Tag: Life

The Much Anticipated Dreaded Class Reunion

Melissa Praemonitus
Melissa Praemonitus
87 29
 

She was the first to greet me as I approached the banner hung over the room reserved for our group, smaller now, after so many years. Her lovely face, crinkled with many summers of smiling in the sun, was a bit different, but her voice and demeanor were unchanged. She was always meant to cheerfully organize these things. “I got on Facebook” she said, “And had my daughter check to make sure I did it right.” I told her that was smart and that Facebook events are perfect for us older folks. Then, I cringed.

I wandered about, struggling to recognize people. A guy approached and asked if I remembered him. I glanced at his name tag and thought I did. Wasn’t he the quiet one, who was always talking about sic-fi? He was bald now, but he sort of looked familiar. Yes, I did recognize him! Laughing, he told me that he came with his buddy, and was not a classmate of mine after all. Okay, now it feels like high school again.

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Life With Meaning

Caryn
Caryn
28 21
 

No life lacks meaning. No person, however young, dies without touching and moving others. In the Jewish and Christian traditions, this is taught explicitly, with the idea of a soul having a mission to complete (roughly, the Jewish idea) or a Divine plan (broadly speaking, the Christian perspective).

On Monday, June 13th — just a month ago, in the late afternoon — Morgan Malcolm, a delightful, vivacious, sweet, kind, loving 16-year-old girl was in a terrible automobile crash in which she was thrown from the car and sustained a severe head injury. She was comatose, initially reactive to pain, but that diminished over time. Two days later, she was declared brain dead.

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Arahant
Arahant
82 24
 

If the history is less than fifty years old, it is wrong. If the history is less than a hundred years old, it is probably wrong. If the history was written by a historian and not a paleontologist, it is probably biased. If one reads enough history, one learns to read between the lines to […]
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iWe
iWe
9 5
 

What is the substance of a smell? The scent of a delicious food does not provide any material comfort. Instead of satisfying our hunger, the smell of roasted coffee or baking bread has the opposite effect: it whets our appetite, adding to our cravings. Indeed, a sweet savor is not filling: it is something that […]
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Barkha Herman
Barkha Herman
13 11
 

One of the instructors that taught my kids karate was what you would call a hard-ass. I remember watching his classes, where he would ask kids to do, say, a right straight punch. There would always be one little kid in the class who would have their left arm out in a punch. His solution […]
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Obama’s Abortion Pill Mandate Sham Is No “Accommodation”

Greg Scott
Greg Scott
11 8
 

shutterstock_133423673-e1444998785546Several religious non-profit organizations — including Christian colleges, the Little Sisters of the Poor, and Priests for Life — filed their opening brief Monday with the US Supreme Court in a highly-anticipated challenge to the Obama administration’s abortion-pill mandate and the sham “accommodation” it offers religious non-profits.

The Department of Health and Human Services mandate forces employers, regardless of their religious or moral convictions, to provide abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception through their health plans under threat of heavy penalties. Alliance Defending Freedom clients Geneva College in Pennsylvania and the four universities in Oklahoma – Southern Nazarene University, Oklahoma Wesleyan University, Oklahoma Baptist University, and Mid-America Christian University – specifically object to providing abortifacients.

So what distinguishes this case from the Hobby Lobby/Conestoga Wood Specialties victory against the abortion-pill mandate at the Supreme Court in 2014?

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Lash LaRoche
Lash LaRoche
33 14
 

Less than an hour-and-a-half ago, I received some disturbing news. A friend of mine up in Lubbock e-mailed to inform me that a former professor and colleague of ours named Ethan Schmidt, an Assistant Professor of History at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi, was shot and killed in his office earlier this morning. He leaves behind a […]
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Lash LaRoche
Lash LaRoche
11 9
 

A few days ago, after reading Jon Gabriel’s “You Are a Snob” post, I was reminded of a country music group that I loved listening to during my childhood and teenage years: the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. In the comments I remarked, “Damn, those guys were good.” They were, and still are. Here’s their single “Oh […]
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‘To Those That Were Robbed of Life…’

Doug Watt
Doug Watt
93 23
 

Pope Francis babyTO THOSE WHO WERE ROBBED OF LIFE: the unborn, the weak, the sick, the old, during the dark ages of madness, selfishness, lust and greed for which the last decades of the twentieth century are remembered….” C. Everett Koop, MD

Much has been made of the recent decision of Pope Francis to allow priests to absolve those involved in the grave sin of abortion. Catholics and non-Catholics alike who depend on the major media for what this means might misinterpret his letter. Many outlets are reporting that this decision leaves the possibility that the act of an aborting a child might no longer be a grave sin, or was not a grave sin in the first place. This is not the case.

Let me start with a quote from Pope Francis’s full letter as reprinted by The Catholic Herald UK.

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Are You – For Eighty Sixing Life? Dadgummit, I Guess Not.

Buster Chops
Buster Chops
58 28
 

Well, I suppose I’m pro-life now. I don’t want to be. I arrive here with feet dragging, slunk shoulders and hanging head. As if resigning to a dreaded chore.

I’d prefer to remain with my peers, my contemporaries. I’d much rather adopt and reap the many perks of convenience in a pro-choice lifestyle. I wish I could resolve the consequences of insignificant hook-ups with RU-486. I want to maintain the impression that my career is too important and it’s just not the right time. I’d rather stick to the beaten path of overpopulation concerns, unfit parents, or unfit world, than to that of wearing a condom or abstention.

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ConnorDadoo
ConnorDadoo
27 22
 

On April 29, 2014 I came home to find my wife of almost 10 years, and mother of my two kids, in bed with another man. This started the the more then year long odyssey to today. Some who have been through this can sympathize, there was the few days of sleeping on my moms […]
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EJHill
EJHill
9 10
 

It seems there’s not an industry or job that hasn’t been touched, for better or worse, by the presence of computers and automation. Even the guy who scrubs the restroom at the local Wal-Mart probably has the toilets send him a message to his smart phone when they need cleaning. In my business large swaths […]
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Maya Angelou: Why I Kept My Baby

Peter Robinson
Peter Robinson
12 11
 

master-class-maya-angelou-2-600x411Writing in 2001 in Family Circle magazine, Maya Angelou, who died yesterday at 86, described her decision to keep the child she conceived at 16. With thanks to Feminists For Life for posting it, I’m reposting this remarkable article in full.

When I was 16, a boy in high school evinced interest in me, so I had sex with him — just once. And after I came out of that room, I thought, Is that all there is to it? My goodness, I’ll never do that again! Then, when I found out I was pregnant, I went to the boy and asked him for help, but he said it wasn’t his baby and he didn’t want any part of it.

I was scared to pieces. Back then, if you had money, there were some girls who got abortions, but I couldn’t deal with that idea. Oh, no. No. I knew there was somebody inside me. So I decided to keep the baby.

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