I looked through a local paper today and saw the heading, “Restore Democracy.” Under the heading was information on those working to recall Gov. Rick Synder. It reminded me of a bumper sticker I saw recently that said, “We Want Our Country Back: Defeat Obama.”

I guess I’m one of those people who believes our country hasn’t left and our democracy is intact. Accepting the importance of dissenting views is actually a hallmark of our democracy and our country. I find it frustrating when those on the left and the right use overheated rhetoric toward their own political end.

It isn’t that I don’t have strong feelings on political issues, I do. I just don’t think the health of the American Republic depends on my favorites being in power.

This past week I happened to stumble across a church rummage sale. I looked at the many items that the church was selling and was taken by some of the silverware. It did look like it was from a different era and to my undiscerning eye it looked like they might be made of real silver. Yet what I liked best was the small lettering stamped “Congregational” on the front of all the pieces. It did seem kind of classy and refined.

I told my dad about the silverware and he told me of a story that was relayed to him about the church. During World War II, the Congregationalists and the Methodists decided they should worship together. Such an arrangement would save on utility costs and perhaps make for larger gathering with many men having gone off to war. During this time, a dispute arose between the two groups of Christians over . . . yes, silverware. Some pieces went missing and one group had accused the other group of taking the pieces (by the time the story reached my dad, it wasn’t clear which group was the “victim” or the “accused.”)

After hearing that story the lettering took on a whole new meeting. It seems that the Congregational Church had decided to put their names on their silverware as a loss-prevention tactic against their fellow Christians.

While this certainly doesn’t rise to level of betray of the far more famous 30 pieces of silver given to Judas, it does seem a sad thing for Christians to be arguing over. With all the demanding needs and suffering in the world, isn’t it too often true that church argues amongst itself over trivial issues. Do you have any “silverware” issues in your life or within your church? Perhaps on some days, we Christians can keep focused on the real priorities of kingdom. Such an outcome would indeed be golden.

When is it presumptuous to call yourself a writer? I don’t make a living writing. At times, I’ve had jobs that writing was a part of it. Yet one of the things I have rediscovered about myself over the past couple of years is how much I do enjoy writing. And I have had the chance to expand the types of writing that I’m involved in. I was very fortunate to be involved with a science-fiction and fantasy writer’s group while I was living in Kansas City. (Perhaps some of my projects in that vein will appear.) There is some poetry, which fortunately not much of that will appear online. And a variety of other nonfiction subjects, some essays, some blog entires.

The Facebook status window can be very addictive, and I enjoy writing short little messages to go in that box and then check frequently to see what comments appear. I don’t think many of my Facebook contributions will stand the test of time. Probably none of my blog entires will either, but I feel that the longer-form contributions of blogs are so much more substantial than those little Facebook quips (I have yet to become an active Twitter person, but the same applies there too). I sometimes think Facebook is sharpening my senses so that I’m becoming like a small primate in the jungle anxiously jumping from subject to subject. (I’m not particularly happy with this trend)

The discipline of blogging on a regular basis is something I am wanting to get back to and I hope that this has a positive impact on my other writing projects as well. I plan eventually to pull old content back into this blog, but until then you will get my new posts on faith, politics, tech stuff, culture and other things which interest me, and hopefully some of those posts might interest you too. Thanks for stopping by.