I find this English Parliament contribution by the Archbishop of Canterbury to be quite interesting. To me it is surprising. It is not a timid statement, nor is it ambiguous.
Archbishop Addresses Religious Liberty in Parliament
Friday, July 17, 2015
Thursday, July 16, 2015
The Crushing
The Crushing
After rowing and wading
Through years of litigation
The virtue in new life began fading,
And the shameless saturated our nation.
Coldness and indifference the new norm,
Legal rights and privileges Supreme.
Only selected lives now allowed to form,
Crushing the unwanted not seen
as extreme.
When was the point made pivotal,
When did conscience lose its mooring?
Revulsion of the biblical, cynical,
And unfettered freedom then went soaring.
“Do not tell me what to do,
I am the captain of me.
I can crush whatever I choose.
That 7-2 decision set me free!”
At our ancestral founding
Creation was honored and accepted.
Now in affluence the crushing compounding,
With no borders, boundaries expected.
In recent, hubris within the Supreme Five
Reverse rendered positive law
What the natural makes thrive,
Catering to the unnatural, from the natural they claw.
Now more than six years progressive
The nation torn apart,
Becoming increasingly repressive
And guided by a marxist chart.
No boundaries, no borders
No limits to follow,
Removing our history is in order,
Leaving America utterly hollow.
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Jeremiah 31:31-34
My bride is you,
The House of the
North,
And the House of
the South.
A newer pact with
you I now bring forth.
My new agreement
is an eternal act,
Something intended
in My original law,
Broken by both ancestors’
tract:
The letter, not
the heart, they held in awe.
Those were the
days past.
The new law I now impart,
An agreement to last,
Because I write it
on your heart.
No more teaching about Me to your neighbor,
No more approaching
your brother.
For in the future there
will be no labor:
I will forgive
your iniquity, and sin I will smother.
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
On the River Jordan
On the River Jordan
He appeared to them
Cloaked in camel’s hair.
A good news message, he brought a gem,
To turnaround and escape despair.
They came from the City of Peace
And its greater region from afar,
A flood of people never cease
Drenching in the river looking up at the star.
Overwhelmed by his power
To forgive all their sin,
Quickly denied he being that flower,
But revealed the true Forgiver was kin.
“I prepare you for change through water,
I make way for Him who will come.
For you He will go to the slaughter,
The Son of the Father He is from.”
“He Who is to come is mightier than I.
But to the world He will become a scandal,
I unworthy to stoop down and untie,
The straps of His sandals.”
“I baptized Him in the Jordan,
An act in cosmic reverse.
Adornments of glory fell like a cordon,
The great heavenly blessing, not a curse.”
Sunday, July 12, 2015
Waiting
Waiting
“It is
difficult to accept that politics, like history itself,
Is a
never-ending process in which nothing is ever definitely over.”
Paris, October 27, 1992
At one end of the great
wide spectrum
Some waited for
Godot,
As their saving
welcome
To freedom from
bondage, at minimum a furlough.
This kind of
continual waiting
In bondage one
learns to cope.
But the idea of
Godot is baiting
A falsehood
killing hope.
The opposite end
of the spectrum
Lives a waiting of
another kind.
It is a longing
and vocation that beckons
The practice of
patience in the heart and mind.
Certain types of
waiting have no meaning,
Those of
hopelessness and personal inaction
Plant nothing but
false leaning,
Wishing for some
reversing traction.
The breadth of
life requires understanding,
World, Being, and
History move on their own.
Impatience makes
no mark on their processes,
Patient waiting slowly
tarries, sometimes with a groan.
Rational plans
move forward
Envision Utopia, a
well-documented plan.
Enlightenment
thought notwithstanding,
Incapable of controlling
and to fully understand.
The art of patient
waiting is something to be learned,
Like sowing a seed
and watering the land.
There is nothing that impatience could turn
Life’s processes rapidly
around and as grand.
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
1958 School Desegregation in Norfolk City Schools
In an earlier post today I wrote about the passing of Andrew Heidelberg, I wish now to place more detail about the context of that period of history.
Over the years many of my fellow 1962 graduates of Norview High School have kept in touch. Thanks to emails, the Internet and such, communication among us has been fairly easy. Due to this technology those fellow graduates who remained in the Tidewater area throughout their adult lives planned our 50th class reunion. That reunion was well-attended.
Andrew was unable to attend. He was missed and so were many others. In all there were 17 African Americans who entered previously all-white schools in 1958: the three high schools (Granby, Norview, and Maury) and several junior high schools.
From one perspective, the 17 were social test cases. From another point of view, the white students, teachers, and parents were test cases. It was painful for everyone, but for the 17 it was also dangerous. Few knew what might happen, and bad things did happen. Some of the seventeen dropped out and returned to their original schools. Andrew Heidelberg was one of those who stayed.
Though Andrew may have trembled in silent fear, his outward appearance was strong: not defiant, but strong and confident. Quickly he became friends with many. Likewise, many did not hold him in any high regard. These were some of the signs of that era. Many of us 14-year-olds at that time wanted to make good of an unwanted and potentially violent situation.
In 1959 when the closed schools were re-opened by a federal court order, the Norview campus was crowded not only with students but with the press. I, among others, was interviewed by some reporter.Pictures of that day can be viewed on Google Images.
Andrew wrote about his high school experience in a book (see link below). He pursued a successful career as a banker and late in life he began a masters degree program at Old Dominion University. In his book he told of his walk to school and his thoughts while approach the campus in February, He also wrote of his football friends especially on a football game trip to play EC Glass in Lynchburg. His football buddies ate with him in the kitchen of a restaurant because Andrew was not allowed to eat in the public dining area.
History was made that February and Andrew went on to be the engaging personality eliciting the best hopes from his white fellow students. Finally in his senior year he was allowed to play football and became a hero. He was fast. After graduation he played for Norfolk State.
I joined the United States Marine Corps just days after high school graduation. In my final year in the USMC I was stationed at Quantico, Virginia. I was a military musician in the band at Quantico. One day in 1966 there was a college sporting event on base. After playing the national anthem the band marched off the field returning to our barracks. On the march - I was on the left column when I spotted Andrew walking to the athletic field with his NSC teammates. I yelled out his name. He looked into the ranks of the band but could not find his caller.
In 2012 when talking to Andrew on the telephone I asked him if he remembered. A couple of years earlier I had emailed him about the same. He did. I wrote about that moment in my first book (see below).
Andrew Heidelberg, in my opinion, was the face of the history-making Norfolk 17.
Over the years many of my fellow 1962 graduates of Norview High School have kept in touch. Thanks to emails, the Internet and such, communication among us has been fairly easy. Due to this technology those fellow graduates who remained in the Tidewater area throughout their adult lives planned our 50th class reunion. That reunion was well-attended.
Andrew was unable to attend. He was missed and so were many others. In all there were 17 African Americans who entered previously all-white schools in 1958: the three high schools (Granby, Norview, and Maury) and several junior high schools.
From one perspective, the 17 were social test cases. From another point of view, the white students, teachers, and parents were test cases. It was painful for everyone, but for the 17 it was also dangerous. Few knew what might happen, and bad things did happen. Some of the seventeen dropped out and returned to their original schools. Andrew Heidelberg was one of those who stayed.
Though Andrew may have trembled in silent fear, his outward appearance was strong: not defiant, but strong and confident. Quickly he became friends with many. Likewise, many did not hold him in any high regard. These were some of the signs of that era. Many of us 14-year-olds at that time wanted to make good of an unwanted and potentially violent situation.
In 1959 when the closed schools were re-opened by a federal court order, the Norview campus was crowded not only with students but with the press. I, among others, was interviewed by some reporter.Pictures of that day can be viewed on Google Images.
Andrew wrote about his high school experience in a book (see link below). He pursued a successful career as a banker and late in life he began a masters degree program at Old Dominion University. In his book he told of his walk to school and his thoughts while approach the campus in February, He also wrote of his football friends especially on a football game trip to play EC Glass in Lynchburg. His football buddies ate with him in the kitchen of a restaurant because Andrew was not allowed to eat in the public dining area.
History was made that February and Andrew went on to be the engaging personality eliciting the best hopes from his white fellow students. Finally in his senior year he was allowed to play football and became a hero. He was fast. After graduation he played for Norfolk State.
I joined the United States Marine Corps just days after high school graduation. In my final year in the USMC I was stationed at Quantico, Virginia. I was a military musician in the band at Quantico. One day in 1966 there was a college sporting event on base. After playing the national anthem the band marched off the field returning to our barracks. On the march - I was on the left column when I spotted Andrew walking to the athletic field with his NSC teammates. I yelled out his name. He looked into the ranks of the band but could not find his caller.
In 2012 when talking to Andrew on the telephone I asked him if he remembered. A couple of years earlier I had emailed him about the same. He did. I wrote about that moment in my first book (see below).
Andrew Heidelberg, in my opinion, was the face of the history-making Norfolk 17.
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