Mark doesn’t get much style credit amongst Hebrew scholars, his gospel is often seen as simple and basic. But the fact is that the nature of the Hebrew language and the pre-modern culture means that even the most basic is very rich for our pallet. This is the case with Mark's telling of the feeding of the five thousand. Oddly it was pointed out that the people sat down on green grass as if Mark were concerned about which season it was. Really he is tying us into the rich literary tradition of the Old Testament concerning the Messiah. The first clue was the the phrase “they were like sheep without a shepherd”. I was even shocked at how simple it was when I was reminded of the Psalm 23. Jesus is proving he is the messiah by this pastorale scene:
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” And so the people did not want, he provided their needs “He makes me to lie down in green pastures.” There it is, and Mark got it he led them to green grass.
And having these connections we can bring in the following verses.
“He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake”
Back in Mark “This is a lonely place and the hour is now late.” brings us to the next section of the Psalm
“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me”
And then the part of the message that really made the religious leaders mad. They were supposed to be the shepherds of Israel but they had been unfaithful. And so the people were lost. This is why every action of Jesus stung them to the core. This is why they plotted to murder him after everything he did.
“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil”
And Mark tells us that there were 12 baskets of food left over.
“my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
Truly this is the Lord here on Earth. You can see the joy of Mark as he makes these connections, after the resurrection. We don’t often make these connections because we have become less poetic and more scientific in our thinking. This is modernism. We like to break everything into pieces instead of putting them together. We dissect and deconstruct everything instead of connecting words in poetic ways. As Lewis said to see through everything is not to see anything. But poetry and its connections, and even fantasy, make us see the world more clearly. This is the beginning of wisdom (step two is application).
An even more powerful incitement of the Pharisees is found in Ezekiel 34. “Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep?. . .No longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, that they may not be food for them. . .I will feed them with good pasture, and on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing land. There they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on rich pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them in justice”
There is even a hint of the salvation of the nations, the Gentiles, “And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries,” .
Now as the Church we are the sheep, the followers of the Good Shepherd. But we are also the hope of the world, the light of the world, in a sense shepherds to the lost. Today most of the attacks agains the Pharisees are true of the Church. We have been more concerned about ourselves and our comfort than about caring for others. We pride ourselves on having the truth and lament the world falling apart. Instead of realizing that their wandering is our fault. They are sheep without a shepherd we have a shepherd we should be pointing people to him, instead of mocking them.
Lambert Lombard (1505-1566) The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes Oil on panel
I just saw this article, one of many, that I didn’t even read, but a trend that I have observed first hand. This is basic selfishness. “I have my career and my life and I don’t want a husband or children messing it up”. Even people with children often view them as an accessory or compulsory social admittance. This is really messed up.
It’s easy to mock culture and rebel against traditions, but it’s quite difficult to develop and sustain moral culture or even civilization. We are born into a culture of rebellion and so things continue to deteriorate. But the old timers understood the importance of training your daughters to be mothers. It takes work and we can see the results of not doing this work or “leaving it up to them to decide”. It’s the same gambit offered to Eve as if adding another possibility was somehow would empower her, when it only offered death in disguise.
What’s so important about motherhood? Well aside from the personal benefits of all such difficult endeavors, such as character building and a sense of accomplishment, you have demographics. Mark Steyn has been a proponent of the importance of demographics for a while now. The theme runs through his two latest books and many articles, such as this one. We fight many battles as humans and a few more as Christians. That is the nature of living in a fallen world and our responsibility to spread the gospel to all people and all areas of their life. There are two ways you can do this by reproducing through evangelism and by having children.
As humans we fight the elements, disease, other people, and our own human sinfulness. As Christians we fight against principalities and powers and the Muhammedans. The latter we have been fighting for 1300 years with about the same results. It’s easier to understand the importance of having many children when you and 101 other people have just sailed over from England to the wilderness and people are dying from disease and starvation and winter and Indians. In addition there was a much greater understanding of the bigger picture back then. People did things to ensure that their children lived in a more stable, more law abiding country. Things like, I don’t know, pledge your life your fortune and your sacred honor as you sign a letter telling the King of England you want a divorce. It’s a basic fact that you can’t prepare a better place for your prosperity if you don’t have any. I think the reason we don’t think about the future is the same reason women prefer dogs, that is, selfishness. We want what we want right now and don’t consider the consequences, because we are just like children.
But the consequences of reality are such that if you and all the people around you don’t have children then soon there are no more people. Except that there are other people who understand this and they are having tons of kids. Eventually they win. They win militarily, ideologically and religiously. The powers and principalities and powers win. We as Christians are supposed to spread the gospel to all peoples of the earth. In addition we are still bound by the covenants of Adam and Noah to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Jesus has saved us unto good works, he has conquered sin and freed us so that we can live on this earth as it was meant to be. One day our labor will determine our jobs in the new earth (Matthew 25:14-30). God is glorified when good works are done on earth. Being fruitful and multiplying and being good stewards of the earth are some of those good works. Now God obviously can and does do whatever he wants with history. But he could have just saved everyone or lined up everyone in the world and given them a choice between a relationship with him or rebellion, but he didn’t. He built twelve men who built the Church who spread and spread. He left it up to us to be and spread the Church. Why let it fall apart when we have established it in any area? Why let the minions of Satan reclaim ground because we were too lazy to have children and too dumb to plan for the future?
Because Muhammed did plan. He saw the rise of Christianity and he took it and twisted it for his own purposes. He created a tribal religion that appealed to the Arab people and appeals to what is basest in man, with plenty of rules to keep them busy. Do you want to escape your poor humble life? Join my tribe, Allah has promised me victory over all the tribes of the Earth. He created a culture that glorified having children and all but guaranteed that they would follow the heresy of their parents. Today 90 some odd percent of Muslim children become Muslims, while Christians hand half of their offspring over to the Atheists every generation. The Christian populations of Europe halve every generation. That means there is one grand child for every four grandparents. Where as the Muslims are multiplying six fold. The United States has just hit the tipping point. Our birthrate is just at replacement. Now I am not saying that every person in America is a true Christian, but they are Culturally, which is very important. They don’t go on jihad, behead people who disagree with them nor kick dogs. That is they are living on this earth and doing a heck of a lot more of what God intended for man before the fall than the Muhammedans are. That is a good. Sure it’s not as good as if they were solid Biblical Christians but it is better than the alternative. Looking at the demographics it’s not hard to see what is going to happen shortly.
Interesting that the west is the first place that dogs were more than street vermin. In the east they are wild scavengers that are the targets of kicks and rocks. But Christians began cultivating wolves, ruling and subduing the earth, and now we have an amazing assortment of dogs for many purposes today. So if you really love dogs you will have children and raise them up to be Christians, then dogs and all of this wonderful civilization will be possible in the future. The alternative is love of self and love of Jihad.
I was surprised at the portrayal of John the Baptist as some sort of loser in his day. Also I was surprised at the pastor painting this picture of a loving family who had no idea how their son would turn out. I don’t think it’s all that difficult, even for the world, to understand that someone with a wildly successful ministry, beheaded by the whim of a drunk king is not a loser. Also, I have no problem with trying to relate the people of scripture in what they were going through. But these people were not clueless and disappointed at how things turned out. They were far too wise for that, they were far wiser than we are.
First of all, John was not a loser. He was a super star. People flocked to the desert to see him. Everyone knew his name, including the King. People even mistook Jesus for John the Baptist (Matthew 16:13,14). People love fame today, almost more than anything from what I can tell. Some people are famous for being famous. People will subject themselves to almost any form of torture to appear on TV. And even committing grievous crimes is not outside the realm of possibility for someone who really wants to be famous. Shoot a bunch of people or commit suicide and you will be famous. I’m assuming it was the same back then. Herod put on shining armor and told all the people to look at him. Rulers built statues of themselves and held them up for the people to worship. John had this kind of notariety, and he was a faithful servant of God. He was so famous that the Queen and her Daughter couldn’t find anything in the whole world that they wanted more than him dead. Now even secular historians have to admit that people singled out for death by the royalty are significant.
In this and many situations we don’t have to wait for eternity to resolve who was right and who was wrong. The church made many such errors in the past as they executed people whom they later had to recognize as saints. Now I’m not for worshiping saints, but there are worse things and the point is that these martyrs had to be dealt with because their lives bore real fruit, and the church couldn’t ignore it. Things were rightly judged on this side of eternity. That is the case with John the Baptist. As I mentioned before choosing the drunk king and his incestuous marriage to his brothers wife or the prophet of God is not that difficult. We shouldn’t really be concerned if the world gets it, but even they could tell the difference between someone killed fighting for what was right, faithfully doing his job (more on this later) and some dumb actor who kills himself. And the Church should certainly be able to figure it out on this side of heaven, they always did in the past. In a post Jesus world, the power of martyrdom is almost unavoidable. I was reminded of this passage from G. K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy:
About the same time I read a solemn flippancy by some free thinker: he said that a suicide was only the same as a martyr. The open fallacy of this helped to clear the question. Obviously a suicide is the opposite of a martyr. A martyr is a man who cares so much for something outside him, that he forgets his own personal life. A suicide is a man who cares so little for anything outside him, that he wants to see the last of everything. One wants something to begin: the other wants everything to end. In other words, the martyr is noble, exactly because (however he renounces the world or execrates all humanity) he confesses this ultimate link with life; he sets his heart outside himself: he dies that something may live. The suicide is ignoble because he has not this link with being: he is a mere destroyer; spiritually, he destroys the universe. And then I remembered the stake and the cross-roads, and the queer fact that Christianity had shown this weird harshness to the suicide. For Christianity had shown a wild encouragement of the martyr. Historic Christianity was accused, not entirely without reason, of carrying martyrdom and asceticism to a point, desolate and pessimistic. The early Christian martyrs talked of death with a horrible happiness. They blasphemed the beautiful duties of the body: they smelt the grave afar off like a field of flowers. All this has seemed to many the very poetry of pessimism. Yet there is the stake at the crossroads to show what Christianity thought of the pessimist.
This was the first of the long train of enigmas with which Christianity entered the discussion. And there went with it a peculiarity of which I shall have to speak more markedly, as a note of all Christian notions, but which distinctly began in this one. The Christian attitude to the martyr and the suicide was not what is so often affirmed in modern morals. It was not a matter of degree. It was not that a line must be drawn somewhere, and that the self-slayer in exaltation fell within the line, the self-slayer in sadness just beyond it. The Christian feeling evidently was not merely that the suicide was carrying martyrdom too far. The Christian feeling was furiously for one and furiously against the other: these two things that looked so much alike were at opposite ends of heaven and hell. One man flung away his life; he was so good that his dry bones could heal cities in pestilence. Another man flung away life; he was so bad that his bones would pollute his brethren’s. I am not saying this fierceness was right; but why was it so fierce?
The world gets this. I think of the last Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises. At the beginning he fought because he didn’t care, he was suicidal. Later he learned to give himself for others, as a martyr.
I think the Church does a little too much of this waiting around for eternity and not deciding anything stuff. It’s cowardice. Jesus tells us that what we bind on earth is bound in heaven (Matthew 18:18), with regard to church discipline. What we do here matters and we can judge rightly, we have the tools. Rulers of old were commended for judging rightly. We are not to sue our brother because we, the Church of the all knowing God, keepers of the scripture, His very word, should be able to resolve conflicts between people in our midst better than the world (I Corinthians 6:1-8). We are the light of the world, not the lawyers of America and it’s judges who can’t tell the difference between a man and a woman or the difference between marriage and homosexual perversion. Knowing scripture is great but being able to apply it to every situation in life is the real definition of wisdom. It’s an applied science, not just a theory.
Secondly, the life of John the Baptist was not just a random shot in the dark. From the beginning the story is all too familiar. An old couple that can’t have children, suddenly is visited by an angel. Hmm does this remind you of any other Biblical stories? It should. How about Abraham and Sarah? Ruth and Naomi? Hannah? Barren women suddenly having children, is a sure sign that God is doing something. Not to mention the first chapter of Luke laying out the circumstances of John’s birth. These were not random people they were faithful Jews in every sense of the word. They got it. The same can be said of Mary and Joseph. The song of Mary is all the proof you need. It is very complex, and a reflection of the song of Hannah (I Samuel 2). They understood how God works.
It was even obvious that he would be a prophet (Luke 1:16). And as the faithful of Israel, they were looking for just such a prophet. And it was no secret what Israel did to the prophets, they stoned them (Luke 13:34). But like the Catholic saints, the people of Israel eventually figured out that the dead prophet was truly sent of God and their works were preserved in the Old Testament. And his job was also no secret. The rise of the prophets in the Old Testament came with the system of kings. Before the Kings you had Judges. Then Kings came on the scene and God’s method of communicating his will to the King was through prophets. They often performed allegorical acts or condemned the actions of a king directly. So, it was completely appropriate for John to criticize Herod for taking his brother’s wife. And it was, completely predictable that he would be killed.
John was the last of the Prophets, just like Samuel was the last judge and the first prophet to the kings. Both represent a change. The change was brought about by the faithful prayers of a woman, Hannah, Elizabeth and Mary, each a woman who was saved by childbirth (I Timothy 2:15) and who saved her people. Rather than blaming the leaders for their problems they raised faithful children with their prayers and remade the world. Rather than wallowing in depression, or getting a dog, they followed the Word of God and brought blessings to all.
There really is a lot of bad information going around about Israel which leads a lot of people to misread this situation. There is the one camp of American Evangelicals who are convinced that our mission is to hasten the return of Jesus by rebuilding the temple in Israel, so he can blow up this world and we can barely escape. Then there is the other camp reacting to this silliness with everything from anti-Semitic jihad to some form of Ron Paul Constitution worshiping isolationism.
I heard Glenn Beck today make the claim that those who don’t stand with Israel are doomed to destruction, or some such. And then he wanted to quote some passages and refer to some generic history, which supposedly happened. I wonder if he would have sided with Babylon when God gave Israel into their hands.
“Thus saith the Lord God of Israel; Behold, I will turn back the weapons of war that are in your hands, wherewith ye fight against the king of Babylon, and against the Chaldeans, which besiege you without the walls, and I will assemble them into the midst of this city. And I myself will fight against you with an outstretched hand and with a strong arm, even in anger, and in fury, and in great wrath” -Jeremiah 21:4,5
Hmm, God actually says he is fighting against Israel. This wasn’t an isolated incident, God gave Israel into the hands of their enemies countless times for keeping forbidden booty, or not obeying him or general idol worship. On the other hand there were many times when the Lord gave the people of Israel the victory over their enemies. He gave them victory over Egypt, he gave David and Joshua countless victories. He gave them the land, then he took it away then the gave it back. This is all very complicated and a simple “stand with Israel, because it’s God’s will” is foolish. You don’t know what God’s will is and trying to decode prophecies that already happened just makes you look silly. In the Old Testament God often spoke through his prophets, today we don’t have that, we have the Old Testament record of how God worked in those situations , we have the Church, and we have brains–well some of us. These are complicated things we are supposed to sort them out and judge rightly. We will judge the angels, don’t you know?
Which side was God on when it was the Jews against the Christians? From the beginning of the Church, Jews were hunting down Christians and killing them. This was the apostle Paul’s job. What about when Rome destroyed Jerusalem, whose side was God on then? Based on the words of the last prophet, Jesus, I am inclined to think God was with the Romans. “But he answered them, “You see all these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.” ” -Matthew 24:2 “When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:) Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains” vss. 15,16. And so it happened the Romans leveled Jerusalem and the only ones who survived were the Christians who listened and fled across the Jordan. Every Jew who lived by the sword died by the sword and they have been chased all over the globe ever since.
Later Christians came into power in Europe, and Russia and they killed many Jews. I wonder whose side God was on then? Much strife arose between Christians bound by the Catholic church not to be moneylenders (another oversimplification of that proverb) and Jews who became wealthy in their midst as moneylenders. A jealous Christian population kicked out the Jews in almost every kingdom of Europe and Russia. There are lots of details and lots of blame. There were lots of Christians who thought very differently than you do. I believe they were smarter and better judges than we are today. We really don’t know much about the Bible or history.
So we come the events today. Should we side with Israel because it is God’s will? I don’t think so. I think we should side with them because we made them promises as a political ally, and because they are fighting TERRORISTS. I don’t get what is so hard to understand. It’s not about some innovative misinterpretation of the Bible masquerading as prophecy. It’s about the application of judgement in a very old, very simple conflict. If you can’t figure out the events happening right in front of your face how are you going to understand the events that took place thousands of years ago? How do you think you are equipped to predicts the future?
It’s not hard to figure out that there is something unique about both the Church and the Jewish people. Both have been persecuted the world over and both are the most prosperous of all peoples. Despite all the genocides and all the cleansings the Jews still have all the money wherever they are. They run Hollywood and most of the media. They make money off of most of the diamonds and electronics in the world. Despite all the persecutions Christianity has taken over the world. This of course leads to envy. It led to the narrative of Hitler, that the Jews were the cause of all the problems. Even this was the same motivation for kicking the Jews out many time in many lands. It leads to the narrative today of Big Bad Israel vs. Poor Little Innocent Gaza. It leads to all the anti-Americanism taught by elite professors and our President. But we Christians should know better. God did destroy the world, when he destroyed the temple. He put a new creation in place, the Church. And it has recreated the entire planet in a way no one would have guessed 2000 years ago. It is so thorough, that people think their view of reality, which is actually Christianity is normal. Appreciating romantic love as the highest love. Appreciating self sacrifice. Appreciating martyrdom. Building hospitals to minister to everyone, with every ailment. Peace and security apart from war. No slavery. These things were unheard of before the Church. But now we take them for granted. The temple was destroyed. The presence of God that used to strike down even the High Priest from time to time, for entering the Holy Place, left the building. The Emperor Titus walked in there and took the ark and all the furniture from the temple and marched away. Now the presence of God dwells in the hearts of every believer. We don’t nee to help Israel rebuild the temple, we need to do the work of the Church. We need to go about baptizing then in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We need to be about remaking this world, bringing his will on earth as it is in heaven. It’s not just a simplistic platitude to stand with Israel. It’s a lot of hard work, and we need to let history guide us, instead of silly prophecies.
Was that supposed to be a sweet pea parade? Because, I didn’t see any sweet peas, in the botanical or the female-sweetheart-nickname sense. That string of militant feminists couldn’t be any one’s sweet pea. At best this parade was disturbing. As Henry Van Til recognized, culture is religion externalized. What we do is driven by what we think. It’s just the reality of humanity, we are self-aware religious beings and we do what we do for a reason. You don’t fight wars or fight for survival without a reason. Today many like to believe in the Dream of a culture free from religion, well sorry, that too is a religion. So, today we witnessed the parade of our culture and I really wanted to throw up.
Early Sweet Pea float for the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Back when women fought for morality instead of against it. This was one half of the paradox, man vs. woman, in a struggle that made culture work. But then the women gave up and decided to join the other side and now we have disaster.
I found myself heckling more than once, in a parade that was historically a small town festival centered around flowering peas, Lathyrus odoratus L., Latin which most people used to understand. It’s not hard to unite around such a simple idea, you grow some pretty flowers and have a festival when they are in bloom. Sure, why not? Then we shared a common religion under the God who made the flowers grow, and there were no active rebels seeking to destroy every aspect of culture. We had real problems like surviving the winters in the west, protecting our loved ones from wild animals and wild Indians and mother nature. Today mother is lord, or she would be, mother that is, except for the three abortions. Now she is just she, and she is very angry at discovering her historical oppression, as angry as the women of old would be surprised to hear they were oppressed. The parades of old might have featured portly politicians waving flags and simple campaign slogans, but they were hardly political. There were towns all across America celebrating the bounty of the harvest, celebrating pretty flowers in a world of life-threatening hardships.
Now we celebrate the march of militant feminism. Apparently the theme of the parade had something to do with ‘dream’, probably evoking vague feelings of Martin Luther, no not the hero, the black guy, and the one line from any speech that anyone could quote you these days. But I was dreaming the whole time for a world which still had a moral compass and some respect for the created order. I found the ‘float’ for the Historical Society ironic, with their slogan something about ‘Preserving our history’. Ironic because the majority of the rest of the parade was celebrating and furthering the destruction of everything historical.
The only notable man in the parade was dressed as a mermaid. Apparently the only culturally acceptable role for a man these days is in drag. He was followed by a band of drumming dykes, which was, incidentally, the closest thing to a marching band the parade had to offer. I don’t recall seeing any American flags in the entire procession but there were plenty of rainbows. And a ‘coexist’ banner–thing. I’m not really sure what any of this is supposed to be, the notion of floats is out the window. I guess a total break down in civic order is now called ‘thinking outside the float’. I love the hypocrisy of forcing a statement like that, rather than just doing it. Of course, like all our religious sentiments these days, the thinking generally stops at the sentiment expressed. But the action marches on, as did the butch menagerie beating on their multicolored buckets. ”Let us coexist in hell” I believe I heard them chant. They were followed by a string of spandex coated and uncoated females from various dance troupes, of all ages. Apparently this is what women do these days. Parades of yesteryear, with their marching bands and military arrays conjured up the old stories of wars won of peace and freedom achieved. The marching jazzercise-yoga-spa-massage-pilates suited up in their uniforms is kind of like that, except I’m not even sure they know what they are fighting for. Oh yes 100 years since women’s suffrage. Or was that 100 years of women’s suffering? I’m not sure but based on the destruction of the nuclear family and the jaded abused women I always meet, I am inclined to think the latter. And a great number in this troupe were wearing old-fashioned dresses, my goodness isn’t the petticoat the symbol of oppression? And so it has become for we are all under petticoat rule. The state is now our mommy, keeping us safe from everything, including ourselves and sinister parades distributing candy. We simply can’t throw candy, someone might get hurt. So, they hand it out or slide it out of a tube(I almost said ‘shoot’ but we cant be connoting anything to do with guns now can we). If I’m not mistaken clueless children getting wiped out by parade floats traveling five miles per hour, use to be how we cleaned out the gene pool. I’m not sure I might have to make a trip down to the Historical Society to check that one out.
All in all, this is a woman’s world. It’s not surprising that the words of Jesus would be so corrupted. It’s frustrating that more people don’t recognize it. Christianity recognizes the dignity of women and so Satan corrupts it into the worship of women. And so here we are today, with a parade full of women asserting their rights–to not act like women. We have a culture of feminism, because we have a religion of female worship. That’s how it works. We aren’t allowed to take risks or have spirited debate without being sued or medicated. We aren’t allowed to be men, it scares the women and I’m pretty sure it’s not loving. Jesus said so. Na na na na na.
A similar thing happened in the last round of creation. It is evident from scripture that there was no capital punishment before Moses. Cain killed Abel and his punishment was exile rather than death. But after Noah, capital punishment, an eye for an eye, was instituted. That is all well and good, like the entire law of God, until it becomes a god. Tribal revenge became the motivating factor on this earth. It became their religion (it is still the religion of Darwinian Hitler, and the Muhammedan). The good law of God was perverted, because that’s all Satan can do. He is not creative, he thought the murder of Jesus would mean victory for him. He didn’t know about the deeper magic, the way self-sacrifice and humility conquer. But when he finally figured it out, he twisted it. Now legitimate compassion for the weaker sex has turned into worship. And men don’t want to participate in this woman’s world. They stopped going to college and they stopped taking care of their families, and they stopped respecting women, because; “what’s the point?”. They get no recognition and women think they, and their welfare checks, are doing just fine with out him. And it all started in the Church, the center of religion for the world. The center of truth for the world. The light of the world. It all happened because men stopped going to church. People wonder why men don’t like singing warm fuzzy, cooing, love songs to the worship leader in church. Gee is that really hard to figure out? In the old days men could retreat to the club, or the pub or the bar, but not anymore. They were once free to discuss theology amongst themselves without offending everyone. That’s actually sexist and illegal now. So the women are there and everywhere now, trying to be men and that messes up everything, from the Church all the way down to a parade about sweet peas.
I recently went through all the 8mm film taken by my grandfather in the 50′s and 60′s. The majority of it was from the Apple Blossom Festival in Wenatchee Washington. Now there is something to celebrate, the greatest apple producing city carved out of a desert by American can-do spirit. My grandfather helped to design the canal system fed by Grand Coulee Dam that provides water to the center and power to the entire state of Washington. He spent his final years in a rest home in Wenatchee drawing pictures of flowers. He grew tons of rose bushes, for his wife his entire life. And apparently, he loved the parade. Back then the parades didn’t feature women dressed like an amazon military brigade fighting to fit into ever smaller leotards. They featured princesses, up on pedestals, surrounded by cascades of flowers. Those elaborate floats and those elaborate dresses must have taken hours, like anything that is worthwhile. You can’t help but think that those women were cherished. Which led to children who were well adjusted and raised in stable homes. Which led husbands who were respected and provided more than paying the gym bill via child support. Which led to a culture where we were free to stop and smell the sweat peas. I wonder if the men didn’t participate in the parade because they are too busy giving 50% of their labor to the government for social programs.
My mom kept wondering where all the horses were, in a parade, in Montana. I was personally wondering where all the cars were but cars and cowboys are just too masculine for this culture. Then there at the end were the four horsemen. Sorry, make that women, but nevertheless, fitting.
