A D.J. Drummond posted the following on Wizbangblog.com. It is very perceptive.
On Death
Yesterday, I went to the funeral of my old church choir director, the sort of man who achieved greatness the old-fashioned way; he changed the lives of countless people around him by helping them find character strengths and skills they did not know they possessed, and he helped them grow from uncertain youth to a more confident adulthood. Today also happens to be the one-year anniversary of the death of my father. Also, in the past year I have been diagnosed with Cancer, been to several other funerals, and had some unpleasantly direct experience with how the present media culture treats the families of violent crime, so I am a bit more aware of death in my thoughts and ponderings than normal.
We live, we die. These are immutable facts in the human condition. I could make some profound religious or philosophical observation on what happens after we die, I suppose, but it would likely not be original, even if it was worth the effort. And it would be poor, cold comfort to the people left behind to mourn the loss. It's nice to be told that our loved ones are happy and doing well on the other side of the grave, and we might even take some comfort in the hope that we can believe in something more after the death of the body, but in the present we all have to face that death is right here, everywhere all the time. Dying means pain, the grotesque internment of the body as garbage, and the undesired change in reality for everyone connected to the deceased. C.S. Lewis, the Oxford Don and famous as a great apologist for Christianity in the modern age, wrote about the pain he endured when his wife Joy died from Cancer. It was, he felt, grossly unfair and painful to everyone, and it also seemed that everything someone said to him showed how little they understood the situation. If so great an optimist as Lewis felt this way during the passing of his wife, we should not be surprised that anyone else would feel the same suffering.
Yet for all of that, I cannot accept the notion that death should be the focus of a person's life. We are born and we must die, yes, but all that happens in between those events is of tremendous importance. Indeed, all of History comes down to men and women choosing ways to use their opportunities to act in ways that change Reality. Even when they sometimes had to die to do so. And many times, the people who changed the world the most, were far more than they seemed on the outside.
It's no great wisdom to say it, but I think it's a good idea to repeat the fact that living matters more than dying. Anyone can die, and we all get there eventually. Living, and living to a good end, is much much harder and significant. People mourn a person's death, specifically because the way they lived mattered.
By: DJ Drummond
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Friday, April 20, 2007
The insanity of feminism
Al Mohler and Kathleen Parker clarify our insanity:
"Tragically, the most damaging element of Ahmadinejad's media triumph was handed to him by the Royal Navy in the person of Leading Seaman Faye Turney, the only woman among the captives and the mother of a 3-year-old daughter.
Her presence among the captives taken from the British patrol vessel gave Ahmadinejad the opportunity to make this observation:
"You will know that among the detainees there is one lady who is a mother of a child. Why is it that the most difficult work like patrolling at sea should be given to a woman?
"Why is there no respect for motherhood? Why does the West not value its women?"
Ahmadinejad's questions still reverberate around the Muslim world. Nothing could more effectively demonstrate the immorality of Western values before Muslim eyes than this -- a mother of a little girl sent as a warrior.
As Kathleen Parker remarked in The Washington Post:
On any given day, one isn't likely to find common cause with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He's a dangerous, lying, Holocaust- denying, Jew-hating cutthroat thug -- not to put too fine a point on it.
But he was dead-on when he wondered why a once-great power such as Britain sends mothers of toddlers to fight its battles.
Driven by a fanatical ideology of feminism, the West has turned its back on a reality as basic as motherhood. We have adopted a new morality that insists -- nature's obstinacy notwithstanding -- that there is no difference between men and women. This produces mothers of babies and toddlers in uniform and in the killing zones."
"Tragically, the most damaging element of Ahmadinejad's media triumph was handed to him by the Royal Navy in the person of Leading Seaman Faye Turney, the only woman among the captives and the mother of a 3-year-old daughter.
Her presence among the captives taken from the British patrol vessel gave Ahmadinejad the opportunity to make this observation:
"You will know that among the detainees there is one lady who is a mother of a child. Why is it that the most difficult work like patrolling at sea should be given to a woman?
"Why is there no respect for motherhood? Why does the West not value its women?"
Ahmadinejad's questions still reverberate around the Muslim world. Nothing could more effectively demonstrate the immorality of Western values before Muslim eyes than this -- a mother of a little girl sent as a warrior.
As Kathleen Parker remarked in The Washington Post:
On any given day, one isn't likely to find common cause with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He's a dangerous, lying, Holocaust- denying, Jew-hating cutthroat thug -- not to put too fine a point on it.
But he was dead-on when he wondered why a once-great power such as Britain sends mothers of toddlers to fight its battles.
Driven by a fanatical ideology of feminism, the West has turned its back on a reality as basic as motherhood. We have adopted a new morality that insists -- nature's obstinacy notwithstanding -- that there is no difference between men and women. This produces mothers of babies and toddlers in uniform and in the killing zones."
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
V Tech hero
"Virginia Tech University Prof. Liviu Librescu, described as a family man who once did research for NASA, sacrificed his life to save his students in the shooting rampage yesterday.
"When he heard the gunfire, he blocked the entrance and got shot through the door," his daughter-in-law Ayala Schmulevich said.
"He realized he had to save the students," she said. "That was the kind of man he was."
The hero educator was beginning a class on solid mechanics when all hell broke loose on the second floor of Norris Hall.
First came the terrifying gunshots from a classroom next door.
"It wasn't like an automatic weapon, but it was a steady 'pow,' 'pow,' 'pow,' 'pow,'" student Richard Mallalieu, 23, told The Washington Post. "We didn't know what to do at first."
The students in the class dropped to the floor and started overturning desks to hide behind as about a dozen shots rang out, he said.
Then the gunfire started coming closer. Librescu, 77, fearlessly braced himself against the door, holding it shut against the gunman in the hall, while students darted to the windows of the second-floor classroom to escape the slaughter, survivors said.
Mallalieu and most of his classmates hung out of the windows and dropped about 10 feet to bushes and grass below - but Librescu stayed behind to hold off the crazed gunman.
Alec Calhoun, 20, said the last thing he saw before he jumped from the window was Librescu, blocking the door against the madman in the hallway.
He died trying to protect the students."
INCREDIBLE! GOD BLESS HIM
"When he heard the gunfire, he blocked the entrance and got shot through the door," his daughter-in-law Ayala Schmulevich said.
"He realized he had to save the students," she said. "That was the kind of man he was."
The hero educator was beginning a class on solid mechanics when all hell broke loose on the second floor of Norris Hall.
First came the terrifying gunshots from a classroom next door.
"It wasn't like an automatic weapon, but it was a steady 'pow,' 'pow,' 'pow,' 'pow,'" student Richard Mallalieu, 23, told The Washington Post. "We didn't know what to do at first."
The students in the class dropped to the floor and started overturning desks to hide behind as about a dozen shots rang out, he said.
Then the gunfire started coming closer. Librescu, 77, fearlessly braced himself against the door, holding it shut against the gunman in the hall, while students darted to the windows of the second-floor classroom to escape the slaughter, survivors said.
Mallalieu and most of his classmates hung out of the windows and dropped about 10 feet to bushes and grass below - but Librescu stayed behind to hold off the crazed gunman.
Alec Calhoun, 20, said the last thing he saw before he jumped from the window was Librescu, blocking the door against the madman in the hallway.
He died trying to protect the students."
INCREDIBLE! GOD BLESS HIM
Monday, April 16, 2007
20 plus people murdered at Va. Tech
There is great evil loosened in our world. Nobody yet knows the final tally; the shooter is dead.
Waiting to find out who it is; if there is any explanation to the insanity.
Waiting to find out who it is; if there is any explanation to the insanity.
Finnerty, Seligman & Evans Innocent
I admit to attempting to read EVERYTHING about the Duke Lacrosse Non-rape Case that has fascinated the blogosphere in the last year.
It shoulda gone away the day after it was announced there was NO DNA evidence. But too many people desperately needed it to be true to serve their agenda.
If you were following the case in the blogosphere, it was oh so evident that there was nothing there. Yet Nifong and his MANY enablers toiled on.
I would love to interview Mike. It would take a week before you might actually get to the bottom of his motivations.
Oh well, what's next?
It shoulda gone away the day after it was announced there was NO DNA evidence. But too many people desperately needed it to be true to serve their agenda.
If you were following the case in the blogosphere, it was oh so evident that there was nothing there. Yet Nifong and his MANY enablers toiled on.
I would love to interview Mike. It would take a week before you might actually get to the bottom of his motivations.
Oh well, what's next?
Monday, April 02, 2007
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