A Pilgrim’s Odyssey

Light, When You Can Neither Buy Nor Sell

How do you find light when you can neither buy nor sell?

How do you prepare for when living isn't as easy as going on Amazon or whipping out your debit card at the grocery store?

Finding Hope For The Future

So what is next? Prepare yourself, your family, and your close friends to support and look out for each other.

There is no universal source of news and facts close to a majority of people trust. There are lies and mistruths on both sides, and all the big media players are controlled by a few people with money.

The majority of politicians on both sides are more about personal gain and power.

It is a city vs. small-town-rural thing. This means on-going and greater chaos, but few “safe” places.

So what is next? Bigger government, more rules, more chaos, more restrictions, small businesses and restaurants dead, and the only solution the new government will probably have is more of the same.

Where is the hope? The hope is in faith, your family, and your community.  Build those up now, more than ever. Your only other option is despair.

Why? And What We Have Lost

Today is a sad day. What has brought us here? Trump? Liberals? Antifa? Rascists? Republicans?

I could go on with more labels and more “enemies” of someone. 

But, I think it’s more basic and it’s everyone. It's a loss of who we are and what we should be. It's a relinquishing of personal responsibility to our worse impulses.

If we don’t change these things, nothing will get better. We’ll continue to be divided, divisive, and on a road to our own destruction.

Have A Dish of Liberty, Family, & Faith

Wow in Georgia! Hundreds of thousands descend on DC!

But we aren’t gonna talk about that today. Today, we are gonna talk about having a dish and creating a to-do list of liberty, family, and faith.

Ate in a great restaurant after my class today, The Dish. Alone. Yep, sat there for an hour and not one other customer walked in.

It was an incredible experience. Its specialty is a tasting menu of small plates that offers a variety of tastes. I was there during happy hour, each plate was just $3. Calamari, Shrimp, fish tacos, dumplings, pork salad. Yet, I was alone.

The Dish has been open 14 years, founded by a Manhattan Chef who fell in love with a Lynchburg girl. My waitress was extravagantly tattooed and another transplant along with her tattoo artist husband.

The owner said the only reason he was still in business was that he owned the building. He laughed when I asked if he would have stayed open if he rented.

Restaurants aren’t the only business suffering, but they may be the hardest hit. I bet one near you has its own interesting story built on a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. Don’t let government idiots riding their chariots destroy it. Spend your money with them.

Yesterday, we talked a bit about the foundation of our country and the foundations of our faith. What purpose should we follow from these foundation? How should that impact our family, our work, our hobbies?

Modern life is too complicated. We run around doing a lot, often feeling like we have accomplished nothing. One good thing about Covid is that it has given us time to reflect on core values and how we’ve lived our life.

Benjamin Franklin asked himself the same questions as a young man and the answers altered how he approached each day. He began to start each day with a question: What good shall I do this day?

He then ended each day with the question: What good have I done this day?

What will you order your day around? What is your to-do list? What will be your foundations.

I choose liberty, family, and faith. What will you choose?

Empty Restaurants and Golden Calves

We came to you yesterday from the Charlotte airport, today, it’s beautiful Lynchburg, Virginia.

Traveling outside your own community, you truly see the devastation of the last 9 months of Covid.

Lynchburg has a population of about 82,000. It is home to Liberty University which has about 15,000 students, and a couple thousand more faculty and staff. They are all at home for the rest of the semester. Lynchburg seems dead. My hotel has maybe five cars in the lot. The last time I was here it was full. The first restaurant I went to has been closed since December 31st because a staffer tested positive for Covid. At my next choice, I was one of 4 people eating at 5:30. I didn't see any take-outs.

No wonder something like 70% of people want $2,000 checks from the government. But what happens when more and more restaurants collapse and they want bailouts, and then commercial real estate collapses and they want bail-outs, etc? The “help” will come from those who destroyed us and more will be taken from us in order to give us pennies.

Yesterday, I talked about foundations.

 

In trying to control nature, we are chasing something unattainable and allowing ourselves to become enslaved to public policy, drifting further away from these foundational words.

We want a Golden Calf to save us because we don’t believe in God, we believe in ourselves. And what happens when you do that?

Foundations: Thoughts On A Big Week Ahead

This is a big week! Senatorial elections in Georgia that will decide the majority in the Senate, and whether there will be full Democratic control or split control with Republicans.

There is the pending certification of the election by the House and Senate and the stated objections by some republicans.

There is the Trump rally in Georgia.

This might be a good week to spend some time reviewing your fundamentals of belief. Read over the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Remind yourself of the words that proclaimed our freedom.

Read your bible, especially Genesis and the Gospels. Remind yourself why God created us, where we went wrong, and why you need Christ.

That is what I’ll be talking about the rest of this week, who we are and what we were called to be, as a people and as a country.

To weather the storm coming in 2021, you’ll need a firm foundation to stand upon. You do not want to become the problem, one of deceit and exaggeration. You want to be part of the solution of truth - freedom, liberty, and the conviction to live free.

Your Choice To Make 2021 Awesome!

2020 was quite a year. No need to rehash.

Now, what will you do with your 2021?

I was reminded more than ever this past year, that to get the life you want, you have to take control and stop making excuses. 2020 forced me to look outside the box and because of that effort 2021 is shaping up to be a great year for work and for my family. Following the mantra that Viktor Frankl based his trauma work on, no matter what happens to us, we always have a choice.

Your choices are everyday. How much time will you spend with family and friends? How much time will you spend on the phone? Will you work out, educate yourself, simplify, make changes, you know, all the normal New Year’s resolution stuff.

But can you make the choices you need without excuses? Can you simply "choose" and follow through?

You don’t really need a new, New Years resolution, you need the commitment to make the choices you already know you need to do, and be willing to suffer for them!

As the author and psychologist, Jordan Peterson, probably said best:

“To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open. It means deciding to voluntarily transform the chaos of potential into the realities of habitable order. It means adopting the burden of self-conscious vulnerability, and accepting the end of the unconscious paradise of childhood, where finitude and mortality are only dimly comprehended. It means willingly undertaking the sacrifices necessary to generate a productive and meaningful reality (it means acting to please God, in the ancient language).”
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

Anthony Hopkins: Might Forces Will Come To Your Aid!

Today, the great actor, Anthony Hopkins, shared a video celebrating 45 years of sobriety. 82, he was full of fire and joy and hope.

His journey to sobriety and faith began with a question that popped into his head, "Do you want to live or die?:

"I want to live," was his answer, and he did.

He also shared the following nuggets of wisdom:

"Hang in there! Today is the tomorrow you were so worried about yesterday."

"Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid!"

Before he joined AA and became sober, he was an atheist. But at an AA meeting a woman asked him, “Why don’t you just trust in God?” In that moment, he did, and he has held to his faith ever since.

Desperation, A Tender Trap

The band U2’s song, So Cruel, is one of my favorites. A mood of melancholy and lyrics that strike to the heart of the human condition, tragic relationships, and unrequited love. A condition of frailty so apparent today.

One of my favorite lines:

“Desperation is a tender trap

It gets you every time”

So Cruel is about love between a man and a women. But love and passion can exist in other areas. Lately, I’ve seen examples of this in small business owners struggling to survive. Their passion turned to despair. Especially in California where the desperation of shutdowns are now requiring police officers and other officials to confront business owners who won’t comply because their livelihoods are at stake. It is truly heartbreaking.

What you don’t see is the desperate struggle of love and passion that leads to a successful business. The heartbreak of lessons learned from failure. Then some bureaucrat takes it all away while Wal-Mart and Amazon prosper. One example is the Pomp Salon in Stockton, California, it's attempted shut-down by armed officers captured on video.

From Thomas Merton’s book, A Vow of Conversation: Journals 1964-65:

"On the Wednesday I was in New York, it was a lovely morning and at noon I rode down in the taxi to the Guggenheim Museum through the park under the tunnels of light and foliage, with the driver talking about his problems, his nerves, his analysis and his divorce. The more I think about the museum, the more I recognize it as a light, beautiful, airy and intelligent place. And the Van Goghs, wheels of fire, cosmic, rich, full-bodied hones victories over desperation, permanent victory, especially the last light-and-shadow calligraphic impastos."

We overcome despair with cosmic fire!

Here Comes Baby Jesus

Here comes baby Jesus folks. It is Christmas eve. Now is a good time to focus a bit before your living room is filled with wrapping paper, empty boxes, and candy wrappers.

Isaiah 7:14 told us of this day, over 700 years before Christ’s birth:

“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”

That's right, today is no ordinary day, tomorrow a savior is born. History is altered, God reveals himself through his son and we are given a pathway to salvation and a revelation of who we can become.

Now act like it! Take a minute to pray quietly, to give thanks, to read from scripture. Include your children and friends, do it at home, and do it in church!

Rejoice, a child will soon be born!