Pleasantly Surprised * John G. Roberts Jr.
Well, I'm back. Been in some sort of doldrum state lately. with a bad writing attitude, Since I don't want my personal diary to be a book of complaints, I've avoided saying anything for awhile. It's kinda nonsensical to complain about things you can' t change anyway, like the government.
Anyway, in my last posting, more than two weeks ago I made a bold statement: "
Unless Bush makes a huge error in his usual judgement, I doubt if he'll pick anyone with true integrity to sit on the supreme court." Well, these words came back to hit me tonight. And I'm glad. In my defense, I did say, "My hope is of course that Bush will rise to the occassion and choose a person of wisdom to be on the court", but I had little real hope for that.
I'm sure some sorta dirt will be brought up by political folks, but this guy seems seriously to be a person of character, so I expect good things from him. I know his views on Roe vrs Wade will play big during the hearing; but there's no way a person should be held to account on one issue when his job description will cover multitudes of issues. What I can figure from what he's said about the issue publically is that he will uphold the law as it stands, even though he disagrees with the way it became law; and that his theory on our constitution is that congress should pass laws, not the courts.
Well, that is truly what the constitution says, so, hey, why not? So he's a strict constitutionalist - can't hold that against anybody. If you think that through, it means his personal opinion on matters brought before him will not make him decide to change the law during court time - that should be left to congress. If he can hold that belief to it's final processing then he can do no real harm on the bench.
I'd be personally interested in how he would have voted on the eminent domain issue that still bugs me. Also, small things, like the President declaring war instead of Congress. But those honest questions will probably never be brought up, so we'll never know. Good news is I don't feel uncomfortable with the nomination.
The only downside I see to John G. Roberts Jr. is that he seems to have spent a good portion of his career in Washington, DC and mixed up with politics a good portion of that time. I know, a guy has to work somewhere; but it seems like having someone who has actually had to deal with real, honest working people in the real America would have been cool. That's my only concern, and I admit it's a minor concern. So, Bush is on my happy list until I read about another soldier killed for his crusade to democraticize the world, which I unfortunately think will happen sometime in the next 24 hours.
Tonight we studied Chapter 25 in Genesis. Esau and Jacob, what a pair. In Malachi God mentions in passing, Jacob I loved, Esau I hated. I love what Spurgeon told the woman that said she couldn't understand how God, who we call love, could hate Esau. His reply was so true: "I don't have any problem with that, my problem is how could God have loved Jacob!" Jacob is quite a character, and well worth the time to reflect on. He is a believer in the same way most of us are believers - always trying to help God out =:-)
In Chapter 25 we see Abraham's death, so the homework was to reflect on Abraham's life as a person of faith and consider his stumblings and see which part of Abraham's path we personally fit on. No one could truthfully say they had reached the faith of Abraham in Chapter 22. I'm betting that after we study Jacob that most of us will feel comfortable identifying with him =:-) He's definitely not one we could call "perfect", although we can sort of almost see him "perfecting" - maybe not as clearly as we see Abraham, but he earned his stripes enough to be called a person of faith in Hebrews 11. Should be a fun few weeks - will go by kind of fast compared to Abraham, whom we've studied for 6 months.
Started reading a new book that popped in today - read the introduction this afternoon: "The Year's Best Science Fiction - 22nd Annual Collection" edited by Gardner Dozois. I've been away from Science Fiction for a few years, and delving into some of the classics made me wonder which current writers are worth reading. Sometimes the best place to discover that is in these anthologies - after all, that's where Asimov & all those folks first became recognized outside the small circle of readership of sci-fi mags.
What intrigues me the most so far is how far I've been "away". Very close to 1/2 of the selections in this book are seeing "print" for the first time because their original "publication" was on-line in a science fiction webzine. That's amazing, even to me, and I shouldn't be - because early on I was an advocate of on-line publishing. Turned out not to work too well for me personally, because I couldn't think of a way to generate an income, and simply spending time editing and giving it away was cool; but I went cold turkey from print to on-line. Our readership grew fast and furious - that was a great ego-boost, but I lacked the knowledge of how to turn that readership into an income. Losing the income from the print magazine meant I had to take on a real job, thus became a teacher.
Point is, I'm glad to see that on-line publishing does have some true status - the next thing will be to actually read these stories and see of the writing holds up enough to convince me to keep an eye on these writers. I think that's my next blog project - to report on these stories as I read them
Of course, I planned to do that with Leaves Of Grass, which I actually did sit and read in one sitting. The "problem" is I read it while traveling, and while I thought I'd write about it when I came back, I keep reading other stuff and experiencing other things, and I don't feel the need to re-hash everything I thought while reading, tho I kept lots of notes =:-)
The one thing I did think about a lot and discussed with several people was the thought that Whitman has had a much bigger impact on my life than I ever realized. I read the paperback version that I had a lot as a young dude. I picked it up in 1971, and never looked back - I kept it near me for several years, reading parts of it over and over. Not to memorize it, but to absorb it. Let's face it, Whitman makes writing look a lot easier than it is.
I didn't consciously try to absorb his philosopy; but I can see now it seeped in. His love of people and belief that every trade is worthy of praise has crept into my understanding of Christianity, and may explain why my take on Christianity is so much different from the popular TV preachers. I don't see going to a building to watch some guy in a tie spout off for 45 minutes as being very spiritual, or uplifting at all. I can see why TV preachers would hate Whitman, and would go out of their way to demonize him like they do everything else. What's funny about that is Whitman, at one point, talked about the sermon as something worthy of one's time to absorb. The only thing I can figger is he ran into a better brand of preacher once than we have nowadays =:-)
Point is, tho I can see why modern Christians would shun him, I think I have allowed my early reading to influence the type of thinking I do today when I teach the Bible. The big question is, of course, is this a bad thing or a good thing?
I do feel that Whitman would be much like myself in that I have a hard time identifying with Christians and Christianity because the truth is what I've experienced is mostly culture and Churchianity. It's very difficult to want to label myself in such a way that anyone would feel I identify with some of the mularky that comes out of their mouths. It's going to happen anyway, since people like the concept of wrapping things in neat little boxes - can't help the world and won't convince them to start thinking independently any time soon. Where is this rambling going? Oh, I remember - I have decided that the seemingly "non-Christian" Whitman (as a modern "believer" would label him) acted more like Christ than any modern "Christian" I've met.
Oh, not to worry. I know there's other followers of Jesus Christ out there who believe that love is what He was teaching. Just seems to not be as many of them as one would hope.
Anyway, in my last posting, more than two weeks ago I made a bold statement: "
Unless Bush makes a huge error in his usual judgement, I doubt if he'll pick anyone with true integrity to sit on the supreme court." Well, these words came back to hit me tonight. And I'm glad. In my defense, I did say, "My hope is of course that Bush will rise to the occassion and choose a person of wisdom to be on the court", but I had little real hope for that.
I'm sure some sorta dirt will be brought up by political folks, but this guy seems seriously to be a person of character, so I expect good things from him. I know his views on Roe vrs Wade will play big during the hearing; but there's no way a person should be held to account on one issue when his job description will cover multitudes of issues. What I can figure from what he's said about the issue publically is that he will uphold the law as it stands, even though he disagrees with the way it became law; and that his theory on our constitution is that congress should pass laws, not the courts.
Well, that is truly what the constitution says, so, hey, why not? So he's a strict constitutionalist - can't hold that against anybody. If you think that through, it means his personal opinion on matters brought before him will not make him decide to change the law during court time - that should be left to congress. If he can hold that belief to it's final processing then he can do no real harm on the bench.
I'd be personally interested in how he would have voted on the eminent domain issue that still bugs me. Also, small things, like the President declaring war instead of Congress. But those honest questions will probably never be brought up, so we'll never know. Good news is I don't feel uncomfortable with the nomination.
The only downside I see to John G. Roberts Jr. is that he seems to have spent a good portion of his career in Washington, DC and mixed up with politics a good portion of that time. I know, a guy has to work somewhere; but it seems like having someone who has actually had to deal with real, honest working people in the real America would have been cool. That's my only concern, and I admit it's a minor concern. So, Bush is on my happy list until I read about another soldier killed for his crusade to democraticize the world, which I unfortunately think will happen sometime in the next 24 hours.
Tonight we studied Chapter 25 in Genesis. Esau and Jacob, what a pair. In Malachi God mentions in passing, Jacob I loved, Esau I hated. I love what Spurgeon told the woman that said she couldn't understand how God, who we call love, could hate Esau. His reply was so true: "I don't have any problem with that, my problem is how could God have loved Jacob!" Jacob is quite a character, and well worth the time to reflect on. He is a believer in the same way most of us are believers - always trying to help God out =:-)
In Chapter 25 we see Abraham's death, so the homework was to reflect on Abraham's life as a person of faith and consider his stumblings and see which part of Abraham's path we personally fit on. No one could truthfully say they had reached the faith of Abraham in Chapter 22. I'm betting that after we study Jacob that most of us will feel comfortable identifying with him =:-) He's definitely not one we could call "perfect", although we can sort of almost see him "perfecting" - maybe not as clearly as we see Abraham, but he earned his stripes enough to be called a person of faith in Hebrews 11. Should be a fun few weeks - will go by kind of fast compared to Abraham, whom we've studied for 6 months.
Started reading a new book that popped in today - read the introduction this afternoon: "The Year's Best Science Fiction - 22nd Annual Collection" edited by Gardner Dozois. I've been away from Science Fiction for a few years, and delving into some of the classics made me wonder which current writers are worth reading. Sometimes the best place to discover that is in these anthologies - after all, that's where Asimov & all those folks first became recognized outside the small circle of readership of sci-fi mags.
What intrigues me the most so far is how far I've been "away". Very close to 1/2 of the selections in this book are seeing "print" for the first time because their original "publication" was on-line in a science fiction webzine. That's amazing, even to me, and I shouldn't be - because early on I was an advocate of on-line publishing. Turned out not to work too well for me personally, because I couldn't think of a way to generate an income, and simply spending time editing and giving it away was cool; but I went cold turkey from print to on-line. Our readership grew fast and furious - that was a great ego-boost, but I lacked the knowledge of how to turn that readership into an income. Losing the income from the print magazine meant I had to take on a real job, thus became a teacher.
Point is, I'm glad to see that on-line publishing does have some true status - the next thing will be to actually read these stories and see of the writing holds up enough to convince me to keep an eye on these writers. I think that's my next blog project - to report on these stories as I read them
Of course, I planned to do that with Leaves Of Grass, which I actually did sit and read in one sitting. The "problem" is I read it while traveling, and while I thought I'd write about it when I came back, I keep reading other stuff and experiencing other things, and I don't feel the need to re-hash everything I thought while reading, tho I kept lots of notes =:-)
The one thing I did think about a lot and discussed with several people was the thought that Whitman has had a much bigger impact on my life than I ever realized. I read the paperback version that I had a lot as a young dude. I picked it up in 1971, and never looked back - I kept it near me for several years, reading parts of it over and over. Not to memorize it, but to absorb it. Let's face it, Whitman makes writing look a lot easier than it is.
I didn't consciously try to absorb his philosopy; but I can see now it seeped in. His love of people and belief that every trade is worthy of praise has crept into my understanding of Christianity, and may explain why my take on Christianity is so much different from the popular TV preachers. I don't see going to a building to watch some guy in a tie spout off for 45 minutes as being very spiritual, or uplifting at all. I can see why TV preachers would hate Whitman, and would go out of their way to demonize him like they do everything else. What's funny about that is Whitman, at one point, talked about the sermon as something worthy of one's time to absorb. The only thing I can figger is he ran into a better brand of preacher once than we have nowadays =:-)
Point is, tho I can see why modern Christians would shun him, I think I have allowed my early reading to influence the type of thinking I do today when I teach the Bible. The big question is, of course, is this a bad thing or a good thing?
I do feel that Whitman would be much like myself in that I have a hard time identifying with Christians and Christianity because the truth is what I've experienced is mostly culture and Churchianity. It's very difficult to want to label myself in such a way that anyone would feel I identify with some of the mularky that comes out of their mouths. It's going to happen anyway, since people like the concept of wrapping things in neat little boxes - can't help the world and won't convince them to start thinking independently any time soon. Where is this rambling going? Oh, I remember - I have decided that the seemingly "non-Christian" Whitman (as a modern "believer" would label him) acted more like Christ than any modern "Christian" I've met.
Oh, not to worry. I know there's other followers of Jesus Christ out there who believe that love is what He was teaching. Just seems to not be as many of them as one would hope.
posted by Cholla Needles | 8:22 PM
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