Thoughts About Thanksgiving, Personal Growth, And A Few Things I Am NOT Thankful For

I have so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. I’ve spent another year as a husband, a father, and working in a job I love and find challenging yet fulfilling. My home and most of my family has been relatively untouched by the hardships of the current economy, and even more exciting, I am expecting the arrival of my second son any day now. Even though this year was harder for me, in terms of medical conditions and physical ailments, than previous years have been, through everything I’ve seen instruction, areas of my life for growth, and even divine purpose. So much so, that is this small way I understand what Flannery O’Connor meant by feeling sorry for people who have never been sick.

I’ve come to believe, that for the Christian, there is not a single situation or trial that any of us can go through that won’t be played through backward at the end of time and shown to reveal glory. This might be hard for some to understand and harder still for those knee-deep in their suffering to believe. Even a few short years ago I would have written this statement off as drivel myself, but it really is true. This is my cornucopia of thanks.

With the abundant blessing in my current life and a fresh perspective on eternity is it quite difficult to find things I am NOT thankful for. I have always been thankful for most things, but even still there are some things that I wish would just… go away. Here is a short list.

Celebrity Gossip / Controversy

It’s got to be hard these days to be a celebrity. The stars that helped bring the music and movie mediums to the grandeur that they are today are either aging, burning out, or finding it hard to shared the spot light with the throng of new artist clamoring for fame. Whatever the reason they all seem to be searching for some form of relevance. Some of these celebrities handle themselves gracefully and are still called upon for certain roles or tasks, but overall they seem happy with the mark they’ve made on history and seem content with their lives. Tom Hanks, Clint Eastwood, Angeline Jolie and even Justin Timberlake are perfect examples.

Others however seem to feed off public opinion as their very lively hood and can’t stand to be out of the spot light. The result of their feelings of inadequacy creates a downward spiral of pushing the edge and creating controversy to stay relevant to a new audience, there by making the new stars take things even further to edge to make their mark. The latest episode with Adam Lambert at the American Music Awards comes to mind. Janet Jackson and Britney Spears good examples. I’m even starting to see signs of this breakdown is “The Oprah” and “do nothing” celebrities like Paris Hilton and the Kardashians.

John and Kate

Jon and Kate Gosselin during happier times.

I’m not going to say too much about this situation other than I feel sorry for the kids. Who cheated on who with whom, or who said what about the show at what time doesn’t seem to matter anymore. They’ve created such a mess that is going to echo down through their kids and, most likely, a generation past that. It could just as easily be said that the gossip hungry people who ate up every bit of this gossip share some of the blame for this down fall. That idea isn’t so far fetched. These kids, and their parents, could really use some prayer.

Before I continue with my final two items, I want to make an observation. My previous “What I’m Not Thankful For” posts usually just turn into a hit list of people whose political views differ from my own (And canned cranberry sauce) and I’m starting to think that the that gimmick is getting a little old. I am still, very much, not thankful for just about everything the yahoos in Washington are doing, but this year I’ve changed the way I’m looking at these political problems.

In his book Reflections on the Psalms, C.S. Lewis asks an efficacious question. “How ought we to behave in the presence of very bad people?” He uses the illustration of a politician who consistently abuses his power for his own gain, and a newspaper owner who knowingly produces lies within his product, as his illustrations for “very bad people”. These two example complete the whole of what I’m not thankful for this year… but what hat I find interesting is that Lewis does not go on to further condemn the bad persons and their actions, but rather, he places the blame at the feet of the society that allowed these men to go unpunished. He blamed societies inaction. Though he wasn’t an American, I am sure he would not object to be summarizing his thoughts as “We The People” get the government and society that we allow.

I’ve chosen two “current event” items to not be thankful for:

Global Warming Alarmists, Al Gore

In light of new evidence, Al Gore has to take drastic measures for the global warming lie.

This week a hacker identifying himself only as “FOIA” (short for Freedom Of Information Act) broke into the servers at the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University in Great Britain and retrieved hundreds of emails. These emails contain proof that climate change “specialists” have been falsifying the data about global warming in order to propagate the lie that the world is warming. The emails themselves have been shown to be authentic. I’m not going to get into the specifics here, a simple Google news search on ‘hacked global warming’ should be all you need to find the facts, but I do want to point a couple things of out.

This supposed global warming data has been pushed down the American people’s throats since before I was born, 1979 was the first instance I could find, and has been paraded around as a means to limit industrial and technological growth as well as a money laundering funnel for literally billions of government dollars (tax dollars, our dollars). Even the current “cap and trade” legislation within the Senate, which economic experts agree is only going to further cripple the American economy, was drafted with this falsified information as the source for it’s inception.

So in light of this new, hard evidence that global warming is the hoax many people always thought it was, what are “We The People” going to do about it? Even though my Senator, Chuck Schumer, has stopped returning my correspondence (yup, he just completely ignores me now) I plan on raising holy hell and I encourage everyone to do the same. They have been playing this little game for too long with America’s wealth and I’m sick of it.

Al Gore, who has personally earned millions in pushing global warming on the rest of the world, and has proclaimed that global warming is “settled science” and “the debate is over” is notably silent.

President Obama.

Now before you get all kerfuffled, because heaven forbid anyone ever present an honest criticism of President Obama (he’s not George W. Bush you know), all I’m going to do is list three things that he has done since taking office that I a problem with. I could list a lot more, but in the interest of keeping my post short, I’m going to list three issues that irritated me the most. I’m just going to present the facts and you can make up your own mind whether or not you’re thankful for our chief community organizer.

1. He gave a speech to the troops on Veteran’s Day of this year and stated “I will back you to the hilt.” Yet (as of the time of this writing) still has not honored General Crystal’s request for 40,000 more boots on the ground in Afghanistan (or any suitable contingency plan). His reason? He says it’s not a simple decision and it’s a matter of “cost”.
2. He’s spent more money on social programs in 9 months than Bill Clinton did in 8 years.
3. He asked the FBI to not “rush to judgment” to call the massacre at Fort Hood a terrorist attack, though the attacker shouted “Allah Akbar” before opening fire, was had guilt about being scheduled to be deployed to a predominately Muslim occupied country, and was giving away Koran’s. But, he did decree before he knew all the facts (by his own admission), that a White Massachusetts police officer “acted stupidly” when he was responding to a possible breaking and entering call that ended up in a confrontation with the home’s irate, racist owner. (Who just happened to be a black college professor.)

So again I’ll present the question, what are “We The People” going to do about this? In a way, we’ve already started to make a stand. His numbers are tanking, the independents are starting to want nothing to do with his brand of hope and change, and all but of few of the people who I know personally that voted for him have thrown their hands up and told me (some even with quite a temper) “This is NOT what I voted for!” Even Saturday Night Live, a normally very Democrat-liberal friendly venue, has starting tacking shots at the do nothing President. I’m just hoping for change (get it? I played with his hope and change slogan!) in the 2012 elections.