 150,000 US citizens have died unnecessarily because they could not get health insurance. My math sees that as thirty times as many. Where’s the real terror threat? Way of life or way of death for many? And there is no supply of oil that can continue supporting our consumption addiction.

Now Congress has to deal with the abortion bug-a-boo in order to pass health care reform legislation. No health care insurance can provide payment for abortions, say abortion opponents (many of whom also oppose health care reform). So apparently we’ll have even more people who can’t get health care, more children and their mothers who’ll have to be covered by already mandated state and federally funded insurance programs. I don’t get the logic. Add to that the fact that there are already far too many humans for Earth to support.

I suppose I must be missing something here, but Nero’s fiddling comes to my mind…