Wandering Elder

As I sit on this very rainy day and listen to the sound of the water hitting the roof and rattling down the gutters, I find that whatever regrets I have (or have had) seem to be more easily recalled.  That doesn't always  happen on a rainy day, but something about the gray skies pulls out the melancholy - but it does not pull enough for a total extrication.  Perhaps that comes from some subconscious unwillingness to completely let myself be rid of those feelings of regret. That may be because many of my regrets come from the recognition of poor behavior on my part in the past.  I find that in the midst of a thought, conversation, or walk between rooms or offices, that a flash of memory hits and I am back in high school, or a moment in college, or in some intangible age where I can hear or see myself acting poorly towards someone: making fun of them, saying something mean or mean-spirited, or not acting in a manner becoming of me.  And as far back as some of these go, I find that

We have to acknowledge that our country is going through a difficult time of transition.  I have heard people say that America is dying.  That may be going a bit too far.  It isn't clear what it is  doing, though.  We live in a time where we are well armed, if not overly well armed, and poorly educated.  That is never  a good combination. This isn't to say that there isn't anything good to see.  There is.  There are plenty of avenues of progress being made, but that doesn't capture the news.  That doesn't keep the pundits talking.  What does is a love for decay, scandal, and basic unpleasantness.  As such, what we begin to believe is that the time in which we live is not good. And there may be some truth to that. We live in a time of lawyers, loopholes, and increasing leverage from corporations.  Laws are written and re-written in an attempt to close loopholes on some and open them for others.  The discrepancy between the poor and the wealthy grows at sta

As I mentioned in the last post, I have been re-evaluating some of my positions and thinking.  Not a bad thing to do from time to time.  Not an easy  or necessarily enjoyable thing to do, but one that is needed in order to grow. Faith, theology, and philosophy are topics on which I dwell most of my waking hours.  I realize that this is not the case for most people.  But these topics have a great deal to do with my work as well as being topics I enjoy (this does not mean that I always enjoy my work!).  And it is from those times of musing and pondering that I write. Perhaps one of the common threads I have found in my writing and thinking revolves around identification.  Very often I have written about people claiming to be this or that (and in this case the term Christian), but noticing that in so claiming they identify those who are not  this or that in an effort to expose their fraudulence.  "If they were a real  Christian, they wouldn't have any doubts." Things lik