partsofspeaking

Advent calendars are blocks of wood or cardboard with December 1-25 marked.   Little doors in the wood or paper can be opened.   For some reason, you can buy them with chocolate behind the doors (nothing against chocolate, but why does everything at Christmas have to revolve around food?   Well, we are feasting in celebration of a birth, but ……)

Advent means, “He comes.”   Where does He come?   Into the world.   Into our homes.   Into our brains and hearts and beings.   Into our wills, or He should.   Christ in you, the hope of glory.  

The message of the Old Testament is “He is coming.”   The message of the Gospels is “He is here.”   The message of the Epistles is “He has come and done the work of God ordained for this age.”   The message of Revelation is “He is coming again.”   As C.S.Lewis has his characters say of Aslan, He will make all things right. Even the first time, Jesus made things right.   We just didn’t always see it.

The weather today is deluge-ional.

So now Newt Gingrich is at the head of the Republican pack.   Newt, who is from this part of Georgia, is a smart guy, an interesting speaker, an experienced politician.    And I agree totally with him about the immigration matter he is supposedly in trouble about now; some conservatives just don’t get it.   Latinos should be on our side; Republicans are running them off and slitting their own political throats.   However, Newt cannot bring in the votes against Obama, if that is the issue.   I am not sure Romney can either, but Newt can’t.   And I don’t trust him to make good decisions.   But that’s just me.   I just think it’s funny the media are bearing down on him right now.   He would be a dream candidate for the Dems.   Let it be said I do not consider myself a Republican, but a conservative.  I like most traditional, truly Republican Republican principles; it's the Republican politicans I have trouble with.

The alternate title to this post would be:  The Hallmark Channel Christmas programming: Jesus Need Not Apply. Hallmark has created some beautiful programming over the years.  Sarah Plain and Tall is one example I could give.  But they have also created some incredibly vapid stuff, programs that make the Lifetime network look Shakespearean.  I watched one last night while I was trying to make progress on my NaNoWriMo novel, which I still haven’t named.    Ten minutes in I was pretty sure where the made-for-TV-“movie” was going and how it would end; I was 90% correct.  I kept it on anyway, and the program was sweet and entertaining, if predictable. However, it was supposedly a Christmas-themed program, like what they have already been running for three weeks (don’t get me started!  I won’t be putting up a tree for two more weeks.  I don’t like it being up for more than two or three weeks, really, but I know I am in the minority.)...

I get lots and lots of solicitations from nonprofits for donations.   Sometimes they send me gifts; I got a tote bag yesterday that is really cute.   But if a charity can send out that kind of thing, that means to me they aren’t using the money correctly.   In the case of the charity that sent me the bag, they spend over 50% of their income on “fundraising,” not the mission of the agency.   Another group calls me up every year and I’m just hang up nowadays, because they spent 85% on fundraising and don’t even do what their name implies.   There are several websites a consumer can visit to check out these agencies and nonprofits; recently I have used Charity Navigator, but there are others.   I am very concerned about stewardship of my resources because of reading a recent review of the book Toxic Charity .   Too much of our “charity” does the same thing we conservatives accuse the federal government of doing—causing dependence, not instilling work ...