Who's Who:

DH (dear hubby); #1D (eldest daughter); #2D (middle child); OS (Only Son - sO sad that DH would not adopt him a brother)

Friday, September 13, 2024

On IVF and Katy Faust

 She stands so alone, and yet she won't retreat. I love Katy Faust of THEM BEFORE US.

THEM BEFORE US (TBU) is an oasis of thought regarding in vitro fertilization - - that uncomfortable subject that I've only discussed twice, and each time, felt cornered by its defenders.


Katy has carved a clear path through the weeds of confusion we've lived in for so long after taking a cultural beating so violent that we dared not imagine we could've been right all along.


Read her excellent treatment of the IVF controversy on TheFederalist.com ,


then, if you please, donate to TBU.

Sunday, May 19, 2024

May I Please Be A Presbyterian Please: Please?

 [[ Emancipation Day for our wee AmericanZygote? June 24, 2022 (text of decision) called for an extended salubrious celebration. Hang in there, little fella. Maybe help is soon coming. ]]

- - - - - - - -  ::  - - - - - - - - 

get  competitive when I see how well Team Catholic is advancing the ball down the cultural field, compared to Team Evangelical.

Thanks to a simple Instagram post the other day, suddenly I'm determined to post here. To put up with google/blogspot's old log-in hurdles (hey, improvements were made. nice.) and spend three sleepless nights rehashing my rocky prose to pen this post. 

The IG post I'm referring to depicted a good-vs-evil strafe by some "Good Guy Catholic" football player.

Kansas City Chief's Harrison Butker (hilarious name though) is now an outspoken advocate for cultural sanity thanks to 20 minutes of college graduation speechifying: Benedictine Commencement 2024 .

The caption under the Instagram Video didn't mention his location & was cropped, preventing the college name from showing. Weirdly, the name "Benedictine" popped into my head as he delivered his Family-First, Conservative-Christian-Men-Must-Lead commencement speech. I just knew. I must've seen a millisecond flash of that podium from the edit... or, idunno. Weird.

"Is he at Benedictine, Atchison?

I entered my question on the comment line, but then Googled it anyway, instead of awaiting a reply . .  .

... Well, whatayuknow:

Butker WAS at Benedictine.



My parents met at Benedictine College in 1944, and sent me back there in 1980. They wished me cured of a Born Again fever they thought would go away in the chilly Catholic Kansan winds. A slight fish-out-of-water, I endured and thrived, and I like to think I was their first butt-kicker, who kicked the  tonsured backside of a monk named Brother Jude  (though I often imagine things; story below...).

Suddenly I wanted to renew an old research goal. The hunt was on. 

I scoured all our shelves and gathered up an assortment of books, periodicals, files, and my lone Benedictine Raven yearbook, all harkening back to a time when I thought I could become a serious scholar who might be able to read all the tomes and discern exactly HOW the [bleep!] Catholics got so smart. Kind of a losing proposition when you're dyslexic and ill-disciplined.

Find the brown-skinned rebel

I knew College President Steve Minnis would be found in that yearbook (...he was a Young Democrat?) and that somewhere around here I'd parked notes on how Ancient Christianity had gradually morphed into what is now recognized as Roman Catholicism... All those glimmers of history goals were strewn across four rooms and five bookshelves, but now here they are, piled and ready to engage (taunt) me into taking a few months off; they're begging me to again pretend I am a brilliant professor on paid sabbatical who can actually read and digest entire books.

I pretend. 

I am transported back to that stellar year, isolated in time by success in almost every endeavor (exceptions being Dr Scholz's Logic class, famously. . . and Sociology. Maybe Sister Watson was in over her head).

Before deciding to leave the school behind, I and my dear, sweet, also-born-again roommate, Mary, had prayed with a handful of other BC students to receive Christ as LORD and Saviour "for Reals," not just 'cause they made you. We'd march down the hill to Carol Baptist Church each Sunday morning to get FED with useful bits of scriptural admonition on life and discipleship, on sanctification and fearing God. Unlike the !heathen Catholics up the hill, we merry band of Born-Agains would feed on God's Inspired Word for our Spirits, and Sunday potluck dinners for our stomachs. We would fellowship with families of other Bible Believers and make promises to pray for our strange enemies, the Catholics, some of whom were crass smokers (horrors), most of whom were belly up to the bar, beer drinking miscreants! (more horrors), and all of whom were believers in some other god who'd sold them a bill of goods we called "mere religion." I don't think we were smug or anything, 'cuz I wanted like crazy for all the good looking catholic boys to pay me some attention (they wouldn't. Mexicans with brown skin were anathema in the midwest in the eighties). We did attend a Bill Gothard seminar one weekend in winter --MEGA horrors! (Mary's idea!); a Verna Birkey homemaking seminar on a weekend in spring (I dearly love Verna. Laura's idea!); and a Camp Kanakuk retreat (where I was, again, the lone Mexican outcast w no chance of fitting in... !Tears. Susan N's idea). We even tried an almost-summer Renaissance Faire with one Classics student whose military dad ran Leavenworth Prison (alas, she wanted nothing to do w our Baptist Jesus, and might still teach at a Catholic college in Ojai, CA). 

By the middle of May, right after finals, I think? Mary and I received a knock on our dormitory door from a lowly, tonsured approximation-of-a-man in a tan monk's robe and a dry, straw-looking rim of messy hair. Brother Jude wanted to have a talk with us. His "superiors" sent him. He had been unlucky enough to draw the short straw, I thought to myself. He didn't seem like he much wanted to be there. 

He took a seat on the edge of my bed and we sat in our desk chairs, opposite. His tall lanky body leaned over toward us with grave hand motions. He spoke quietly but emphatically: "...the parents of your Benedictine classmates do not want to learn that their children are not attending (theCatholic) mass. They sent their kids here to be Catholic, not something else..." He forbade us from continuing our weekly practice of mobbing Carol Baptist with our rebel friends. He forbade us from sharing Christ in any form that wasn't expressly Catholic. 

He was censoring us! 

I think I had a few words of my own for him, but it's been forty four years, so, I'll have to ask The Saviour to run me a replay someday. Mary was the polite half of our team, and she Made Nice peacefully. (She later reverted back to her parent's Catholicism.)

Well! I couldn't stay where I wasn't wanted. Besides, my dad really needed the tuition money for his planned sailing expeditions. Never mind that he'd just been bestowed The Order of The Cross Of St. Benedict! (Maybe Dad felt guilty that I'd been a troublemaker, so, he donated a chunk of ca$$$h for which they recognized him as a wellspring of character, deserving of said award with all its honors and privileges contained thereunto!) Whatever. 

I was oUt'a there.

I persist in believing that the Benedictine College of today bears so little resemblance to the BC of 1980 precisely because of Mary, Joe, Laura, Justin, Christina, Pearl, Susan N, Susan S., etc. They all played a role in its growing sanctification. We each must have prayed over the campuses, students, faculty and future throughout the intervening decades, and held up the examples of Hillsdale and Grove City College as Christ-honoring campuses worth emulating. 

As well they are. And so Benedictine may now be (one can hope!). And I want to take all the credit, Gothard memories notwithstanding.** 

SURELY, Laura, Joe & Susan share a load of credit, but, I have books! I might read them! I might become a force for evangelical good! No? Doubt it? 

Really! 

The Catholics surely know how to apply themselves to their academics. We evangelicals? We're seemingly lazy on all the fronts: culturally, theologically, personally...

(Well, a list of exceptions has thankfully grown longer: 

Carl R. Trueman, Seth Gruber, Eric Metaxas, Becket Cook, Josiah O'Neil, Alisa Childers, Megan Basham... And WAYNE GRUDEM! At least tHeY're doing their homework... 

 Francis Schaeffer no longer stands alone).


In my dreamy mind I am a legend in the annals of prayer, wielding spiritual leverage mightily on behalf of errant Popes and misguided Cardinals, Spotlight criminals and BC campus keggers. So, after forty-four years, don't I get to take a little credit for their obvious salty progress? (...those Sisters, tho. May Saint Scholastica offer them a most venal tongue lashing ... ugly nuns. And, after listening to Butker's definition of salvation, I guess there is still a long road to hoe.)


:: :: :: :: 

I sometimes ponder the others who "got away".  Since 1980 I've occasionally prayed for Nancy A. who stole my typewriter (she did eventually bring it back), and for her suite-mates, who went down to the basement to snag all the record albums we sent down the trash chute when Bill Gothard "told us to" (!Maan, MAYBE I want those back).

And BC President Steve Minnis? In recent years, I've prayed for his success at making the college more about faithfulness to Christ and less about mere traditions of men and questionable theology...

Congrats to Mr. Butker on a speech well done, and to President Minnis for inviting him. You're both moving up the charts of my rag tag prayer list. Our Saviour Christ is indeed "King to the heights." 


And as I continue my haphazard prayers for catholicism, maybe, just maybe, I'll tackle the reading of an actual book.


A dreamy, dusty and highly grateful (though-not-yet-Presbyterian*)

Amen.


* a new Presbyterian. A DougWilson morphed with Tom Ascol denomination: it will be called The Presbynists   !:-D... 


...and a new political party I've dreamed up shall be named The Grudems, for Wayne Grudem's Christianity & Politics ... but that's a matter for another post.

**(!heyyy, thanks to Gothard's 

die-to-self dye-cast teachings, plus the power of

TheHolySpirit, future Brother Jude's were spared my ire.

(Hmm. I'm thinking hard about that. I finally concede! Maybe Gothardism wasn't all that great.  I wish I'd smacked Pastor Bob N. right back, right in his DTS Mdiv. And how about all my UCSD Marxist professors? Oh my, how they deserved a good wood shed moment.)

#CarolBaptistChurch#AtchisonKS#ButkerSpeech#BenedictineCollege#Gothard#Presbynist  (!X~D ) #TheGrudems


Every day I will bless You, 

and I will praise Your name forever and ever.

3Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised; 

His greatness is unsearchable.

4One generation will commend Your works to the next, 

and will proclaim Your mighty acts—

5the glorious splendor of Your majesty. 

And I will meditate on Your wondrous works.

6They will proclaim the power of Your awesome deeds, 

and I will declare Your greatness.

7They will extol the fame of Your abundant goodness 

and sing joyfully of Your righteousness.







Tuesday, March 28, 2023

Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day

 Baby AmZyg is napping again. I never wake a sleeping baby. So,

...to the annals of mama's medical history I go, out of respect for and in response to my sweet five year old grandchild whose life is now forever altered, possibly because of jabs. 

Dug this up. 

It was filed under "EMO HEALTH CHALLENGES."

The recipient of this seven year old private email is a founder of  The Daily Wire.  I was responding to his morning radio talk show. 

- - - - - - - - - 

To:    Morning Answer Broadcast/Podcast | AM870 The Answer | KRLA Host Ben Shapiro

RE:     Forewarned

8:47 am :: 23 August, ‘16

 


Mr. Shapiro,

 

You might listen again to today’s caller at around 8:47am, who made the point that a vaccinated student brought mumps to school. This happens not from the vaccine being “active” or “live.” It happens because children who have had their full panel of shots still get sick with the very illnesses they were vaccinated against, and there is no legislation forcing the CDC to appropriate this data. 


The good news is that the statistical incidence of complications or death from these illnesses was never very high, at 1% or so of all infected individuals. Children 70 years ago were routinely boosted with natural immunity from a panoply of childhood diseases which, after running their course, kept them healthier and stronger than your typical child of today.


Further, the well known good [now highly suspect] for which smallpox and rubella, etc., vaccines are credited is not at issue  [yes, it now very much is]. What is at issue: children are being immunized with such a barrage of shots starting mere minutes after birth that their bodies are asked to accommodate to an unprecedented number of challenges to their immune system. 


What once was an effectual  accepted, conventional medical practice has now become a medically harmful overreaction


An over-exhuberent scientific establishment heralding the theoretical good that vaccines once represented now require something like 60** shots before age five, and no parent, knowing her family history of adverse reactions, is allowed to personalize the demand schedule. 


She must offer up her child as an instrument of public health experimentation as if vaccines were some sort of scientific magic bullet. 


Vaccines are not a magic bullet.

 

[2023 addendum: A major health care insurer is reportedly paying doctors thousands of dollars for every 100 vaccinated children. A higher payout is said to be offered for a certain overall adult/child vaccination ratio per “medical practice." I use quotes because, if true, how is that "medical"? It's utterly mercenary.]

 

In 1995, through a “bad lot” of Connaught flu vaccine, I and many others, suffered multiple negative side effects. One gentleman on the east coast suffered Guillain Barré syndrome from this lot.  My symptoms were similar to his, but without paralysis. My complaints were over ten in number, but when I presented them to my administering doctor, he ridiculed me. He shut me up [They now call this gas lighting]. Five years of pursuing any type of relief left me with little confidence in the medical industry.

 

Whereas before this happened I was a staunch vaccine user; after this, I stopped seeing them as the be-all-end-all answer to every problem, as well you should. Do not fall for the warped argument that only vaccines can achieve authentic Herd Immunity. The human body, cared for as God intended, produces all the immunity necessary for any "herd" to remain safe; the difference being that God didn't create mankind to live in wild herds. His creative genius has better things in mind for human thriving.***

 

Don't wait until one of your children falls victim before you take this seriously. NVIC.

 

Talk to people whose children, like me, were forever altered after a vaccine (as was one of mine; a story for another day...).


(2023 addendum number two: now her preschooler. It is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day).

 

Mrs. [name withheld]

Monrovia, CA

 

P.S.

Your wife’s medical credentials notwithstanding, everyone has an agenda. It is well known that the AMA methods of forcing groupthink are every bit as in-play in her medical world of “go along to get along” as it is in every public school, thanks to unions, federal dollars and California’s liberal political machine.

 

** I lost count at 58. Some say it's more like 65. 

 

I challenge you to assess their obscene regimen for yourself: 

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/parents/downloads/parent-ver-sch-0-6yrs-bw.pdf


If this no longer works, try:

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-adolescent.html#birth-15


[the covid vaccine is now added to this new list FOR PEOPLE NOT EVEN AT RISK, INCLUDING SIX MONTH OLDS.  I am begging God for a class action suit that places blame where it belongs: with Bill Gates, the FDA, CDC, WHO, the UN, the military, J&J, Pfizer et.al. ]

 

Included in the first vaccine schedule used to be a list of the multitudes of complications known to have been suffered by "sacrificial lambs" who apparently, in the interest of secular humanism’s Herd Immunity tenets, are relegated as "mere genetically flawed individuals whose lot in life is to suffer a lifetime of consequence" in the spirit of serving elites like you, Mr. Shapiro, who expect that lesser, vaccine damaged unfortunates will serve your family's hoped for "Greater Good."  


The CDC does not see fit to include this list anymore.


***2023 addendum number three: A New Safe Form of Immunization


Personal Symptoms, post Connaught Shot, Oct ‘95

Flu for weeks

Chronic fatigue (five years)

Menstrual hemorrhage 17 days; early menopause 4 years later

Neuropathy

Tinitis

Heart irregularities (heart would - - stop, misfire, stop - -  most afternoons, lasting about an hour)

Asthma

Purpura across torso and arms

Mouth sores after eating sugar

Plugged sinuses and ears

Tendinosis

Brain Fog/stammer

Warts persistent on calf, knees, thumb. Never had warts before this.

 

At my behest, my husband took out an American General 12 year life insurance policy. While I’m thankful that he didn’t need to cash it in, it's an indicator of how miserable I was.  


Friends, DO NOT allow the government to subsume your biology.




 

Monday, January 23, 2023

UNTHINK Able

 Dobbs came and went

But stupor stole me,

Preventing celebration:

A tectonic break

With progeny

Who thinks she's her 

Own nation;

A foreigner at war

With U.S. , to our great

Consternation.


Do commemorate yesterday here:


Mohler on Life and Hope *


... God heal and supply a bit 'more rope.'



* Excuse me, Mr. Mohler. You can't call Roe "the law of the land." It was never a LAW. It was only ever an OPINION. A sick and heinous one, true, but there it is. We have been unalterably made into something  grotesque, because for fifty long years, we believed the lie, and that willful stain has seeped into the folds and undulations of culture like mildew. It won't wash out. 


Wednesday, November 2, 2022

"The Procedure" on Loor.tv


Eric Metaxas sent this out recently.  I'd never heard of Loor.tv. Like Angel Studios, it's a full lineup of crowd sourced free content, among which is a four minute exposé called "The Procedure."

I only wish that the first-person script had cited the source of its self professed true story.  If the incident portrayed really happened twenty years ago, it would seem the narrator would be able and willing to identify himself.

To not pony up with the actuals is to underestimate the degree to which the target audience of "The Procedure" is capable of Deep DEEP deeP denial with regards to examining their convictions about what is true,  and knowing what to do about it.

With that lone exception, I morosely recommend The Procedure.








Friday, October 28, 2022

 

👎 PROP 1 NO 👎

When Roe-v-Wade rocked the nation in 1973, the collective assumption at the time went something like this: Legal Abortion? Oh, a few fringe people might avail themselves of this desperate possibility, but for the vast majority of women, this rash procedure will always be unthinkable. 

Within 15 years, abortion was tantamount to birth control. At its height, 3,000 per day were dying. At work was "the law of unintended" consequences: by the time the debacle of Roe/Wade was over, some 35 million children had been disposed of, and all because seven Supremes (yes, they were down by two justices during that session) forgot to nail down the definition of "health of the mother" in it's attempt to "limit" abortion's prevalence.  Hence, throughout its term, Roe allowed a vague definition of "health" to mean anything anybody wanted it to mean. Anthony Levatino describes a patient during his 20 year abortionist career, whose urgent abortion was excused because her "social health" demanded that she not be pregnant for her senior prom.*

Now we see the same tragedy about to unfold in California. What most people see in Prop 1 as a benign paragraph intended to "enshrine women's rights into the state constitution" will bring about disastrous, unforeseen consequences, all due to vague language much like RoeWade did to this country for nearly 50 years.

State ballot Proposition 1 (aka Measure 1), is a deceptively worded three sentence constitutional amendment, poised to fool every unassuming voter. Crafted to appear benign, it allows death by abortion right up to the moment of birth and w/o a doubt, beyond. The real goal: infanticide is the next step in the march toward the left.  

Proabortion apparatchiks have convinced their victims that NoT voting for it would outlaw all abortion, yet, voting NO would CHANGE NOTHING in California law. 

And that bit about contraceptives? Gavin Newsom just threw that in to enflame the masses. No one I know has ever suggested restricting contraceptives. Putting that smokescreen in there was tantamount to planting a smoking cockroach in the smoked cheese.

Can the governor's team do anything but lie? It would seem not.

The biggest blunder of the entire ball of Prop 1 Bastillishness, is the use of overly broad, ill defined terms: an "individual's" reproductive/sexual "freedom" opens the door to a raft of court approved obscenity: trans lawsuits insisting taxpayer funded sex change? Legalization of pedophilia? You name it, this loosey goosey vague language is capable of it. It virtually guarantees that the proposition will empower reproductive freedom for individual gerbils, pimps and pervs, not just women. Freedom to reproduce what? Well, as Nancy Pelosi once said, "... We'll just have to pass it to see what's in it."  The Zoom call below (minute 49) explains that our court system, especially in California, nearly always reads legal language "expansively" rather than narrowly. It remains to be seen what sized trucks will be driven through the holes in this purported guarantee of a woman's (er, I mean, "an INDIVIDUAL'S") right to choose (to kill his/her unborn child). 

Likely, voilá: every harebrained weirdo with a novel definition of "reproductive freedom" will have his way in court against any traditional definition of that phrase. He will be free to incestuate* his children, and every weirdo judge in this state will pat the perpetrator on the back and offer him a lifetime subscription to Kinsey & Co. S/He'll say The State Constitution made me do it. My hands were tied.

(*made that word up. forgive me.)

LINKS:

Zoom Call on Prop 1  - see especially Minutes 3:00 & 11:00; *minute 49

CA Family Council says...


Conclusion:

apparatchik:

noun

  1. A member of a Communist apparat.
  2. An unquestioningly loyal subordinate, especially of a political leader or organization.
  3. a communist who was a member of the administrative system of a communist party



LA Times columnist

George Skelton gets it,

 even though he's an apparatchik and says he's required to vote Yes to placate his pro-abortion friends and family...

"... the language sure doesn’t read that way to most voters, I suspect. At least to those of us who aren’t lawyers.

It says the state cannot restrict abortion — any abortion — period"

...and he would be correct.



Bottom line of a five page analysis from Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) :

IV. Conclusion

California’s proposed “Reproductive Freedom” Amendment would undermine the state’s compelling interests in protecting and promoting public health, safety, and the general welfare. The amendment’s use of the broad and undefined term “reproductive freedom” paves the way for unregulated abortion, commercial surrogacy, and sterilizing gender transition surgeries. The establishment of a broad, right to “reproductive freedom” could even shield criminal sexual activity, hindering the state from enforcing laws criminalizing incest and statutory rape.

The amendment’s use of the term “individual” rather than “woman” will provide an untested fundamental right to “reproductive freedom” for men—and a resulting lack of accountability for their sexual actions. And it will provide unprecedented access to abortion and sterilization for minors. The amendment will put healthcare providers who wish to preserve life and “do no harm” at risk of lawsuits for declining to perform procedures, like abortion. It will cast out health care providers who wish to provide life- affirming care and it will forbid aspiring doctors from practicing medicine in California.



NOTES: 
• My State and County have stepped on Lady Justice's scales:
I spent an hour scouring my County Mailings, County Taxpayer supplied voters guide, every Prop 1 voters guide, every pro/con Prop 1 argument, and only ONE of them, from a private advocacy group, supplied the exact wording of the proposition.

• The County-printed and paid for voters guide PARAPHRASES the amendment to utterly misconstrue the matter. If the actual prop was in there, I couldn't find it.

Looking throughout the online portals of my corrupt state government revealed no attempt to be factual. Here's their official statement, duplicating the verbiage in the Sample Ballot: 

YES/NO STATEMENT


YES vote on this measure means: The California Constitution would be changed to expressly include existing rights to reproductive freedom—such as the right to choose whether or not to have an abortion and use contraceptives.

NO vote on this measure means: The California Constitution would not be changed to expressly include existing rights to reproductive freedom. These rights, however, would continue to exist under other state law


I find it infuriating that an "unbiased, neutral" government can get away with being so punch drunk lopsided in its reportage.


Go here for all your ballot questions


editor's note: Post was strained through a standard asthmatic, post-covid, ear infected, Cipro hobbled, toothache'd brain fog. There will be typos, misspellings and angst driven disarray.


Saturday, June 25, 2022

On This Day, June24, 2022

Baby AmZyg gives the floor to her adult half today...


On this day, I forgot to sweep up the dead ants in the guest bath before nine folks arrived this evening. And I forgot to put the upturned couch cushions back in place, after vacuuming under them. I didn't put out flowers, either, even though I had five bunches waiting to go into three waiting vases. It was a different kind of Friday. I'd spent that critical last hour choosing something unusually dressy to wear.

On this day, as I had driven to Trader Joe's to fulfill a garden club obligation, I thought I sensed something new in the faces of all the other drivers. It really appeared that they gripped their steering wheels more intently; that they focused straight ahead more deliberately. They seemed to be driving with hyper - care. The World of Men all seemed to be checking themselves. All mankind seemed to be on notice. Business as usual was no more.

On this day, unusual things cropped up in all kinds of ways. There was a 7:45AM romp with Hubs, who had taken a back seat all week to rambunctious toddlers, grandchildren whom we'd delighted to host from from Sunday to Thursday. He had waited until my daily BibleApp reading was finished (had to catch up on two missed days), then I switched to PANDORA 70's music, leftover from a guest request last week. Not the most amorous playlist, but it would do in a pinch.

When the Marriage Bed had been honored, he needed me to see a news alert on his sports-watch. I was indifferent. Whatever it was, couldn't it wait? I can't read print that small. He insisted. 

In the half light of a curtained room, I could barely make it out. RoeWade Overturned.

Surreal. 

Even more surreal:

Buffalo Springfield was playing.


It's time we stop

Children, what's that sound?

Everybody look, what's going down?

There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind
It's time we stop
Hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look, what's going down?

On this day, as the 7PM Bible Studiers filtered through the door, I noticed my hubs wearing his new Tee. It has "1972" printed on the front right side. It's by Culture of Life, who laud the year when Life was last protected here on Planet USA. ***

On this day, new Tees can be printed. Human life protected once again in 2022.  That's "what's going down."


F
or the past 35 years, the ProLife "Movement" has been in our crosshairs.  Tried to foster a ProLife Presence at a Baptist Church in the 90's. Then it was rumored that the unchurched democrats outnumbered churched republicans (little "d", little "r" *),  so, the literature table I'd assembled was shelved out of desire to be 'seeker sensitive'.  The Operation Rescue events I'd attended dwindled down to nothing, but not before I'd met THE Bernard Nathanson, detained with the rest of us in a Cerritos tennis court. I was encouraged to start a ProLife Prayer Group at which one person showed up: Pat L. came to every meeting, until she began to talk more and pray less, so much so that I couldn't wait to find a reason to shelve that, too. We donated to crisis pregnancy centers, volunteered to clean a BirthChoice Clinic office, and prayed outside one of Edward Alred's Family Planning Associates death mills. (God would not answer my cry for the earth to swallow it whole in an unfortunate chasm of Biblical proportions. Why?) **


I taught 10th grade government at a Christian homeschool co-op, but was censured by the BIOLA staff for distributing a pamphlet on abortion. I held a Pro-Life Letter Night once a month at my house, but turmoil in our young marriage killed it. 

Little by little, unbeknownst to me, the next generation WAS becoming strangely warmed to the truth that lies had been told, lives had been sacrificed, babies were being slaughtered, and 
Planned Parenthood is and always was evil.

Fast forward to last year, when Steven Crowder made me so relieved to know he was "on the job."


That brings me to this morning when time stopped. I took the Buffalo-Springfield-playing camera and shot my view from the where I was seated when Hubs handed me that newsfeed.  I couldn't think, so we kneeled down and praised GOD for this small breath of fresh air that feels so rare in an age of lies.




- - -

The place where the Garden Club flowers are supposed to go was under construction, so, after handing out twelve bundles to various staff, 

I put the remainder to work street side, where they disappeared by the middle of the following 95 degree day:





As I prepared the above sign, I discovered that our eldest grandchild had left Toddler Commentary on my drawing table, her favorite perch:




I THINK IT'S VERY HAPPY BABIES IN TUMMIES, THOUGH I CAN'T BE SURE.  I WILL ASK HER NEXT TIME SHE VISITS, AND WILL CERTAINLY LET YOU KNOW. 

On this day, prayers of thanksgiving and praise went up over and over. 
On this day, 1/3 of my Instagram contacts revealed their pro-abortion brainwash. 
On this day I've found my purpose: to make sure they all know where I stand and why. I've much work to do.

    Holy God. Bring lasting sanity back to this nation. Let this small step, as huge as it seems now, become knee jerk in just a short while, spelling the end to the lawlessness that defines us, that has turned a once blessed nation into a Deuteronomy 28 nightmare.

AmenAMENamen.


- - - - - - - -

* little "d", little "r"  It is here that a distinction is never made, but MUST be: that between the Calling of the State to craft laws against devaluation of life, AND the calling of the individual Christian to serve the women sucked into a Culture of Death. The model for each is different by design:

" GOD didn't call the Christian Church to do the job of the State, just as he does not call the State to mimic the calling of the church or individual Christians. Both have DIFFERENT jobs to do: the means to the ends of state justice to the unborn have to be balanced with compassion for the duped woman. The differences between the two roles have to be recognized, honored, and followed. The state MUST punish for the crime of murder, AND the church must rally to the defense of that woman who is pressured into her abortion. Judges can use discretion to separate the callous woman who uses abortion as birth control from the teenager whose parents made her do it. But in reality, if abortionists are jailed first, the message would be clear: only death by Walmart, CVS, RiteAid and Amazon pharmacies would prevail. Once they are fined for wonton disregard for human life, the mifepristone would go underground, obtained from the likes of drug dealers and Walter White chemistry professors. Abortion will then become what it used to be: the purview of Breaking Bad, and judges will (the good ones, anyway. Are there still any of those?) sort through each case as they do for every other denizen of flop house and brothel."  - - Eemoe

Christians as Brothers/Sisters in Christ, have to see their little "d", little "r" predilections  as unimportant, serving the interest of the Gospel at a microcosm level, giving each the latitude to cling to their sometimes shallow reasoning for choosing a political label. But that is not the job of the state.  In government, it's Big D and Big R all the way, and the predilections become stark and necessary for robust debate on Causes and the various factional reasons for them.


** I caught the attention of a man one time. He was in a pick-up truck, & had just dropped off his daughter for an abortion. He was so upbeat to have had an easy way to get rid of his problem. I wondered if the dead child was his by incest. I would later learn that in his racial community, there is a dirty little secret: incest abounds there. 

In the life of the Sidewalk Counselor, it becomes clear: most women you meet do not want abortion. They are pressured into it by parents, boyfriends and a culture that says a child will tie you down to a life of poverty. These are the women you pray for most: those who have to live with the decisions others made for them; those who were ascribed so little worth and chance to prove themselves that they believed the lie that babies equal doom. But for all eternity they regret and hide their deeds, succumbing to mind numbing pathologies that mar their thinking, and mark the age we live in.  I think I know this, bc some people, upon learning I am not pro-abortion, just stop talking to me. Or, in talking, get unreasonably offended, poisoning the relationship. I need to learn how to lean into that. How to start caring more about reclaiming the friendship instead of allowing it to disappear, both of us staying in our comfortably private little polarized bubbles.



*** Planet USA may well be in good hands with this little rocket pilot at the helm. LORD GoD, Holy Creator, Healer, Maker, Mercy Giver, would that This Little who drew on my art table, someday stand equipped and ready to Know You, trust you, allow you to have her life, that her little rocket would go where no man has gone before, a Brave Little Adventurer for Christ. May her parents fear you, live for you, teach her your Word, and pray over their children every minute of every day. . . because here in California, it's only more uphill battling until Life is again crowned by the culture, one tank of rocket fuel at a time. (...at least I think that's a rocket man zooming through space. Maybe it's just a snappy little mackerel. )

Fascinating legal background on today's decision, below [ scroll to the last bullet point, "Post-Roe Pandemic Politics" ], related to vaccine mandates:

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/-coffee-and-covid-saturday-june-25?utm_source=%2Fprofile%2F45832042-jeff-childers&utm_medium=reader2