Pastor Peters: The Deconstruction Of Marriage

When is this gent going to write that book that needs to be read by so many?

Today's post is especially poignant, as the Pastor looks at how we have managed to so totally 'deconstruct' our lives and society as to leave both completely fragmented. 'All the king's horses, and all the king's men...' does come to mind when reading these thoughts.

The problem with deconstruction is that when we are left with only the parts, we also leave it to others or to the moment to reconstruct those parts into something (and therefore leave it to another day to be deconstructed over again). The end result of this is that our social institutions and values have broken down, we are even more fragmented as a people, and even more disappointed in what we have and our future. Far from offering us stability or hope, the result of deconstruction is that we have been left divided, bitter, and captive to the prevailing wind of the moment. We have no common morality or values to bind our diverse people together and we have no common vision of what the present or the future should be.

We were not created to live this way. And in saying this, OldSouth asserts that, yes indeed, we are creations, not accidents. We need not live this way, or at least let it dominate everything about our existence.

One of the most memorable 'deconstruction' moments in OS's inglorious life occurred about fifteen years ago, at Harvey Brown Presbyterian Church in Louisville. OS and his lovely bride were visiting on a Sunday morning, only to find that the service was being led by seminarians from Louisville Presbyterian Seminary. (Fair enough, gotta let the kids get some experience under the belt.) The brave young boys and girls decided to take the venerable Geneva order of service, and rewrite the liturgy based upon Dr. Seuss's environmentalist tome, The Lorax.

The service was, well, nonsense. Mr. and Mrs. OS sat in the pew, amazed, suppressing their laughter, when the best moment of all occurred: One dear old saint, eighty years old at least, stood up and walked out down the center aisle, deliberately striking her cane loudly upon the hard tile floor. Each impact reverberated through the church, like a hammer striking a nail. It was wonderful.

OS wishes he had followed her, but he was too polite. Or too timid. He prays for the good sense and character to follow her example in the days ahead.

Greece (and Spain, and Portugal, and the US): The Alternate Hard-Soled Foot-Covering Apparatus Descends Rapidly Toward The Surface Of The Earth

In other words, the other shoe may be in the process of dropping.

OS thinks we may be arriving at one of those interesting points in human events, such as 1914, or 1929, or 1939, or 1945, where very little going forward resembles what once was.

Q. What were The Two Big Ideas to emerge from the smoke and rubble of Western Europe in 1945?

A. A unified Europe, guarded by NATO, and integrated by The Common Market, which became the vast machine created by the Lisbon Treaty.

B. The Welfare State. From cradle to grave, the elimination of want, disease, ignorance, unemployment, even the provision of the high arts, all on the taxpayer dime.

From these two bedrock Big Ideas would emerge a NewEurope, blissfully free of Christendom, sailing ever toward the dawn of GreaterThings. The Best And The Brightest, all the very best minds, carefully chosen and trained to lead the way, devoted their lives to the great cause, The Two Big Ideas.

It didn't work out at all. Idea A failed because there is simply too much history to overcome, and it is foolish to attempt it. The Portugese shopkeeper shares no cultural identity with the Irish truck driver, and both resent like hell being forced into the same cultural straight-jacket.

Idea B failed due to simple math. No one can tax at the levels needed to build and maintain The Welfare State, and have the underlying economy survive. Add to that a plunging birthrate and an unquenchable desire for consumption over production, and everything caves in upon itself. Even a good-ole'-boy like OS knows you can't keep that up too long. It's like downing a fifth of Jack Daniels every day for twenty years, and wondering why you become a drunk with cirrohsis who can't afford to buy his Jack anymore.

Cranmer's post today about the monstrous building going up to house the EU administrative offices is brilliant. Take a look at that ugly piece of ugliness. Why would anyone trust anything to anybody who believes that building is worth the expenditure of even one fake-currency Euro, much less hundreds of millions of them?

The Emperor be buck-nekkid, ya'll. Europe's in for a real tussle, and we're next in line in the US. 'Cuz we not only embraced the TwoBigIdeas, we by-golly championed them, and ponied most of the money to keep NATO running all along.

So, OS has decided not to rant about it much more, or spend any time being angry about it. The mathematics of default are now likely inexorable, with the only question being how ugly things get, and how graciously and skilfully the situation is handled.

He is trying to discern how best to care for his family, friends and community here during these days to come. He has some ideas about what to do in The Meantime.

Moh, latuh'. Hug yoh' loved ones, don't-chew ferget.


HT Mish

Greetings For The Week From OldSouth: Hiatus

Hi ya'll.

Most of this week will be eaten up with early morning to late night, doing enjoyable things with musical instruments.

So, in the meantime, take time to make sure the ones you love know it.

The entire world feels like some massive 'other shoe' is about to drop (and OS is hoping that does not happen). But we have today and one another, and that's a lot. The future is in better hands than ours anyway, if we can trust in that and behave well today.


Moh', latuh'. In a few days...

Now The Game Of Chicken Begins: Europe (that is to say, Germany) Puts Greece On Short Rations

Hmmm....mebbe, ya'll, everbody's havin' second thoughts 'bout keeping Greece fat and happy, cuz' it shore do look like throwin' good money after bad.

Things are getting tense and ugly, and it's now down to whoever blinks first. Betcha Zimbabwe Ben's phone has been busy, with all our newest-best-friends-in-Europe, who normally hate us, tryin to find some of our money-hunney throw on the Greek bonfire.

Rather like having a meth-head second cousin named Amos, whose got him a bunch-a-kids and no common sense. Shore, we'll help out, keep the lights and water on, make sure baby's got formula and diapers, food and overalls fer the others, and maybe a bit of gas for the car. But that Camaro he bought on credit has gotta get taken back to the dealership, and ain't nobuddy gunna contribute a dime to helping Amos maintain his favorite vices. Them daze iz over, ya'll.

'Course, Amos is gunna get purty hot when he hears the news, and threaten to create all sorts of chaos, and beat his wife and kids, you know.

We'll just have to take that chance. He lays a hand on our Jolene, he'll have bigger worries than having his ride repossessed, know-whud-I-mean? Shoot, he'll be relieved to see the sheriff roll up to arrest him.

President Barack Obama's Complete List Of Historic Firsts

President Barack Obama's Complete List of Historic Firsts

Doug Ross is a partisan, to be certain, but this list is factual, from publicly available sources. No tin-foil-hat stuff here.

Louisville' Ted Collins: There's No Fraud Like Affinity Fraud

On some beach, well out of reach...

There just must be a Perdition, because we live in a world where people like Ted Collins walk around and victimize people.

Tedd Collins, a Louisville businessman who is under investigation by the Secret Service and Kentucky authorities, has been hit with a $3.3 million default judgment for defrauding a minister in South Carolina.

Collins attracted national attention last year after disclosures that he was raising money for a Yale hockey player with leukemia without registering the charity and despite his history of fraud allegations in several states.

Actually, he's rather small potatoes, compared to guys like Madoff, who was small potatoes compared to the folks who kicked the legs out from under the entire economy and walked away, just to prove it could be done.

In this instance, though, it's the parlaying of his own daughter's death from cancer, and the death of another college student from lukemia, neatly packaged and sold to church-folk, that make this particular fraudster particularly odious.

In this life, he'll likely never face justice. In this life, his victims will never recover either their money or ability to trust so fearlessly.

In this life, which is short, and quixotic and unpredictable and unjust.

We are, however, assured of another, contrasting life...so enjoy this one, Ted, while you can. Drink up, bro'. Spend. Chase skirts.

Go for the gusto in this life. 'Cuz it's all yer gunna get.

Tom Jones has a word of wisdom to share in the meantime.

If It's Friday, It's Bloodletting In Syria

One can set the watch to it--US Central +8 hours, midmorning the reports come back. They go to the mosque, they get fired up by the local imam, who stays safely indoors, they head to the streets and a couple of dozen are shot down.

Lather.

Rinse.

Repeat.

Does it occur to anyone, anywhere, in any position of responsibility that maybe-maybe-just maaaaby...there's an inherent flaw in the Islamic approach to life that always leads to repression and violence?

Just sayin...

In the meantime, what's an Arab uprising without a flood of refugees spilling across someone's border, with only the clothes on their backs, and tales of terror to share?



France24 has more to share.

TheWeiner Bows Out, With A Campaign Speech, Naturally/Larry Flint Offers The Weiner His Next Job

OldSouth should know better than to be surprised by people like TheWeiner, really. But, upon viewing his resignation statement, he was taken aback at LittleAnthony's continuing hubris.


(Clink on the link to hear the entire address--CNN posted it all. ABC edited out the campaign speech bits. They're protecting their boy to the bitter end. Shame on them.)

This ole' boy made a speech that sounded like he's running for the next office! Damn, ya'll! That requires real stones!

Or perhaps it requires such a complete state of blindness and deafness that it simply doesn't occur to him that this just might not be the tone to take...

So, off he goes to treatment (or so he announced earlier) his conscience still unpricked by the damage done (sorry...), his wife not at his side for TheBigAnnounce (Her lawyers are going over the family books now. She may not divorce him outright, but within a week or two, she'll own everything except the clothes on his back...including his camera-phone.) If he goes away, his world will be different when he returns, in any event.

But, then again, things are looking up, as he has a bright and rising future ahead of him, working for Larry Flynt.

OS has no proof, no way of knowing whether his suspicions are true or no, he just has his experience of life and a bit of a cynical edge. He suspects that Weiner may have done a Spiro Agnew on Nancy Pelosi and Obama, i.e., 'Here's the number you need to meet, in dollars, to make me go away and not publish what I know about you. Here's the number you need to meet to make sure all those notes from the caucuses, meetings, deal-making dinners, all those slimy stories and supporting docs, don't end up in the hands of Fox News, the RNC, John Boehner's office, or on WikiLeaks. Or all of the above, in a slow death-drip sort of release.'

With the funds safely tucked away in the Caymans, safe from the gaze of the media or his wife's lawyers and accountants, TheWeiner was (with a few Xanax to keep the voice steady) able to stand tall and make his final campaign speech.

For now.

In six months or less, expect TheRehabilitationOfLittleAnthony to begin. Just in time for 2012.

A Joyful Moment from Lyle Lovett: 'Church'

It's been an ugly month so far...this to share a smile, and a moment of basic wisdom.

Enjoy.

Pastor Peters Supplies The Closing Soliloquy For Weinergate: 'The first casualty of our vanity is usually our conscience.'

His entire thoughts are here, and well worth the time spent to read and consider.

Amongst the best moments of the essay is this one, a form of elegaic postlude to the disaster that Anthony Weiner made of his life.

You're so vain... she sang. I am so vain... The world is so vain... Our vanity is not a simple affront to God but our ultimate undoing. Only rightly ordered relationships can begin to hold this vanity in check... parent and child, husband and wife, citizen and neighbor. . . creature to Creator. Christ did not come to do away with these relationships or to set us from from their limitations but to restore to us the right relationship which sin had stolen from us. For it is only in light of these relationships that we know who we are. Sin steals away this identity. Rep. Weiner, Gov. Terminator, Sen./former Presidental Candidate Edwards.... not only forgot who they were but lost their identity in a sea of mirrors which inflated their egos and deflated their wisdom. In the end, we found out that they were not exceptional, like they wanted us to believe, but so full of themselves they thought they were above the Law (God's). The first casualty of our vanity is usually our conscience. The only treatment for this is Law and Gospel. The only medicine is grace. The only therapy is death and resurrection through the waters of baptism (and its daily dying and rising).

OS hopes his readers take time to read, and share with their friends and loved ones.