hafacenturyncounting

Motivated by a lack of material.

Archive for the month “August, 2011”

IX-Hafathetime

With 60 plus posts behind me, I am at a place where I must make a few decisions. Do I continue this blog or do I dedicate some serious time to writing my book? Time is so very important to us all, for we never know how much we have.

Sunday we were examining eternity and the present in church. Eternity being something that is truly beyond our idea of understanding. How can one, by our standards, really comprehend what one has never experienced? It seems clear we will all reach this place eventually, though what we will actually find is “still up in the air.”

The present, a place all too real for most of us. This is a place that I look upon as a construction site. It is ever changing and needs more work to get to the finished product. Problem here is the finished product keeps changing. The blueprints are marred with erasure marks and it is getting harder and harder to see what we are ultimately trying to complete. This is the place where we can actively affect what our eternity will be and it is filled with near misses, mistakes, confusion, and controversy. More reality; if we don’t get it right here in the present, our future and eternity may not yield the desired results.

Later in the day I joined a group that pleasantly took me back in time. I spent several hours on one nostalgic journey after another.  Just that quick I realized I was focusing on something I could not have. I was escaping to the past. There is nothing wrong with visiting places we do not have real access to, as long as it does not become too time consuming. The retreat can all too quickly become a deep longing, an obsession.

When I find myself going astray in these matters I try to find something that gets me back to task, I do something for someone else. At numerous times I find I feel as though I will never be able to live up to what I think is expected of me, but there is no feeling that matches  the one you get when you do something that makes another person feel better.  You are given back a sense, that it is not all about you.  You get a piece of peace and a sliver of time to reflect on that which is not promised to us, now what are you going to do with this time.

Why Is This News….

Jesse James is planning his wedding to his tatoo artist Kat Von D? When this was plastered across my laptop screen and I thought,” Who gives a (we’ll just say) hoot?”What was Richard Willams showing his daughter Serena? Are Wills and Kate taking the USA by storm. What is Bristol Palin’s opinion about pre-marital sex?

My question is what has happened to the news? Now we could go back and forth about the line between news and gossip. Newspapers and reporters used to take pride in what they did and the service they provided. Now all they care about is getting information out there, even if it is bad information. They all know that in our rushed society all that we care about is speed and simplicity. Therefore it is easy to let things go, no one has time to truly investigate. If one bothers to take time to verify information they may miss the chance to “break the story”, so it is left to chance that the information is correct on some level or the other. What is important is you heard it first and where you heard it from.

I am amazed at how the media is so willing to take chances with misinformation now. They will write-it, publish it, say it and hide behind the so-called right to keep the source private. When in actuality on a number of occasions these are just out and out LIES!
Our newspapers and magazines are gossip columns and the gossip columns credible newspapers and magazines. The  parts/roles have become interchangeable and we let it happen.

There was a time when the news took up a particular part of the day. Honestly, a couple of hours of everyone else’s reality was more than enough for me. Now our news agencies are battling for ratings along with our entertainment. Perhaps, that is how and why we have gotten where we are. Someones pain and misery, someone’s dysfunctional family gives us reason to tune in. Yet, we act surprised when  the airways and newspapers are filled with questionable data.

We demand and require little therefore the result is exactly what we should expect, given the requirements. Personally I do not want valuable information mixed in, mixed up with my mindless indulgences. Yes I am as guilty as the next of watching/reading things that are clearly of no value other than shock or disgust. We have to realize at some point though, if there is no market for this material it will soon wither and die. We have to make a choice and perhaps a sacrifice or two, but in the long run we will benefit from a decision to demand more from the agencies that represent themselves as News Services.

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