In lieu of Supporting Friends Friday, I’ve decided to dedicate this Friday’s post to the memories of three great men that left us in the past week. One was a beloved funnyman; the second an influential public intellectual; the third a former colleague’s husband.
That order is not indicative of a ranking by significance or importance, to be clear. As I noted, I consider all three of these gentleman to be great men. Each contributed something to the world in their own way.
There are many Biblical commentators out there, each adding their interpretations to Scripture. I’m very much an amateur in this field, armed with my Pentecostal upbringing and lots of men’s Bible studies.
But that hasn’t stopped me from trying, and I’ve written a few posts attempting to interpret Scripture over the years. So, with summer rapidly fading—and my prayers going up for a good school year—here are some of those feeble attempts:
That’s it for this holier-than-thou Lazy Sunday. Sloth is a sin, but perhaps the Lord will forgive this Sunday’s laziness.
Happy Sunday!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
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The local music scene in the Pee Region of South Carolina is surprisingly robust, with some truly stellar musicians. The creative heart of this scene rests in several open mic nights at local coffee shops. Currently, the two big open mics to have resumed are at The Purple Fish Coffee Company in Darlington, South Carolina, and at Crema Coffee Bar in Hartsville, South Carolina. The Fish hosts its open mic on Friday evenings, and Crema hosts its on Tuesday nights.
The other major open mic—probably the most enduring of the current Big Three—was at Lula’s Coffee Company in Florence, South Carolina. Lula’s, however, has not resumed its legendary Thursday night open mic night—an open mic so artistically fervent, it inspired an entire book of poetry—much to the chagrin and bafflement of its most devoted performers, yours portly included.
But before there were any of these establishments, there was Bean Groovy, a now-defunct coffee shop that used to occupy a magical little bit of strip mall in Florence. I know the former owner of Bean Groovy—himself a studio engineer in the distant past—and despite some attempts to reopen the establishment at other locations, it’s never made a return.
Nevertheless, Bean Groovy was where I got my start in local music in the Pee Dee, way back in the hazy, halcyon days of circa 2012-2013. It, along with The Midnight Rooster in Hartsville (still in business, but it’s shifted from being a quirky coffee house into a frou-frou upscale dining establishment) were my old stomping grounds as I broke my way into the region’s open mic scene.
It was at Bean Groovy sometime in probably 2012 or 2013 that I met one of my best friends, John Pickett. John is an excellent guitarist and singer, and he possesses one of the best ears for music I’ve ever encountered.
This past Sunday we had a guest speaker at church, a pastor with a children’s home ministry. The ministry began with a home in southwestern Virginia, and has expanded to an orphanage in Tuxtepec, Oaxaca, Mexico. Both children’s homes are in poor, mountainous communities—the former the region where my late great-grandmother lived. Both orphanages do amazing work with the kids, combining work (like gardening, feeding donkeys, and the like) with play—even a band!
In giving his talk about the ministry, the guest pastor referenced a few passages of Scripture. Aside from the famous passage from Matthew 19:14 in which Jesus told the disciples to “Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of heaven,” the pastor also referenced Exodus 22:22-24, which deals with how widows and orphans are to be treated:
22You must not mistreat any widow or orphan. 23If you do mistreat them, and they cry out to Me in distress, I will surely hear their cry. 24My anger will be kindled, and I will kill you with the sword; then your wives will become widows and your children will be fatherless.
It’s a pretty powerful passage, and a reminder that God doesn’t mess around with sin, especially against the weakest and most defenseless. We like to think that God has “mellowed out” since sending Jesus to die for our sins, but that’s dangerously wishful thinking. God doesn’t change, and His Wrath is still mighty.
UPDATE: In case anyone missed it, The Make-A-Wish Foundation REVERSED their decision to require terminally ill children and their families to be fully vaccinated in order to receive their wishes: https://theportlypolitico.com/2021/06/29/decency-prevails-make-a-wish-foundation-rescinds-mask-requirement-for-children/
Read The Foundation’s statement here: https://wish.org/news-releases/reemergence
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The Make-A-Wish Foundation, which grants children with terminal medical conditions a “wish,” has announced it will require all wish recipients and their family members to be fully vaccinated against The Virus.
No vaccination, no wish fulfillment.
Naturally, this requirement is absurd, and represents a new low in the race to virtue-signal in The Age of The Virus. At this risk of sounding macabre and insensitive, The Make-A-Wish Foundation is requiring children who are already dying to take a vaccine against an illness with a 99.5%+ survivability rate.
It’s a purely symbolic action that achieves nothing beyond making it more difficult for dying children to enjoy one last bit of whimsy before they cross over into the arms of Jesus.
A big H/T to Neo at Nebraska Energy Observer for the inspiration for today’s post: in his latest edition of Sunday Funnies (“Sunday Funnies: Juneteenth & Other Things“), Neo includes a tabloid-style headline that reads, “I Was Nearly Krilled!: Lobster diver says he was swallowed by humpback whale.” The pun “krilled’ is circled in orange.
I looked it up, and it’s a real story: Michael Packard, a fifty-six-year old lobster diver from Massachusetts, was briefly trapped in the mouth of a massive humpback whale. According to Packard, he was in the mouth of the great beast for about thirty seconds, before the creature surfaced, shook its head back and forth, and spit Packard into the air.
Here is the relevant excerpt of Packard’s account, as quoted at NPR.org:
Packard told WBZ-TV that he was about 45 feet down in the water when he suddenly felt “this huge bump and everything went dark.” He initially feared he had been attacked by a shark.
“Then I felt around, and I realized there was no teeth and I had felt, really, no great pain,” he said. “And then I realized, ‘Oh my God, I’m in a whale’s mouth. I’m in a whale’s mouth, and he’s trying to swallow me.’ “
Packard was still wearing his scuba gear and breathing apparatus inside the whale’s mouth, which he said was completely dark. Fearing he wouldn’t make it out alive, he thought about his wife and sons.
After about half a minute, the whale rose to the water’s surface and began shaking its head from side to side.
“I just got thrown in the air and landed in the water,” Packard recalled. “And I was free, and I just floated there … I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe I got out of that.”
The story sounds incredible—and, according to whale experts, the odds of it happening are extremely rare—but it is within the realm of possibility. Humpback whales lack teeth, and instead filter feed through baleen, long, hair-like “teeth” that filter out sea water and trap small prey, like shrimp and krill, inside. Humpback whales often feed using lunge feeding, during which the whales “open their mouths, accelerate and ‘take in 10 SUVs worth of water and fish and then everything else,'” according to Iain Kerr, quoted in the same NPR piece.
Apparently, Packard just happened to be swimming in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the great whale accidentally sucked him up with tiny sea critters.
It’s easy to forget now, but last summer was terrifying. Race riots erupted in cities all over the country as a result of the death of George Floyd, a fentanyl-addicted career criminal who has now been sainted by our elites. The summer of rioting and looting did more to undermine racial harmony and social peace in our nation than any event of the last decade.
Now that The Usurper Biden sits upon the throne, the rioting seems to have subsided, as least for now, although there was a shooting at George Floyd Square amid the one-year anniversary observance of his death. Even so, I remember how scary last summer was, with radical, violent BLM and Antifa protests breaking out even here in South Carolina.
Part of the growing homesteading movement seems inspired, in part, by the wild lawlessness of the cities. Why live cheek-by-jowl with people who hate you because of your supposed privilege—and pay a hefty premium in rent to do so—when you can live affordably and safely in the country? I have at least one neighbor who seems to be doing that, and I’ve made some half-hearted efforts of my own at the same.
Regardless, I pray for peace—and prepare for the worst. I’d encourage you to do the same.
Here is 5 June 2020’s “Disorder“:
Orthodox Christian, America Firster, former US Senate candidate for Delaware, and current babe Lauren Witzke posted a meme to her Telegram page a few days ago featuring a rainbow with the Cross emblazoned in front of it, with the captions “June is Christianity Month” and “Reclaim the Rainbow.”
It’s a clever meme, of course, because June has become Pride Month, a month dedicated to forced corporate celebrations of abiological and immoral lifestyles.
In the spirit of yesterday’s post, which also dealt with a passage from Ecclesiastes, I thought I’d dust off an old post from my The Desperate Search for Meaning Series, which I completed back in 2019. A double-shot of Ecclesiastes, and the long-winded (but condensed here) wisdom of Pastor Monday is always a nice treat.
With that very brief introduction, here is October 2019’s “The Desperate Search for Meaning IV: Vanity“:
