Grace

By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.

Eph. 2:8

From Nave's Topical Bible: A Digest of the Holy Scriptures, Orville J. Nave, ed., Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, 1979.

My friend Becca has a new post up at Keep Guessing. It's interesting. She begins:

My experience entering the Catholic Church was so many things: intense, beautiful, fun, stirring, humbling (which is saying something), enlightening, challenging...  I'll stop but I could go on.  And on. 

It's hard for me to get past this recurring feeling of having been unzipped right down the middle and having my soul, heart, and mind exposed for all to see-- flayed, dissected, and discussed at length. 

300: Is That All?

If you've been following along, you may have noticed that I've been thinking a bit about those guys who, "with a firm reliance on divine Providence" mutually pledged to each other their Lives, their Fortunes, and their sacred Honor. I even asked, "Who were these guys?"  And so, you can imagine my delight when I learned that today in 1776 John Witherspoon was elected to represent New Jersey in the Continental Congress. (1)

And you can imagine my further delight to learn that Witherspoon, a Scotsman, arrived in the Colonies in August 1768 with his family and 300 crappy old books for the New Jersey College Library! (2) 

Witherspoon was a Presbyterian clergyman and President of New Jersey College-- later to be called Princeton. He had ten children, five of whom died in early childhood. (2) His three sons all fought in the Revolution. One was killed at the battle of Germantown. (1, 3)

Witherspoon was the only active clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence. (3, 4)

From Bennett, I learn that Witherspoon said

There is not a single instance in history in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire.

It's taken from the final paragraph of a sermon Witherspoon preached in May, 1776. (5)

If your cause is just, you may look with confidence to the Lord, and intreat him to plead it as his own. You are all my witnesses, that this is the first time of my introducing any political subject into the pulpit. At this season, however, it is not only lawful but necessary, and I willingly embrace the opportunity of declaring my opinion without any hesitation, that the cause in which America is now in arms, is the cause of justice, of liberty, and of human nature. So far as we have hitherto proceeded, I am satisfied that the confederacy of the colonies has not been the effect of pride, resentment, or sedition, but of a deep and general conviction that our civil and religious liberties, and consequently in a great measure the temporal and eternal happiness of us and our posterity, depended on the issue. The knowledge of God and his truths have from the beginning of the world been chiefly, if not entirely confined to those parts of the earth where some degree of liberty and political justice were to be seen, and great were the difficulties with which they had to struggle, from the imperfection of human society, and the unjust decisions of unsurped authority. There is not a single instance in history, in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire. If therefore we yield up our temporal property, we at the same time deliver the conscience into bondage.

[my emphases]

More on "minutemen and ministers" here.

References below the fold

The Whole Place Has Gone to Seed!

From The Free Dictionary Dot Com:

go to seed
1. and run to seed Lit. [for a plant] to grow long enough to produce seed; [for a plant] to spend its energy going to seed. The lettuce went to seed and we couldn't eat it. Plants like that ought not to be allowed to go to seed.
2. and run to seed Fig. [for a lawn or a plant] to produce seeds because it has not had proper care. You've got to mow the grass. It's going to seed. Don't let the lawn go to seed. It looks so—seedy!
3. Fig. [for something] to decline in looks, status, or utility due to lack of care. (The same as run to seed.) This old coat is going to seed. Have to get a new one. The front of the house is going to seed. Let's get it painted.

[my emphases]

For those who like visuals, here's "gone to seed" illustrated.

#1: to grow long enough to produce seed

Broccoli raab. Each of these individual 4-petaled flowers will produce a seed pod containing six or more seeds.

Orient to the right hand edge of this mass. You should see a handful of immature seed pods against the straw in the background. Now look at the mass of seed pods.

An onion going to seed.

Butter crunch lettuce going to seed.

Giant red mustard. As with broccoli raab, each flower produces a seed pod.

See the thin pods along the stems and clustered at the bottom center of the photo? Each pod has almost a dozen seeds.

#3 below the fold-- along with a bit of inspiration inspired by the giant red mustard.

I'm on a Mission from God.

Not really, but that sure is what it feels like.

I don't like to make excuses, but this is the best I got by way of explanation for my silence recently: I am cataloging my books. (Plus, putting in the rest of the garden.)

These will be #357-366.

Cataloging and tagging crappy old books (and new ones, too!) gives me an opportunity to sit for a minute or so with each. In so doing, I've realized God is omnipresent in my library. It isn't that I have a great number of books on religion, or a stockpile of Bibles. It's that every crappy old page (but not new page) I turn has a reference to God, Christianity, The Bible or religion. I suspect this is because God was omnipresent back in the crappy olden days.

Three quick examples and then out to the garden!

Mr. Big Food is Taking a Nap

He asked me to be sure he didn't sleep past 3:15. I'm doing  daily chores drudge work -- burning some calories-- so I jotted a little reminder:

"that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life."

Pot Luck Charity

If you tried to hold a series of potluck dinners where a majority brought nothing to the table, but felt entitled to eat their fill, it would probably work out badly.

So says Glenn Reynolds (a.k.a., Instapundit) in today's Washington Examine. In his article, Reynolds is commenting on  Charles Sykes new book, A Nation Of Moochers: America’s Addiction To Getting Something For Nothing.

~~

This past Friday evening our local Baptist Church held its annual "chicken, deer, quail supper." It's a pot luck thing. A handful of men coordinate the chicken, deer, and quail. Everyone else brings something or otherwise participates. (As a strategy, it works.) I knew about the Supper before I saw it in the newspaper because Nancy at the United States Post Office told me. She invited us to come. [We don't go to Church as often as we should.] She also told me that this year, the proceeds would go to benefit a late middle-aged man at the Church who has just been diagnoses with pancreatic cancer. His wife works with Nancy at the Post Office.

We've been to the chicken, deer, quail supper and we brought a dish-- broccoli corn bread if I am not mistaken. Talk about delicious (both the supper and the cornbread). The Supper is the Big Food Manual writ large! You can get carry out plates. :-)

But what with feeling badly about not having gone to Church in a while, and with Remy coming and not knowing Remy well enough then-- before Friday-- to know if  he would enjoy a chicken, deer, quail pot luck supper at the Local Baptist Church, we opted not to go.

The next time I was in the United States Post Office, I wrote out a check and gave it to Nancy. She called the Church to make sure I should make the check out to the Church, with the man's name on the notation line.

The paper came Thursday. (I know it's Sunday evening, but I'm a little behind.) Turns out, he has a lot of friends.

Aunt Margaret's Bookmarks

Aunt Margaret's bookmarks

I found these all marking the same page in Aunt Margaret's An Explanation of the Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine, Fifth edition, by Rev. Thomas L Kinkead, published by Benziger Brothers (New York, Cincinnati, Chicago) and copyright 1891. The marked page begins an explanation of The Lord's Prayer.

Please do click on the image to enlarge. The bookmarks are quite lovely. 

Children and faith

New Little Prayers Pop-up Book, reprinted in 1984, copyright Deans International Publishing

I stumbled upon an interesting story in my search for information on the nursery rhyme, "Christmas is coming." It's from the Preface to the chapter on Faith in The Book of Virtues (1993), edited by William Bennett. A few of Bill's words to set up the story:

A human being without faith, without reverence for anything, is a human being morally adrift. The world's major religions provide time-tested anchors for drifters; they furnish ties to a larger reality for people on the loose. Faith can contribute important elements to the social stability and moral development of individuals and groups.

"... time tested anchors for drifters."

The story:

To parents who are themselves insecure in their faith and, like the nineteenth-century English radical John Thelwall, think it "unfair to influence a child's mind by inculcating any opinions before it should have come to years of discretion, and be able to choose for itself," there is an enlightening anecdote in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Table Talk for July 27, 1830. "I showed [John Thelwall] my garden, and told him it was my botanical garden. 'How so?' said he, 'it is covered with weeds.' -- 'Oh,' I replied, 'that is only because it has not yet come to its age of discretion and choice. The weeds, you see, have taken the liberty to grow, and I thought it unfair in me to prejudice the soil towards roses and strawberries.' " (p. 742)

Poppies

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields. 

We have broken faith.