Know Jack #332 The Voice of Experience

 “Write what you know about.”

                             Mark Twain

 

Twain may not be the only writer to give that advice, but he is a great example of a fervent follower of it. Of course, that has gotten him banned by Woke America most of whom cannot grasp the value and message of books like Huckleberry Finn because it contains words unapproved words.

I hear Microsoft has developed a new Word tool that not only checks spelling and grammar but points out better Woke word choices for authors. It allows you to keep a watch on pronouns, gender bias, race, and cultural sensitivity.

In other words, it erases the author’s voice in favor of the collective voice. My question is, where’s the fun in that? Why read a writer’s work but to hear his/her voice—to enter into what they know about from the voice that lived it?

A writer’s word choices and phraseology are a window on their life experience that allow the reader to connect on a level deeper than the page. It’s not just the words they know, but how they string them together.

Life colors speech. Those people with law enforcement and military backgrounds have an affinity for certain words and what they want to convey in a scene. I have found the same true of content writers and screenwriters. Male and female writers will describe a car very differently—sorry non-binaries.

As a nurse, I was taught to avoid nouns and pronouns and focus on verbs. Precise details about size and colors were very important. That’s a skill most male nurses who own a simple eight-color box of crayons have to work harder at than their female counterparts who own that giant 256 color box.

I have a practiced pattern of King James Bible sentence structure and word usage that, like the book, sometimes sound awkward and confusing to those not indoctrinated to it. Trying to sort that out with my military and nursing speech patterns is always amusing.

What I’m trying to say is that, like St. Peter outside the trial, “thy speech bewrayeth thee.” Who you are, and your life experience undergirds your writing and tells something about you. That being the case, bring that out in the open and flaunt it. It worked for Mark Twain.

Maranatha     

 

Lost Crusader #119 Small Sacrifices

 “…thou hast slain my children, and delivered them to cause them to pass through the fire for them (idols)…”

Ezekiel 16:21

There has been much made about when life begins, protecting the unborn, and raging against trafficking in children. Those discussions provide a convenient outward-pointing distraction from the great active sacrificing of children going on every day in the name of education.

Sacrificing their children to the god Molech was in vogue in the prophet’s day. The goal was to bring the blessings of the god upon the land. The blessing was not confined to the parents. The sacrifice was for the good of all—the entire nation was to prosper from the beneficence of the appeased Molech.

Is that so different from loading unguarded children into a bus or car and delivering them to the popular poison that passes for classroom instruction? Feed them to the appetite of the village if you will, but God will not turn a blind eye to the parental abdication of His command to train up a child in the way they should go.

Christian, you—and you alone, bear responsibility for the minds and hearts of your children. That does not mean that they must adopt your faith or heed your teaching. It means only that you must provide that teaching and stand in the gap between the innocent and the secular indoctrination.

We don’t need prayer or moral instruction in schools. We need them at home. Home is where critical thinking must be taught. Home is not a place for pat answers. It is the place to instill young minds with a willingness to question everything—even the faith of their parents.

Thinking is quietly being abolished in public education in favor of compliance with mandates from above. Ironically, the very thing for which those outside the faith ridicule Christians.

Christianity places a high value on obedience to God. However, contrary to some, it is not, and never has been blind obedience. It is obedience gleaned from experimental practice and much closer to science than what society touts as science than the money-driven drivel spouted by “experts”.

Yet, Christians and churches daily feed their children into the gospel of the State. Can God possibly be happy with that? I suppose it’s possible since He was pleased with the closing of church doors at the command of the State. The example we set in doing so was certainly not lost on the young.

The best lessons are those taught by living models and personal experience. Children do not need to go to school or pick up a book to learn. They have instructors all around them every minute. That is why training is committed to those who are supposed to love and value them the most.

Training up a child comes with no guarantees except that they will recall what they see and hear. They will do what they have seen done. Commit to them, then a thirst for truth and a love of freedom.

“…keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: which some professing have erred concerning the faith.”

Maranatha

The Colonel #81 Let’s Go Brandon!

 “Will we choose democracy over autocracy, light over shadow, justice over injustice? I know where I stand. I will not yield. I will not flinch. I will defend your right to vote and our democracy against all enemies foreign and domestic.”   

So Breitbart reports our illegitimate President will say in his upcoming speech defending the illicit practices that put him in office. Biden means to put the federal government in charge of state and local elections in order to stop voter integrity laws springing up around the country—Georgia being the focal point.

Georgia did pretty well recently with a scoreboard to tally the scores. Counting votes—not so much. The trouble was too many players on the field and too many Zuckerbucks at stake. But Georgia wasn’t the only team playing for Joe.

That American election integrity can honestly be questioned is a sad commentary on We The People. We let it happen and continue to do so. When vote counts exceed the population of a given area, there is no doubt that the system is corrupt.

Surgery is the only solution. It’s time to cut away the gangrenous limbs—voting by mail, proxy harvesting of ballots, and “found ballots” to name a few.

In the very first Congressional election to be held in Virginia, voting was in person only and confined to at a single location—the county courthouse. Election Day was February 2, 1789. The temperature in Fredericksburg was minus 10 degrees and there was approximately ten inches of snow. Walking, riding on horseback, and riding in unheated carriages, 61% of the voters in Spotsylvania County turned out to vote. In Amherst County 74% of the voters showed up at the courthouse to vote.

To be fair, 75% of voters voted in Spotsylvania County in 2020, but over half of them were absentee ballots. Only 30% of registered voters turned out in person, without fear of frostbite, in the 67-degree temperatures, in a record setting year when 57% of voters (voting by all methods) turned out in 2020 nationally.

Did remote voting alter Spotsylvania County’s vote locally or Virginia’s statewide—I don’t know, but given the numbers not actually attending the polls, the potential was there, and such fraud certainly took place elsewhere.

My point is that in-person voting is not a deterrent to those who wish to vote. Absentee voting, on the other hand, is an open invitation to fraud and should be banned everywhere. It seems voting integrity has gone the way of office seeker integrity.

The candidates in Spotsylvania in 1789? James Madison versus James Monroe. For the “woke” both attended Virginia’s convention that ratified the Constitution, and future Presidents.

Sic Semper Tyrannis

Know Jack #331 When You Got Nothing

 “When you don’t have resources, you become resourceful.”

KR Sridhar

For a writer, staring at a blinking cursor atop a blank white page is a lot like those dreams people talk about in which they are walking naked through a crowded place. Every flaw, wart, and unseemly part is there for anyone and everyone to see.

Put something on! a voice screams in your head, write something!

There is an evil voice that tells you anything will do, but you know it’s a lie. It may satisfy the deadline. It will not satisfy your soul. This is about the time that you begin to question your ability, your sanity, and your worth as a writer and a human being. A huge black cloud begins to form above your head.

The temptation is to run inside to a laundry list of safe, mindless chores await to occupy your time. Don’t give in to temptation—well, not that one—run out into the brewing storm where you might just get hit by lightning.

You got nothing? Writer about having nothing. Write about the storms of life. That may not be the subject at hand, but once you begin to write, things have a way of coming around. You may begin to write the blog post that is due tomorrow. You may write the beginning of a new novel—go with it.

As you begin that story, the blog will come to you. As probably will a multitude of other ideas like popcorn in a microwave. Of course, then you are concerned you won’t remember all that great stuff when you have time later. But, being consumed with projects is a better feeling than afforded by that mocking cursor.

Write what you know. I can’t get into quantum physics on that horse. I can ride a long way on “gloom, despair and agony on me—deep dark depression, excessive misery.”

Yeah, now that song is stuck in my head.

It’s okay though. I’m now 335 words into a blog post that, moments ago, I had no idea what to write about and telling myself, to wrap it up. I can’t spend all day writing.

When you can’t be the writer, be the character.

Maranatha

 

Lost Crusader #118 The Living Dead

 “The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones…

“Again he said to me, Prophesy upon these bones and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord…Behold I cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live…and ye shall know that I am the Lord.”

Ezekiel 37

The message of the gospel is not one of reformation, but of transformation. Christianity is not about resolutions, but reconstitutions. The message is not one of a better life, although a better life will result from Christ’s teachings alone, it is about a new life. It is the message of a life inside the life of Christ.

Ezekiel stood in a valley of dead men’s bones, bones so long forgotten that they were bleached and dried. With a spoken word, reminiscent of creation, they returned to living, breathing, flesh and blood.

The good news of the gospel is that those dead, withered and dried up in rebellion against God can, by a Word already spoken, live a new, everlasting life, at peace with God, directed by His Spirit, and empowered by His Son.

I don’t know what became of those who lived by Ezekiel’s prophesy. I don’t know what they felt or what was expected of them. I’m sure it is an interesting story one I imagine myself telling one day.

Poor example though I may be, I do know what it feels like to be resurrected to new life in Christ. I also know what is expected of me. In a strict sense, it is not the keeping of commandments. Rather is a freely given love for God and for my fellow human beings.

That kind of love is not a replacement for the commandments, but the motivation and the outcome of them all. I am not good at that yet. As I said, I’m a poor example to follow. I am on my way to a perfect realization of God’s love acted out in flesh and blood.

The price is steep, the way is hard, and the truth hurts but...

“For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is for a moment, worketh for us a more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. While we look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.

Maranatha

The Colonel #80 Death by Taxes

 “I am strongly impressed with the necessity of having a firm national Government, but I am decidedly against giving it the power of direct taxation; because I think it endangers our liberties…I would consent to give the General Government every power contained in that plan (the Constitution), except that of taxation.”

James Monroe

The guiding star of the American founders was human nature. They had a rather practical and realistic view of how humans behaved—not how humans should behave, but how they do behave. They had dreams of a new land of liberty and individual dignity and worth.

The human experience, especially where it concerned governments, was never far from their minds. Their goal was to have a government strong enough to protect liberty, yet not so strong as to be able to snuff it out. That is why our Constitution was designed as it is with its disjointed powers and duties.

Even with the Constitution’s design, men like Monroe saw dangers. They insisted on a Bill of Rights and almost stopped the Constitution from being ratified until they got it. They did win the promise of that list of protections. The last enumerated right—powers reserved to the States and the People was high on their list. They saw state governments as a shield between themselves and the federal government.

The power of the states was broken in 1865. Once that happened, it took just over a generation for the federal government to begin to transform itself. In 1913, it became Monroe’s monster.

There are people today who will tell you that advances in technology and science have resulted in us becoming better humans, “woke” to truth, and without the need of protection from a government designed by men who considered human nature a constant.

We have evolved, they tell us. We don’t need the protections of the Constitution anymore; in fact, it is just in the way. We now have government experts, men of science and learning, to formulate the best future and stand ready to protect us and supply all our needs for free—if we will only let them.

The last two years have seen great advances toward that goal. There are just a few deplorable chumps in the way, clingers to guns and that religion with a view of a human nature that, outside of divine intervention, is immutable. They are patriots to a dead document and a danger to the future with their attempts to infect the protected with ideas of personal liberty they refuse to surrender.

  Men like Monroe thought that citizens should be able to keep and employ the fruits of their own labors as they wished. They believed we should be free to see a need, enter into the business of supplying that need, and thereby enrich themselves and others.

Men like our current President think you should be banned from such freedoms unless you comply with their whims and fears. They are dedicated to growing a government big enough to snuff out liberty while maintaining that it is for “the good of all”.

 

Sic Semper Tyrannis

Know Jack #330 Decisions, Decisions

 “Well those drifter’s days are past me now, I’ve got so much more to think about, Deadlines and commitments, What to leave in, what to leave out.”

Bob Seager—Against the Wind

One of my new year’s resolutions came about back in November. In the midst of the NaNoWriMo challenge, I decided that in 2022 I would be a publisher who writes, instead of a writer who publishes. As resolutions have a way of doing, five days in, I have hit the place where I am beginning to wonder what the heck I was thinking.

The shine is off the idea… but that does not mean that I’m giving up on this one. It is just an acknowledgment that to accomplish anything worthwhile there is a point where it becomes difficult. That’s why so many resolutions fail.

Ideas are easy to come by. Altering your life to turn them into a reality—not so much. The heart that chases a dream will be sorely tested. King David once said that he would not give to God something that cost him nothing. Turning dreams into reality will cost you. You must decide if you are willing to pay the toll to reach your destination.

The truth is that there are times when the destination is not worth the price. Sometimes you don’t find that out until you pay it. There are other times that you arrive at your dream to discover the joy and blessing you’ve won far outweigh the fare.

You never really know until you try, fall flat on your face, get back up and do it all again—several times. That’s called experience and experience is to be prized above ambition.

The line from the song sounds a lot like the road I’m staring down wonder how I will ever get to where I hope to go. Yeah, deadlines and commitments, what to leave in and what to leave out. I used to think I was a dreamer, not a businessman and builder. I never imagined the dream would become building a business.

Plot twist!

Maranatha

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