And Fifteen Chickens?
This guy is a disaster. So sad, nuts with guns, and who suffers? He claims his dog jumped out of the truck, causing the accident (dog died) and then his truck rolls over and all these legal and illegal weapons fall out, and fifteen chickens??? IED’s???
From today’s AOL News
By RYAN GORMAN
Officers responding to a single-SUV crash Friday in West Virginia found bombs, drugs, guns and more than a dozen chickens inside the vehicle – and may have thwarted a domestic terror attack.
Seth Grim, 21, somehow managed to roll the SUV off a highway about 40 miles northeast of Charleston. Police found four improvised explosive devices, two AK-47s, a rifle and about 15 chickens inside the vehicle, police said. They also uncovered a large amount of marijuana.
Authorities also found about 10 loaded magazines and body armor, they could possibly have halted a major tragedy. Two of the bombs were six inches long, two were four inches long, police said.
Grim’s Ford Explorer rolled off Interstate 79 at around 3:30 a.m., police told the West Virginia Gazette.
Grim apparently blamed the wreck on his rottweiler, which he told police jumped out the window while he was speeding down the highway, Office of Emergency Services Director Melissa Gilbert told AOL.
The dog was found dead several yards away, Roane County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Mike King told AOL.
West Virginia State Police arrived on the scene shortly after and found the chickens inside a cage, said Gilbert.
A number of the chickens were dead on the road and a few others escaped, said King. They were not recovered. Also scattered on the road were a few of the loaded magazines.
Cops also found multiple improvised explosive devices, assault rifles and several loaded clips stashed inside with the chickens, according to Gilbert.
King shot down reports Grim was on the run from police in Pennsylvania. Police are not clear where he was heading or what his intentions were. Several agencies are waiting to speak with him, according to the officer.
Grim suffered minor upper body injuries but was immediately arrested. The potentially dangerous man also declared himself a “sovereign citizen” upon his incarceration, according to Gilbert.
A bomb squad took the bombs to a secure location to be detonated out of harm’s way, Gilbert said.
Sovereign citizens often refuse to pay taxes as a form of protest against the federal government. They are seen by the FBI as domestic terrorists.
Terry Nichols, who helped plan the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, is the most infamous sovereign citizen.
A call to local police seeking further information about the charges filed against Grim and to find out why he was running from police in Pennsylvania was not immediately returned.
Only the marijuana and IEDs are illegal in West Virginia, according to King. Grim faces four felony counts for possessing them.
He remains in a West Virginia jail.
Pockets of Silence
Every now and then, after all these years, I can still crack my husband up by saying something unexpected.
Retirement carries some unexpected adjustments. There was a time, when he was managing a major contract in Germany, where over dinner, I once told AdventureMan I needed him to look at me and to listen. He looked at me in horror; he told me later he thought I was leaving him. No. No. I just looked at him and told him that I am very independent, but that at least once, every single day of our lives together, I need five minutes of his undivided attention.
“Five minutes isn’t much,” he said to me.
“Five minutes is more than I am getting now,” I responded. I knew he was busy, and under a lot of stress, but relationships require nurturing, and I knew I could get by on five minutes, as long as I could count on that five minutes to stay connected.
Now, years later, the shoe is on the other foot. AdventureMan LOVES retirement, and he comes into my office all the time to tell me about a new Tiger Swallowtail in his garden, or to update me on our financial worth, or to use me as a sounding board for a political item that has come up in his garden club.
There are times I need focus. All the years we were married, I had that time, and more, I had all this time to myself, and I learned how to fill and manage my time. I rarely had to coordinate anything with AdventureMan, he just trusted me to manage the house and finances and making sure everything was in its place.
Once he had time, I had to learn how to share my time. I also had to let go of a lot of control. The first time he organized and cleaned out the garage, I almost had a heart attack. He was so proud! And I was so horrified! I am very logical, and more than a little compulsive, and I knew where everything was, in its logical place, and now . . . things were, very literally, out of control. A part of me wanted to kill him, and another part of me said “hey, cool, now you don’t have to clean out the garage, he he he” but making that gain meant giving up control over where things were!
AdventureMan started cooking, and suddenly pots and pans and measuring spoons were not where they were “supposed” to be. AdventureMan took over the garden, and I danced for joy at not having to go out and water in the heat, but I lost control over what was planted out there.
It’s hard. We are both managers, and both very good at it. We’ve had to draw some lines. I’ve had to share territory I always thought of as mine, and he has had to consult with me, when he would much rather carry out his plans directly.
We’ve both had to draw some lines. We don’t touch stuff in one another’s offices. We consult. When I clean out the pantry, the first thing I do is show him the logic, even put little signs so he will know where to find things when he is cooking. I put up with things ending up in the wrong place, except for the spice drawers, where all the normal cooking herbs and in spices are in the left drawer and all the chilis and peppers and exotic herbs are in the right drawer, with all the teas. It can be irrational, but sometimes it is the smallest things that matter.
From time to time, I need a pocket of silence.
I welcome my sweet husband into my office; he is always welcome. From time to time, however, if I am working on paying bills or a blog post or designing a quilt, or trying to get my readings done for my bible study, I tell him I can listen for five minutes, and then I need a pocket of silence.
The first time I said it, he looked at me in horrified disbelief, what I was saying was so astonishing to him that he couldn’t even take it in. Once he comprehended, he started laughing, and now he tells his friends he has a wife who needs her “pockets of silence” – and I do. As he has become more relaxed and stress free, he has become chattier. As I live a life of commitments and connections in retirement, I need some times with no talking.
I need silence in my life the way some people need to be around other people hanging out. Silence refreshes me. Silence helps me focus, helps me think things through and develop a strategy. I am never bored with silence; for me silence is a resource I use with great respect and gratitude. I love my family and my friends, and then – I need a pocket of silence.
Wayfaring Stranger and James Lee Burke in the Heat of August
Just in time to save August from being my most hated month EVER, a new James Lee Burke novel, Wayfaring Stranger.
LOL, escaping from the relentless heat and humidity of Pensacola, I enter the heat and humidity of Burke country, ranging from the oil fields in Louisiana to the desolate social scene of Houston in the 1950’s.
I got hooked on James Lee Burke in a very cold winter February in Wiesbaden, Germany, when I came across a book called A Morning for Flamingos. I like mysteries, but this was a mystery by a poet! When I read about the what an approaching thunderstorm looks like when you live in a little cabin in New Iberia on Bayou Teche, I was lost. I-don’t-know-how-many books later, I’ve been to New Iberia, had lunch by the Bayou Teche and explored Burke country.
Louisiana is soulful, all those little roads, and sugar cane factories (think True Detective, here) but, (sigh) no matter how colorful, no matter how beautiful, the Louisiana in James Lee Burke’s books is better. He’s been there longer, he has the eye to see that heron, that shiver of wind over the water, that glint of pure evil in a bad guy’s eye. I know you think I am blathering on, but kinda-sorta the Dave Robicheaux detective series are all pretty similar, what changes is the particular social injustice. So this is what hooks me – Burke’s relentless battle against injustice, by writing powerful books that get read by a lot of people, and the elegant prose and philosophy he inserts to lift it way beyond the run of the mill mystery book.
The Wayfaring Stranger is the best yet. It’s not one of the Robicheaux series, it’s part of a Holland series, lawmen whose Texas lives and challenges we’ve read about in previous books. Wayfaring Stranger is the story of Weldon Holland (Burke tells us in an after word that Hollan – no D – is an old Texas family name in his line) who lives with his grandfather and runs into the real Bonnie and Clyde. Fast forward and he is fighting in the Ardennes, and the only reason you have faith he will survive is that there are so many pages ahead of you . . . he and one of his men trek, hop a train, and end up in a deserted death camp, where they find one survivor – a woman. The three of them are surrounded by fighting armies and find safety in a local farm’s cellar.
Oops. I’ve already given away that Weldon survives the battle. It’s hard to write much more without giving too much away. It’s a powerful story, powerfully written. It’s about good men and women and weak men and women and how sometimes an evil person can surprise you with a goodness.
Warning. Once you pick up Wayfaring Stranger, you’ll need a block of time so you can just go ahead and finish it. You won’t be putting it down.
“Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor . . . “
Who are we?
I’m listening to a heartbreaking discussion on National Public Radio’s Diane Rehm show about the masses of children heading toward the southern border of the United States.
Anti-immigration is nothing new, not in the United States, not in newer countries. It is shocking to me, however, that people who came from somewhere else are so strongly opposed to allowing these desperate children in. If they are running for our border – and they are – they are desperate. They are desperate to escape violent death, and death by starvation, death of the spirit eeking out a living day to day.
“They come here for a hand-out!” is the most common complaint.
Read your American history. Very few immigrants – your ancestors, American citizens – arrived with money. Most relied on friends, family, the immigrant community, social services – whatever they needed to survive until they could get on their feet.
And get on their feet they did. Immigrants to America come here to work hard, believing that working hard will give them a chance at a better life. Your ancestors and mine – they came and worked hard, scraping together the money to build a business and/or to send their kids to schools. If you’ve ever attended a citizenship ceremony, you will love the jubilation. They don’t want a handout. They want a chance at building a decent life.
So now it’s “I’ve got mine, go back where YOU belong?”
When I grew up, not even in the United States proper, but in a U.S. territory, we sang a wonderful song, from a poem by Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus, which is on a plaque on the Statue of Liberty:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
I’ve never forgotten those words we all sang as children. The immigrant flows into America are our life-blood. You can keep your stale traditions and meaningless pomp, she cries, send me those willing to work hard and yearning for freedom.
How can we refuse CHILDREN seeking asylum? Each child we feed, house and educate will have a chance to become contributing citizens. The face of our nation is changing, has already changed greatly and will continue to change, and what we choose today will have a critical effect on what our society will look like tomorrow.
Do we still yearn for liberty for all? Do we want a highly stratified society where some are born to high paying jobs and others relegated to trades (I’ve seen how this works in another country; it’s stultifying.) Restricting access to all that we enjoy will create a wholly different society, a zero-sum-game society, where your loss is my gain, instead of an everyone wins society, where my success lifts you, too. Our country thrives on the creation of wealth; ideas are generated, resources and labor pools are created, they are not finite, they transition. Immigrants fuel the kind of innovation and population flow that keeps the lifeblood of our country flowing.
My family has been in the US a long time. We qualify as daughters-of-just-about-everything. We were immigrants; we were not native-born. The entire United States, other than the First People, are immigrants. We are immigrants, all of us. It makes us strong.
Pope Meets With Sudanese Woman Condemned for Apostasy
I am not Catholic, but what I love about this humble Pope shines through in these photos – the Pope, the revered leader of the Christian world, is standing, while the family sits in his presence. His loving actions speak loudly. You can see all the photos on AOL News by clicking here.
ROME (AP) – Pope Francis met privately Thursday with a Sudanese woman who refused to recant her Christian faith in the face of a death sentence, blessing the woman as she cradled her infant born just weeks ago in prison.
The Vatican characterized the visit with Meriam Ibrahim, 27, her husband and their two small children as “very affectionate.”
The 30-minute encounter took place just hours after the family landed at Rome’s Ciampino airport, accompanied by an Italian diplomat who helped negotiate her release, and welcomed by Italy’s premier, who hailed it as a “day of celebration.”
Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said the pope “thanked her for her faith and courage, and she thanked him for his prayer and solidarity” during the half-hour meeting Thursday. Francis frequently calls attention to the suffering of those persecuted for their religious beliefs.
Lombardi said the presence of “their wonderful small children” added to the affectionate tone of the meeting. Ibrahim was presented with a rosary, a gift from the pope.
Ibrahim held her sleeping infant as she stepped off the plane from Sudan, which had blocked her from leaving the country even after the country’s highest court overturned her death sentence in June. An Italian diplomat carried her 18-month-old son and they were followed by her husband, Daniel Wani, who is a citizen of the United States and South Sudan.
Ibrahim and her family are expected to spend a few days in Rome before heading to the United States.
Ibrahim, whose father was Muslim but whose mother was an Orthodox Christian from Ethiopia, was sentenced to death over charges of apostasy. She married her husband, a Christian, in a church ceremony in 2011. As in many Muslim nations, Muslim women in Sudan are prohibited from marrying non-Muslims, though Muslim men can marry outside their faith.
The sentence was condemned by the United States, the United Nations and Amnesty International, among others, and both the United States and Italy – a strong death penalty opponent with long ties to the Horn of Africa region – worked to win her release.
Sudan’s high court threw out her death sentence in June, but she was then blocked from leaving the country by authorities who questioned the validity of her travel documents.
Lapo Pistelli, an Italian diplomat who accompanied the family from Sudan, said Italy was able to leverage its ties within the region. “We had the patience to speak to everyone in a friendly way. This paid off in the end,” he said.
Rehab, An Unlikely Hero
I love this story. When you start reading the bible, you come across the most human of our race, you have the dramas of sibling rivalry, disobedience, and murder, the heartbreak of childlessness, slavery, and terrible loss, you have marriages and wars . . . the full spectrum of human behavior is there. And you have Rehab, a prostitute, who has heard of this God, but is not a Hebrew. She will help them in return for safety for her family. All who shelter in her small apartment, protected by a red ribbon (or rope), live.
In a later chapter of the bible, we learn how Rehab figures in the family line of Jesus.
Joshua 2:1-14
2Then Joshua son of Nun sent two men secretly from Shittim as spies, saying, ‘Go, view the land, especially Jericho.’ So they went, and entered the house of a prostitute whose name was Rahab, and spent the night there. 2The king of Jericho was told, ‘Some Israelites have come here tonight to search out the land.’ 3Then the king of Jericho sent orders to Rahab, ‘Bring out the men who have come to you, who entered your house, for they have come only to search out the whole land.’
4But the woman took the two men and hid them. Then she said, ‘True, the men came to me, but I did not know where they came from. 5And when it was time to close the gate at dark, the men went out. Where the men went I do not know. Pursue them quickly, for you can overtake them.’ 6She had, however, brought them up to the roof and hidden them with the stalks of flax that she had laid out on the roof. 7So the men pursued them on the way to the Jordan as far as the fords. As soon as the pursuers had gone out, the gate was shut.
8 Before they went to sleep, she came up to them on the roof 9and said to the men: ‘I know that the Lord has given you the land, and that dread of you has fallen on us, and that all the inhabitants of the land melt in fear before you. 10For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea* before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites that were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed. 11As soon as we heard it, our hearts failed, and there was no courage left in any of us because of you. The Lord your God is indeed God in heaven above and on earth below. 12Now then, since I have dealt kindly with you, swear to me by the Lord that you in turn will deal kindly with my family. Give me a sign of good faith 13that you will spare my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them, and deliver our lives from death.’ 14The men said to her, ‘Our life for yours! If you do not tell this business of ours, then we will deal kindly and faithfully with you when the Lord gives us the land.’
No matter who we are, no matter what we have done, the love of God follows us everywhere, with the free gift of salvation, if only we see it, as Rehab did, and ask for it. God is great!
All Who Exalt Themselves Will Be Humbled
Today’s Gospel reading makes me squirm; it does not come naturally to me, a first-born, to be humble. I love being special. I love to be honored, to be given a seat of honor, to get that upgrade. And I think I am very human, so I imagine the reaction this radical teaching received among his own people, and among the scribes and Pharisees who also loved being special . . .
Matthew 23:1-12
23Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2‘The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; 3therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practise what they teach. 4They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear,* and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. 5They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. 6They love to have the place of honour at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, 7and to be greeted with respect in the market-places, and to have people call them rabbi. 8But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students.* 9And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven. 10Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah.* 11The greatest among you will be your servant. 12All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.
Zombies and Me and Romans
A very long time ago, I loved scary movies, and then a friend told me to see ‘Night of the Living Dead’ and scary movies lost all their charm for me. I was young, to get to my job I walked eight blocks to the bus stop, and I was living in Seattle, where early morning is still very dark. Rationally, I know zombies of the kind in ‘The Night of the Living Dead’ do not exist; irrationally, those were eight long dark blocks and my heart jumped with every movement caught out of the corner of my eye.
Why is it that zombies are so terrifying to me? I have always thought it was because they exemplify the worst in us, the kinds of things we do when we are in mobs fueled by passion and violence, or even smaller groups where we go places and do things we would never do on our own.
As I read todays Lectionary readings, however, I realized that the reasons zombies have such a visceral horror for me is that they are the hidden me, the appetites and hungers I won’t even acknowledge to myself; the urge to kill when someone treats me rudely or cuts me off in traffic, the appetites I yearn to indulge, zombies epitomize everything we are without the saving grace of a loving God.
Romans 8:1-11
8There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2For the law of the Spirit* of life in Christ Jesus has set you* free from the law of sin and of death. 3For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin,* he condemned sin in the flesh, 4so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.* 5For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit* set their minds on the things of the Spirit.* 6To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit* is life and peace. 7For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot, 8and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
9 But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit,* since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit* is life because of righteousness. 11If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ* from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through* his Spirit that dwells in you.
Revolutionary Government: South Africa
AdventureMan and I have a soft spot for South Africa, not the least of which for the dramatic and radical way they transformed from apartheid government to democratic government. It is not to say South Africa has been without problems – there are still problems. But the manner in which they confronted and dealt with their past and then moved on allows change to happen, change in the heart.
Today’s meditation from Forward Day by Day:
FRIDAY, May 30
Psalm 85:3. You withdrew all your wrath; you turned from your hot anger. (NRSV)
But for the grace of God and the work of extraordinary leaders such as Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, the fall of apartheid in South Africa could have been marked by one of the worst bloodbaths ever seen.
The incendiary ingredients were all present: a repressive minority regime that ruled by violence, fear, and fiat over a majority population denied fundamental human rights and forced to live a subservient existence.
There was upheaval, but the nation never fell into anarchy as it radically changed its government, thanks largely to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Chaired by Tutu, then the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, the commission held hearings throughout the country. Victims told their stories of torture, killing, and degradation, sometimes confronting the accused.
The goal was not vengeance or justice but truth-telling to clear a path for healing. Powerful emotions were released. There were tearful confessions and apologies. There was forgiveness. The people of South Africa managed to turn from their hot anger and begin building a new nation.
Can we do the same? Where can we forsake our anger for the liberating power of forgiveness?
Leadership – A Memorial Day Meditation
This is today’s Forward Day by Day reading, and I think it is perfect for Memorial Day, a day in which we celebrate those who fought and gave their lives that we might live free:
MONDAY, May 26 Rogation Day
Matthew 13:14. You will indeed listen, but never understand, and you will indeed look, but never perceive.
The daughter of the young clergyman looked and she did perceive.
She had taken a bus trip with her father to their home country so she could obtain an identification card at the age of eighteen. Before the bus left, the driver asked if someone would pray for a safe journey. Her father walked to the front of the bus and led the passengers in prayer. Later, at a rest stop, the priest noticed some trash littering the area. After other passengers walked past heedlessly, he scooped it up and put it in a trash bin.
The acts seemed minor, and he thought no more about them. But later, his daughter asked him to read her homework—a profile of a leader. He did and was humbled and amazed.
The profile was about him. Citing those two examples and others, the daughter described how his behavior reflected his values. She wrote, “Leadership is not a title, but it is about the way you live your life.”
She had done much more than see her father’s actions. She had perceived their meaning and importance in the context of their faith.
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