The Cloak of Love and Joy

Imagine, if you will, that you live in a city or town with individuals of diverse family situations, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and religious philosophies. Trying to imagine this in the United States of America isn’t very hard to do, especially if you live in an urban setting. The hustle and bustle of public transportation among densely populated neighborhoods and a variety of commercial buildings is second nature to those who live in these environments. Many times even the suburbs located not too far from these urban areas are bustling just as much. However, there is a great deal of difference when towns are located far from this hustle and bustle.

Small rural towns are more homogeneous, that is, the people in them share a sameness of culture born around a common industry such as agriculture, mining or manufacturing. There is still a diversity of incomes and thought, but race, ethnicity and religious beliefs are typically less different. Our rural identity is just as important to the fabric of our country as our urban identity. Both knit together a unique sense of pride which we call patriotism.

What we build together as communities of hardworking and intelligent citizens is more important than what we take individually. We cannot have one without the other however…My commitment to myself as an asset to my community ensures a lasting civilization. Self awareness is key to prosperity no matter who you are on the spectrum of cultural diversity because it can help you make better decisions, build healthier relationships, lead with authenticity, take better care of yourself, and live a more fulfilling life. Self awareness is your personal cloak of love and joy.

Think of this cloak as your own hero cape! You are a Superhero to all those around you when this cloak has been fully formed by other self aware people in your life. It is like the Biblical narrative of the coat of many colors that Joseph’s father gave to him. In this story Joseph’s brothers did not get one and so were jealous of him. The importance here is that the father only recognized Joseph as most worthy of this gift because Joseph had obtained true self awareness. Of all his future suffering, Joseph would still go on to achieve and share much prosperity while maintaining his humility with God, his family and all those around him…An inspiration for all.

Who will give you your hero cloak and are you deserving of it? Is your character up to the challenge? Can you knit your own with the help of God’s presence in your life? The answer is a resounding YES! No matter who you are or where you’re from it is possible. Our western civilization truly depends on our Superheroes.

As with most anything, there is a balance to achieve when being self aware. The jealousy of others will be present and your perception to this will help to direct your path in life…Trust in divine providence.

Shrewd on The Grim Reaper

It’s definitely general election season! The political hate mongering is here, and thanks to social media it can spread like a wildfire.

The baseline for the hate is the same as ever…One “side” must lose. Unfortunately the narrative of hate from the left “side” has created a must die situation. How on earth did we get here?

Is it only the left side? Certainly not. Let’s get real about the situation. The right has just as much complicity.

The old expression ‘You reap what you sow’ comes to mind. Our web connected devices have become portals to soulless content created by careless individuals who spread the seeds of accusations and gossip to reap clicks and shares. The Shrew finds it interesting that so many people are entertained by these weeds that become entangled in our culture. Aren’t we smarter than this? Apparently not. So many people have allowed the weeds of destruction to grow.

How grim are the times that we are living in today? Is it reversible? The optimist in me believes that yes, we can scythe out the hatred. All it takes is transparency and an enlightened mindset. What is truly interesting to me is how an individual can take information without having direct experience of a given situation to arrive at an assumption and then call it a fact. This activity is neither transparent nor enlightening. Instead, it is pure ignorance.

Our new culture of ignorance is what we must lose. This is not a political “left” side or “right” side issue. It is a human issue. Civility in our society can only be restored when we all recognize the problem. Only then will we reap real sustenance.

Fatalism or Free Will

These are some very dark days. How does your ideology help you to cope?

Sadly I see that many turn to activism. However, there are two types of activism we must be aware of.

The first type is personal … It’s plan of action is rooted in direct experience and uses principles that have been proven to work among close relationships with family, friends, and local community members. The system is designed for success to help the most people possible without disenfranchising others.

The second type of activism is what I call “tangential”… It’s plan of action is rooted in empathy and uses emotions as swords for justice. It’s appeal is not based in principle at all. The hook is projected outward from a guttural and primitive perspective. The system is designed for chaos and mass psychosis.

While personal activism is grounded in Truth, tangential activism has no grounding. If there is no grounding then the activism is nihilistic. Nihilism rejects all moral and religious principles in the belief that life is meaningless. Today’s group activism in the streets and meeting places is replete with catchphrases and chants yet has no solution. How is this activity useful for coping? Think about it.

To bring light into these dark times we must reject the fatalism of the tangential activism that we are witnessing around us. The goal of this activism is to eliminate the useful systems that have brought human prosperity. Yet, no matter how difficult the situation may become there are always people who work together willingly and freely to protect the lives of individuals. This light is the Creator’s promise of life everlasting in our world.

Reject fatalism and embrace your inherent free will to choose human prosperity. The evidence is clear: https://www.policyed.org/human-prosperity-project

The Shrew View: New Year, New Perspective

2023 is a year to lean back. All through 2022 I heard the term from main stream media (MSM) and progressive leaders to “lean in”.

What does it mean to lean into something?

From Wiktionary…To embrace; to experience fully or respond to wholeheartedly. quotations ▼ To take on or embrace something difficult or unpleasant, usually through determination or perseverance; to find a way to benefit from, or alleviate the harm of, risk, uncertainty and difficult situations. quotations ▼

As you can see, the term is meant to encourage a person to use their energy, skills and knowledge to turn a bad situation to better. But today’s MSM and progressives abuse the term by politicizing it. For example; they use politics (aka “equity “) to encourage social/cultural change because the “old way” of doing things to “alleviate harm of risk and difficulty” they believe only benefits the already “privileged”. Leaning in allows a progressive mindset to disrupt the old way and force a new way that changes familiar systems to better benefit “marginalized groups”. Trouble comes however when this change enforces “re-education” tactics that are tyrannical in practice. Leaning in removes questioning and debate both of which are cornerstone principles of a free society/culture.

Leaning back preserves questioning and debate. Conservatives know this to be true which is why our Constitution is full of checks and balances to limit the possibility of tyranny. Liberals used to believe these same principles as the foundation of States rights, but their quest for power has blindsided them. By relying on the progressive agenda for Democrat political power, liberals have lost sight of their own strength of being part of the power balance which is shared by individuals of different beliefs and backgrounds.

Conservatives in the 118th House of Representatives got it right! They leaned back on formerly accepted methods of congressional rules to force the Speaker into being more mindful of The People’s Business. No longer can this one person in a position of power force an action through Congress without proper time allowances and debate. “But,” you say, “the process will slow down work for The People!” Of course it will! Not all bills, laws or use of taxpayer funds are deemed appropriate by every elected representative. Each representative has a perspective and a voice which is guided by their constituents, not by the elite swamp of Washington D.C. or the political party in the majority. This is true for State legislators too.

As a former city councilor I was privileged to see this perspective, and in all honesty I can tell you that help for the individual in a community begins with this relationship especially if a person has not been able to build a strong family or faith community foundation. The Federal Government will never have your best interests at heart because it is much too big a swamp of ulterior motives to see your specific needs and all too often mismanages the bureaucracy. For example; when my city had a serious problem with many homes, streets and shoreline destroyed and lost due to shore erosion that the Federal Government admitted to starting by building a poorly implemented Army Corps of Engineers project, it took decades for our representatives in D.C. to have our voice heard. Wouldn’t you know that funding wasn’t in the huge infrastructure bill, better known as the climate change bill (of which this project would have certainly qualified)…Our swamp Republican Senate representative was later swayed to vote for the huge omnibus spending bill in December because the swamp elites who put the bill together added our erosion project funding to it! We shall see if the project ever really starts. How many other projects were funded in this way? Meanwhile some of our citizens struggle with inflation because of these poorly designed spending bills. Who wins? Think about it…

So lean back this 2023. All we need is right there for us if we would only question and debate the merits of a bill, policy or anything for that matter. Risk, uncertainty and difficult situations are learning opportunities that should lead to growth and mentorship, not ignorance and dependency.

Giving Over Personal Control

It’s true! Bit by bit my incredibly ordinary life is being controlled by forces that have very little compassion for me and my values. What forces? Basically they would be anything and anyone in government that I personally cannot hold accountable for actions that are contrary to my welfare.

The “general welfare” clause in the US Constitution is incredibly important for the individual citizen. General is meant as inclusive rather than exclusive AND very different from “for the public (common) good”.Think of it this way…As one individual in a family, that one person has the same personal rights and responsibilities as every person in that family to keep that family whole. But, not everyone in the family has the same abilities so each individual must learn how to contribute to the family’s overall health and survival. It’s just the same for our nation! We as individuals with our own unique abilities have the rights and responsibilities to keep our country whole. WE do this…We The People. Get it?

Each of us have the self-governing authority to ensure a governance that promotes our general welfare. This means that elected officials and administrative bureaucrats must use BEST PRACTICES to ensure the security of each and every individual who is a citizen of the country that ALL OF US are a part of, a.k.a. the More Perfect Union. Not the “Perfect Union” because we all know nothing and no one is perfect, but we can and must at least strive for a perfection which is God’s will NOT man’s will. As a child of God and as an individual of our human family I honor others of my human family by helping and not hurting our general welfare.

Elected officials and administrative bureaucrats hurt our general welfare by using their will to control the general population. Methods of this control typically come in the form of Congressional overreach. For example: The Democratic Party for years have been wanting single payer health care. To achieve this end they put out the narrative that 30 million people every year go without any health insurance and therefore go into debt trying to pay back bills for their major medical care (we can equate this initiative to the current college debt forgiveness). This narrative is repeated over and over with help from the liberal media in effect drowning out any hard data that shows many of these people are temporarily without insurance because of a job change, a lifestyle interruption, preferring to pay cash, or have no idea they can negotiate their costs and afford a pay back plan. Leaving out this hard data creates the perception of a “crisis”, therefore health insurance for 320 million people must change for the needs of 30 million people who are either in a transition for health insurance or who know how to deal with their health care needs in their own way. Reality could indicate that only 500 thousand people need actual help which could be managed through their representatives directly or through a charity source. Interestingly, much of this debt was directly forgiven anyway by every healthcare user through increased facility costs which you have much more control over rather than your tax dollars going into a federal healthcare fund.

Enter the “care team” of the federal government…Taxpayers across the board foot the bill that bureaucrats implement through laws, regulations and IRS oversight. I don’t know these people! I’ll never meet these people and there is no guarantee I can even talk to them. Yet the money from my paycheck that goes to Washington DC is supposedly working for my benefit. Congressional oversight of the administrative state is currently a lever only pulled by a Democrat majority (with help from a Republican establishment), which is to say that oversight isn’t actually happening for our general welfare. Control is in their hands. Affordability is never a result. My tax dollars are being spent on initiatives that go counter to my values in some cases.

Even “private” industry is tracking our second amendment right. Government along with Big Tech definitely have an interest in this.

In the not too distant future nothing the individual does will be left unchecked which is the complete opposite of the limited government that our forefathers envisioned. Once the federal government has access to your health care practices, education choices, energy usage and banking records you have handed over control of your ability to decide what is best for your general welfare. Your Liberty is not even an option. The only choice you will have is at a federally mandated voting booth (or app lol), but the results will be made by majority rule conditioned by media propaganda. Personal rights and responsibilities become obligations and contrition.

We as individuals, families and communities take care of ourselves. Politicians and bureaucrats do not take care of us, and regulations should be implemented only when clear and scientific data along with bipartisan debate ensures that liberties are minimally encroached. When a federal government works hard to divide people racially, culturally, economically and politically then it becomes harder for us to form bonds to take care of each other and easier for that manipulative government to provide that care by picking winners and losers with our own tax dollars.

Never allow yourself to be guided toward division against your fellow man. Let go and let God as it is said. Pray for more kindness in all of our hearts. And treat your neighbor the way you would want to be treated. Love is a verb, use it.

Shrew View: Oh Women, My Women

Women are more than a word and more importantly women must remain the word.

“Trans woman” Lia Thomas (pictured left) is NCAA “Woman” of the Year.

Just as culturally ethnic people have norms and experiences attributed to them, biological women own their norms and experiences. It is illogical to me that radical leftists scream racism and cultural appropriation relating to people of color while also trying to pawn off the idea that a biological man can claim to be a woman. What these leftists want the mainstream populace to believe is that two genders (male as man and female as woman) is an idea constructed solely to make humans conform to one or the other. Poppycock!

Anatomy and hormones are hard facts for determining gender. Sure, we can and should acknowledge that there are birth anomalies that can blur this distinction, but these are not the norm and parents along with their pediatrician choose the best path forward for these beautiful individuals. Any other “gender” description beyond man or woman is based on personality, is an appropriation of gender and harms societal norms.

Women are suffering the most during this absurd time of gender appropriation. Through the decades women fought hard for their autonomy and equal rights. Sisterhood, motherhood and menopause are distinctly anatomical and hormonal in their development. Men can never experience these physical and emotional demands no matter how they change their hormones or anatomy. And sexuality is not the same as gender…sexuality is about who or what you fuck! So, when you are asked what your sex is this too is gender based as male or female, one or the other. God gave us genitalia to procreate our species…we can’t fake this no matter how you get your sexual thrills!

We women must remain strong in word and deed. We cannot allow our righteous power to be usurped by personalities that demand our privileges. Men cannot be women. “Trans-women” are not women but rather men with very feminine tendencies, and this is fine as long as actions are clearly modeled as such. The world is a far more interesting place when individuals believe they are blessed by God given physical and metaphysical attributes, these cannot be taken away except if a government steps in to create laws denying them. However, when individuals appropriate new supposed “genders” government then must step in to define them and the laws to grant special “rights”.

New gender definitions beyond women and men are stepping stones to Artificial Intelligence “rights”. We must be careful what our culture and our government begin to normalize. Extinction of the human race could be legalized if we aren’t careful. Think about it.

Is Less Really More?

Empty store shelves, back-ordered web purchases, higher food costs, increasing energy prices, slower services, and hours cut back at your favorite restaurant or coffee shop…How are you adjusting?

I remember several household habits from my childhood quite distinctly:

– Keeping lights off in a room that you were not using;

– Dad cleaning the dishes by hand;

– Mom giving the hair cuts;

– One bathroom for a household of seven people being do-able;

– Cans of vegetables being stored and rotated in the basement;

– Re-using or re-purposing plastic food containers, brown paper grocery bags, wrapping paper, news paper, milk jugs, etc…

I also remember as a family we would go out to eat on rare occasions, get along with one car just fine, and communicate with one home phone. I am a child of parents who grew up during the depression. The 1970’s weren’t the 1930’s, yet hard times did make their appearance none the less. Learning how to adapt to hard times is a skill not easily acquired if you have never been exposed to hard times. Our current inflation is a good reminder that hard times can make an appearance no matter what the circumstances.

Sometimes habits or behaviors from one generation transfer to the next…Obviously all the above household habits are healthy habits and I have used the experiences at times in my own adulthood. Reduce, reuse, recycle therefor comes naturally to me as does planning for one trip to grocery shop for the week and minimizing the stuff I WANT to have as opposed to the stuff that I NEED to have. But I really don’t think that my example has been adopted by my children all that well. My children have not been spoiled, but I think the consumer-driven era that they have grown up with can really spoil the generations of its time.

It’s a Woolworth vs an Amazon mentality. Either you can walk about a mile or so to get your basics or you can sit and have many different boxes and bags delivered on your doorstep. It’s a Main Street vs a Corporate Monstrosity mentality. Either you want to be in person with your community or you want a socially distant social media pseudo relationship. When people need a web device to direct their day to day experiences, then I suppose there may be less aggravation and more time for other experiences. But when people must use a more “hands on” and in-person approach to daily life, then one might find that less consumerism is actually required perhaps because the physical sensations are more satisfying. Sure, there may be more frustrations when you can’t find exactly what you want, but that can happen at Woolworth or Amazon. Some of us are just that picky lol! The ability to curb frustration is a cornerstone of healthy character building.

I believe that the Covid19 pandemic has really shed some light on this topic. Locking people down in their homes has driven the web-based consumer appetite to higher levels. This is obvious given the billions of dollars that the owners of these platforms have amassed. Lock-downs have also reinforced the notion that physically distancing from others is a medical necessity to minimize the spread of germs, but is there more to maintaining a healthy immune system? Of course there is! The average physically fit person on zero medications is a virus’s worst nightmare. Being around people when you are a healthy, fit individual builds immunity for the whole environment…Immunologists have known this for decades if not centuries.

A society that emulates a place of scarcity is similar to putting healthy, fit individuals in hiding from a virus…Wealth (similar to immunity) is not allowed to spread. In fact, hoarding can happen. But when a society embraces abundance, it builds wealth (i.e. immunity) for everyone in the environment and is almost “contagious”, but in a good way…Wealth and giving among and between individuals spreads! An individual in the USA always has the choice in an abundant environment to cut back on their consumption either to save money for the things that they wish to redirect the money for or to maintain a perspective of “reduce, reuse, recycle” (less can become more). However an individual living in an environment of scarcity will never be able to improve the quality of their consumption (less is always less). We should never allow the elitists in government to control our marketplace by imposing their will on our choices and our freedom of movement.

I want my children to live in a country where there is limitless abundance and opportunity for all individuals. A country that uses the framework of God’s Laws to help guide their choices and the Rule of Law to help hold them responsible. LESS control imposed by government IS MORE freedom for we the people!

Our Authentic Awakening

There has been a comical willingness for citizens to hand over to the government their inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Woke to Wickedness

Wicked, adjective – evil or morally wrong; intended to or capable of harming someone or something (Google dictionary)

Do you really want to know why certain people seem to be melting down over perceived differences as a nation?

I watch all news channels, listen to podcasts and radio programs from various sources, and read news clips and books from all authors on both sides of an issue. I like doing this because my questioning takes on a much deeper meaning…not everyone is right and not everyone is wrong, and, in point of fact, much material can seem to be simply glossed over or blatantly left out.

I’ve been following the chaos that has been developing since before the 2017 general election. I try to make sure that my research and sources have a very broad scope because I like to keep in mind my friends, family and acquaintances who are all very different people with diverse thoughts, ethnicities and group affiliations. I feel blessed to have come from a type of background which placed me in diverse situations when I was growing up because not everyone gets to see and experience what our large, complex, multi-ethnic, culturally diverse country has to offer, and, quite frankly, it is not until you are past the age of 50 can you appreciate the exposure.

“Wickedness was like food: once you got started it was hard to stop; the gut expanded to take in more and more.” – John Updike, The Witches of Eastwick

I believe the “wicked food” Updike is referring to is connected our egos as individuals. Lately we have been digesting this food at an alarming rate. We must make an effort to look outside ourselves and take smaller bites, chew the information a few more times and rinse it down with a heavy dose of calm reason. It is our ability to reason that will connect our mind to our heart and drive a wedge between wickedness and our ego.

Consider the wickedness of the Socialist/Marxist movement that’s been brewing. It does not believe in the individual’s capacity to succeed in a free market system, yet this movement does believe that a small group of elites have the capacity to tell each person what they can do, think, and be…

The harmful wickedness fed to people of all races by an elite few in America today is unquestionable. I present to you a few examples:

1) The rewriting of history (As in the 1916 Project) instead of adding more information that is fact based to improve upon its richness.

2) The removal of historic statues and plaques by force without considering their context and significance for a teachable moment.

3) Banning certain types of free speech no matter who might be either offended or positively inspired.

4) Condoning mob rule when such behavior infringes on the rights of others.

5) Reworking social interactions in order to remove the possibility of proper civil discourse.

6) Changing the meaning of words to abuse cultural norms instead of creating new words that might reflect better our human progression.

7) Segregating differences as a way to cause chaos instead of promoting our human capacity to allow for differences as a means to grow spiritually and intellectually.

You might be able to think of a few more examples.

Consider these solemn words from Jane Austin:

“When I look out on such a night as this, I feel as if there could be neither wickedness nor sorrow in the world; and there certainly would be less of both if the sublimity of Nature were more attended to, and people were carried more out of themselves by contemplating such a scene.”

All of us have the capacity to be individual ambassadors of good will in our pursuit of happiness in this land of liberty which is grounded in Judeo-Christian principles. Put the politics aside! Let wickedness reign no more…

The Shrew View: Home of the Brave

Fear is being allowed to fester in America…The type of fear that can only be fostered by the media and improved upon by the liberal academics because they are the prime manipulators of emotion. Is this fear linked to the polarizing politics of today? Perhaps it is simply the natural human instinct of preserving life at all cost? Either way, it’s definitely worth taking a closer look as only a Shrew would…

When President Roosevelt said in 1933 that ‘The only thing to fear is fear itself…’, he was not far from the mark. During that time we were at the peak of the Great Depression. He went on saying, ‘…fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance…’ Fear as an emotion is ephemeral unless a person is consumed by it nonstop.

In my booklet, Archetypes of the Human Spirit, I picture a large fish with many sharp teeth as a symbol of the fear that consumes all efforts to improve not unlike the Bible story of Jonah and the whale.

This all consuming fear is that which comes when you are not sure that your choices are leading you in the best direction. Fortunately we have the ability to look back on past choices to determine the best path forward…This is why learning factual history is so important! In your own life your history is all of those past choices, and the outcome of those choices are what you have to learn by. Your anxiety ridden, uncomfortable present or future is an illusion of fear until you reconcile those past choices with what you learned after making them…And if you succeed in applying this model, you gain wisdom.

In America there is a certain effort underway to rewrite our history. This is an unfortunate circumstance because the “new” history focuses on victimhood and is consuming humanity’s efforts to improve. Learning everything we can about why we had slavery, The Trail of Tears, women’s suffrage, Jim Crow and gay rights in our “free” society is good, but only if we are brave enough to see the true context as whole and proper. It is only then that we can make progress as a nation that values Liberty for all rather than equality as an outcome for all.

The Shrew

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