What lies behind the polished surface of a reasonably
well crafted monologue? A blog post is either the tip of a quiet life iceberg,
or it is a hollow, hyper perforated pickle ball, full of air and noise, flying
with great force for a few feet, only to land with a few soggy bounces.
Blogging is not my first life goal. However, at the
present, it is a vehicle that accomplishes a lot of things for myself and our
family.
I am aware of the power of the written page. Take the
spread of Christianity—and of communism. A Christian missionary to China in the early 1900’s wrote of the full blown
contest between the Leninist advance agents and Christian missionaries who were
competing for the soul of the awakening Oriental giant. Large numbers of
Communist ideological leaflets were being distributed among the gullible
peasants, with dozens of articles attacking the ideas of God, the Bible,
missionaries, and the church.
A war of words had begun which has had full and ebb tides
for continual decades since then, and has been recorded in the blood of both incarcerated
and executed Christian expats and nationals, and the sequence of Communist leaders who pass
from worship to hatred to indifference among their own people.
Why would I blog? Writing and spreading words around is
both soothing and incendiary. For a few paragraphs, as I think about what to
say to people about blogging on public policy and our family’s civic
engagement, I will muse about the back stories of this week.
This week, we went to church as a family. Our late teen
girls prepared a lesson for children. Team teaching in rotating pairs, they
spell off parents who would listen undistracted to adult teachers. Sunday
morning we came home from church. What is the balance between Christ and Plato,
between Augustine and Socrates, between Aquinas and Aristotle? Why is the word
theology not in the Bible? Do family life lessons need to be strained through
many layers of historical religious creeds? For seminarians, this is usually
their bread and butter.
Philosophy and theology encapsulate life, and they can
also plug up the jets of civic service. Where is the black robed regiment of
the 1600’s and 1700’s in New England, that struck fear into the hearts of
overbearing English regents, that led King Charles to plan to send bloody Percy
Kirk, fresh from war with the Moors, to New England to stamp out the fires of
town hall democracy by crushing the congregationalist churches. Charles died,
and Kirk never sailed, and ministers continued to preach sermons that were
“blogged” (printed in the 1680’s, and re-printed in the 1770’s ), whose
phraseology was directly incorporated into the Declaration of Independence. No
wonder English redcoats in the revolutionary war made it policy to stable their
horses in American churches and burn the benches for firewood.
This week, I finished replacing the bearings on our old
utility trailer axle drums. I did the bearings myself, Monday morning, hurrying
to get it done and get to the first electrical job. Mechanics are great, but
cash flow is small. That evening, we loaded the crop of ewe lambs up and moved
them to the neighbors pasture. Which were more active, the lambs, gamboling up
to the loading ramp, or the teenagers, racing after lambs who had a different
mindset? Why make an effort to milk dairy sheep? We almost got stuck in a wet
area of that pasture. After coming home, I had to wash a layer of mud off my
van in the dark. I wanted to be ready for work the next day.
Our neighbor has leased his barn and garden space to the
manager of the Bellingham Farmers Market. We had a nice introduction to each
other yesterday. I wonder if he will like our children like the two girls from
Utah did last summer. It is great to share notes with other value added Ag
people, even if they may be city oriented progressives or traditional farm kids.
Dairy sheep continues to be a money sink, as we are not
yet licensed to sell aged raw milk cheese. That is coming! But, the process of
doing this without loans teaches our young people character and basic business
principles—the old fashioned ones that built America. Do I hate banks? No. Do I
over work our family? I don’t think so. There are a lot of fun moments. And, working
the land as a family gives opportunities to talk about water rights, land
rights, social programs, capital programs, work habits, marketing, education—you
get the picture.
This week, we started a new unit study in our home
schooling. We use a curriculum that looks at basic school subjects through the
lens of the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, the classically recognized
pinnacle of the teachings of Jesus Christ. Published by an organization that
has fallen into great disfavor and whose founder is currently under accusation
for serious ethics violations, this curriculum is nevertheless one of the best.
So we quietly continue to use it.
It seems that success and favor destroy more people than
failure and rejection. The text? “Blessed are you when men shall revile you and
persecute you and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my
sake”. Does that sound like civic service?
This week, I spent a few minutes at the end of the work
day chatting with the Bellingham home owner whose kitchen and bathroom I am
being paid to help remodel. We talked about under cabinet lighting, about the
beauty AND the price tag of energy efficient undercabinet LED light tape.
Then we talked about their parents home on Portal Way,
and the grouchy county inspectors who have declared the back forty to be
wetlands, and won’t let them drive a pickup truck out back. We talked about the
rude City of Bellingham public works employee, who twice angrily snarled at
this lady the day before, when she suggested the water shut off might be
farther from the road than it was.
We talked about the militant activism of public sector
unions, about their punishing and demanding attitudes towards the public they
are “serving”. We talked about Freedom Foundations bills in the last several
months that highlighted Washington union leaders pushback against Wisconsin style reforms here. You get the picture.
This week…
This week, I am tired. Yet, I am happy. My desk has
several months old piles of unfiled public service handouts, articles, meeting
notes. My computer desktop is also spilling over. Every day I read about
problems in our country. This blog. That blog. This city. That family. This
business. That government leader. Learning and engaging in public policy really
can destroy that “Better Homes and Garden” look.
This week, I and five of our young people will trek to
Meridian High School for a day of engaging with other public policy volunteers. We will raise a standard for
conservative Whatcom citizens. For one day, as a group of locals, we will renew
the focus of conservative civic service that was the norm in the American past,
that has been co-opted and outflanked by decades of focused socialist, agnostic educators bent on separating our children to their agenda.
This week… ??
See you at Meridian at 9 a.m. on Saturday!
JK
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