You have learned much in the Arizona wilderness...
Posted on 07/26/2012 8:09:38 PM PDT by InHisService
;-) We have a beautiful stadium here in Pittsburgh. Come visit it sometime! ~MK
For me, that’d be 20 too many.
The Lord has seen fit to admonish me.
I suspect most folks wouldn’t call that a ‘holy’ undertaking or associate it with God. While I’m a baptist, I tend to agree with the idea that God gives us different things to do, and doing them to the best of our ability honors Him. I think teaching a fear-ridden mare confidence is something God has given me to do. It won’t ‘win the world for Christ’ or gain me much respect, but it is God’s will that we become like Christ - to conform to his image. Jesus spent years taking care of his family building chairs or tables. If God Incarnate could build stuff for others, then who am I to complain that training a nervous horse is too little?
The parable of the talents might be applicable here.
I’ll admit it is easier to seek His will when I don’t have secular culture being pumped into my home via the TV.
You're just saying that because it's true!!!
No. And if you name the name of Christ...you need to avoid things like this.
I’ll be in Pittsburgh for a Pirates game this August. I try to get out once a year.
Mr Rogers is not lucky. He simply has made the choice to follow Christ and to jettison one of the common millstones of modern American life.
Sounds to me rather more wise than lucky...
So you advocate complete myopia and avoidance of all forms of entertainment? Seems kind of retarded to me. The fact is there’s good and bad entertainment, TV, movies, music and books. I think people should use their ability to discern and pick and chose the stuff they like. Sticking your fingers in your ears keeps the good and the bad out, using the channel changer only keeps out the bad.
If you've got the finances to do that, ride horses out in the countryside, then I'd say that's lucky. Some of us are holding on by a thread to stay a live with the lack of jobs, kids to support and living in an urban hell hole.
If you've got the finances to do that, ride horses out in the countryside, then I'd say that's lucky. Some of us are holding on by a thread to stay a live with the lack of jobs, kids to support and living in an urban hell hole.
I've moved six times in my career. I started out in a very large megametropolitan area. I now am in a 'subdivision' between two very small towns and about 20 minutes away from a city of 150,000. My wife and I downscaled - she stays home with our five children and we don't have boats, snowmobiles, personal watercraft, designer automobiles, timeshares in Aruba and the like.
Our Windstar is 1998 and our PT Cruiser is 2002.
I am active in the local Knights of Columbus and lector and play organ at our church. There is no way I'd go back to an urban hell hole. We breathe clean air, and the sounds at night tend towards crickets, owls, and the occasional coyote. It's all choices, dude.
Mr. Rogers has served our country valiently. Also a choice.
I was 50 when I bought horses. In my 20s, I sometimes lived in a 200 sq ft basement apartment with another guy. I was 28 when I married because I was lucky enough to wait for a good one. I first bought a house at 38, and ended up losing money when I sold it. I was gone 5-6 months each year during most of my time in the military, so my wife stayed home. Later, she shed a ton of tears while putting in 20 hr days Mon-Fri in nursing school. From about year 10 to 25 of my military career, my main reason for staying in was the retirement. However, by staying in as long as I did, I damaged my chances to work afterward. Not a lot of people who want to hire a 54 year old newbie in this economy.
However, we also have been conservative in our spending. Vacations have bordered on unknown for us. We’ve always preferred to keep an old car over borrowing to buy another.
This sounds familiar:
“My wife and I downscaled - she stays home with our five children and we don’t have boats, snowmobiles, personal watercraft, designer automobiles, timeshares in Aruba and the like. Our Windstar is 1998 and our PT Cruiser is 2002.”
For the last few months, we’ve used outdoor rattan in our living room after giving much of our living room furniture to our son. Looking at my living room, every piece of furniture in it was bought used.
I consider myself lucky, but I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth. My sister beat me by one year in being the first member of our extended family on both sides to graduate college. My wife was so poor growing up in the Philippines that at 5 she was hired out to a wealthy couple. She built fires and cleaned floors with a coconut husk in exchange for food & clothing and permission to go to school.
Yes, at 50 my wife & I bought a couple of horses. Our third was given to us for free by someone that just didn’t want to own him. Turns out the little guy is a very good trail pony - all 13 hands of him.
I’m lucky, but like a lot of lucky people, it wasn’t all luck. What my wife and I have, we have after 25+ years together, and both of us started saving well before we married.
“I am active in the local Knights of Columbus and lector and play organ at our church. There is no way I’d go back to an urban hell hole. We breathe clean air, and the sounds at night tend towards crickets, owls, and the occasional coyote. It’s all choices, dude.”
Well, I don’t even know what the Knights of Columbus are & I couldn’t play a piano or organ to save my soul. Luckily, God doesn’t require that, altho I’m sure he honors it when used for Him. But I sure understand the rest. Living in the desert, my wife & I spend a fair number of evenings watering the trees we’ve planted, watching sunsets, cleaning up the corrals & talking. Having no TV frees up time for talking, and watching sunsets.
I know people who love cities. I hate them. I prefer the crickets, horses and coyotes - we have a lot of coyotes. I also received 50 railroad ties a few days ago, and distributed 25 to where I plan to dig trenches and plant them for erosion control. Another 25 are waiting...I need to do the same to them, but want to get the first load in the ground first. My team for doing that consists of me, Mr Pick & Mr Shovel. Who needs a gym when you have Mr Pick and Mr Shovel and a LOT of digging in hard soil to do?
Choices. Choices and TIME. When Obama tells me I need to “give back”, I want to tell him, “What have YOU given ME?” It is the values you hold, the choices you make, and yes, SOME luck that helps one get ahead. The studies I’ve seen say that if you take a bit of time, marry well, don’t divorce and get as much education and training as you can get, you won’t be poor. Not for long. But yes, life may suck pretty bad for a few years along the way.
I wouldn’t think of denying that luck plays a role. But over time - over 10, 20 or 30+ years - luck tends to even out. What remains are the choices one makes over time. When you & your wife are having a hard time together - and most do have those patches - do you tough it out and learn to love each other more, or quit and get a divorce? When your job really sucks, do you take night classes and prepare for something else, or complain until you are fired? Do you borrow money and play now, or save and hope you live long enough to get some enjoyment out of it?
Some are called to something else. Most of the Apostles died in pain and poor. And I’m not ‘wealthy’. Frankly, lots of folks could point to my 9 year old car and my $3 T-shirts and my $15.88 jeans and call me...well, not wealthy. They’d look at the $25 chairs my wife bought a few years ago off of Craigslist and our rattan love seat and our garage sale dining room table & chairs and call us...well, not wealthy. My horses live in our back yard and we spend about $300/month on hay...not exactly rich folks living.
But we’re happy. We’re together. Our TV is only connected to a DVD player, and we’re living pretty good. And when the rain stops, I’ve got some railroad ties to go set in the ground.
Yeah, I’m a lucky man I guess...
My father's Alzheimer wasn't my choice, my house losing all value wasn't my choice, losing a baby wasn't my choice., Life happens despite our best laid out plans. There's nothing wrong with being lucky. If you've got it, be proud of it.
My Mom had Alzheimers. My Dad died in Vietnam. Those aren’t choices, but our responses are.
House losing value? Frankly, that IS ‘our’ fault. The first house I bought lost value when the nearby military base cuts jobs. That wasn’t my fault. My current house value is less than I paid for it, but not by much. We almost didn’t buy it because we THOUGHT the housing costs were getting out of line with local wages. After we bought it, it nearly doubled in price, and then it dropped to about 10% less than we paid. We misjudged the long term value of the house by 10% - housing values ultimately are tied to wages. That is why we often rented in our lives.
I haven’t lost a baby. That would be tough. But what I wrote is true - over 10, 20 or 30 years, ‘luck’ tends to even out.
I’ll hazard another guess...one that will go over like a turd in a punch bowl: People who think in terms of “luck” won’t be successful. They will be waiting for their luck to change instead of building for a lucky future.
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it sounds like you believe that being entertained by moving shapes in some form of a rectangle is important. it is far from important. discernment is learned in many areas of life. Watching television and film is ephemera.
Relaxation is important for the human psyche, if we don’t give the brain a chance to unwind it snaps. And entertainment often inspires. Many people working in the technology industry today, providing you with things like the computer you’re reading this from, became interested in their field because of TV shows and movies. In fact many of the devices of our life were thought up for entertainment first. If you have a tablet computer thank Star Trek, it was there first. Cellphone? Thank Star Trek again. We’re on a Batman thread, do you know why cops have so much equipment on their belt? Yeah the Batman utility belt inspired people to try something, something which eventually contributed heavily to the combat webbing our soldiers use. Ephemera tends not to be as ephemera as people like to think.
Relaxation is important for the human psyche, if we don’t give the brain a chance to unwind it snaps. And entertainment often inspires. Many people working in the technology industry today, providing you with things like the computer you’re reading this from, became interested in their field because of TV shows and movies. In fact many of the devices of our life were thought up for entertainment first. If you have a tablet computer thank Star Trek, it was there first. Cellphone? Thank Star Trek again. We’re on a Batman thread, do you know why cops have so much equipment on their belt? Yeah the Batman utility belt inspired people to try something, something which eventually contributed heavily to the combat webbing our soldiers use. Ephemera tends not to be as ephemera as people like to think.
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Humans have been relaxing as long as there have been humans. And humans have been playful and inventive for millenia. The screen has been around for about 100 years, but humans have been inventing and playing far longer.
I do not thank batman or star trak for my cell phone, I thank the inventors. Not the scifi.
Regarding books, we have no lack. In fact, I have a library of well over 3,000 titles that are housed in every room in the house. Novels, classics, texts and technical. Absolutely no need to languish in literary obscurity when the best work of several millennia are a few steps away.
Music? Again, we have more than our share of CD’s, 33’s, 45’s and several hundred 78’s with a Victrola to play them as they were meant to be played. Classic to funk, but absolutely no junk.
So, I guess you could say that we have elevated “discernment” to a level much higher than that of most TV consumers given what I have seen around me for nearly 60 years. The notion that we are hiding, or, as you said, sticking our fingers in our ears is way beyond simply errant; ignorant is a better word. What we have done is disconnected from the cultural tit and taken control of our lives and we live much fuller, rewarding lives for it.
You have learned much in the Arizona wilderness...
You started off right, then you got it wrong. Story telling is an integral part of the human experience, every culture has a form. The screen is just story telling, the big difference is it can tell more stories to more people at the same time than any other.
The inventor of the cellphone has repeatedly said he got the idea from watching Star Trek. HE thanks Star Trek.
Oh so it turns out you didn’t kill your TV, you’re just making crap up. Cool, now we know not to listen to you.
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