bierkergaard

In my search of the "Vulture Culture" term yesterday, I was reminded that the phrase was the name of an Alan Parsons album back in the early 1980's. Lina asked me who was playing on Spotify. I said Alan Parsons...she commented that it sounded very 1980'ish but that she liked the sound. She is actually more of a fan of the 1980's songs than I am. During the 1980's, I (D.O.B. 1963) was more attuned to 1960's songs. Some generational echo lag there. She (D.O.B. 1973) had never heard of A.P. before, though. The stand-out song on the LP was a song called "Let's Talk About Me. " The Alan Parsons Project band was one of my favorite bands back in the day. I thought their songs were lyrically intellectually interesting with a tuneful vibe. There were some bands in the 1980's who were current that I liked...U2, A.P., REM, The Call, and a few others. The cover art pretty much illustrates visually the song and is what happens when we desire to ta...

Ewww...I was just out for a run a few minutes ago and encountered a vulture who was eating dinner at the Road Kill Cafe. He was picking at his food--some indescribable mass of rotting animal flesh--and reluctantly abandoned his meal as I approached. He then took to flight and ominously sat on a telephone pole, waiting for me to pass. I heard the term "Vulture Culture" from the People of the Second Chance website. Spiritually, it a condition where an individual, a group, or a society, derives a sense of satisfaction and glee in the failure and humiliation of others. There is a joyful feast in destruction and death, a sustenance of feeling better because we can make others feel worse. The Pharisees in Jesus' time expected righteousness to be deposited in their accounts as a dividend from their judgement of the unrighteousness of others. Not so, said Jesus. For you all are bankrupt in soul. We become more like Jesus when we take no joy in the misery of others. The bill for ...

There I was in the middle of the uber-storm last week here in Pennsylvania standing on a patio chair cleaning out a gutter. It was 12:30 in the morning. Water was incrementally pouring into the garage. I peered out the glass pane back door and grasped that the cascading waterfall was in the wrong place. It should be at the end of the gutter and not the middle. Further it should be going out a downspout and not the gutter itself. Instead, it was spattering off the patio in gobs and some of it was sneaking under the door. I surmised that the gutter was clogged with leaves and so it was. Soon, I had it free and flowing. The past can also seep steadily into our present. While not always a bad occurrence, more often I find myself thinking and being affected by some negative dead leave memories in the gutter of my mind. I am not sure how clean my mind...I wish it was as easy as climbing a patio chair and scooping. Yet, what we think about is a choice. We diminish the power of our actual thou...

Yesterday afternoon, my neighbor got to work chainsawing a fallen tree from the storm into logs and then pulverizing the smaller branches in a mulcher that he bought in the morning at Lowe's. Instead of paying the $ 500 deductible from his home insurance and then paying someone else to do the job, he just decided to do the work himself and use that same $ 500 to buy the mulcher. He's a self-reliant person and does not expect others to take care of his own problems, a characteristic in decline these days of victimization. Hmm...there is a lesson here. Insurance should only exist for those devastating occurrences that ruin health and home. Catastrophic events that have life-altering consequences. Otherwise, pay your own way. It would put market discipline back into the system. Either we have a free market or we don't. A half-public, half-private system will never work over the long-term. Insurance companies don't want a free market either. Imagine the taking out all of th...

As I picked up the sticks and branches from the storm the other day, a distant church bell played "A Mighty Fortress is Our God." I strained to hear the notes. At least that is what it sounded like to me. For the purposes of this blog post, let us conclude that it was and move on, for this writing would make no sense if not. Or even less sense than usual. One of the stanzas: A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing; Our helper He, amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing Luther had a robust theology that acknowledged that life in this world is full of the flood of mortal ills prevailing. Having Papist wanting to drown you alive or light you aflame on a stake can do that to a man. These mortal ills prevail in the reality that they happen and are not prevented. God certainly could stay the flood and push the water back unto the skies, yet in His providence He does not. The greatest threat to a humanity's soul health is pride: The belief that we can command th...

Two Bison were lost at Hershey Park's Zoo America due to high waters. With the "two by two" species idea and the flooding, it is not hard to draw parallels to Noah. When I arrived back from work on Wednesday through the harsh rains, I put on Facebook that I was in need of some pitch and gopherwood because I was fixing to build an Ark. About an hour later, a friend on Facebook commented that he was already tired of Noah jokes. I wondered if my mine was before he had made that assessment, was causative of that condition, or after. The worst of course being "after"--that my Noah joke had missed getting on the boat--my comment drowned in a Deluge of disenchantment, for several others flooded his post with similar of "tired of Ark jokes" comments. I knew when I posted my comment that I was taking a chance of being trite. I thought the pitch and gopherwood wording from the King James was sufficiently arcane to be amusing and would tow the rest of the joke ...

Oh yes, I have rain on the brain, rain in the drain. Dr. Seuss could go on but I am out of lines. That is why he was Dr. Seuss and I'm not. I think the themes of the bierkergaard blog for the foreseeable future are going to be water-logged and logs about water. Catching up on reading a couple of missed days of " 365 Days with Calvin " devotional this morning. School was cancelled because of the flooding, so I have some time. If I miss a few days reading the daily entries, which I really should not do, I at least try to go a back and read what I missed. For God could speak through a devotional that I skipped. On September 5, Calvin writes, "Children ought to be like their Father....Christ declares that unless we show kindness to the unworthy, we cannot be children of our Heavenly Father." Calvin is caricatured as being a stern man, unloving and unkind. Bent on preaching predestination and damnation. Yet, in reading his writings, truly he writes from the Scriptur...