Snail Mail:
2000 Mallory Lane, Suite 130-229, Franklin, Tennessee 37067
Search Results for: label/Sandra Day O'Connor
Walking With God in America …
Anyone who doesn’t believe God has blessed America just needs to take a long walk and witness her beauty posits Ken Duncan, a world renowned Australian photographer, who visited all 50 states with his camera and notepad.
In the intro to his book, Walking With God In America, Duncan writes:
It might seem funny that although I am Australian, God has given me a real burden for America. No nation in the world has been more naturally blessed than the United States, and I believe God has done that so people will understand how much He cares for the nation. America’s faith in God is what had made it one of the greatest countries on earth, and faith is a beacon of hope for other struggling nations around the world.
From “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance (the phrase was upheld in 2004 by the Supreme Court 5-4 because Sandra Day O’Connor argued that the phrase is “meaningless” — “any religious freight the words may have been meant to carry has long since been lost”) to removing references to God in textbooks on American history, the place or name of God in America’s public square — literally — is an ongoing political and legal powder keg.
I’ll defer any attempts at an argument that maintaing liberty requires virtue — and virtue requires true religion, to John Adams:
We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
For now, I’ll leave debates on whether or Constitution intends for there to be freedom of religion or freedom from religion and follow Duncan’s simple advice to look for America’s spirit in her beauty!
Acknowledgments: Panographic photographs are (c) Ken Duncan and used by permission; all rights reserved. The quote from Sandra Day O’Connor and John Adams are from Rediscovering God In America by Newt Gingrich (Thomas Nelson).
Share this:
Labor Day: It Beats the Alternative
A celebration of a “worker’s holiday.”
Founded in 1882 (or 1884) by machinist Matthew Maguire (or by some reports, carpenter Peter McGuire). Labor Day in the United States was ratified as a federal holiday in 1894 (maybe; and maybe again in 1898) and subsequently by all 50 states as a state holiday. It is celebrated on the first Monday of September each year.
In the words of McGuire (no one can remember what Maguire said), Labor Day should be a “worker’s holiday” to honor those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.” (His reference to “rude nature” does take a little luster off the honor.)
By a resolution of the American Federation of Labor Convention of 1909, the Sunday preceding Labor Day was adopted as Labor Sunday and dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement (Source: Department of Labor website.) But that seemed like too much work and conflicted with church services so it never quite caught on. Over time, another hallmark of the holiday, highly charge political speeches on the evils of the Bourgeoisie’s exploitation of the Proletariat, faded away also. We can thank long-winded politicians, the NFL, and the defeat of Communism for that.
Ever since Adam’s Curse in the garden (Genesis 3:17-19), though, there has been a definite negative connotation associated with work.
Cursed is the ground for your sake;
In toil you shall eat of it
All the days of your life.Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you,
And you shall eat the herb of the field.In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread
Till you return to the ground,
For out of it you were taken;
For dust you are,
And to dust you shall return.
Karl Marx, writing from his comfortable upper middle class lifestyle in London, England, couldn’t help but express outrage over the horrific conditions for much of the worldwide working class, though his assertion that industrialization separated ‘man’ from the fruit of his labors failed to note that the life expectancy of farmers wasn’t very long either.
A negativity toward work, even by those who ply their trade in safe, comfortable, life enhancing environments with free coffee and real half and half, persists. For example, if someone works long hours today and shows a fondness for work, he or she is labelled a ‘workaholic’ – someone with an obvious and dangerous psychological deficiency. One of the fantasies presented by motivational speakers as a good idea to the modern American worker is to quit a job that doesn’t meet his or her need for self-actualization – without having something else that pays the bills lined up.
I have no desire to argue against the theology of the Curse. But I would posit that there is something a lot worse than work. No work.
Just ask yourself this question, who looks happier and lives better, the one who is out of work or the one who is gainfully employed?
I like what friend and author, Richard Exley, presented in The Rhythm of Life. The best life, the fulfilled life is one that has the proper balance of work, rest, play, and worship. In a culture obsessed with play – and certainly not going overboard in the area of worship – what a great paradigm for ordering your life in a way that opens you up to experience and express what matters most.
Wow. I feel like I have a better attitude toward hard work already. I plan to remember that tomorrow when I head back to the ‘salt mines’!
