Oh Yeah, Trust Us!

What's wrong with this? Besides the fact that Boston officials are complete idiots.

Boston’s much-ballyhooed “safe homes” initiative hasn’t received a single call to search a home for guns in the nearly four weeks since the program was launched.

Program advocates had hoped parents of at-risk youths who suspect their children of stashing guns would be among the callers to the hotline, 1-888-GUNTIPS.

Under the program, aimed at taking the battle against gun violence into teens’ bedrooms, anyone can request a voluntary search of homes where guns are thought to be hidden.

Homeowners or parents sign a waiver allowing a search team of clergy and plainclothes Boston police assigned to the public schools to conduct the search. In exchange, cops promise not to arrest the offenders for illegal possession, saying the goal is to take as many weapons off the street as possible. Read the whole story.

A Different Perspective

This is another shot from this past Friday morning. I thought I would get down and look up at these Clydesdales that are kept at Grant's Farm near my home. This angle makes the mighty Clydesdale look a little like Mr. Ed. - Nikon D300w w/12-24 Nikkor at 12mm, 1/500 sec, f11, ISO 200, handheld. As always, you can find a larger, better image here.

A Fishing Joke for Jr. High & High School Boys

A woman goes into Cabelas to buy a rod and reel for her grandson's birthday. She doesn't know which one to get so she just grabs one and goes over to the counter.

A Cabelas associate is standing there wearing dark shades. She says, "Excuse me, sir. Can you tell me anything about this rod and reel?"

He says, "Ma'am, I'm completely blind; but if you'll drop it on the counter, I can tell you everything from the sound it makes." She doesn't believe him but drops it on the counter anyway.

He says, "That's a six-foot Shakespeare graphite rod with a Zebco 404 reel and 10-LB. Test line. It's a good all around combination; and it's on sale this week for only $20.00."

She says, "It's amazing that you can tell all that just by the sound of it dropping on the counter. I'll take it!" As she opens her purse, her credit card drops on the floor.

"Oh, that sounds like a Master Card," he says.

She bends down to pick it up and accidentally passes gas. At first she is really embarrassed, but then realizes there is no way the blind clerk could tell it was she who tooted. Being blind, he wouldn't know that she was the only person around.

The man rings up the sale and says, "That'll be $34.50 please."

The woman is totally confused by this and asks, "Didn't you just tell me the rod and reel were on sale for $20.00? How did you get $34.50?"

He replies," Yes, Ma'am. The rod and reel is $20.00, but the Duck Call is $11.00 and the Catfish Bait is $3.50."

Magic Light

The new banner for the blog is a shot I took Friday on Grant's Trail in South St. Louis county. I was riding my bike in the morning with my camera bag. I knew a storm was coming and so I hoped that there would be some good light. Well, the morning sun was shining slantwise as the dark clouds were coming in from the west. Photographers call this kind of situation "magic light." In fact, the light was so good that I was scrambling to find a suitable image to capture. Normally, you frame a great subject to capture but then make do with whatever cruddy light you have. This time I had great light and nothing much to shoot. As it turned out the fence, power lines, dirt trail, and the asphalt bike trail all make for a pretty nice vanishing point. I'll have more shots to post from this little bike ride. Oh yeah, I cloned out the power poles and lines for the blog banner because they didn't work with the close, narrow crop needed to make the banner.

From the field (Nov 10, 2007) . . .
. . . to my wall (April 2008).

Putin's Church

At Expense of All Others, Putin Picks a Church

STARY OSKOL, Russia — It was not long after a Methodist church put down roots here that the troubles began.

First came visits from agents of the F.S.B., a successor to the K.G.B., who evidently saw a threat in a few dozen searching souls who liked to huddle in cramped apartments to read the Bible and, perhaps, drink a little tea. Local officials then labeled the church a “sect.” Finally, last month, they shut it down.

There was a time after the fall of Communism when small Protestant congregations blossomed here in southwestern Russia, when a church was almost as easy to set up as a general store. Today, this industrial region has become emblematic of the suppression of religious freedom under President Vladimir V. Putin.

Just as the government has tightened control over political life, so, too, has it intruded in matters of faith. The Kremlin’s surrogates in many areas have turned the Russian Orthodox Church into a de facto official religion, warding off other Christian denominations that seem to offer the most significant competition for worshipers. They have all but banned proselytizing by Protestants and discouraged Protestant worship through a variety of harassing measures, according to dozens of interviews with government officials and religious leaders across Russia.

This close alliance between the government and the Russian Orthodox Church has become a defining characteristic of Mr. Putin’s tenure, a mutually reinforcing choreography that is usually described here as working “in symphony.”

Read the entire NY Times article.

Satan's Light Bulbs

I drove by a Protestant church recently that had the following moral exhortation on their lawn marquee:

"Saving the world, one light-bulb at a time."

Wow! Talk about a test of faith. Don't think you're going to slide through the gates of heaven without renouncing Satan's bulbs -- not a chance!

Read the whole essay in the American Thinker

Wake up and smell the. . . .

Actually, I captured this image at sunset in my back yard. This little tree rat was in the ? tree above me when I was BBQing. So what kind of tree is this?

Ordination for Life?

I have always been sceptical of the so-called "indelible character" of ordination to the ministry. If find the idea nowhere in the Bible. The popular notion is that once a man is ordained he is "ordained for life." Now, true enough, this is God's intent and calling in ordination—that a man will be faithful to this special calling all his life, through thick and thin.

But what if he proves to be faithless and by the judgment of the church he is deposed? Or what if he changes his mind or cannot find church that desires his ministry? If he is faithless, then he is deposed. If he is unable to find a call, then he leaves the ministry and demits voluntarily.

In either case, this means that his ordination, his is call to the ministry, is removed. He is stripped of his office. Period. He can't go around saying, "I'm still ordained" or "I'm a minister for life." Phooey. A minister's calling is not something that he holds independent of the judgment of the church, except of course in extraordinary circumstances where the church herself is faithless.

I base my comments on converasations, even disputes with men who have been deposed, but who still believed the are "called to the ministry," or "once a minister, always a minister." My response to them is: if a congregation calls you and you are approved by the church for service in that parish, then you are indeed called to the ministry. Until that happens you are not. You are a former minister of the Gospel.

I have Luther on my side. In speaking against calling ministers "priests," according to the late Medieval Roman Catholic understanding, Luther says, "If they are merely ministers, the 'indelible character' also perishes, and the eternity of their priesthood is nothing but a fiction. A minister may well be deposed if he ceases to be faithful. . . In fact, the minister of matters spiritual is more subject to removal than any civil servant, because if he turns unfaithful he becomes more unbearable than any civil servant, who can work harm in matters of this life only" (LW 40, pp. 35-36).

Life is Rough