Plenty Meet Dearth

I feel a multipart series coming on. Given that satan has pulled out all the stops in the final push to eradicate any trace of morality, common decency and common sense, thereby erasing any vestige of the values that keep humans restrained by the God created universal laws of creation, I see no downside to speaking up for God's side. If I get arrested or just canceled, I'm okay with that. I have chosen the hill I am willing to die on. 

The links form here:

Part 1 - Rock Meet Bottom

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I recently had an opportunity to have a reflective moment with a twenty year old grandson over lunch. The conversation began with the state of the world in this moment and how it's a challenge to find a restaurant because no one wants that kind of job in post Covid Lockdown World. 

Chatting with a twenty year old reveals the maturing process.  You can talk about your history with a 20 something grand because he or she realizes it is also their history. A younger person is bored by such reminiscing because it doesn't plug into their current interests.

I asked him what young people are doing for money and he enlightened me about all the ways young adults make money online. Some of which prudence guides me to not repeat in this blog.

But the topic opened up the opportunity for me to give him a bigger view of how things have been in the past because it seems we might be about to repeat a few things. 

After all, like it or not, my history is his history too but more importantly his future is my concern.

I started with the fact that my parents were teens during the early years of the Great Depression so they knew all about doing without and making do with what they had. There were and always have been the elite wealthy class even in the worst of times who hardly feel any inconvenience or lack, just as there are the extremely poor who suffer dearth in what we label third world countries, but from 1929 to 1942 the majority of the American citizenry experienced first hand not having quite enough all the time. 

As my parents hit their adulthood WW2 caused even more reasons for most people to have to do without. My parents had two small children to care for even as ration cards were the normal way to acquire a small allotment of scarce food and supples. Given the limited availability of goods and much of what was redirected to what they referred to as "the war effort" most people simply did not expect much and therefore were accustomed to having nothing and next to nothing including what we, in the age of plenty, would consider necessities.

My point in relaying this bit of history to my grandson was to encourage him with another perspective because his generation and that of his parents have mostly only known abundance. Multiple choices of everything on shelves from floor to 25' ceilings in warehouse sized stores produced by numerous competitive companies make it nearly impossible to imagine empty shelves here in the modern prosperous western world.

But the complications and challenges of the past year or so have introduced the possibility that we might be faced with a similar harsh reality that my parents grew up thinking was normal. Making do and doing without are conditions that loom large as the gears of our long prosperous economy grinds to a halt. 

The generation that suffered their youth in conditions of great paucity and then went off to war as they reached their budding adulthoods, many never coming home, were dubbed the Greatest Generation. I have to wonder, though, was it the circumstances of experiencing great deprivation that toughened them up to return home from the horrors of war ready to move on with life, to find mates, to have children, to create businesses and birth a new age of plenty that the world had never known?

Or was it something more profound and difficult to define? Like good character, integrity, morality, work ethics, love of God, family and country that shored them up and kept them moving forward? 

What if it is these qualities that are necessary to meet the challenges of the loss of prosperity and the new normal of dearth? What if the up and coming generation is not prepared to face such challenges because they have revised definitions for how to exist in a modern world?

Which is better - to grow up with making do with practically nothing and moving forward to build to the point of too much - or growing up knowing nothing about having to do without and suddenly finding there is nothing to be had?

So many questions.

For Him,

Meema

Proverbs 22:16

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Rock Meet Bottom

 

This is #1 in a 7 part series. 

The links form here:

Part 2: Plenty Meet Dearth

Part 3: Safe Meet Free

Part 4: Godly Meet Godless

Part 5: Logic Meet Absurdity   

Part 6: Good Meet Evil

Part 7: Enough Meet Never

History teaches us that the slow slide downward often begins with one small push that guarantees a destiny with destruction. With the current rapid advancement of the decline of modern society, I think we may have reached the point of speeded up momentum. 

 

They say hindsight is 20/20 meaning we usually ignore the repeating patterns as they happen. Certain signs stand out like red flags though. Like child/human sacrifice, for example, which seems to be the hallmark of a doomed society.

I'm old enough to recall the original very gentle shove was the argument that abortion should be legal and therefore safe so that women who were victims of rape or incest or who had life threatening medical conditions would not be forced to kill themselves with a hanger or find a rogue back alley abortionist. 

The plea sounded so reasonable and included what most considered the rational caveat of 'in rare cases'. But once the downhill roll of all that is civil about civilization has begun, there is no stopping the inevitable progression. We are now at the point where the process is redefined and defended as 'women's health' thus killing millions to prevent a few from being stupid is logic kicked aside to facilitate the predicable collision with rock meet bottom.  

Decades into the descent of this dark hill we have evolved from early gestation abortion to vigorously defend killing full term babies, whether just on the verge of first breath or now even days after birth by the latest legislation proposed. 

Based on my personal experience of having been through pregnancy and childbirth three times, I keep asking the question - why would a woman go through nine months of pregnancy and then choose to kill her viable new born? No one seems to have an answer, not even a dumb one. I can think of very sinister possibilities that involve money exchanged. Clearly the billion dollar industry of selling human parts is somewhat impacted by reducing the number of abortions. But I struggle to dwell on those thoughts lest I sink into hopelessness.

I also have to wonder how it is that humans can be so much more compassionate and willing to go to great lengths to rescue animals even as fresh, viable human infants are considered completely expendable. 

What am I missing when I ask crazy questions like - why do those who rally to the cause of snuffing infants under the sanction of 'safe' abortion also demand that children should be protected from gun violence? In other words, why are some children okay to save and others can be stabbed at birth? 

I am forced to point out that My Body My Choice! is a cry roared in unison by liberated females unless and until it applies to women refusing to have ineffective, proven to be harmful, vaccines injected into their arms. 

So many inconsistencies and conundrums not to mention hypocrisy.

We are now so far down the slope, the pattern of extremism should be predictable, i.e., some now call for a woman having the right to determine whether or not her toddler is allowed to live. But that opens another question - a woman is granted the right to kill her child but can't object to what is being taught or done to the child whom she chose to allow to live?

What can be said of a society that has no problem snuffing the life of a full term infant, turning a blind eye to children being groomed for sexual deviancy, to mutilation by surgery and puberty blockers without parental consent or knowledge, to refusing to address the millions of children held captive in sex trade slavery, even while claiming that the only way women can be treated as equals is to give them the right to be 'safe' from motherhood? 

Even while allowing mentally ill males to invade the restrooms and sports of their daughters. Aren't they women too? It's not even safe to be a woman in prison anymore as all a male prisoner has to do is declare he is a woman and is then transferred to a woman's prison and then allowed to commit rape with no consequence.  

Because...?

Tell me again, what is the latest definition of insanity? I am struggling to keep up here.

What does bottom even look like? When the questions pile up with no good answers are we there yet? Will we know when there is no place else to go? Will we feel the impact? Will some survive and be able to feel regret? Will we - can we - recover? 

Civilizations rise and fall and apparently the only way to stop the downward roll is to hit bottom.

If by Grace we get a re-do, this time, will we rinse and repeat? How many do overs do we get?

So many questions.

For Him,

Meema 

For what shall it profit a man [or woman] if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?  Mark 8:36

Thoughts On Turning Seventy-five

 

I've always been a maverick, an outlier, someone who has to do things in the way I was able to do them. I started, at a very young age, writing down my thoughts and impressions without a clue why. I did love to read and I freely admit that I also don't recall when I first began to read but I know I've never gotten over it.

However, though that sounds like the beginnings of what should have been a writing career, my personality type interfered with my being able to admit that I could be a 'writer'. I never granted myself a byline or even put a title on anything that I composed because that would have been too presumptuous. Instead, I stuffed the lined notebook papers that held my stories and poems into the bottom of my sock drawer. 

Eventually, as I matured, I started keeping a journal. Still no titles or bylines but I did call the collection - Shadows Speaking. Cracks me up when I read those earnest passionate thoughts of my younger self.

I was a dreamer from the very beginning and so it was common for me to ponder things deeply. I wasn't good at self promotion so I was mostly talking to myself but I did secretly believe I had profound insights into human existence. I even thought I could imagine what it would be like to be old. I  wrote several poems about aging.

I didn't have a clue. Clueless I was.  But my old self is willing to be lenient on my young self. At least young self was trying to understand the aging process.

What old self knows now is that until you wake up with the same aches and pains you went to bed with, until you  start toddling and shuffling with carefully placed steps because you are no longer steady on your feet, until you realize that you have to let go of so much of what you worked so hard to learn how to do, until that which was once so important to you now seems irrelevant, you can't possibly know what it's like to be old. The downside should be obvious. 

But wait... there 's an upside.

When you are officially old, you have history, the good, the bad and the ugly but hopefully mostly good. You can be proud of those things you used to do with vigor and energy but you don't have to do them anymore. You have built in excuses for eating dinner early so you can go to bed early. Others understand if you can't do certain things anymore. You can have cereal for dinner if you want. Or cake. 

If you wear your shirt wrong side out no one thinks anything of it. You can accidentally lock yourself out on the back deck, (twice) and someone will pop in and rescue you and think nothing of it. You can forget things and say dumb stuff and be grumpy sometimes and get excused because... well, because.

So, yes, there is certainly a downside to aging but there is  also a silver lining to the dark cloud - you can be what/who you are without having to prove yourself or compete with the current standards du jour of expectations for perfection. Better yet, you are way closer to finishing your last story. 

I officially title this one Pioneer.

And this time I get to claim the byline.  

For Him,  

Meema