"What Could Possibly Go Wrong?"

"Let me get this straight—we’ve got a health care plan passed by a Congress that hasn’t read it but exempts themselves from it, signed by a president that hasn’t read it and smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes... and financed by a country that’s broke. What could possibly go wrong?”

~ Kim Coghlan, Life in a Shoe

* * *

Persevero,

A Tough Interview

"When President Obama gives TV interviews, the treatment he gets is typically soft, if not reverential. This is not because of the interviewers' respect for the presidency--they were much tougher on George W. Bush--but because of ideological and personal sympathy for the man who now holds the office. Yesterday was an exception--perhaps the first time Obama has ever faced a tough interview. The interviewer was Bret Baier of Fox News Channel, and the president was clearly unprepared, coming across as petulant and evasive.

~

"If the rest of the so-called adversary press had been doing its job for the past few years, Obama might not be in the political trouble he is. Then again, he might not have withstood the scrutiny and become president either."

~ excerpted from OpinionJournal.com's "Best of the Web"

written by the editor, James Taranto

wHaT's wRoNG wITH tHe WoRLd?

That's a serious question that deserves a serious answer.

Unfortunately, it often doesn't get one.

~

My family and I recently listened to an excellent sermon by Dr. George Grant, pastor of Parish Presbyterian Church in Tenessee. The text was Matthew 9:1-35. The topic was - you guessed it - "What's Wrong With The World?". Here's an excerpt...

~

"In 1910, the Times of London asked a number of the most prominent authors of the day to write essays answering the question 'What's wrong with the world?'. So, all of these erudite men began to trot out their long essays detailing the woes of this poor, fallen world, and outlining their answers to the dilemma, what men and nations and governments must do in order to solve all of these woes. "What's wrong with the world?" G.K. Chesterton's answer was witty, profound, and deeply insightful:

                Dear Sirs,
                      
                       I am.

                          Sincerely Yours,
                          G.K. Chesterton

That's a grasp of the gospel and of the truth of the fallen nature of man that most of us fail to fully encounter in ourselves or in others."

~

Had you been confronted with this question, what would your answer have been?

~

As depraved sinners, we have a propensity to reach for the magnifying glass instead of the mirror. We don't want to look at our own ugliness. We'd rather point out ugliness in someone else. And in the process of focusing on everbody else's cess pool, we lose all sense of our own.

~

So, the next time someone asks you, "What's wrong with the world?", you can smile and respond with,

 "I am. You are. We are."

* * *

Persevero,

   

Been There, Done That...

"You Asked For A Loving God..."

"You asked for a loving God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the 'lord of terrible aspect,' is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds. persistent as the artist's love for his work and despotic as a man's love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father's love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes."

~ C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

* * *

Persevero,

From the School Library...

"Don Abbondio was always absorbed in thinking out how he could ensure himself a quiet life, and was not interested in advantages of the sort which can only be obtained by hard application or by taking a few risks. His personal system consisted primarily in avoiding conflict whenever he could, and in giving way whenever conflict became unavoidable.

~

"His policy was one of unarmed neutrality in all wars that broke out around him, such as the conflicts which were then so frequent between clergy and lay authorities, between military and civilians, between noble and noble - right down to the quarrels between two peasants, arising from a hasty word, nad settled with fists or knives.

~

"If Don Abbondio could not help taking sides, he always sided with the stronger of the two contendants - very circumspectly, however, and making every effort to show the weaker party that he had no real feelings of emnity towards him.

~

"'Why couldn't you have been the stronger than the other fellow?' he seemed to say. 'Then I could have been on your side.'

~

"He kept away from bullies when he could; he pretended not to notice passing, capricious acts of arrogance, and greeted those that arose from a serious and deliberate intention with total submission. With his low bows and his air of respectful cheerfulness, he could induce even the most forbidding and contemptuous of men to give him a smile when they met in the street. In this way, poor Don Abbondio had reached the age of sixty without ever getting into serious trouble."

~ from Ch. 1 of I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed),
by Alessandro Manzoni

Hmmm... that's an interesting philosophy... but in the long run, will
it really get him anywhere worthwhile?

* * *
Persevero,

"Death, Be Not Proud"

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

~ John Donne

The Voyage of the Armada: The Spanish Story

"Roughly one hundred and thirty ships and thirty thousand men made up the armada, dispatched by a royal fanatic who thought that 'he could organize a huge opreation of war without leaving his study'. As commander he appointed his ranking duke, the hapless, unmilitary, and gallant Medina Sidonia. Reluctantly and obediantly the duke set sail, to fight running engagements in the Channal, to meet disaster by fireship and battle, to be let down by his colleague on land, the Duke of Parma, and to flee to the cold, uncharted northern seas, only to face shipwreck and massacre on the Scottish and Irish coasts. Fewer than half the men and ships returned from this terrifying Anabasis." (From the inside flap of The Voyage of the Armada)

~

David Howarth's The Voyage of the Armada: The Spanish Story easily ranks among my favorite history books. Period. Historical narratives truly do not get better than this. 

~

Some writers are able to take history, and turn it into an apallingly dull affair. By the time they're finished, you'd think history was just a bunch of facts, numbers, names and dates. A dislike of history can indicate at least one or two things: one, you've got problems; or two, you've been reading poorly-written history books. 

~

Thankfully, however, there are writers who are able to make history interesting, and David Howarth is among them. History books like his are the ones worth reading. They have the power to make you love history in a way you might never have thought possible. 

~

The Voyage of the Armada is well-written, engaging, and stretches the mind. Set during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, it recounts the history of the Spanish Armada sent by the Catholic King of Spain to invade Protestant England. Until the publication of this book, the story of the Armada had been told primarily from the English viewpoint, which made the English victory into a puffed up tale of national heroism far from the truth. Howarth brilliantly redresses that imbalance. Drawing from a vast collection of previously unexplored Spanish sources, he tells the Armada's story from a different perspective - the Spanish perspective.

~

From the book...

"... the soldiers were marched back to the quays and taken in boats and shut up in their ships again. They were the only people who were supposed not to know what the fleet was for. A few weeks earlier, the king himself had sent instructions that the soldiers and sailors had better be told they were going to the Indies.  But for once his instructions were ignored; it was too late for deception.  Everyone in Lisbon knew the truth.  All over Europe, indeed, everyone of consequence knew it: the fleet was bound for the conquest of England.  The men who manned it had not been told a lie, as the king proposed.  Officially, the had not been told anything at all.  But even the most dimwitted of them had been discussing it for months.  Without any information, their ideas of England, and of what they were in for, can only have been the vaguest: a cold, wet, windy and altogether unpleasant island for to the north - barbaric and said to be guilty of devilish heresies.  Rumor said the conquest would be easy."

~

David Howarth, historian of Waterloo, the Norman Conquest, and other turning points in history, lives and writes in Sussex, England.

* * *

Persevero,

   

The Heavens Are Thine...

"The heavens are thine, the earth also is thine:

as for the world and the fulness thereof,

thou hast founded them." ~ Psalm 89:11

"The day is thine, the night also is thine:

thou hast prepared the light

and the sun." ~ Psalm 74:16

"Honour and majesty are before him: strength and

beauty are in his sanctuary." ~ Psalm 96:6

 

"Who covereth the heaven with clouds, who

prepareth rain for the earth, who maketh grass

to grow upon the mountains." ~ Psalm 147:8

 

"O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in

all the earth! who hast set thy

glory above the heavens." ~ Psalm 8:1

* * *

Persevero,

An Obesity Problem