National Day of Prayer: Politics and Religion

May 1st, brings us the national day of prayer. This is an exciting day for me, a Christian, who believes in the absolute power of prayer. However, the idea of a day of prayer is also tainted with some people's missuse of the United States First Amendment to the Constitution's provision of seperation of church and state. That is what brings me to my persuasion today.

So we've got the First Amendment which prohibits the establishment of a national religion by congress. Okay fine, I believe that our founding fathers were inspired if not completly directed by God to the form The Constitution and Bill of Rights. It doesn't take a genius here... Just look at the documents the term "God" is printed all over. However, in the spirit of the freedoms those documents profess, I will concede that argument and leave it up to your own judgements. I just challenge you not to forsake true history for the sake of temporal intelect.

The other argument established in the First Amendment of The Constitution, is the freedom to exercise your religion. Therefore, as a citizen of the United States, one has the freedom to profess and openly worship his or her chosen religion. Or! To choose no religion at all.

So to marry the two provisions above, as an American one has the right to his or her religion, and can count on the Federal government not to establish a forced national religion.

What irks me is when one takes those two provisions completely out of context. On one side, you say, "a political leader can't have prayer in her office." Why not, wouldn't that conflict with her freedom to exercise religion? Contrary, if she were to create and enforce law to require all her subordinates or citizens under her jurisdiction to follow her religion then she would conflict the establishment clause.

Now my rant... So when our President gets up to pray in a few days and maybe he'll say "Jesus" or "Christ", it's okay. He is not breaking the law! In America we have this wonderful organization of political election where a majority vote rules. We all knew our President, George W. Bush at this time, is a Christian. He was voted on and won, twice. If the majority of voting citizens of the United States wanted something different then they would have elected differently. We're not that stupid and we weren't decived by anyone. Accept it!

If a future president were to take another religious stand contrary to my beliefs, I would disagree. However, by no means does that give me the right to forcefully stop him.

So, a non-Christian might say that the United States doesn't represent me. TRUE and FALSE. False, because as a national government, the United States does nothing to prevent you from your religion. You are welcome to worship or not worship as you please. Go to some other country and try to practice a religion not accepted by the national govenment and you'll see what the freedom provides to you. The heading statement is TRUE in the sense that the collective individules of the United States don't represent the same beliefs as the non-Christian. In the 2001 American Religious Identification Survey completed by The Graduate Center of The City University of New York, the results show that just under 80% of those randomly surveyed consider themsleves personally aligned with the Christian religion. Only just under 4% believe in ALL other world religions and 14% stated they believe in no religion.

So if our national leader prayed a Christian prayer then in the popular sence, he would represent the United States very well. Hmm...

Rant number two, so in light of the above facts, I feel like in many circumstaces the adgenda of the non-majority try to jump up to a position of majority by way of legslitation or media or whatever. ALL are free to their thoughts I am sorry your's may not be the leading one. But the fact is that if you have a minority belief, the majority might disagree. Sorry. I can't change them just like I can't change you. You are STILL free! Stand tall! Just don't suppress me in the spirit of freedom. Huh? Suppress me. Freedom. I thought we were free to religion, and for the sake of freedom you are saying I can't pray at school, as a student? Listen to yourself.

Thanks for hearing my rant, conversly I hope the facts I expressed take a stronger position.

If you have any thoughts on this, please comment.

One Year Pictures (2nd Try)

Link to the much awaited (grandparents), one-year pictures below. It took two time to get what we wanted. I have a little more post process to do, but we're so proud of the pics we just couldn't wait to show them off.

LINK TO ONE YEAR PICTURES

Hope you enjoy. Oh yeah, let us know what you think, we love to hear from you.

Ah, one more thing... We put magnet locks on the kitchen cabinets and drawers. They are great for keeping Baby O out of them, but unfortunately, Hot Wife and me too!

A Handfull of What?

Today, Hot Wife took Baby O to the doctor for a check up. While there, Dr. P, the best pediatrician ever, agreed with Hot Wife's comment that, "she's [baby O] a handfull". I know she didn't mean it in any kind of bad way. However, we needed a little reality check and Baby O is getting a little tempermental.

Okay, so give me a break, first child, first grandchild for all grandparents... Of course she'll be a little spoiled, we accept that. But, I think we're facing the reality of parenting where we have to enforce some dicipline.

I am trying to remember what I learned from a cabin (8) of ten-year old boys at Falling Creek Camp when I was a couselor. By the way, a great experience if you ever get the chance. I do remember my first year. I was a college student that was expected to care for young boys for a four or five-week term. Wow the parents really didn't know where they were sending their boys!!! Anyway, back to the first year. My group of boys arrived for the five-week session. My goal was to be accepted by them so I was the easy-going leader who let them bend the rules. I was thinking that they would love me because I let them have a fun time. We that didn't work! A week into the five-week session and our cabin was falling apart.

Redemption time... The second week, I did a full-180 and was a tough guy. If you don't obey the rules there will be consequences and dire ones at that. Well, nobody likes a jerk. Not even a ten-year old.

Hmm. I scratched my head... I was finally inspired. The problem about week one and week two, is that my attitude toward the kid was all about me. From the third week on, I was inspired to show the kids that I genuinely cared for them and assumed the role of leader. And by leader, I mean servant leader -- yeah I know it's a little Biblical.

Anyway, what I learned is that there is a reasonable balance between strict and "fun". However, above all, kids have a sense no matter their age, and can tell if you truly care for them or not. And no matter how you dicipline them or "guide" their paths, they know if you desire their best interest or yours.

So, if you've made it this far, you might think I have my act together. Well, I don't! So, what do you do with one-year olds? Spank? I tried that the other day, but wimped out and it was more of a nice tap on the leg. Argh! How about time-out? There's got to be other ideas out there. I mean I got really creative at the camp, but I'm drawing a blank now almost ten years later.

Please comment your ideas. I look forward to hearing from you all!

Beach Trip

We just saw off Dad, Cole, and Dylan who are headed back home and I had a few minutes to blog. Dad and his crew had been at his sister's, my anut's, condo in Orange Beach, Alabama for the week. We joined them on Wednesday and got to enjoy a nice visit with them.

Baby O, is not sure about the beach and ocean. She has a love/hate relationship with the sand and the water is still a little chilly for her to enjoy. But the birds... She's a huge fan! Yesterday, she drew the attention of all the passers by as she screamed in excitement at the seagulls on the beach.















































We also were able to get in a few games of bocce ball. Notice the cast on Cole's arm. Yep... He "earned" that one playing backetball earlier in the day. That's one thing about Cole -- he's always been a tough guy no matter what he's doing.

Not only is the guy tough, he's also very keen on details. As seen below, Uncle Coco, Cole, wants to always make sure we scoring the game correctly. I wish we had a string or measuring tape, it probably would have cleared up some discrepancy.









Hot Wife, Baby O, and I will be here for an additional day. Maybe we'll get in some beach time, shopping, and a good nap!

Weekend Post II

What two post in two days! It's the weekend folks, I guess I got time on my hands. Actually, it's been a pretty busy weekend I suppose. As you know, we went out to LaPaz last night and today we went to the Friends of Birmingham Botanical Gardens Plant Sale. Lots of fun plants for the yard, but we couldn't put out all of them because it was a pretty rainy day. I was a little inspired though while getting the plants set out. The weather reminded me of Kennebunkport, Maine in October. Nice...

We've done some other things as well...

Reading.

Taking bottles out of drawers.

Putting bottles on the floor.















Doing laundry.















Vacuuming.























Most important, we've - and by "we" I mean Baby O -- learned to love ourselves. The Bible says to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Well, Baby O is pretty high on herself so expect great things from her in the future. Humanitarian? Missions? I can't wait to see. Just in case you can't tell, she's kissing the reflection of herself on the stove.

Crappy Movie

So I've had a nice filling meal from LaPaz, gotten Baby down to bed, and I just tasted a sip of week-old Edna Valley chardonnay. By the way, I think some wines get a little better in the fridge. Go figure... Hot Wife is watching "Legally Blonde II" (pink hits D.C. - I think). Anyway, I figured that I better blog before I either drink too much of the stale wine or throw a rock at the T.V.

So... The blog, right? I've got to vent... Baby O has been nuts since we came home from her grandparents house. In the past two weeks, she has been around a grandparent just about every day. First, grandparents from Georgia, then grandmom from Florida, and most recent grandparents here in Alabama. I mean, grandparents, does someone pull you aside when you first learn that your son or daughter will be having a baby and tell you how to spoil the future grandchild? Spoiling a grandchild is nothing new and actually a fine artform in both Hot Wife's and my heritage. Our grandparents did it and so did our parent's grandparents.

Okay so that's the end of my rant... We'll give Baby O a few days to adjust back to reality.

That aside, we are so proud that Baby O likes to read. Kind of...

I hope she's reading about how to grow St. Augustine grass, because I haven't a clue.

Huh?

These days Hot Wife and I have been learning a new language. Nope, not Spanish or Mexican as she calls it. Not, Latin just in case Caesar comes to town. We've been learning baby talk.

"Boo"(pointing at a book) = Book
"Bur"(pointing outside) = Bird
"Mamamamama" = Mom
"Dadadadadada" = Dad
"Bubba" = Bubbles
"Pop Pop"(wispered) = Poppy
"Anen" = Amen

I think that's it for now.