The Peaceful Gnome

I'm on vacation... not much blogging unless I find a quiet moment and so far that ain't happening all that much :-) We left home in Pleasanton California on Wednesday and drove to Roseburg Oregon where we spent the night, on Thursday we stayed in Roseburg and went to the Wildlife Safari there, that was very cool as we drove among the animals. I'll post pictures later. In the afternoon we went to a couple of wineries in the area and sampled some of their wines, I was pleasantly surprised at how good they were! On Friday we drove up to Springfield Oregon where we met my late sister Lisa's granddaughter, McKenzie. She is five and is adorable. Pictures from there later as well. After the stop in Springfield we continued up to Oregon City where we had steak dinner with my cousin Dan and his wife Connie and their kids Travis and Nicole. And that is where we are now, in Oregon City for the day today and then off to the coast on Sunday afternoon after church.

Ah, here we are, witnessing yet another sell out... We are promised change, but what sort of change? The car is broken down, the tires are flat, the engine is leaking oil and smoking. So what do we get? A paint job! No change of anything important but it will be a new color ! Oh goody. If only I could work up enough naivete to be shocked once again by a betrayal, but I can't really. Luckily I can still muster a bit of anger and outrage over it but what to do with that anger? It seems to me that the game is so far gone now that opposition just serves to make me grouchy for no good end. From Foreign Policy in Focus : Biden, Iraq, and Obama's Betrayal Stephen Zunes | August 24, 2008 Editor: John Feffer Incipient Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama’s selection of Joseph Biden as his running mate constitutes a stunning betrayal of the anti-war constituency who made possible his hard-fought victory in the Democratic primaries and caucuses. The veteran D...

An archaeological team, digging in Washington DC , has uncovered 10,000 year old bones and fossil remains of what is believed to be the first Politician.

From the UK... amusing, but so true...

This morning, as I was praying and thinking about my evil nature, the old Adam who refuses to stay drowned and whom I need to drown each day all over again, I found these in my morning readings: Psalm 101:1-4 (ESV) 1 A Psalm of David. I will sing of steadfast love and justice; to you, O Lord, I will make music. 2 I will ponder the way that is blameless. Oh when will you come to me? I will walk with integrity of heart within my house; 3 I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless. I hate the work of those who fall away; it shall not cling to me. 4 A perverse heart shall be far from me; I will know nothing of evil. Thanks be to God. Psalm 103:8-14 (ESV) 8 The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. 9 He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. 10 He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. 11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love to...

Here are part of the results of a Gallup survey about belief in God. ( Full survey results are here ) These trends are even more pronounced in the Bay Area where I am pretty sure theists are close to a minority. You midwest folk need to send missionaries to California!

OK, so maybe I was unnecessarily snarky in my previous post about Rick Warren interviewing Obama and McCain. It was good that they were asked some pertinent questions important to Christians. By all accounts he was fair in the way he handled things and didn't just toss out softball questions but asked real questions about important issues. I'm just now listening to a podcast about it on Issues.etc, check it out .

So, Ron Paul fizzled out and the Republicans nominated Mad Mac. The Democrats have given us "The Anointed One" O-Ba-Ma! Savior and Messiah... Nope, I can't bring myself to vote for either of these liars and thieves. There is not a lick of difference between them when it comes to the status of the Empire in the World at large. Only the minor details of the order in which they rape us of the last few shreds of liberty we posses separate the two. Both want our very souls to belong to the state. So, it looks like once again I will be voting for principle, I'll be voting Libertarian, the only party that at least tries to stand for FREEDOM.

TV Sucks. That's just the simple truth, and the part of TV that sucks the most is TV preachers. This is great stuff...

Here is another gem from Father Hollywood. The lie that there is no "passion" in Lutheran worship is easy to debunk, and this blog post does it splendidly: Read it here.

I got this email from the LCMS. I am wondering just why we would expect any good questions from a false teacher like Rick Warren ? Why would the LCMS be promoting his shtick? Oh wait, this is the same synod that has Kari Jobe as the big draw for a youth conference . Personally I care less for the religion of a politician than I do for his competence and his philosophy of government. I care less if he's a Baptist or a Jew than if he has real principles he is willing to stand up for in office. I already know that neither of these candidates pass that test though, so I guess I'll have to be satisfied with Purpose Driven Warrenite Infotainment questions. Bah! 8.15.2008 LCMS Notes THE LUTHERAN CHURCH Missouri Synod Pastor Rick Warren Interviews Presidential Candidates Saturday, Aug. 16, in Joint Appearance Dr. Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Churc...

When you sow heresy, you reap heresy. From Extreme Theology : August 15, 2008 The Fruit of Purpose-Driven / Seeker-Sensitive Methods Granger Community Church is considered to be one the brightest stars in the Purpose-Driven Church universe and is the 6th most influential church in America. Thousands of churches have purchased, downloaded and preached Granger's sermons. Past and present pastors from Granger are considered 'rock stars' and thought leaders in purpose-driven / seeker-sensitive circles. But how effective are these Purpose-Driven / Seeker-Sensitive methods at making true converts and true Christian disciples? Well, Granger just released the results of their Reveal Now survey and the data is bleak. In fact, Granger and their 'pastoral' staff get an F. Here are some of the low lights. 47% of those attending Granger DO NOT believe in salvation by grace. (This means they are NOT Christians, regardless of whether or not they identify t...

Click on it to read it...

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Dormition of the Theotokos (Greek:Koimesis) is a Great Feast of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches which commemorates the "falling asleep" or death of the Theotokos (Mary, the mother of Jesus; literally translated as God-bearer). It is celebrated on August 15 (August 28, N.S. for those following the Julian Calendar) as the Feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God. From Weedon's Blog : A Dormition Meditation I remember when the angel came and told me, and my heart burst with joy and terror. I remember when I came to the door of Zechariah’s house and Eliabeth knew my secret and my heart melted and my eyes burned with tears and my mouth prophesied. I remember when I felt your movement first inside my body, and I realized that I was the living ark of the living God. I remember when first I saw your face, and touched your hands, and looked into my Joseph...

This morning I was reading both the Bible and a selection about Michael Faraday in "Archimedes to Hawking" (which has now been relegated to an occasional chapter book instead of reading straight through) and was amused by the coincidence of these two passages: "In 1844 Faraday was suspended as an elder of the Sandemanian Church for missing a single Sunday service--the only time he missed a service in his entire life! When he explained that he had been dining with Queen Victoria, the church elders cared little for his flimsy excuse." A-H pg. 275 From my morning Bible readings: " At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him: how he entered the hous...

Why are they hot and why did early Americans start eating and domesticating them? Cool. Or Hot actually. Tewksbury suggests that our ancestors may have first started using and domesticating chillies for their ability to kill of nasty microbes. Before refrigerators became commonplace, the fungi and bacteria lurking within our food was a massive problem, and it's possible that our ancestors developed a taste for spicy food precisely because the chemicals that make our eyes water also cause trouble for contaminating bugs. Read here.

Proposition 8 states: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." That's it. So, is that a reasonable thing to state? I tend to fall on the "keep government out of it" side of things, of course :-) There have been numerous forms of marriage in different places and times, not all were of the "one man and one woman" variety. Indeed, not all today are of that type, though in America today those are, for the most part, the only accepted ones. Having the government involved in marriage has been a huge disaster as far as I can tell. The government gave us "no fault divorce" and the resulting "serial polygamy" or "temporary marriage" that is so common today. If we had left it up to the churches alone to marry and grant dissolution of marriage we would not have that, I don't think. But no, our totalitarian government has to have it's grubby paws in every aspect of our lives, incl...

Sorry for all the You Tube links but this rap about the Large Hadron Collider and what it's supposed to do is just cool, and educational too! Enjoy:

So, the Ruskies have invaded a puny little nation that was no threat whatsoever to them. As a result The United States of America is horribly offended , who do these Russians think they are, Americans ? After all only America is allowed to invade any country they feel like attacking without provocation, consultation or consequence. I'm impressed, America is raising the art of "in your face hypocrisy" to amazing new levels. That being said, this war, like all wars, is stupid, pointless and evil. Both sides need to stop and get back to talking things over as if they were adult human beings. Oh wait, we are talking about several governments here so instead of rational discourse they act like Junior High School boys strutting around trying to prove how macho they are. Peace.

Oh my! I just found out, while rummaging about on Messiah's web site ( http://messiahlutherandanville.com ) that there is a link from there to this blog! Yikes, that's my home church, I better behave myself then :-) Yeah, like that's going to happen! I do recommend checking out our church web site, it's pretty cool I think. You can even listen to some of Pastor Ledic's sermons there.

We took down our Pirate flag cause we're all legal again ;-) From the SF Gate: Parents have the right to home school, state court says (08-08) 10:49 PDT LOS ANGELES - -- A state appeals court reversed itself today and ruled that parents in California have the right to home school their children even if they lack a teaching credential. The Second District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles had ruled Feb. 28 that the state's compulsory education law requires parents to send their children to a full-time public or private school or have them taught by credentialed tutors at home. The ruling caused an uproar among home-schooling advocates and could have made truants out of an estimated 166,000 children in California who are taught at home by their parents. After hearing from an array of objectors that included state education officials and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the court agreed to reconsider the case and issued a new ruling today that reached the opposite conclusion: State law...

from Father Hollywood's blog : The Texas District's 2008 Youth Gathering coming up in November has an interesting array of speakers scheduled. Note that the "lead worshiper" is Kari Jobe (see below). """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" I went to the website and had a real hard time finding the word "Lutheran" anywhere on it. The only place I found it was on the "Group Registration" link where it said: *Checks made payable to: Texas District Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, Memo: GLORYbound 2008 I'm not even surprised any more :'( Since my first visit there they've rather deceptively rearranged the order of speakers and fiddled with the outside to attempt to conceal the poison inside, but it's still a toxic non-Lutheran mix of crud. This stu...

I'll write later on closed communion, or maybe just post links to other people who've already done it, but here is a cartoon that helps to demonstrate why it's a good thing (click on the cartoon to enlarge):

I meant to mention in last night's post that one reason I found Kevin's essay so exciting was that Serenity has been responding well to the unschooling concept. We have mostly been leaving it up to her what she does and she has begun, on her own , seeking instruction from us in reading, math and other subjects. It is almost all done on the fly and without too much "schoolish" stuff involved, not sitting at at desk and "studying" much :-) The other day she requested that we return to working on the Hooked on Phonics program that we had been using at first. We stopped using it when she didn't want to work on it any more. She has been figuring out reading on her own quite a bit and has realized it would be easier if she knew more about it. Cool :-)

This is a great blog post from a 15 year old who was unschooled his whole life until he decided to try a year of school for his freshman year of high school. In reading his blog I saw that he said feel free to repost it so I'm doing that here for the benefit of those I know who would be too lazy to click on a link and read it somewhere else, you know who you are! It is wonderful writing and well worth the read! Education From the Free Eye Written by Kevin Snavley All my life I have unschooled. The only thing that could be remotely considered school that I attended was pre-school, and of course, that was all fun and games. That was just life, how things were. I always wondered in the back of my head what it was like to be there, in a school building all day. How horrible it was to sit there for hours on end being lectured by crazy teachers and doing hours of homework. And then somewhere in between most of my friends going to school and me wondering, I got caught up in "catchi...

I have expressed considerable skepticism about the plausibility of Intelligent Design theories recently, so I thought it only fair that I share on a day when it seems to make a lot more sense to me. This morning I was listening to the TWIS podcast, which is an excellent, if somewhat goofy, discussion of "This Week in Science." At one point they had a brief discussion about a new form of body armor being developed that is based on the scales of an armored fish . The fact that this design was so superior to anything humans had yet come up with suddenly struck me as something that increases the probability of ID, possibly, having some real merit. I know that they can most likely come up with a typical evolutionary "Just So" story to account for it, but just for today, it makes it seem likely it (everything) was designed by God. :-) So, I'm not convinced, but I'm still open to some ID ideas. I'm still checking out Reasons to Believe becasue at least ...

I was going to just post an excerpt and a link to this like you are "supposed" to do, but I couldn't manage to do it, I'm just reposting the whole thing here from LewRockwell.com . I agree with everything Dan Spielberg says below, everything : Don’t Call the Cops. Ever. by Dan Spielberg by Dan Spielber It's clear from reading the daily news that the police in this country have become as big a menace to the average American as any officially designated "criminal" could ever be. Officially designated criminals at least are restrained by fear of discovery and try to make their behavior as inconspicuous as possible whereas the police have no such fear because they are "the law." They feel no compunction against using all manner of force, including sexual assault and murder, at any place and at any time in this supposedly free land of ours. It is high time to reconsider the very necessity of the modern police force, which is actually based on the...

This purports to be an ad from the McCain camp, don't know if that's so but it is amusing: Obamaone1 by dollarsandsense123

from Weedon's Blog by William Weedon Because I bug and harass the good folks at CPH no end, I've been blessed to see some of the new Treasury of Daily Prayer . All I can say is: PREPARE TO BE BLOWN AWAY! The good folks who have worked on this puppy have produced something that I have never seen in the whole of Lutheran liturgical history: a daily office book and so much more in a SINGLE volume. Not one that refers to charts for you to search out readings in your Bible or Psalter. No, everything needed is included between the two covers of this ginormous volume. ALL the daily Bible readings; the entire Psalter (and yes, with the monthly chart from Common Prayer also included); fabulous readings from the early Church, Reformation, and post-Reformation fathers (with none of those wacky readings on finds in the otherwise excellent For All the Saints ); Hymn verses; Commemorations; Prayers; all the daily prayer offices in LSB including the suffrages and litany; helps for private co...

Another example of why we love our Masters and their hired thug enforcers: From Pro Liberate : Roughly a year ago (July 29, 2007), Mrs. Roberts, a 48-year-old nurse and naturalized American citizen from Africa, was returning from work at about 10:45 PM when she saw a car driving erratically in front of her. After she passed the vehicle -- a maneuver that entailed acceleration, of course -- she noticed what appeared to be a set of police lights in her rear-view. Her first impulse was gratitude, assuming that the erratic driver was going to be pulled over. But she became first puzzled, then alarmed, when it became clear that the apparent police vehicle intended to stop her . Dibor and her husband, as it happens, had discussed recent incidents involving police impersonators. They were aware of advice given by police agencies to people being pulled over by purported police officers in dangerous circumstances: Drive carefully to a well-lit, preferably public area, and call 911 if possibl...

From my morning readings today: " Why, O Lord, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? In arrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor; let them be caught in the schemes that they have devised. For the wicked boasts of the desires of his soul, and the one greedy for gain curses and renounces the Lord. In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him; all his thoughts are, “There is no God.”" (Psalm 10:1-4, ESV) "Arise, O Lord; O God, lift up your hand; forget not the afflicted. Why does the wicked renounce God and say in his heart, “You will not call to account”? But you do see, for you note mischief and vexation, that you may take it into your hands; to you the helpless commits himself; you have been the helper of the fatherless. Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer; call his wickedness to account till you find none." (Psalm 10:12-15, ESV) " To the choirmaster. Of David. The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They ar...

DARPA has all the coolest toys! Check out Big Dog from Boston Dynamics , very cool, also very scary. Terminator is not all that far off it looks like. I wish our masters would not develop stupid things like this, don't they watch Sci-Fi? Don't they know this sort of thing will doom us all? Ah well, do watch the video, it's really a life like creature and I think that makes it even more scary.