Thursday, January 13, 2005

Another Day, Another Post

Wow! The weather can be so tricky up here in the PNW. This morning when I awoke, the sun was shining brightly and the skies were azure. Now, the clouds have rolled in and are looking a bit threatening in spots. We'll probably get some rain this afternoon.

The new Carolyn Arends site should be launched within the next few days. The contest to summarize CA in one sentence ended yesterday. I submitted a few ideas - none very good, I'm afraid. First of all, I have a big problem with brevity - I tend to ramble. Secondly, Carolyn Arends's music is so complex and varied and significant, she's hard to condense to one sentence. For instance, one of the clues to writing this one sentence was to imagine how you would describe Carolyn's music to a friend who had never heard of her. Well, to me, that would depend on the friend. To a non-Christian friend, I might say that she has a folk-pop sound and concentrates her songs on the questions of life without easy answers. She doesn't just repeat "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus" over and over in her songs, but He's there in every note, nonetheless. Therefore, she is the perfect Christian artist to introduce to non-Christian friends. She speaks truth in a gentle, non-threatening, subtle way. To a Christian friend, if they were not of a literary bent, I would mention her grounding in scripture and her unique sound. To a Christian friend who tended to be very bookish, I would mention her amazing integration of many great writers into accessible songs. Her breadth of literary knowledge and references thereto never fail to leave me breathless. In any event, it will be interesting to see what they choose to use for the website.

There was another Nicole Brodeur column about abortion in the Seattle Times today. Her tag line is "Nicole wonders about the same things you do." I don't think so. She writes that she wouldn't "wish [abortion] on anyone." Amen to that. But she sees abortion as something that happens to women, whereas I see abortion as something that happens to babies. Women do not abort themselves, they abort their babies. And that is a sad, horrible thing. When 4 in 10 women in the United States have contracted to commit legal murder, when one in four babies (25%) is murdered before seeing the light of day, when wombs are turned into killing fields and lives hang by the thread of a "choice," and Nicole Brodeur speaks of women's bodies being "under siege by those who don't live in them" without thinking about the siege against those who temporarily must live in them, she is hardly wondering about the same things I am. Thomas Jefferson once wrote with slavery in mind, "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever." Today, slavery is even more insidious, because it is all but invisible in the form of abortion. Women can kill their children in the womb, because, according to the courts, they own these children. I tremble for my beloved country when I think of the ramifications of almost 32 years not just of legalized murder, but of murder embraced and celebrated as a Constitutional right.

Please, dear Lord, protect the unborn and the born. Protect the children and their childhoods, their sense of wonder, their innate sense of joy, their instinctive love for You, as is within Your will. Amen.






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