"The important thing is to see your hands in a dream,...in the dream in which I saw my hands, I looked in the mirror and my face was black, I'd turned into a nigger,..."

 

Everybody knows - once you're "honored" - it's time for a celebration:

"Gay teen activist honored by Obama charged with sex crimes against a 14-yr-old boy"

Sigh. I'm learning to hate my memories. 

Especially while reading the news.

It occurred to me today that - if this product of foster care were honest about what traits I've observed in others as "human nature" in my lifetime - they would add up to abandonment, betrayal, cruelty, deception, delusion, evil, almost a crippling sense of insecurity (that must be covered at all times and at all costs), lying, lust (lots of lust) murder, and violence with a capital "V". They've also all been topped off with massive amounts of stupidity, piled high like "nuts" on a sundae, covering whatever brief interludes of love, and/or compassion, I've seen and received in facsimile.

Unfortunately, intelligence was what I was counting on,...

 

“The joy of God is not the death of the sinner, but the life of the sinner. And how far from this were those who murmured against Jesus, how far from the heart of God! They didn’t know Him. They thought that being religious, being good people meant always being well-mannered and polite, and often pretending to be polite, right? This is the hypocrisy of the murmuring. But the joy of God the Father, in fact, is love. He loves us. “But I’m a sinner, I’ve done this and that and the other!” “But I love you anyway, and I go out searching for you, and I bring you home.” This is our Father. Let’s reflect on this.”

Our society doesn’t know anything about marriage.

Oh, there are certainly some individuals, some couples, that possess immense wisdom and knowledge on the subject; wisdom and knowledge earned from years of experience, crafted with an intuition and maturity that few achieve and fewer even attempt to achieve. Some people in our society know something about marriage. My parents know plenty about it. They’ve been married for over 30 years, they’ve had six kids; they’ve seen the ups and downs, they’ve withstood every challenge and obstacle that the world can present. Their marriage is real, their love is real, and it’s an inspiration to me and my wife. There are some in my parents’ camp, but our society as a whole? No.

No, it doesn’t know a thing about marriage.

Just look at what we’ve done to the institution. Look at the sorry state of the sacrament. Consider how frivolously and arrogantly many of us flutter in and out of marriages, like the union isn’t any more significant than a part time job at Applebee’s. The turnover rate in marriage these days is worse than the turnover rate at telemarketing firms. The “prevailing wisdom” about marriage is bunk. It’s garbage. It’s trash. It’s one of the principle reasons why our culture can not claim to be more “enlightened” or “advanced” than societies past. Yes, I am aggressively, passionately, unapologetically hostile to our culture’s “lessons” about life and marriage; that’s another thing I learned from my parents.

I’ve been married to my wife for two years so I don’t pretend to be some sort of budding marriage counselor. Still, I know enough to recognize lies when I hear them. I know that we’ve weathered the storms and drawn closer to each other by rejecting virtually every piece of marital “insight” this twisted country has to offer,...

“Black people loving and losing is something we don’t see enough of. We’re always in these heightened situations like something big is happening, something funny or something violent. And you know what? Sometimes we die of breast cancer or a broken heart.”