Imagine that we were farmers and we all plant the same crop. We have the same costs and we all work sun up to sun down all spring and summer. Yet when it comes harvest time, I harvest and sell my crop and you inexplicably abandon the field. As a result I prosper for that year and you starve and die.
We wouldn’t honor that person as a farming hero who died in the career of feeding the world. We would likely say he is a fool who died as a result of his lack of farming efforts. It is not what you do to get to the end point but what you do with it that is honorable.
It would be admirable if I ploughed your field, bought your seed, tended your crops and harvested your bounty. What if after all of that, I died in a farming accident and you then just leave the crop to waste? After that, you then turn around and say ‘I know that this is prime farming ground, this crop has an infinite return and is necessary for a happy and healthy life but instead of farming it, I am going to build a shopping mall here’.
Those actions are not honoring my farming and human efforts, they are doing the opposite. Sure, I defend your freedom of choice to do what you want when you want. We cannot in the same voice then claim that death in farming is a sacred result because it is dangerous, necessary and for the better good. Culture is result of practicing traditions, consistently with a common understanding.
The holiday is not to connect service death to platitudes. It actually to honor people that died rather senselessly. I would ask what is sadder: a person that died prematurely or died prematurely as a result of a higher cause? It is natural for us to invent significance to justify the occurrence. That is why we label it the ultimate sacrifice because it helps quell the doubt of the result.
The reported stance is that military service is required to defend the state and by proxy of the state existing we have the illusion of freedom. The implication is no state/no freedom. For instance, if communism succeeded in southern Asia, then it could advance here and we would loose our country as it were and therefore freedom.
End Your Programming Routine: Not only is that what Memorial Day has become but our actions don’t respect the freedom that we proport to be so thankful for. What are you doing with your freedom? Are you buying a permit for that summer building project or to hold a garage sale, are you complaining to the police about you neighbor’s party or are you scheming because your neighbor’s grass is too tall or house is painted in an unapproved color? To embrace the true ultimate sacrifice, we need need to embrace the true concept of freedom.
Only a fool would let his enemy teach his children. – Malcom X
I don’t always agree with Malcom, but this sure resonates with me. I will assume that you are dense and explain this a little further. We send our kids to school for seven hours a day and then we are surprised that they leave after thirteen years woke and entitled.
I wrote early on about being the ‘gray man’. This means don’t get noticed, blend in, be strategic about your permanent footprint. Every day, as I write and post I consider whether what I am producing will have negative consequences. I deliberately leave personal information obscured for those reasons.
While these two things don’t 100% correlate, I guess what I am trying to say is to not educate your enemy because they will use that against you. Don’t be surprised when I talk about a subject every week and all of the sudden I am an expert or at least a target. That is where I am at with Tacticool Thursday. With that, I am going to discontinue that segment immediately.
The truth is I am sad. I have lines of ideas that I want to write about. I have more things in the pipeline for that one weekly segment than any other. But, it is foolish to continue to broadcast even a small amount of attention for what I may or may not have.
Let’s talk about what I am and am not saying. It doesn’t mean that I am going to stop with the activity. It means that I am going to stop writing about most aspects. It doesn’t mean that I am not going to occasionally write about related subjects or even certain gear. But, firearms specifically are no longer going onto the blog and similar topics are going to be greatly reduced.
If I end up moving to a place that respects freedom more, then Tacticool Thursday will likely come back. For now, it makes no sense to continue to paint a background scene to my self portrait even if I haven’t put my picture in it.
It is very likely that a challenge to Oregon 114 will be upheld. Already magazine capacity limits in states like California and New York have been nullified by the results of Bruen v. New York State Rifle and Pistol Club Supreme Court ruling last year. The current precedent of that ruling is that magazine capacity limits are unconstitutional. But, when it comes to the comparison of right and dead or wrong and alive, which one do you want to be?
Despite the fact that these laws are getting struck down, do you want to pay the lawyers’ bill? Do you have 10 years of your life to fight this fight? Do you want to go through the hassle of arrest and bail or ticket? This is what I am saying, stay the gray man.
End Your Programming Routine: I do not deny who I am or what I like. I do not deny what I have written. But, the past is the past. I think that I am going to start investigating freedom on Thursdays. I need to start spending some time researching a better alternative to where I am currently residing and the best way to do it in my mind is to write about it.
I heard something interesting on Friday. One of the reasons that Texas is in a different state of mind than Oregon is that people just decided that they were not going to comply, regardless of the rules. When I was in Texas a couple of weeks ago, there were still signs everywhere that said masks were required however I would estimate 1 in 20 actually wearing one. The rule became unenforceable.
I decided to run an experiment over the weekend. I went out and about to check on mask enforcement and compliance. I didn’t push too hard, but if I saw people going in or coming out without mask I would not where a mask myself. So, I am going to run an point by point of my experience.
Semi-Annual Gun Show – There were a handful of people wearing masks but it was a busy event. I encountered no problems.
Local Music Store – I try to respect private property rights and it was posted masks were required to enter, so I did. While in the store, two men came in without masks and the store owner confronted them and made them put on masks. Neither side were happy over the situation.
Sportsman’s Warehouse – No problems there. I walked in without a mask. I would estimate 2/3 of the customers were mask-less.
Costco – I was in there earlier in the week and I would estimate that probably 25% of the patrons were without a mask. On Saturday I saw none.
Local pawn shop- When the people working there are wearing mask it seems pretty safe to enter without one and there aren’t going to be problems.
Walmart- No mask-less customers
Regional agriculture chain – 2/3 mask-less
Local second hand store – No mask-less customers
Liquor store – There were two ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ slogans on the glass outside. I figured I was not going to have any problems here.
Emboldened by my experience on Saturday, yesterday I went completely mask-less. When I did this experiment before, I was operating within compliance of the rules, it seems that few were willing to test that. This time I was not.
I am not looking to cause problems per se but I am looking to be a leader. To be ungovernable means that you think as an individual. If we had true, non-biased data with policy decisions made as such then I could respect and comply with that.
I am going to change directions here. Traditionally, people ‘comply’ when it is in their best interest or there is more to lose not because someone else says so. Using one example, why do bribes work in China? The practice is illegal and the punishment can be public execution. Here are the reasons why: 1) the risk of being caught is low 2) the practice is extremely prevalent, see number one 3) Punishment is only used as an example, you have to have done something else wrong as well.
Today, my government has superseded freedom for the attempt at safety and security to the naked eye. This is precisely the results of combining government and things that do not belong such as healthcare. Now because they have become entangled, not only do they feel a responsibility to keep it operating, there are so many entities that are making crazy amounts of money under this charade. They all have a vested interest in kicking the can down the road as long as they can.
This is why all the governments are pouring tons of resources into analytics and data modeling. It is all in efforts to prevent the hospitals and the medical systems at large from failing. The medical cronies get together with the ‘big ag’ cronies to create a food pyramid and other such propaganda to keep us sick combined with a system to keep us alive. Those two enlist the help of ‘big tech’ to collect the data and market those ideas. To which our society is addicted to and cant resist. Don’t forget about the big banks who have created the monetary policy to help themselves to a lot of profit while funding all of these other endeavors.
And who runs the government? All of those interests. We are the witnessing Fascism 2.0 and guess what is their business? A compliant flock of useful idiots who think they are making a stand by picking one side or the other. To be ungovernable means that we reject Fascism.
I ran across this graphic this morning. It is no surprise to me that Oregon ranks in the bottom 10%. If I had a crystal ball, I would be willing to bet that Oregon could end up at the bottom of the rankings easier than all of the other states. Why? It has the smallest population and it seems like the willpower to make it worse.
End Your Programming Routine: My prediction is that mask mandates are here to stay forever. The only thing that will change that is if the people decide that it isn’t going to be so. I also think that there is a window where we the people will have an opportunity to reverse it. Once that window is shut, it is going to be very difficult to open it again. It is interesting that the mask represents double entrendre. When you are not wearing one, your face is visible and identity exposed. That is the way it should be.
I know that I was behind last week. I got a sad chuckle out of this, so I thought that I would quickly share. Humor was definitely something that I wanted to keep in the forefront. I also realize that I have been 99% serious over the last year. Hopefully it will be a better week on the content front.
Hello world. This is a famous introduction in programming where the output of running a program displays text on the screen with the words ‘Hello World’. It is pretty universal, no matter the language and I the syntax on how you do it.
As you all can tell, I have been pretty busy. I am still delivering for Amazon and when I do, it is an all day affair. I leave the house at 9:30AM and I usually get home between 8:30 and 10:00PM. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for other things. I have also picked up another handyman client which leaves me working that around my days off.
In some ways, I have been holding back writing because I am resisting jumping into what is clearly a mess and it is counter to my mission here which is teaching skills with a little commentary. The heat is getting turned up from different sources on exposing the ‘Great Reset’. ‘Cancel Culture’ is becoming an often used and successful strategy to further divide our population. It feels like we have yet to see the big event because tension is building on both sides.
This song ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ by Billy Joel was released in 1989. It was the very end of the Cold War but I think that it was really relatable at the time to my generation (X) and I think that it was targeted to the Baby Boomers. It was an homage to this very scary era where we believed nuclear war was possible and we were inheriting a mess that we weren’t even sure that we wanted to participate.
The song was mostly a list of events in history that describe the Cold War. If I represent my generation, to me the song resonated because I had the ability to look at the facts without prejudice and form my own opinions of the validity of the current political beliefs. Obviously with hindsight, we can see what we thought to be true in 1985 and what we know to be true in 2021 were two different things.
If we take a look at the culture of today, we might get a pass to claim that we didn’t start the fire, but boy do we like to watch it burn. My father is one of the earliest Baby Boomers at seventy-four. If we look at leadership of business and politics, the who is leading the charge are the Baby Boomers followed by Generation X.
Traditionally, a generation would lead and enact policy to influence culture based on the events that shaped their experience. It seems a likely A to B connection that the people who fought in World War II would have strong, global military to prevent another repeat of the same circumstances. Even the Vietnam conflict, which was a misguided attempt to rebuke Communism is understandable under the World War II generation of leadership but the Baby Boomers who predominantly fought in the war seem to be just as hawkish today.
For some reason, we have lost the ability to be objective. No longer do we question our adherence to dogma. Once we are jumped into our gang, we become ‘lifers’ and there is no escaping no matter what our gang does.
Take for instance, former President Trump as a really good case study. I am pretty sure that most people (on both sides) never realized how masterful he was at manipulation. I do not believe for a minute that he ever intended to incite a mob storming of the capitol, resulting in at least two deaths. I also don’t believe that he was not stirring the pot of his supporters which indirectly lead to this happening. This incident went in a direction that nobody ever thought possible. Both sides are right and wrong at the same time.
Where does that leave us in the middle? You can’t or won’t as easily be manipulated if you don’t pick a side. Once you have figured out that the game is rigged and there is no way to win, you cannot play.
How do you get out of the gang? For me, it has been a slow evolution. I guess that it started with being repeatedly disappointed with my side of the electorate. Then, I got disgusted by my media of choice defending that group to the end, so much so that I turned it off. Then I started looking for choices that interested me which turned out to be more anti-establishment.
I am sure that most people are like me. There are issues that are important and those that are not. For instance, I still get suckered into the drama of defending the second amendment. I struggle because I see the writing on the wall for standard capacity magazines, semi-automatic firearms and such. I know that one party is better on those issues than the other but they are so bad at everything else including their platform issues. I cannot support the totality of loss of freedom despite my second amendment opinions.
But you see, I am being manipulated in that argument. My pull is to want to vote for the lessor of two evils because it will temporarily stave off what I now see as inevitable. So, I have to fight the urge to participate in a system that doesn’t care about me or represent me. It makes you feel used and disgusted. All of my programming through the years makes my stance feel wrong, but it is the way it has to be.
I think that if we boil it all down, we like the idea of Freedom more than we like the actual application. It is clearly evident in my routes delivering for Amazon. There are neighborhoods where freedom is embraced. I know that because I see the lifestyle choices. I see the houses that don’t have trash service, who own as many dogs/animals/cars/boats as they want. I see houses with Christmas trees still up and houses where Halloween decorations still up, believe or not.
I also see the neighborhoods where order is more important than freedom. Nearly every single one of those houses has a garage packed to the gills with stuff. That is a sign that they can’t or won’t ever be as free as their nature would permit.
With that, I will wrap it up. I will not make anyone submit to my way of thinking, that would be against my principles of supporting freedom. When I look at how much we have lost in my lifetime, I cannot help but worry for my kids experience and belief on what freedom means as they inherit the world in the next twenty years. Twenty years ago, I was throwing wood on the fire, but now I realize participating in that is a fools errand.
Finally, if you look at the American Revolution the timeline spanned much longer that our condensed look at history. The ‘Stamp Act’ was enacted in 1765, a full ten years before shots fired at Lexington and Concord. There was discord years before that occurred particularly relating to the end of the French and Indian Wars. Don’t be surprised if we are seeing the warning signs or an irreparable country.
Hello everybody. I am sorry about not getting a full week in to begin the year. What I am learning is that if I work a full day, I need to begin getting ready at 8:30AM and I get home around 10:00PM. That doesn’t leave a lot of extra time to get other things done.
Political muck is still heavily on our minds as the final election results are being sorted out (the Georgia Senate races). But, today I wanted to talk once again about mindset and freedom. You see something happened yesterday that completely illustrates our lack of the value of freedom and reinforces the fact that we don’t really value it as we say we do.
There is a fledgling business near my small town. I don’t really know much of the story other than to say my family has been doing business with it for about four months now. The owner has done a good job with guerilla style marketing, works like a dog, employs around ten people and has compassion in his business dealings. For instance, he doesn’t demand payment before goods rendered, he offers line of credit and he charitably donates probably more than he should. This business is ‘illegal’.
What you say? Don’t go all half-cocked before you hear the rest of the story. The facility and organization is not licensed to do business. Consequently, a ‘competitor’ found out about the operation and reported him to the state. Now, he is in limbo about the entire organization. From an inside source, there are plans to go legitimate in 2021. He has built a business plan that include five franchises beginning in the second quarter of this year.
So that is the quick story. Now, let’s take some time to analyze the situation.
Tyranny is propagated by those that participate in the system. The people that are vested in the rules and regulations have the most to gain by implementing and maintaining systems that exclude competition.
Licensure is a false prophet for the ideals of quality, safety and sanitation. Sure, periodic audits are helpful to implement better practices and establish a baseline of what should be done. They do very little to make sure that they are followed on a day to day basis.
Everybody loves a rags to riches story… or do they? Would you buy an unpermitted house or go to a non-licensed restaurant or buy products weighed on an non-certified scale? We say that we like these things, but our actions prove otherwise.
Sometimes the barrier for entry is too high, until you have means to get there. As someone that went through an IRS audit last year, every undocumented transaction is income unless it can be documented otherwise. Guilty until proven innocent.
The foundation of this country, based on bootstrap will and tolerance for entrepreneurship is dead. Did George Washington get a permit from the ATF to make whiskey or was Benjamin Franklin licensed to provide insurance? I think that they would have thought this a violation of there fundamental rights as do I.
We claim to be a society that roots for the underdog and values the little guy. Yet the proverbial ‘we’ has little tolerance for rule breaking to claim our stake and make our fortunes as our predecessors did. When people are more concerned about what everyone else is doing, they have lost their ability to be creative and compete on merit. That is the essence of freedom. I figured that this day would come, I was rooting for the guy.
I have been mulling over this topic for a while now. One catch-22 is that I want to stay as apolitical as possible. But I watch some of the things and I have a hard time not screaming for people to wake up as they seem to be stuck in a logic wormhole. I am trying to evaluate fake news and propaganda versus real problems and I have a difficult time separating or seeing the truth.
One thing that is extremely apparent is that many people are scared out of their minds over Covid-19. I hear it and see it all over the place, particularly with the more aged and health susceptible people in my life. I know people that still believe hiding out or washing and sterilizing shopping bags, voting for the right person or refusing to associate with people will tip the scales on this virus and outcome.
I am one of those people that believe that collectively we have more in common than we have differences. I watch in disbelief as our governor threatens the citizens of my state. And, just as fast as the threats went up, they seem to have been whitewashed. It is difficult to find the quote in the news stories for this post.
I would like to point out (again) the extreme lunacy in the current social distancing schemes by using an example.
Put on mask to leave the car and enter a restaurant
Be seated, take off mask
Be served with mask off
Get up to go to the restroom, put on mask
Return to table and remove mask
Does anyone remember the earliest debates about mask usage? They were originally not recommended, largely because they are generally not considered medically viable. Just as all things get thrown into the meat grinder and become distorted and re-propagandized, it has now become the ‘must have’ accessory to make people feel better about doing nothing. I believe that the guidance was changed for the appearance of doing something that we as humans have very little control over, the spread of a disease.
I am not saying masks are equated to freedom. What I am saying is that people are losing their ability to discriminate between fact and feel good. I have no issues with wearing a mask when required to participate in society. Any private entity has the right to make rules or conditions for entry i.e. masks. People have the right to ask people to adhere to hygiene practices or social distancing to enter a residence. I do have an issue when the government limits how society will associate together. This I find to be strictly un-American practice.
People are abdicating their responsibility to use common sense in situations and wanting the government to handle it by policy, rule and regulation. I draw that conclusion based on the overwhelming election results to double down on state policy that will never work. I read a headline this afternoon that 75% of Americans support an national mask mandate. I am wondering if this is really true or this is another propaganda push?
I will leave with the non-scientific but logical litmus test for this entire situation.
Does the bubonic plague still exist? The answer is yes.
Does the Spanish flu still exist? The answer is yes.
Covid-19 is never going away. It is never going to be eradicated. Children still get cancer, not just smokers. Shit happens and we don’t know why. Pharmaceuticals may some day do wonders, for now have to do the best with what we have.
I feel like I am living in the transformation of the world of George Orwell’s 1984. We have the surveillance state with the Patriot Act in collusion with social media. We have perpetual war in the middle east and Afghanistan. We have xenophobic hate egged on by the partisan groups. We have a population that subsists on processed food garbage and funded by government rations. Most of all, we have a population that is numb to critical thinking and is spoon fed ‘news’ that gets rewritten .
Just wait, there is going to be some neighbors turning other neighbors in when seven people are gathered. I can sense that it will soon be time for my re-education.
I had a good Fourth of July. It certainly wasn’t normal or typical. One of the best benefits of living in a small town on Main Street is the parade that goes by our house every year. We usually have a a sizable gathering of friends and family to watch and then the grill goes on afterward. Not this year because of COVID.
Our sister city next door puts on a 40 minute fireworks display that causes enough traffic to take over an hour to move two miles. Not this year because of COVID. As a result, a lot of people were home and a lot of people were itching to celebrate.
It is common knowledge that I live in Oregon. I feel like I have written enough about my opinion that you can probably speculate on where I am going to come down on a lot of issues, but I want to divert to fireworks for a bit. Throughout my years, I have watched this state go from an independent thinking and acting group to an increasing statist leaning. Fireworks are no exception. Oregon has very strict laws on what fireworks are legal under the guise of personal safety and fire risk.
Despite that, Washington does not adhere to the same laws. I am literally sixty miles from purchasing any fireworks that I would like to buy. I can somewhat understand the fire risk argument, however I have rarely heard of a fire started by errant fireworks. I prescribe that it is a more nanny state rule, than fact. I lived in South Carolina for a couple of years and they definitely enjoyed their freedom when it came to fireworks. Ironically, North Carolina did not and we were ten miles from the border in that case.
I want to introduce a term here – Agorism. You can look up the definition but it to summarize it is the voluntary association of people for mutual benefit. We live in a society that is the opposite of that; involuntary association that uses the power of the state to make people comply to arbitrary rules or opinions.
Another applicable term that is misunderstood is Anarchy. The common perception of Anarchy is violence and chaos which I would argue is much more akin to revolution than a society without rulers. I am going to show some examples of what I saw on Nextdoor after we got done with our celebration on Saturday.
In this case, there was a half-hearted attempt blast out an plea to stop lighting fireworks (I am assuming illegal). The first issue is that the people lighting them off are not reading Nextdoor posts right now, I sure wasn’t. Additionally, she made no attempt address the people that she had the issue with. But the real problem I have is the reasoning is not solid. I am willing to bet that there is no one with PTSD in that household. Pets – maybe, but I believe that the real issue is that Becky does not want to enjoy freedom.
Before I get too carried away, I want to make sure that my position is clear. There is a time and a place to light fireworks. Fourth of July, after dark and before midnight is the time and the place to do so. I talked with my neighbors while we were lighting fireworks off. If I knew that someone had a problem like PTSD, I would appreciate it if we had a discussion where we would set clear expectations about what we would do.
I was already kind of agitated when I read the second post.
The white supremacist’s are looting and rioting? What? If you read all the responses you would see that Howard is lamenting the lack of fireworks display – cancelled because of COVID but yet the city (of Salem) is staffing up for a Black Lives Matter protest. People such as Deby are now using completely flawed logic to push her agenda and lash out. There has been no looting or rioting in Salem, Marion or Polk counties (Nextdoor’s target group). Those activities have occurred within the protest ranks. I am not sure what she is tired of.
My point with all of this is that a lot of people don’t really want freedom. They like to think that they do, but true freedom has to let people do things they want, whether they agree with the activity or not. They want to live in neighborhoods with and association dictating what they can do. They want to use the power of the state to enact laws based on their own beliefs. Both sides of the political isle do it. It just depends on your flavor rule.
I think it goes part and parcel with people not using logic and blathering nonsense whenever they feel like it. I am looking for a way to opt out of Nextdoor as I speak.
My mad dash into everything started Friday. I spent two hours on a personality test for a job prospective. I wanted to finish the roof, which I did in about an hour and then it was time to get the kids off to the grandparents so that my wife an I could enjoy the ‘Anniversary Weekend’.
We had another lovely dinner at the Joel Palmer House on Friday night to celebrate our 22nd wedding anniversary. We capped the night off with a quiet fire (for once). Anyway, I am not going to go into all of our celebration but it lasted all weekend. Smack dab in the middle we got this little girl.
Moving on to this week’s message…
Admittedly, this week wandered a little for me. I think that I got the gist of what was being said. I will paraphrase… there is a holy association that we have despite our residence or citizenship. We need to keep our eyes on the right things rather than getting caught up in a more temporal existence. Submitting to secular authority is part of our duties as citizens of the holy nation.
Now, I haven’t been super direct about my beliefs and I intellectually understand that there is a certain zen or reverence in submission. Not that I know first hand, but I believe that monks act in similar belief. So there must be something to that. I suppose that you can distill it down more coarsely by saying ‘put up with what is going on here so that you can have a better, future life (in heaven)’.
Interestingly enough, in these two weeks there is a whole series on freedom in The Survival Podcast. The thrust of the series is about developing personal independence so that freedom is more attainable. These would be more in-line with career happiness and lifestyle. However, I think that the two work nicely together.
The questions of the week are
What is the most important thing about your freedom?
What can you do this week to honor the freedom that you have?
To me the first question is easy. The most important thing about freedom to me is that people appreciate it and do not take it for granted, for the greater good. One of the episodes last week, Jack implied that people dont really want freedom. By living in a neighborhood with a homeowner’s association, by caring about what their neighbors are doing, etc we take away our own freedoms voluntarily.
The application questions are always harder. They require analysis and action. My toolbox fallacy kicks in. It is really this time writing that is my thinking and analysis time. One thing for sure that we are going to do to honor our freedom is celebrate the Fourth of July. Maybe that was intentional?
This post started on Friday, like all tasks recently, I got interrupted and never got through it all. Now it is going to take a slightly different twist, somewhat of an analysis. It has been a long time since I talked about my faith on this site. In some ways, it is very personal but religion can also be very divisive.
I mentioned last Monday that I took a class on leading a small group for our church. Because we cannot gather as an entire church congregation on Sunday, this is a two fold effort. I will use my terms – one is to enable people to connect in a deeper and more personal level and the other is to build a deeper and more resilient organization.
I want to divert to religion and doctrine for a minute. I grew up in a church that was more liturgical. That means that the process of ritual and symbolism are important in the worship. I now attend a church that is evangelical and it is more about living values. As I have tried a lot of different things and explored denominations, I have not found one that I feel like ‘this is exactly like what I think it should be’. But, we were attending a different church for a while and one day the message was load and clear – don’t let perfect be the enemy of good (for attending church). If God is going to discriminate on denomination, then we are all in a lot of trouble.
In my introverted, liturgical mind, there are some things that are uncomfortable like asking for prayer and such. But, that doesn’t mean that I don’t agree with them and think that practices are more in line with how I interpret the message. I also often find that if you remain on the outside, these things never get easier or more comfortable. I guess jumping in, leading a small group and becoming vulnerable is a way to overcome that.
So with that, I am going go a little deeper into what we are doing. The following are the core values of the church and our group.
Safe
Serving
Submitted
Spiritually Awake
Sent
The initial kickoff of the group is to watch the service together and then dig in deeper into the message. There are some questions at the end to help facilitate that.
As I am writing this, it feels as if world is on ‘proverbial’ fire. We have riots and plague to a level that I have never seen in my life. With that, I have personally observed nastiness and name calling. Friends accusing others of racism when they don’t think you are doing your part or to the same level (even when you are agreeing with them). This is my attempt to re-center and lead by example.
The questions of the week are
What does freedom mean to me and what has God freed me from?
How can I love carefully this week?
What is it that you are saying that you think I need to know?
Admittedly, I struggle with empathy and forgiveness. That is definitely something that I need to keep working on. I could probably go on with analysis and so forth. But, I think that providing the gist of small groups and what we are about is a good start today.
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