Update: Politics, Rascals and Railroads

A Season Apart

Seems that Death has returned to make his rounds before the glory, the recollection of Christ's birth is celebrated. My dearest friend in Austin is growing road weary, dealing with a sic Mum, grieving over the loss of a friend.

It makes me wonder.

Advent....'Tis a season that was set apart by the early Church to prepare for the birth of Christ. It has been hijacked and twisted into a season of gluttony and avarice. Today, while Hugo Chavez dances with the Iranian devil and builds bases for SCUD missiles, capable of striking the mainland United States, Washington argues about the debt they have brought down upon themselves, and therefore their constituency. That would be us, our children and grandchildren.

I find it ironic that Christ was born to a couple who were called by the reigning empirical government to return to the husband's genealogical home town.....Bethlehem, King David's home. They were called to come, as a family, to register and pay taxes to Rome.

So it is today.

We have allowed our selves and our blessed land to be overrun by the same style of governance our forefathers fought and died to destroy.

We have a pretender sitting in the White House, his polished shoes casually flopped on the desk built from the timbers of a ship that saved his ancestor's asses from barbarism and slavery. He knows it not. We have Senators and Congressmen, on both sides of the coin, who could care less about anyone or anything except their own re-election and retirement, while the world steps away and chooses to isolate us, degrade our currency and laugh at us behind veiled masks.

Yes, it is Advent. And I pray daily that God will rise up and confound the spurious courts and marble halls of the mighty. We prepare for the gentle crisis of birth...where a child enters the world with all uncertainty awaiting. His name is "Wonderful, Counselor, Almighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace!" His name is Jesus bar Joseph of Nazareth, born of the House and lineage of David, the King.

Its a good time to remember that while the ponderous world of political machinations prattles on, there have been and continue to be individuals who serve quietly and gently. One was a dance hall gal who wandered the mining towns around Alma, Breckenridge, Como and Buckskin Joe. She was known only as "Silverheels" because of her penchant for nickle-silver adornments on the heels of her dance shoes. When smallpox hit the mines, she was one of the only gals to remain to help care for the sick and dying miners, merchants and their families. She did so at her own peril. Supposedly she died from the pox.

The community leaders and townsmen raised money to take care of her, only to find that she disappeared. It is said that her ghost still haunts the cemetery at Buckskin Joe, and that flowers mysteriously appear at certain graves.

Advent..........Would that we all could find that tipping point twixt serving self and serving God...then choose to follow Him, not our own path.