The Great Separation

WORLDview Fiction Contest Finalists Announced!

Hey! Hey! Do you see that?! - There's a big dumb grin spreading across my face as I type this post.

I am in the top ten finalists for the WORLDview Fiction Contest.

WOW!

Look:

We congratulate our top ten finalists:

Patricia Anders, "The Crossing"
Jamie Driggers, “Wanted: Perfect Life (will settle for mediocre)"
Megan Dunham, "A Lost Art"
Mandy Houk, "Never Another"
Heather Humrichouse, "The Will"
Jeremiah Montgomery, "The Fall"
Christa Parrish, "Up the Mountain, Then Down"
Harold Paxton III, "The Package"
Rebecca Schmuck, “The Results of a Dog Going Blind”
Richard Young, “My Parent’s House”

Yeppers, that's me. "The Package".

I may have a hard time falling asleep tonight.

Congrats to my fellow finalists. I think it's a pretty great thing to make it to the top 1%. Actually, I guess it's less than 1% since there were more than 1,000 entries.

I love some of the titles and can't wait to see the stories.

And I can't tell you just how cool it is to see one of the comments about the top ten announcement from my cousin Joel Tate. Thanks Joel! That was such a big surprise to see you there. You humble me, man. I didn't know you even knew about the contest.

Hurricanes God's Punishment for 2000 Election?!

Shame on you! - Good grief. What silly people there are in the world.

Some silly man named Ben Green from San Francisco sent this into the Tampa Tribune following hurricane Jeanne (italics added):

It seems to me, from my perch here in earthquake country, that perhaps God is telling you Floridians that voting for George Bush is a bad idea. Maybe he is punishing you for inflicting the world with George Bush. The hurricanes you are suffering from seem small compared to the suffering "Dubya'' has inflicted on so many innocent people in this world. Save yourselves and the rest of the world. Vote John Kerry, please.

If this is the case what is God punishing California for with the recent earthquakes? Or what is Haiti being punished for? Or Japan?

And then you have another silly man named Joel Adkins, a columnist for EchoOnline, some Internet arm of Eastern Michigan University, making the same stupid assertion (italics added):

Why, Lord, why must you decimate the great state of Florida?

The answer to this question lies in the past, a very sinister past. Many may recall that in 2000 a controversial election took place. That event was the 2000 Presidential Election; this election is held every four years. It is an election that is voted on by the American people in order to decide the next president of the United States. What’s the connection some may wonder? The controversy started in Florida.

...And thus we have discovered the source of Florida’s plight. Charley, Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne were all examples of God’s divine vengeance and will only subside when these traitors have repented of their evil deeds. I, for one, anxiously await the next slew of hurricanes.

These two men are very sad examples, I think, of human beings.

Of course a scripture comes to mind.

“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.” (Ephesians 2:1-2 NIV)

Hmm. Ruler of the kingdom of the air? That would be Satan. So perhaps Satan is the one at work attempting to keep Bush from being elected. Or maybe nature is what nature is and it rains on the just and the unjust alike.

Five Reports of Christian Persecution from Around the Globe.

They hate you because of me - Well, I'm still hip deep in clean up following hurricane Jeanne and I'm all dressed up for chainsaw duty but I thought I would post these five items that came across the Internet ether over the last several days.

Christian Carnival XXXVII at IntolerantElle.com

Come one, come all. - Hey folks, got an eMail this moring that Christian Carnival XXXVII (37) is up and running.

No, I don't have an entry, ;-) Been way too involved with a mean lady named Jeanne.

But don't let that stop you from swinging by and checking out the good stuff.

I guess it would help is I included the link, wouldn't it? Yeah, it would.

Frazzled, Frustrated, Stretched, Mental, but Alive.

From Florida all worn out. - Just to let you guys know I'm alive.

Frazzled, stretched thin, and probably suffering from some sort of mental condition along with the rest of Florida because of all these storms. :-)

We lost our power to the Church and parsonage yesterday afternoon during the storm but thankfully got it back this morning.

Apparently my TV got fried because of it. Also, a tree and part of another fell over onto the Church tool shed (fairly large structure). Thankfully it wasn't damaged. Dad and I cleared it from the roof today with the help of some of the neighborhood kids. We've still got about four other trees to deal with and probably twice to three times that in the form of large limbs.

We're going to be doing that for the next week I guess. Keep us in prayer. It's always dicey with power tools, Dad, and me.

Some Church members are in similar situations. Three families that I can think of off the top of my grey matter are without power. One family is pregnant and due. Another had part of their roof start to roll up in the wind but thankfully it didn't develop too far and can be easily repaired.

I think that's it. I'm a bit muddled at the moment. I feel like I'm forgetting someone or something.

Long hot humid day.

Yesterday we hunkered down in the Church with two families and a couple of neighborhood kids whose parent(s) didn't seem to care a heap about them because they arrived at the Church in the middle of the storm. Anyway, there was one point while playing Skip-Bo that I realized I had reached the storm limit.

I wasn't very happy with the behavior of the neighborhood kids, I couldn't concentrate on the game, and so I attempted to try and find ways to cheer myself up. That meant periodically I would arrange the placement of the Skip-Bo decks just for the heck of it. That caused a few looks, then smiles, and finally it caught on with the others.

We were all storm weary, storm drained, and off and on punchy and touchy.

Oh, and don't get on my case with an, "At least it's nice that the neighborhood kids felt like they could come to the Church." It is nice, but I can be frustrated all the same. And if you've worked with neighborhood kids whose parent(s)/guardian(s) prefer their kids neither seen nor heard then you know why I'm frustrated. Come on people, it was the middle of a category one hurricane by the time it reached us. I should note that the storm was at a lull at the times the kids showed up, but still, it was gusty, raining, and dangerous to be out.

Oh well.

I'm done with these hurricanes.

God, do you hear me? Please, no more.

I have to say I was pretty impressed to see that the power companies in the State sent out a call to the 48 contiguous States in the Union and Canada for power workers. There flying in extra help from as far away as California. Pretty nice if you ask me.

So thank you to all.

Thanks too, Stacy for your comment and prayers, and to all the others who went before the Lord for us on this one.

I guess I'll try to touch base with everyone later. This week is going to be cramped I think.

Here We Go Again... Hello Hurricane Jeanne.

Color Me Weary. - It looks like we will be getting a near head on blow from hurricane Jeanne. Right now it supposed to be just North of the Tampa Bay area come 2:00 PM. As I type it is 6:53 AM.

Didn't do a whole lot to prepare, because... well the boards were still on the windows.

However, we did have a bit of emergency yesterday. While mowing the church I drove the tractor around the privacy fence we have set up on the North side of the Church and found that the Silver Oak that stood some three stories worth was starting to up root.

Apparently hurricane Francis - or was it Ivan? - started to blow it over onto the Church sanctuary side. We were fairly sure that Jeanne would finish the job as winds are coming out of the North, so we called a good friend of our, Robert, who is a lawn and tree guy. He came over immediately and proceeded to surgically put that big tree on the ground.

It was an amazing sight to see him at work climbing up into that tree and picking just the right spots to cut so that nothing fell on the Church or even the fence.

God Bless him. It was a wonderful blessing for us.

He's an awesome Christian man with a great love for the Lord.

The Population Implosion.

Population boom goes bust. - Michael Meyer has an interesting article for Newsweek using United Nations data showing that there is, as he titled his piece, a "Birth Dearth."

Just last week the United Nations warned that many of the world's cities are becoming hopelessly overcrowded. Lagos alone will grow from 6.5 million people in 1995 to 16 million by 2015, a miasma of slums and decay where a fifth of all children will die before they are 5. At a conference in London, the U.N. Population Fund weighed in with a similarly bleak report: unless something dramatically changes, the world's 50 poorest countries will triple in size by 2050, to 1.7 billion people.

Yet this is not the full story. To the contrary, in fact. Across the globe, people are having fewer and fewer children. Fertility rates have dropped by half since 1972, from six children per woman to 2.9. And demographers say they're still falling, faster than ever. The world's population will continue to grow—from today's 6.4 billion to around 9 billion in 2050. But after that, it will go sharply into decline. Indeed, a phenomenon that we're destined to learn much more about—depopulation—has already begun in a number of countries. Welcome to the New Demography. It will change everything about our world, from the absolute size and power of nations to global economic growth to the quality of our lives.

A few things that occurred to me as I read this article:

• Same Sex Marriage didn't come up as a factor.
• With China's future declining population will they want to act soon to move militarily on countries like Taiwan?
• With Muslim people and the Middle East being one of the few populations increasing through birth rates across Africa and into Europe, what will the future hold for Muslim states and Terrorism?

Duck-Taped Low Riding Jeans.

A new fad riding low on the horizon? - The gist of this oddity is that a father is upset that the assistant principle duck-taped his sons low riding jeans in place so that they were no longer low riding.

But I personally think that this assistant principle may have set a new fad into motion. So don't be surprised if in the future you see low riding jeans featuring that handy man's favorite fastener.

Terrorists Selling Beheading Videos.

Funding pain. - Further evidence of just how sick these people are.

I would hope some authorities would go in and clean out "Thieves Market" in Baghdad.

Amer Ouali (AFP) reports that the video beheadings of hostages in Iraq are being sold on video:

Hostage throat-slitting videos rub shoulders with pornography in the stalls of central Baghdad's infamous "thieves market", as Islamic radicals immortalise their acts of terror in grisly films like Monday's beheading of a US national.

Churches Silencing Cell Phones.

Ring. Ring. ZAP. - This sounds really cool. I remember reading about this kind of tech some time ago and thought it would be perfect for this kind of application. It blocks cell phone signals.

Reuters reports on some churches using in Mexico:

Some Mexican churches are using state-of-the-art technology developed by Israeli electronic warfare experts to silence cell phones that ring during mass, church officials said on Tuesday.

Four churches in the northern city of Monterrey, which lies some two hours by car south of the Texas border, are using equipment made by Israeli telecoms equipment firm Netline Communications Technologies to block incoming calls during services.

I wonder where they purchased it and how much it cost?