Amarugia - Something happened

paint brush prairie at Amarugia

Bluff's of Amaragia Highlands above lake

I am sitting here today, pondering what we did as a nation, as a people, to have the natural law of cause and effect yield the result of our prior actions. Maybe, just maybe, I lived with visions for my company all of my life. A fantasy world. But what we experience now is caused by how we have acted in the past.

To change what we reap in the future, we must change how we act now.

These comments are reflective and began as an observation as a follow-up observation to:

http://youhavetobethistalltogoonthisride.blogspot.com/2009/04/tgif-circus-life-torture-slow-burn.html

Thinking back over the past 40 or 50 years, I can see now that we as a people have not remained the moral edifice of God's blessings on earth(maybe I should say that I am not).

Here, see the vision wide-screen, but flat and dimension-less. In the post war era our Republic saw the greatest gains possible for a nation:

People owned their own homes, those wishing to work went to work and were able to pursue their own happiness. But soon this "trailing purple" became dusted, selfish, altered in someway by a corruption of...what...? Deviant to the admonishment of our Forefathers? Our brethern? Our bountiful blessing?

What did we do?

We the children of those who suffered through the great depression and the Greatest World War were raised with care and oppulence. Of course we did not understand the care and certainly did not view ourselves as being spoiled. But we were.

As we grew to adulthood, we attached our selfishness to liberty and made it so:

• Common drug use(especially Marijuana (See the link to: Marijuana: It is not a Soft Drug)


• Recreational sex


• Abortion (accepted as post-lconception contraceptive)


• euthanasia


• Education - our children can't/won't or don't read


• media and what we witness on TV/in the news/on film (sex, crime, drugs, violence)


• Opposition to Authority (with Rancor and without Service)


• Living life as if it were a "drama" set to the theme of a favorite movie


• Living life as if it were art -- depicted especially by a favorite musician


• Finding social and moral deviance acceptable expression of liberty

WITHOUT the Soap Opera, our live's don't have meaning. We are become drama queens.

Yes, I know, I was all for the type of realism in film as began finally with the film "The Wild Bunch". But , I certainly didn't anticipate this. We have disregarded the precepts which brought us into this paradise--yes, despite it's flaws and inherent problems, no culture in the history of man has found such great common good with continuous opportunity to improve it -- allowing more and more of all the people to pursue it. (Then you did come to be beloved).

But soon this dream's shadow was not free of the world's dust. Somehow, the lutes had silent grown. Soon, this blessed disregard for Christian precepts was become muted to "angelic knowledge".

How did we get here? Or as the infamous Pogo cartoon observed, We have met the enemy and it is us. What happened to our great experiment? We are now seeing a Senator who is to fillibuster the appointment of a Jurist to the 7th District US Court because the potential jurist ruled that the invocation of God or Jesus in public communication was not legal. Even more, our current occupant of the Oval Office, visiting University, had covered the image of Jesus which would have been in view when this President delivered a speech--that same president saying that we are not a Christian Nation.

Meanwhile I read of a grade school teacher sending a child home with an accusatory note and a bit of exrement from the child's accident in his backpack. You can see the picture of this? The child's embarrassment, the parent shock and anger.

When, where and how did it go wrong?

You know what? Obama is right but only in the following manner -First of all, our nation was founded with the principles of invocation of God's will and blessing. But State sponsored religion was restricted in the Bill of Rights. Both are true. Franklin, during the early days of the Convention at Philadelphia, suggested each day's proceedings begin with an invocational prayer of God's will(this from the man the Left claims was an athiest, or a Deist--didn't and doesn't sound so to me).

We have lost our foundation of moral and ethical behavior, as a people. (or is it just me that sees this).

I keep hearing Tevya singing in my ear, 'if I were a rich man...' with a chorus in the background singing: "tradition'...Tradition!"

Does this make me a drama queen to think in terms of the musical, "Fiddler on the Roof?"

Sheesh.

I am as much to blame for all of this, perhaps more than others.
I recall growing up in the faith I rejected - we had Church camp out on the dirt road that bordered the north end of my father's farm. Out that way, on out past INDEX school was the farm of Jim Courtney and his wife. What a wonderful Christian couple. Even now sometimes I will awaken and have a dream that somehow has returned to the idealic world of my youth and sometimes, people like Jim Courtney are in the dream.

My family moved from the environs of Kansas City (we lived on the West side, Merriam, in Kansas and Da commuted to his work(Bannister Rd, KC, MO), to the farm near Garden City, Missouri in 1959. If we had arrived the previous winter, I would have attended that one room school, Index School, Cass County, MO).

Our farm was about 2 miles out east of Garden City on state road NN from the edge of town on the. This camp was on a creek that ran through Jim Courtney's farm. On the other side of the road was the farm, on the same creek which my father intended to purchase...a wonderful place where a childhoold schoolmate lived, Anita. But her father decided not to sell out and stay out on the farm.

So the distance out to this "church camp" 6 miles, first out state road NN about 3 miles and then North another 3 on this country road that border our farm on the north side. The men of the church used rocks, bolders and so on, to dam up the creek to make a swimming hole. It had a rope to swing out and drop off. We had educational activity during the day and they showed christian related film in the eve showing the film against the white clapboard side of the barn.

What a wonderful thing.

In winter, the youth of the church traveled to various creek bottoms with a tractor and wagon and picked up pecans and black walnuts to be sold to make money for the church. I remember, about 1960 or 61, the tractor and wagon drove into town and Marvin Richardson, pastor of the Southern Baptist church to which my family had allied, agreed that with all the hard work, everyone deserved an ice cream cone for the locale dairy-style drive up.

I hopped of the wagon and it ran over my foot but I was too embarrassed to tell anyone.
Oddly, Richardson was the one who introduced some foreign concepts to a strict baptist church, material from the dead sea scrolls, and the Nag Hammadi(apparently) and other text and resources. I think this actually led to a later passion to investigate all Christian Source Literature.

He left the ministry the year after, perhaps it was 1963 and went to Indiana to teach.
The next Pastor would not sign my brothers Merit badge for faith was it? Because by this time, my brother and I purchased a motor boat at a farm sale for 315.00 of our own money, and from that point on, in summer time, the family went to the Lake of the Ozarks each weekend. Steve, my brother, would attend a lake side church each Sunday(I opted not to do so).

Still the new pastor asked my brother about church attendance, as the family was not at church all summer long. My brother acknowledged that the family went to the lake but that he attended church at the lake each SundaY. The pastor, apparently credulous, wondered if he could believe my brother, who responded, do you think I lie? Steve did get his Eagle Scout but it was later. At that time this occurred, had the pastor signed off on the merit badge, my brother would have been the youngest ever to receive the rank of Eagle Scout in America.

I rebeled, having done so already.

I went to church and waited outside and cussed the pastor out in front of everyone(I was 16 and had quit attending). I did not and basically have not set foot in a protestant church since--not to say I have been catholic to being catholic either though a Jesuit college(now University) is my alma Mater(This demonstrates perhaps the childishness of my behavior and is perhaps demonstrative of the problem I am addressing overall).

So this morning I was reflecting upon my behavior, thinking about the license I took doing that, there in a small town across from the Victorian home of Charles Kenagy, where the large Kenagy family lived--they were so educated, and self-educated beyond. Roy, the oldest(at home) caught me at the library and looked at my reading list oh, maybe it was 1960 or 61. He said, why are you reading this nonsense, and began showing me books and pulled Lee's Lt off the shelf and said, learn something from this. So I checked out both volumes.

My father, about this time, said, you need to read this book I purchased, and handed me Atlas Shrugged and another volume titled "The New Intellectual". I was at once taken to history and political science about age 10(as I was at this time). I read "The Search for Bridey Murphy" and have been convinced of reincarnation, which later led me to Buddhist text and Thich Nhat Hanh and others, recalling Hanh's acquaintance, about 1965 or so, who was one of the monks who self-immolated on TV during the War in Vietnam.

What am I saying? Something Happened!!!

And even they did fall before

Something is missing and I can't seem to lead enough to help us get it back. Never could.
A group of acquaintances and I started SCA in 1993-4 time frame to combat Bill Clinton and try to prevent his re-election. In 97 the group of course fell apart since Clinton was relected but during our run we had a very good website with numerous articles that were well worth publishing and reading from our wideranging membership. The Group was known as: Strategic Conservative Alliance: From Sea to Shining Sea.

In 1961, my father had a heart attack. Unheard of really, for someone so young. I was nine. I had to do the chores, feed the cattle and so on for two months(Back then, they kept people in bed for 30 days if you had a heart attack and then no work for 30 more). He was 39 when his cardiac event occurred. I was 49. My youngest son drove me to town to the hospital--I didn't trust and didn't want to see my oldest son the rebel. We lived 5 miles out of Tomball Tx and Ian did not yet drive(he was 14). When parking he slammed on the brakes and a floor jack in the back of my truck slammed into the tail-gate. Local cops thought he had hit a car while parking and I got into a big argument with them to leave the kid alone, which worsened my condition. The sorry bastards pissed me off and I collapsed in the parking lot.

What happened? It's as if our knowledge has caused us to think we know everything, isn't it?Maybe our view is just this: Ens Est primum quod cadit in intellectua humano--We all know everything--we think. We don't need experts to tell us, we don't need to invoke God's knowledge or guidance -- we are able to choose right for right's sake without angelic intervention or guidance. But our's is just human knowlege, nothing beyond this. Unless we are somehow imbued with such saintly angelic nature by our God.

I have known men, priests for example and later a member of the laity, whom I am sure had "angelic knowledge" and this was far beyond intellectua humano.

I am as Jeremiah: Pray for me, this poor sinner, for I will blame the cup, which maketh me drunk -- on the wine, on power, with this great human knowledge which denies God or the need for God.

In all of this, I am the one of our generation who seemed to lead away from the tradition, and now this late in time I am trying to re-establish the "faith"--meaning, my faith --In our fathers, in our way of life, in the simplicity of the farm, in our manners and loyalty to the precepts of our Republic, not some malleable concept of transient morality and ethics. Logically, see this is a fallacy from it's origin.

How to counter it? I don't know but I am writing this to give others pause.

I lost the idea of God's gift: "Met in thee, and from out thee overcameMy soul with satisfaction of all wants:Because God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame."

I know not what others are doing(those with whom I grew up, and mostly, others with whom I share ideas and life on daily basis. But I hear them and see them. They are the foundation of our greatness and blessedness which is fading into a dusky sunset. I am certain that those long-ago childhood acquaintances and friends viewed me as a rebellious, athlete type bubba, and perhaps without foundation.

When not playing basketball, football or baseball, drinking with the good ol' boys gone down to the river to noodle catfish or sein ponds, or gone frogging, drinking beer and frying the legs in the cool of the evening as the breeze flowed in from Kansas--Garden City, Order No 11 Ground, four miles north of Dayton Town which was burned to the ground by Quantril.

Out west, over towards the Kansas State line lies a dreamworld, the Amarugia highlands, and so it is just so, my fictional county of the trilogy, Amarugia(County) being the centerpiece, Key West: Trout Noir being the first story, and the last, Eulogies(if I can ever overcome the sorrow of things that will allow me to finish the work).

I am ruminating on these things. - best....dai

(Poetic License: Some phraseology taken from Sonnet XXVI by Elizabeth Barrett Browning).