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Comparison is cruel, isn’t it? And yet, I’m going to do it anyway. If you know me at all by now, you know I read any type of literature, high or low. I have what’s known medically as a reading addiction. Yes, I made that up, but being that almost every personality quirk can become a diagnosis, I wouldn’t be surprised if that were a thing. We only really hear about these diagnoses when they become trendy or reach wide swaths of the population. For example, Asperger’s and ADD are still quite trendy, though I believe they reached a peak around five or ten years ago. Anxiety isn’t trendy, but it has consumed so much of the population that we read and hear about it all the time. While I tend to be skeptical of the frequency of Asperger’s and ADD diagnoses, especially for adults, I don’t doubt that people suffer from anxiety. And, to be honest, it doesn’t sound like much fun. I am rarely anxious, but like any human, I have my bouts…and they are physically painful. Anxiety hurts way down in the gut.

Bad literature, on the other hand, hurts in the head. Every book I’ve read lately I would mark as bad literature, even though I’ve liked at least two of the authors in the past. Without further ado, I will tell you about the last three books I’ve read.

1. Marc Levy’s Hope. Genre: sci fi light. Marc Levy is a French author, whose works are translated into English. Normally, this doesn’t cause me any problems. I like his style because he is light, whimsical, and good at characterization. Also, he always incorporates some manner of sci fi or supernatural elements. His first book, If Only It Were True, was made into a film I loved for all the reasons I listed above. The book Hope was just a slog to get through, despite its fascinating premise of a supercomputer capturing human consciousness. Of course, that’s been done before, but I thought Marc Levy would bring a new spin on it. Did he? Sure. But it was so infernally slow, and I usually don’t mind slow, ponderous books. I also felt the translation was awkward, which didn’t help.
2. Harlan Coben’s The Boy From the Woods. Genre: mystery/suspense. I’ve raved in the past about Harlan Coben’s ability to be suspenseful, fast-paced, and yet not throw characterization and setting ambience by the wayside. This book was all right, as far as all that goes. I read it in a few hours — not all at one time, mind you, as I normally only read before bed. But I blew through it, unlike the book above, which took me over a month to read. But it was entirely unsatisfying. It felt phoned-in, and that’s not even touching on the Mary Sue nature of the elderly female protagonist. She was far too perfect and intelligent in every way. I wanted to like her; I really did. The male protagonist was a stereotype, too, a version of Reed from Criminal Minds. Not that he was a copy of Reed, per se. More to the point, the Reed-like character is plucked out for use in mysteries far too often, and that actor just happens to have a physically impeccable embodiment of the personality. Oh, and there were a couple of pages that were probably from an unedited version of the book. I usually only see that in self-published novels because the authors are trying to do too much and can often only afford one editing pass. I don’t know how it got through the editor at his publisher, but alas, nobody’s perfect.
3. Victoria Aveyard’s The Red Queen. Genre: YA fantasy/sci fi. I’m calling this fantasy/sci fi because it ultimately comes down to characters controlling elements of the earth in a very magical way that would, um, normally kill humans. In this case, the people have been altered by evolutionary necessity after the fall of modern civilizations, hence the “sci fi”. It’s not a bad book. It’s enjoyable and mostly fast-paced, but it doesn’t feel unique at all. I can’t make that same claim of Levy above — all his books have an air of uniqueness, even the slog. And Aveyard’s the writing is mediocre to bad. There are some grammar errors that drive my mind down an OCD correction loop (no, I don’t have that trendy diagnosis either). It wouldn’t have been difficult or awkward to fix these errors; somebody either didn’t know enough to fix them or didn’t care. I doubt I will read any more books by this author. I mean, she looks young. There is hope for her, I guess. I just want something more!! I’m in desperate need for the kind of book that surprises me or makes me stare at the ceiling after the last page because I can’t move until I process the perfect ending, the lingering satisfaction a little while longer.

That’s it — the three books I’ve read in the past couple of months. The first book pushed it to that lengthy time. I’d like to cleanse the palate a little with an amazing book before the New Year. I don’t know what that might be, though. If you have any suggestions, please put them below. I might just go back to Chesterton’s nonfiction wit. He’s a sure bet. Or Emily Organ. She’s a modern author that tweaks my funny bone in the way P.G. Wodehouse always has. Perhaps it’s not great literature, but that remains to be seen. P.G. Wodehouse’s books have stood the test of time, even if a good many follow the same formula and are entirely predictable. It’s the humor whose steady light will never die.

We’ve been attending a non-denominational church as a family. I think it’s good for us to worship together on a Sunday, but I’m not sure how long it will last. My husband doesn’t like church services, any of them, and I will always prefer the Catholic liturgical services. This does not bode well for longevity anywhere. But our kids are almost grown and gone — two already are, and the other two are on their way. We only have a few short years left to go to church with the almost-adults still left in our care.

The pastor at the church we’ve been attending is hung up on the idea of not being religious, not worshipping by rote. I find this a strange sentiment for a pastor; after all, his church meets at codified times and follows an ordered service before ending in an altar call and prescriptive prayer. By “prescriptive,” I mean it is word-for-word the same every week.

Protestants often pit religion against relationship, but the very idea of Christianity as a religion involves a relationship with God through his son Jesus. There is no division between these two ideals; they are simply trying to mesh the tangible with the intangible. This is admittedly difficult, but I can guarantee you it will not be achieved without some manner of rote practice. If you want to encounter the divine, you have to show up for the experience even when you don’t feel inspired to do so. Showing up in a codified manner for Jesus will naturally lead to a good life habit.

I’ve said before that living a life filled with good habits is ultimately rewarding. Sometimes writing is dull. Sometimes I don’t want to exercise or study my languages or play my accordion. But when I show up for the daily practice, I am rewarded by my accomplishments. I finish books and learn new songs and new vocabulary. How much more will a rote daily practice of prayer and Bible reading do for me?

There are habits upon habits that can be formed in life. I once wrote about my first confession in the Catholic church. Confession itself is a rote religious practice — I’m certain this Protestant pastor would eschew it, even though I’ve heard him preach about accountability in the Christian life. Accountability has been coded into the Catholic model, and as mortifying as it is to admit your sins to your pastor of all people — on a regular basis! — it does incredible work for the soul.

But that first confession was a bit odd. The thing about rote religious practice is that it is a religious practice. And when we show up to meet God, which is the basis of why humans practice religion, he will surprise us. He will shake us up, change us. (No, I don’t consider all religions the same, except that they are all about humans seeking the divine. If I didn’t believe Christianity was the one, true religion and path to the divine, I wouldn’t practice it at all.) So, I was both surprised and not surprised during that first confession to find an unfamiliar, elderly priest who listened to my faith crisis, and then told me to talk to Jesus. He said it was a necessary practice. He then reiterated this message about regularly talking to Jesus in the Saturday Mass.

I will always remember that first confession because it wasn’t what I thought it was going to be like. I didn’t expect the advice he gave me. And frankly, I was moved by it. It was so simple and yet so right. It was what I needed to hear. Of course, I obeyed. I went straight to the perpetual adoration chapel and talked to Jesus.

Did you catch the name of the chapel? Catholics have those because they aren’t afraid of rote religion. Rote religion is what sustains them. Remember, this is the oldest version of the Christian church around. (I’m not going to get in arguments with EOs right now; they both have a claim. I’ll just leave it at that.) They might have figured some things out in all those centuries, e.g. that showing up for God is necessary to be a Christian. It is a good habit, a right practice.

Do you know what happens when you don’t develop good habits? Yes, you do, but just in case you forgot: bad habits. Some bad habits will just get us in tight corners with our jobs or destroy our physical health. But those sin habits — they can destroy our relationship with God.

The answer, then, to my title is yes. I want both. I want both from the core of my being.

It’s no secret that fall is the busiest season of the year. It “starts” in August and takes a slow dive into the middle of winter. When January sets in, the world calms down. There is time to sit and stare at a crackling fire and listen to … oh, you know, whatever gets the heart pounding again (but, yes, it’s probably going to have accordion and/or brass). What is it the Bible says in Ezekiel? He will replace our hearts of stone with hearts of flesh. That seems to be an ongoing process in life — chipping away at the heart of stone to reveal the flesh hidden inside.

Because I have extra busy-ness going on in my life right now, I can’t focus on blogging. That’s why I decided to write a post with my varied thoughts. I almost wrote “random thoughts,” but I refuse to misuse the term “random” as so many youngsters do. Is there anything that occurs in the universe that is truly random? That’s a philosophical question. For believers in God, the answer is most likely no. My thoughts are especially not random, as they are brought on by personal circumstances, plus the input of news and books. They might be unfocused and scattered (monkey mind), but random they are not. Even subconscious thoughts in the form of dreaming are not precisely random.

So, what are these thoughts, apart from being thoughts about minds and feelings about hearts? First of all, I’ve been thinking and even dreaming about the shed I’ve cleared out in the backyard. The shed came with this house we purchased a couple of years ago, and it’s a decent-sized space, already wired for electricity and containing a window and two skylights. I should’ve said, “It’s a decent-sized space now that I’ve gutted it of junk.” For the last two years, it has housed odds and ends we don’t use, such as castaway furniture. It also contained a number of items when we moved in that we left there — a few “random” drawers and shelves and a pile of lumber. This space will soon be my office. It will only require a space heater for the winter. In its current position, it’s in near-constant shade from overhanging trees and thus maintains a reasonable temperature in the summer. I doubt I will do much to it but sweep and mop really well, maybe hang some twinkly lights to make it cheery. I’m not interested in decorating. Joanna Gaines I am not. Thank the good Lord above, as I’m stunned that anyone with such bad taste in home decor gets TV shows and advertising gigs. But being the snob that I am, I don’t understand the love of blandness and mediocrity. I’d prefer to live in a nun’s cell and listen to only Gregorian chants echoing around its bare chamber than…. Sorry, but even these thoughts are not random, albeit I had no intention of discussing Hobby Lobby styling.

Now, to get down to brass tacks where the rubber meets the road (which is one of my favorite mixed metaphors), I had set out to write an eminently quotable quote on how a society that upholds justice becomes steadily more just, while a society that tries to enforce equality by demanding a lack of justice for all becomes, well, less just. But I just couldn’t find a snappy way of expressing it. Maybe I need to work on it a little more. That was obviously brought on by current events.

Ay, current events. Some of you know that in about 2017, I started to write my Roswell alien story, which comes complete with a peaceful apocalypse and forced inoculations for an alien virus that had ravaged the population of the world. But, see, my imagination of an apocalypse could never have imagined the current reality, in which we are continuing to shut down economies and borders over Covid variants. Let’s put this in layman’s terms: Covid viruses are cold viruses. That is what we’re shutting down over. Cold viruses. It’s become almost laughable now that the choosers of such things are using idiotic terms like “omicron.” Everything the media and official government and international entities are saying is so ludicrous it’s laughable. They are satirizing themselves. I used to consider myself, if not a comedian, at least a humorous person. But if I can’t even compete with Yahoo News, I don’t stand much chance at winning this gig.

However, my writing does not rely on humor, per se. And that’s where I think I’ll leave this post: with a review of Order of the PenTriagon from Jay DiNitto. This is what he has to say about my youthful heroes, Talat and Robert. You can read the rest of the review here.

Jill got the aforementioned two protagonists right: YA writers, or folks who write books with young adults as protagonists, add too many adult qualities to them, or give them abilities that only specially trained adults would have, in an otherwise semi-realistic situation. Talat and Robert spend most of the story length running from danger (the frequency of that scenario is actually mentioned late in the book), and untying and retying the information they get. …this is how young adults act, not like millionaire Navy SEALS. This is probably the book’s strongest element, and I hope it continues into the second part.

Eminently readable!

Jay DiNitto

It’s cold these days; the tree across the street is fully red. Most trees in New Mexico only blaze a fiery yellow for a short duration, and then fall is over. It’s a phenomenon brought on by the shortness of the season here. It commonly goes from hot to cold in an instant, which doesn’t allow for the slow turning of the leaves. However, here in Roswell, there are a handful of trees around the city that turn a deep red, and one is right across the street from me. It’s beautiful.

I have trouble dragging myself out of bed when it’s cold, though. I have trouble moving at all when it’s cold. I think I was meant to hibernate in the winter, despite my supposed cold-adapted genetics. My inability to pack on the pounds defies this idea of cold adaption. I suppose this is my excuse for turning into a lazy blob this week. Instead of getting up at six, I’ve been sleeping in until seven. Instead of doing a workout immediately, I’ve lazily made breakfast for my son and then sat on the couch until it was time to take him to school. I’ve been watching YouTube videos.

This morning, I was watching videos called Los Rancheritos de Sinaloa. I watched a matanza, though it skipped from the adorable little piggy alive and well and went to a tutorial on how to make chicharrones y carnitas, and it was just getting to the best part, the assembly of chicharron tacos, when my son insisted we had to leave or he would be late for school. Such has been my week, with the greatest moments existing as deep-fried pork fat tacos.

I’m on the Sinaloense algorithm on YouTube. This is because my favorite Mexican singers hail from Sinaloa, and I like to listen to interviews with them if available — it improves my Spanish listening skills. They are the singers who have full brass bands to accompany them. Brass bands were introduced to Mexico in general in the mid-nineteenth century, but the genre known as banda today originated in Sinaloa. It’s no surprise, then, that the best singers also hail from Sinaloa. These include but aren’t limited to Julio Preciado, Pancho Barraza, Valentín Elizalde (not from Sinaloa, but moved there to part of the music scene…and died young as part of the music scene*), and José Angel Ledezma Quintero, aka El Coyote. I think I’ve said before that El Coyote is my favorite singer; there is a depth and beauty to his style que me pone a llorar. Well, I suppose that’s an exaggeration. I don’t cry when listening to my favorite music. But his voice makes my robot soul feel deep emotions, and that’s not an exaggeration.

I suspect this post had a point in the beginning somewhere, when I first started writing it. Oh, yes, I think it was my laziness and propensity to fall for YouTube algorithms and watch videos of life on the ranch in Sinaloa. What strikes me is how New Mexico culture really isn’t that different from that of Sinaloa. We are a ranching and farm state. People are unpretentious and love their little “Shire” in the Southwest of the United States. In fact, people with roots in New Mexico are loath to leave it. I get the idea people from Sinaloa are the same way: they love their little corner of the world.

The food isn’t that different, either, despite that Sinaloa is a coastal region. But then, that’s the case with much of Mexico and New Mexico; we are the far northern region that used to belong to Mexico. They say colache. We say calabacitas. Actually, they use the term calabacitas, too, for various dishes. I noticed that in one Sinaloense rancho video, the mamá called the dish she was making colache, but it has the same ingredients of the New Mexican dish we call calabacitas. It used to be you could get calabacitas in New Mexican restaurants, but I haven’t seen it for a long time. I live in Roswell, though. I suppose it’s still on menus in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. It’s an end-of-summer or early fall dish meant to use up all that leftover summer garden squash, but I think it’s not too late in the fall to get away with making it. I will simply have to buy whatever the store offers for summer squash. My family loves the dish, which is composed of chopped squash, corn, onions, garlic, and usually green chile in the New Mexican dish, though I believe the Sinaloense mamá chopped a single jalapeño for her colache. It’s cooked in butter or lard, depending on what you prefer, and can have other ingredients such as tomatoes, though I prefer it just as I described above.

*I love the beauty of the land I see in Sinaloa, but it also has its dark side. Valentín Elizalde died young because he was murdered. Many other singers have been murdered or have had attempts on their lives. The people on their ranches seem happy; I suppose the violence doesn’t always touch people out on their farms. And, honestly, I don’t know that Sinaloa is the highest crime region in Mexico. They do harbor their own giant cartel, which is going to taint the culture at least a little. But again, is that different from where I live? No, it is not. Roswell is a sleepy agricultural town with one of the highest violent crime rates per capita of anywhere in the United States due to being on the drug trafficking route. It doesn’t affect me — not much. I’m happy in my little house in a decent neighborhood, but the reality of violence all over New Mexico can’t be denied.

And because I’ve been habitually providing you with videos, I’ll post one of Pancho Barraza. He is a great singer, loads of the drama I like, and a total goofball in some of his videos. He dances like Napoleon Dynamite and the Happy Hands Club in one, though I happen to like the below song better.

Look, I don’t want to link to news articles because I don’t want to put myself on Google’s radar … or the media’s … or whoever’s. But there have been some exciting developments in the world over the past week. Let’s be honest, there have been developments of Idiocracy for a long time now. When did that movie come out? Mid-oughts? Yeah, it was prescient back then. It is even more prescient now.

Do you remember when New Mexico was handing out $100 bills and your name in the lottery if you took the jab in the arm? It gets worse. In Austria, a whorehouse is currently trading sex for the Covid vaxx. This is because at 65%, they have a low vaccination rate. Or whatever. You also don’t get diseases at all from whorehouses. Nope, that never happens, not in our enlightened times when people wear masks and condoms.

Now, of course, New Mexico is one of the most vaccinated states in the US, with a supposed rate of around 85%. This is confusing since we now have one of the highest rates of Covid infection. So much for wasting untold sums of cash on people who “like money” and can’t believe that “you like money, too.” I have a sinking suspicion that the hospitals like money, which is why they’re going to continue using Covid as an excuse to get it. On the other hand, vaccinated people tend to get infected with Covid and spread it around. That’s what the stats show.

I don’t know what the truth is; it’s hard to pinpoint these days, but I do know that the propaganda piece I just read, wherein a health administrator claims our New Mexico hospitals are full of unvaccinated people and, thus, if you have a heart attack, don’t expect to get treatment, is 100% lying. Okay, I’ll downgrade it to “twisting the truth.” If you have hospitals full of overdose victims (which we do, in the same areas where they are struggling to keep up) who didn’t happen to get the vaccine, the term “unvaccinated” is technically true. But it isn’t true that you won’t get treated if you have a heart attack. Heart attack patients are generally treated immediately. It’s the stubbed-toe patients in the ER who are going to have to stand in line.

And just when you thought the US and Austria couldn’t be outdone by the Idiocracy in other countries, a doctor in Canada has diagnosed a woman with “climate change.” Yes, that’s right. She apparently has diabetes, asthma, heart problems, and a trailer with no air-conditioning, so naturally, when she goes to the hospital with difficulty breathing, it must be “climate change.” I wonder if that will be the new disease when Covid doesn’t work any longer on the populace because they’re burnt out on hearing the word. “Climate change” is, indeed, still a fairly good trigger for many. Now that it’s been determined a disease, I wonder what the treatment will be. Best guess…taxes? Maybe on breathing (since we breathe out CO2), and probably on gas. Oh, heck, on cows, too. Does the Walmart pharmacy carry the generic brand, though?

I don’t have much to say about the other Idiocracies in the world. The image below speaks a thousand words that I can’t.

It’s no secret that the boomers raised their gen X children to be antiauthoritarian, rebellious, and disenfranchised. They did this in multiple ways, from the media they created or let us watch, to ditching us to fend for ourselves while they worked and/or followed careers. Far too many gen Xers were left to their own devices, ready to follow their own ways, march to their own tunes. Now that it’s come back to bite the boomers, they aren’t very happy. But at the same time, I see no indication that they recognize the part they played in this.

I began thinking about this while at the store the other day, where there was a plethora of boomers all masked up. I happen to live in a town that determined it would pay no heed to mask mandates any longer. Almost nobody wears them anywhere. That’s why these elders stuck out to me, their shifty, side-eyed glances from the top of their masks. Their eyes are shifty because they love mandates. They love big government bringing the hammer down on citizens. They are the generation, for the most part, who are making these authoritarian rules (e.g. Bush and the Patriot Act). Recall, this is the same generation that made flipping off their superiors and burning flags and bras popular.

Part of this, I’m sure, is youth versus old age. And yet, do most generations go to such extremes? It’s almost as if their intense authoritarian nature came out as a response to their own inability to reel themselves in from immoral destruction. As for my generation, I see less inclination with age to follow absurd rules. Life’s too short to waste it standing huddled on a yellow circle, equidistance from the next person huddled on a yellow circle.

Of course, masks are simply an outward symbol of what’s going on internally. That’s why people who refuse to wear them have so much vitriol for them. For those people, they aren’t just a “cloth on the face;” they’re an outward symbol that government can control our society down to the Nth degree. For my part, the only place I’ve conceded to wearing a mask in quite some time is at church. I generally respect church authority; I cannot and will not give this same respect to government, no matter how many boomers unpack Romans 13 to try to force it on me.

If you are the type of person — I don’t care what generation you’re from — who likes to unpack Romans 13 in order to force Christians to comply, I would just ask that you give it a little more thought. If Romans 13 means we have to follow every petty, unjust, or immoral rule brought to us by our authoritarian overlords, then this country we live in is operating off a bed of sin. That is the foundation, the zeitgeist, the raison d’etre of the United States: saying no to tyrants. This country would not exist if we had all just genuflected and chanted Romans 13 at each other.

We need to do a little self-examination, don’t you think? Should we be doing all these when our authorities tell us to: closing our businesses, ceasing our church services, donning our masks, getting our vaccines, handing over our suitcases and removing our clothes to be searched, teaching our children whatever our Department of Education tells us to? Yes? Then we should also repent of the American Revolution and beg the Queen’s forgiveness and ask her to be our leader once more. Either it is a sin — or it’s not — to throw their tea in the sea. If it’s a sin, then we had better humble ourselves as a nation right now. Unfortunately, we might not like the results. But, hey, at least our souls will be clean.

That was a dramatic title, no? Evil has always been a part of the world, but the last couple of years has brought the evil that lies in shadows to the light. We can visibly see the evil, whereas in years past, evil was a conspiracy theory that made a good many of us roll our eyes or smirk. Lesson one: it doesn’t pay to be glib, smug, and nonbelieving, as the truth has a way of catching up.

I’m not an impassioned person like Alex Jones — though we all should be a little more ready to shout until we’re hoarse and lose our credibility for the sake of truth — and yet, I used to regularly have these arguments about evil and truth with the pragmatists of the world. While the pragmatists were willing to vote for men like the Bushes, I saw them as evil, demon-possessed trolls. Yes, that was the way they appeared to me. And their actions didn’t change my mind.

I don’t want to obsess over the past or argue with people any longer. Lesson two: it’s useless to change a pragmatist’s mind. They must come to their own conclusions. But I admit I feel a little vindicated now that the entities I knew were corrupted with evil, such as the FDA and CDC, are coming out of their tombs or their coffins, or wherever it is that demonic vampires dwell. The funny part is I had fewer arguments with leftists once upon a time due to their knowing the FDA was in bed with big corporations like Monsanto. But now they’re apparently as pure as the driven snow regarding Covid vaccines according to leftists, and many of my old conservative pragmatist friends have changed their tune.

Information is really difficult to control, ultimately. It has a way of being put forward, even in times before the internet. There were underground resistance papers during the World Wars, for example, and in communist states. Now many of these anticommunist information gatherers have moved to YouTube and are being purged for badthink. Freedom of the press in the US is a complete scam. There is freedom of the press for the state propagandists, and anyone else is eventually shut down. However, as I already said, it’s difficult to control information. It gets out there before it’s taken down, and it is archived by many.

Lately, I do feel as if I’m watching two movie reels simultaneously, due to the difficulty of the state to control information. I read articles detailing world stats and information about Covid vaccines, their safety and efficiency, and giving voice to eyewitness testimonies of people in the medical field; and then I read the AP news as it pops up on my phone (I’ve tried to block it, but the news streams always find a way, I guess) to see our media, FDA, and CDC are pushing the exact opposite information than what I’ve been reading. The vaccines are dangerous at worst and ineffective at best, but they FDA has gone ahead and approved them for children, and the CDC and Biden admin are still touting them as better for immunity than actually getting Covid and pushing forward their mandates that have the potential to shut down the economy.

There is a big difference between being a sinful human who is prone to error in thought and giving oneself over to evil. It’s my opinion that the political elites have done just that. I’m sure that doesn’t apply to all of them; some are no doubt simply compromised and haven’t yet been consumed by the blood-sucking demons of worldly control and filthy lucre. Take, for example, Amy Coney Barrett: she went ahead and took the devil’s proffered golden ticket in the form of a lucrative book deal, and now belongs to the wrong camp. But is she fully taken over by evil? She is young yet. There is still time. I don’t believe that is the case with a man like Biden. I don’t believe he’s operating with any kind of conscience any longer. His beady little eyes tell me he’s demon-possessed, and he will do whatever is backwards and wrong for humanity because he does what his master the devil tells him. He doesn’t sound as if he’s able to produce independent thought. Contrast that with a man who is simply confused and sinful like Trump. He had to be removed from office because he hadn’t sold his soul to the powers that be. There was still a conscience there, even if he didn’t always know what the right thing to do was. Obviously, that doesn’t mean Trump is a good man. Sinful and confused still apply to Trump.

Do you think I’m being dramatic? I’m not. Neither am I a pragmatist. The fight between good and evil in this world is very real. But the question for us is the same as it’s always been, even before Joshua stood before the Israelites and told them to “choose this day whom you will serve; as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD” (this comes from Joshua 24:15).* So, whom will you choose to serve? As for me, I have never chosen to serve the God of pragmatism as many of my conservative family and friends have chosen to do. Pragmatism allows for great evil. Being perceived as reasonable will cause you to compromise.

Instead, be the opposite of pragmatic. Don’t be practical just because it will be easier to achieve or maintain your worldly status. Be like this little girl from Florida, who has more determination in her pinky than most adults have in their entire bodies: Florida Second-Grader Suspended 36 Times Over Mask Mandate. And if you want a clear evidence of evil rearing its ugly head, look at the school boards around the country that are trying to silence parents and push through evil propagandist curriculum. All of that has come to pass since Covid. I’m not sure if the wicked governors who continue pushing mandates on the people knew when they began that the evil was going to leak out in unexpected ways and wake up the complacent go-along-to-get-along people of this nation. Lesson three: the law of unintended consequences will always be there to thwart your best efforts.

*This is our family verse. It was the verse my mom drew in the cement sidewalk when the foundation to our shared house (at that time) was poured. It was the verse the Lutheran pastor chose for our family when we joined the Lutheran church. When we moved into our current house, the people who were selling it had left a keyring hanging up on a hook that uncannily bore this verse. We are constantly reminded of it.