HinesSight

Sustained by Drunkenness

I read the Tao Te Ching again over the weekend, looking, as always, for some inspiration and answers to life’s big questions. Of course, right off the bat the first line of chapter one demolishes this ridiculous expectation: “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.” Damn! I should be able to learn the secrets of the universe from a book! Except…wasn’t the universe around for, oh, some twelve billion years before there were books? Hmmmm. Maybe what made it possible for books to eventually be written is something far different from what is in books—words, concepts, ideas.

Laurel and I have been struck recently (not that this is a new revelation) about how shaky is the ground on which we all try to sustain ourselves. Of course, we have our idiosyncratic personal supports, which are different from other people’s supports. But almost everyone tries to sustain him- or herself by leaning on props that are something other than him- or herself. And those props are prone to falling over. People. Organizations. Political parties. Nations. Ideologies. Philosophies. Nature. Everything around us is changing and changeable. Disappointments are inevitable when we expect to find a firm grounding on ever-shifting sand.

Expectations have a lot to do with dissatisfaction. This is an obvious observation, but it bears observing nonetheless. What is happening is what is happening. And what isn’t happening is what isn’t happening. (If I keep on in this vein, I’ll have written a New Age book). So, how do we accept reality, whatever it may turn out to be? Chuang Tzu, an ancient Taoist sage, has some nice advice in a treatise called “The Full Understanding of Life.” Yes, these are just words. But they point toward a way of being that is anything but conceptual.

Chuang Tzu says, “The perfect man attains to be without form, as it were, and beyond the capability of being transformed….He will study with delight the process that gives beginning and ending to all things…In this condition, with his heavenly constitution kept entire and no crevice in his spirit, how can things disturb his serenity?” Wow. That sounds great. Having achieved that, I could probably even watch Fox News and not feel my blood beginning to boil. The key, it seems, is remaining continually drunk. Not on alcohol. But on something else that inebriates, and is all around us—maybe it even is us. This next Chuang Tzu paragraph is cool:

“Take the case of a drunken man falling from his carriage. Though he may suffer injury, he will not die. His bones and joints are the same as those of other men, but the injury which he receives is different: his spirit is entire. He knew nothing about getting into the carriage and nothing about falling from it. The thought of death or life, or of any alarm or affright, does not enter his breast. Therefore he encounters danger without shrinking from it. Completely under the influence of the liquor he has drunk, it is thus with him. How much more would it be so if he were under the influence of his Heavenly constitution.! The sagely man is kept hid in his Heavenly constitution and therefore nothing can injure him.”

Now, if I could just find that Tavern where the Liquor of Life never stops being served, and hangovers are unknown. I’ve heard sages say that it is so close at hand that we can’t see it because of its nearness, not its distance. Got to keep looking, I guess, though more and more I wonder if it is the looking that prevents me from finding it.

Global Warming…The Big Lie

Remember, you heard it first here, on HinesSight: Global warming is a big lie, probably propagated by the radical enviro-liberal-feminist-socialist cabal that controls everything through their secret meetings in a cavern deep underneath the offices of the New York Times, their unacknowledged, but oh-so-obvious mouthpiece.

How did Laurel and I figure out the truth about this conspiracy aimed at shutting down the red, white, and blue lifeblood that keeps the American economy humming, all those fuel-sucking SUVs, coal-fired power plants, and noisy polluting snowmobiles? Simple, we did some basic research. And the Big Lie stared us in the face. Checking the outside thermometer at noon today at our cabin in Camp Sherman, it read…44 degrees, on April 26.

Then, the clincher came when we took our half-frozen bodies into Sisters to warm up (if that sounds a bit kinky to out-of-staters, be assured that Sisters is a town about fifteen miles from Camp Sherman). Shopping away in a blessedly well-heated women’s clothing store, following two steps behind Laurel in my usual subservient husband’s shuffle, muttering transparently clichéd supportive comments (“that’s a nice color,” “you should try that on”), and counting the minutes until I could make a break to the Paulina Springs Bookstore, the proprietor suddenly yelled, “All customers out into the parking lot! We’re going to make a snowman!”

Well, not quite. It was more hail than snow. But it was damn cold hail, what with the strong wind blowing through the 40-odd degree air. I was thankful that I had stifled my desire to pack shorts for our mid-Spring outing to sunny central Oregon. Subtle hints that the weather might not as perfect as I had planned came yesterday as we passed by the Santiam Junction and Hoodoo ski area in a real honest to God snowstorm.

The cabal is probably working overtime trying to explain away this chink in the global-warming-is-really-happening armor. I’m sure the New York Times will conjure up some sort of fake statistics in an op-ed piece to keep the Big Lie going. But Laurel and I know better. We spent a day in late April brushing hail out of our hair.

[Tongue-in-cheek note: Global warming is real. Please read "Global warming: the big truth" in case you took this post at all seriously. Then go buy a hybrid car, if you don't have one already.]

Laurel makes waves at Water Resources Commission

Friday, Laurel testified during the public comment period at a meeting of the state Water Resources Commission. I played a part also, by looking on admiringly from the audience as she spoke. Laurel spouted out terms such as “recharge rates” and “sensitive groundwater overlay areas” with wonderful fluidity. I also contributed as Laurel’s faithful and obedient secretary by making up labels for the packets she handed on to the Commission.

Basically she appealed to the commissioners to step in and do something about Marion County’s longstanding apathy about groundwater problems. Laurel cited several instances in which obvious well problems were ignored, because the Planning Department is so pro-development, until homeowners ran out of water and had to pay a lot of money to deal with problems that never should have occurred if the county had been doing its job properly.

The cynical side of me expected that the commissioners would offer Laurel a “thank you” for her detailed testimony, then go on to other matters, such as lunch. I’ve testified numerous times before committees of the state legislature and found that a single person, who doesn’t represent a significant interest group, almost always is ignored, no matter how much sense he or she makes.

However, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the chairman immediately called three Water Resources staff up to the table to comment on the problems Laurel had raised. Then a member of the commission said that she thought a letter should be sent to Marion County, essentially telling them to get their act together and start protecting groundwater, or the Water Resources Commission might have to take its own measures—which are quite draconian (like forbidding any more wells to be drilled in an area).

After some discussion, it appears that a letter will be sent to all of the counties in Oregon, naturally including Marion County, which has a pretty pitiful record when it comes to preventing groundwater problems. Laurel was a center of attention after the meeting ended, with several people congratulating her on how clear and compelling her testimony was.

I beamed with pride, and then bought her lunch. No one asked for autographs at the Salem Center Food Court (I can’t afford much of a lunch on my secretary wages), but that was OK. Laurel the Environmental Activist is a star in my eyes. She has become highly knowledgeable about groundwater issues, and is an inspiring example of how one person can make a difference, if they grab onto a problem and refuse to let go until something is done about it. She’s a pit bull, and I’m proud to be pulled along at the end of her leash.

Can eating animals be an act of kindness?

A postscript to my last posting: in discussing with Laurel whether a meat eater can legitimately call himself or herself an animal lover, she reminded me that she used to eat free range chickens and didn’t feel guilty about it. “After all,” Laurel said, “they lived a good life while they were alive, and if someone hadn’t raised them to be eaten, they wouldn’t have lived at all.” OK, I suppose this is a decent argument for eating animals that have been raised and slaughtered humanely, but such animals are by far the exception, rather than the rule. And if you were able to ask a free range chicken who has its head on the chopping block, “Are you pleased that I’m about to kill you, and end your carefree free range life?, what do you think it would say?

Meet PVR, my new best friend

I’m calling him by his initials, because this is how he was introduced to me by the Dish Network technician who brought us together about a week ago. His full name is Personal Video Recorder (is there an impersonal version, for people who are afraid of intimacy?), but I prefer PVR, though that is a bit hard to pronounce, since it lacks a vowel. No matter how you say it, it starts to sound like “pervert” (which he isn’t at all, so far as I can tell by what he has recorded for me so far, but that might change as we become more open with each other).

PVR is the Dish Network’s answer to TIVO, whatever those initials mean. We needed a new receiver so Laurel could do her daily stretching and floor exercises while watching a different channel from whatever was being recorded at the time. So PVR joined himself to our main TV, while old receiver got banished to the TV on the other side of the house.

PVR has a 60gb hard drive instead of those horribly crude videotapes, which now seem like something out of the Dark Ages. He does just what he is told and can record 60 hours of programming. Even more, now we can actually find what we’ve recorded instantly, rather than me rewinding tape after tape, looking for that elusive critical episode of Six Feet Under that I forgot to mark down.

The only anxiety I’ve had with PVR came right at the beginning of our relationship, when the technician was introducing him to Laurel and me. The technician was standing between us as we stared expectantly at the TV set, waiting to see what marvels would be revealed. The technician began his explanation by leaning over toward Laurel, and for a moment I thought that he actually was going to hand the new remote control to her so she could try it out. I was prepared to quickly leap and grab it out of her hand, as this would have been a travesty, an unforgivable insult to my inherent male right to control the remote control.

Fortunately, the technician began by saying, “With this PVR you can pause live programming, then go back and catch up on what you’ve missed.” Laurel, bless her heart, blurted out, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I then said, “Oh, so the PVR must continuously record what is on the TV for a certain length of time,” which was exactly right (it records an endless 60 minute loop on its own). At that point the technician ended any pretense of paying attention to both of us equally, and spoke almost exclusively to me, recognizing that if he was going to be able to quickly transmit the sacred secrets of the PVR to the Hines household (he was late for an appointment in Woodburn), this would happen man-to-man, electronic gadget aficionado to electronic gadget aficionado.

It’s a marvelous thing, our PVR. You can sort of play Master of the Universe with it, the only small difference being that you are controlling TV programs rather than the universe, and you aren’t really the master even of those. But you can indeed pause live programming, and record a program after you’ve already watched it. The PVR guide book recognizes that users are prone to get carried away with their newfound power. In several places it cautions: “Remember, you can’t fast forward through a program that hasn’t happened yet.” Darn!! You mean I have to wait for the future to become the present before I can experience it, after paying $199!!!

Dozen Desperate Ducklings Dodge Death

Due to a daring damsel, animal lover par excellence, Laurel Lee Hines. This afternoon Laurel was driving on 25th Street, past K Mart (or whatever the heck it is called now), and noticed some adult ducks on the other side of the road—the airport side. Then she saw some other tiny dots in the road, desperate newly born ducklings frantically trying to climb up a high curb and get to their mothers. Laurel stops her car. She watches vehicles speeding by in both directions, some missing the ducklings by only a few inches.

Finally...a slight break in the traffic. She dashes across the road and starts to scoop up ducklings as they try to scurry away from her. The mother ducks are honking at the babies, while the males are further away, probably oblivious to the whole situation. Laurel gets all the ducklings up on the roadside, and the duck families waddle off to a water-filled ditch, not exactly the optimum environment for the them, but better than a four lane highway.

Three quacks for Laurel! Interestingly, this morning I had read portions of a lengthy New Yorker article to her (April 14 issue) called “The Extremist: the woman behind the most successful radical group in America” (PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). This woman, Ingrid Newkirk, is a fascinating person. And PETA is a fascinating organization. We’re members, and support their animal rights efforts, especially when they involve ad campaigns featuring beautiful women promoting vegetarianism (see left side, second row).

PETA is wonderfully creative, though undeniably controversial. But when I read in the article about how cruelly chickens, pigs, and other animals are raised on factory farms so people can eat unhealthy meat, some in-your-face activism seems entirely justified. The article's author, Michael Specter, goes to visit a poultry "farm" (actually, shed), and describes what he saw after he opened the door to the shed, every window of which was covered with blackout curtains:

"I was almost knocked to the ground by the overpowering smell of feces and ammonia. My eyes burned and so did my lungs, and I could neither see nor breathe. I put my arm across my mouth and immediately moved back toward the door, where I saw a dimmer switch. I turned it up. There must have been thirty thousand chickens sitting silently on the floor in front of me. They didn't move, didn't cluck. They were almost like statues of chickens, living in nearly total darkness and they would spend every minute of their six-week lives that way."

PETA’s mission statement reads, “Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on or use for entertainment.” Amen. Except maybe for the wearing part—I’m not ready to give up leather yet. Aside from the main www.peta.com web site, PETA sponsors a host of other sites, including www.furshame.com , www.kentuckyfriedcruelty.com , and www.wickedwendys.com . Burger King gets some kudos from PETA, since BK offers vegetarian burgers now (they are pretty good).

Anyway, it was fitting that vegetarian Laurel saved the ducklings, because it would have been the height of hypocrisy for a meat-eater to feel self-righteous about helping them, when he or she would be eating other animals for dinner the very same day. Plain fact: anyone who isn't a vegetarian isn't an animal lover, no matter what they say. You don’t love animals by killing them.

Sad Iraq fact, #... of how many?

Today the New York Times web site reports that the National Museum of Iraq, which once boasted the greatest collection of artifacts in the Middle East (some 7,000 years old), has been completely looted. Big deal, Rumsfeld would say. This is what happens when a tyrannical government is overthrown. People celebrate, and go a little bit crazy. Except, Mr. Rumsfeld, this isn’t a matter of looters taking some office chairs from the Information Ministry. It is people taking priceless irreplaceable treasures, which by rights belong to all humanity, while U.S. troops stood by and did almost nothing to stop this cultural disaster.

This story probably won’t be featured on the jingoistic Fox News, but I dare you to read this article about the looting without feeling more than a little outrage. (you might need to register with the site to read the article, but the New York Times on the web is worth the free registration). With all the planning our Defense Department put into the war, including identifying sites of archeological significance that needed to be protected, isn’t it more than a little suspicious that no effort was made to protect 170,000 Middle Eastern artifacts stored in the museum. It is this sort of “who gives a shit?” behavior that causes so many people around the world to hate the United States. Right now, I’m not feeling so good about being an American myself.

War against partitioning continues

Recently Laurel learned that the Nielsens have asked the Marion County board of commissioners to hear an appeal of their proposed lot partitioning in Spring Lake Estates that was denied by a hearings officer. We’ve gotten a copy of the appeal request letter that was written by Nick Coffey, the Nielsen’s hydrologist. There don’t appear to be any new facts presented in the letter, just arguments that the old facts were misinterpreted by the hearings officer. This is good news, because our understanding is that the commissioners usually won’t even consider an appeal of a denied partitioning unless new facts are brought to light that weren’t known to the hearings officer. But the board may decide to hear the appeal, in which case Laurel and the Stop Densification in Spring Lake Estates Committee will once again enter the fight on the side of truth, justice, and the environmental way.

Pit of Vipers

That’s an uplifting image, isn’t it? I can barely watch the previews for Fear Factor, where they show contestants lying down in a box, covered with a mass of creepy-crawly snakes slithering every which way over them. I’d last, oh, about one second before I screamed, “get me out of here!” I’ve been thinking about a pit of vipers ever since my martial arts instructor, Warren, spoke about this concept last week. With the war in Iraq taking the turns it has, the Saddam statue falling today being a dramatic capstone to a pretty darn successful week for the Anglo-American forces (I can’t bring myself to use the term “coalition,” since there isn’t one), Warren’s ideas ring true to me—and relate to yesterday’s post.

The gist of what Warren was trying to get across to us is that a martial artist, or anyone for that matter, should look on life’s encounters—whether belligerent or peaceful—as akin to a pit of vipers. If you found yourself in such a pit, you’d be extremely wary and alert to everything happening around you. For you never know what is coming next. Oh! Here’s a viper striking from this direction. Better deal with him quickly, because the next one could come at you from any other direction. Or maybe the first viper will retreat briefly, and then strike again.

The point is, you never know. You just don’t know. So you have to be ready for anything. You have to do what needs to be done at this moment, and then be able to shift gears and do whatever needs to be done at the next moment. Pre-programmed habitual responses leave you responding to the pit of vipers (or more positively, the plethora of opportunities) in a dysfunctional fashion, always one step too slow, or out of sync with what is truly happening.

Today the war in Baghdad is going great. The conservative talk shows are having a field day, the hosts crowing about the vindication of Bush’s policies. “We told you so” is echoing through the Fox News Channel right now, and will continue for days. Until the next viper strikes. And then we’ll see how things change. I do my best to react to the reality of the present moment as regards the war, and not how I expected the moment to be, or what I ideally would like it to be. Right now, I’m almost as proud of our military as Sean Hannity is, god help me. The Iraqis seem genuinely thankful that we toppled Hussein. I would be too if I were them.

I thought the war would turn out more badly than it has. For awhile I was shocked to find myself rooting for the Iraqis at times, sort of like when you root for the 16th seed that is matched up against Kentucky in the first round of the NCAA playoffs. But I began to realize that what I was doing, really, was rooting for my expectations, not for the Iraqi army, and that made me feel better—less like a unpatriotic American and more like a normal human being who can’t lay aside his preconceptions when reality demands that they be trashed.

The Power of Don’t-Know

Laurel has started attending a “Power of Now” group here in Salem, which discusses, and tries to put into practice, Eckhart Tolle’s philosophy. In his book, "The Power of Now," Tolle speaks of the wisdom of living in the present moment, which, really, is the only moment in which we can live anyway.

Unarguably, most of life’s anxieties, fears, and problems vanish when we either forget about those that have already occurred in the past, or stop ruminating about those that might occur in the future. Laurel likes the people who participate in the Power of Now sessions, and I’m happy that she now has her cult to be a part of. Now I can kid her in return when she teases me (in a spirit of lighthearted marital fun) about my own spiritual cult.

All this has gotten me to thinking about another angle, the Power of Don’t-Know (leave off all but the first word, and the last three letters, and we’re left with the Power of Now—which is interesting, because Don’t-Know and Now may be close to the same thing; I don’t know, though). I suppose the war in Iraq has something to do with this pondering also. Almost everyone is so sure their view of the war is the correct war, whether they are pro-war or anti-war.

More broadly, I heard on a BBC news broadcast that one-half of the United States population believes the U.S. has a special place in God’s heart. How do they know the contents, and spatial positioning of the contents, of God’s heart? Beats me. Guess they know something I don’t know, because I’d have to answer, “I have no idea,” if presented with that question.

At a recent meeting of our monthly Salon Discussion Group, I said, “More and more it bothers me when either liberals like Michael Moore or conservatives like George Bush claim they know the complete and total truth about what should be done with Iraq. Aren’t the world’s problems much more complex and difficult to pin down than these simplistic yes/no, right/wrong, good/bad dichotomies imply?”

Per usual, when I make a wise and seemingly indisputable comment such as that one, I waited for the group to erupt into a standing ovation in praise of my sagacity. And…I kept waiting. The response was non-deafening. A little later, someone said, “If there is an extreme position held by one side, the other side has to take an equally extreme opposite position, or nothing will change.” OK, that makes some sense politically. But I’m not sure it makes sense philosophically, or realistically.

I still believe in the power of Don’t-Know, but it is hard to put into practice. When some people are engaged in a vigorous debate about some social or political problem, and they turn to you to learn your opinion, see what happens when you say, “I don’t know. I haven’t a clue about what to do.” Boring! Move on to someone else with an interesting opinion. But, the medieval Christian mystics framed an entire spiritual philosophy around such themes as “learned ignorance,” (Nicholas of Cusa) “the cloud of unknowing,” (anonymous English preacher), and “nothing, nothing, nothing” (St. John of the Cross).

Maybe the Power of Don’t-Know needs to be more highly esteemed. I remember Huston Smith saying, in one of his books, that he had encountered a Zen Buddhist friend who told him, “I have a new koan: I could be wrong.” Beautiful.

Femme Fatale…fabulous

Another unexpectedly delicious DVD find, "Femme Fatale," a 2002 Brian de Palma film with a Hitchcockian flavor. I can’t even remember it in the theatres. It must have had a short run, probably because it is more artsy than mainstream films, and less artsy than art house films. “Tweeners” like Femme Fatale often get overlooked, which is too bad. Any movie with Rebecca-Romjin-Stamos in it deserves to be looked at, particularly the scene in the second half where she does a highly seductive bad-girl strip tease in the basement of what looks like a biker bar.

Except…we theorized that any girl who looks like a model, and is dressed in a skimpy leather biker babe outfit, who voraciously flirts with a guy in front of his bar buddies, and then leads him into an adjoining room to do a sexy lap dance for him, probably isn’t going to be left alone with the girl. But this allows Romjin-Stamos’ companion (Antonio Banderas) to do his save-the-girl thing mano-a-mano, rather than having to fight ten tough guys at once, which, realistically, he would have to.

However, this is one of the few I’ve-seen-that-before aspects of the movie. Mostly, it is highly creative and makes you think at the end, “Now, I’ve got to reflect on all this.” That is rare in a film—where you want to close your eyes and ponder the meaning of it all as the closing credits run. As a final inducement to rent it, and without giving away the plot, I’ll just say that any movie that begins with Rebecca-Romjin-Stamos seducing an equally attractive, and scantily clad, supermodel in the restroom at a film festival is definitely worth seeing. And the film gets even better after that rousing start.

Human training with Chuck-It

We often hear, "be careful of what you want, for you may get it." The summer after we got Serena the Wonder Dog I took her down to the dog exercise field at Minto Brown park, where I admired the tennis ball hurling gadget that a woman was using. While I was throwing Serena's ball just a little way down the field, plus running the risk of throwing my shoulder out with every not-so-mighty hurl, she was effortlessly catapulting her dog's ball far past my distance, and with much less effort. To top it off, she didn't have to bend down and pick up the ball after her dog trotted back and laid it at her feet.

So I was thrilled when Laurel came home with a Chuck-It a while back. It almost didn't survive its first day with us, since Serena immediately decided that it had a higher use as a plastic chew stick, than as a ball-chucking device. However, the pieces she gnawed off didn't impede the functionality of Chuck-It, so Serena and I have been training with it for several months. I'm pleased to report that in this relatively short time I've learned how to retrieve tennis balls from amazingly far distances, sometimes when they're hidden in thick wet grass, and have lost several pounds to boot. Serena has learned how to manipulate and control a human being, or, more accurately, she has honed her already ample skills in this area.

This afternoon offered a good example of how well my training is coming along. Standing at the top of our lawn area, I'm able to Chuck-It a tennis ball with excellent accuracy all the way down to, or even past, the large oak tree at the other end of the lawn. The Chuck-It web site says that throwing distances of 150 feet can consistently be achieved with their product, and I will testify to that. This is half the length of a football field. So, every time I walk all the way down the hill to the oak tree to get the ball that Serena has run after, sniffed, and then left alone to go pursue some other more interesting Wonder Dog activity, and then walk back up the hill to repeat the process, I am walking close to 300 yards, which has to be excellent exercise. "Thank you, Serena," I try to remember to say every time I trudge down and up the slope. "Because you have such a recessive retriever gene in your German Shepherd/Labrador heritage, I am reaping wonderful aerobic rewards."

Still, once in a while I wonder whether it really is appropriate for a man throwing a ball for a dog to get more exercise than the dog does. But that's a humancentric thought which I try to dispel as soon as it arises. We are equal members of equal species, Serena and I. If it works out that Wonder Dog trains me to retrieve the ball, while she has her fun running after it and then leaving it where it lays, who am I to say that this is not part of the rightful natural order of things? After all, I also am trained to jump up and give Serena her dinner-time chew stick dessert when she puts her paw on my knee while I am comfortably reading the paper on the couch, and Laurel is trained to rub her stomach until Serena falls asleep when she presents herself for her late evening pre-bedtime patting session. Ah, its great to have gone to dog-training classes. Now we know just how to respond when Serena wants us to do something.

God Bless the Troops

Somehow Laurel had made it through her, um, 39 years of living on this Earth plane without ever being exposed to the Fox News Channel. So yesterday I served as her Right Wing Television Pimp and hooked her up with channel 205 on the Dish network. We managed to watch Fox News for about two minutes before we started to gag on the ever-present American flag logo in the upper left corner of the screen, and the hyper Got-To-Kill-Those-Damn-Iraqis-Before-They-Destroy-America (but how?) rhetoric from the so-called "news" anchors, all of whom seem to be angry white men with deep inferiority complexes being masked by an over-compensating patriotic machoness.

However, even more irritating to me than Fox News are the God Bless the Troops (GBT) types who call in to the Lars Larson KXL talk show. A few days ago I got to hear a GBT lady who was a perfect example of how patriotism and religion have somehow gotten fused in the muddled minds of many Americans. She talked about how she wanted to do something to support the troops, so she went to her church and got the congregation to back a God Bless the Troops lawn sign campaign. Kinkos gave them a great price on copying several hundred signs, so I guess God Blesses Kinkos also.

What got me was how this woman clearly had no qualms about the theological appropriateness of using her church as a vehicle to make a patriotic political statement. For some reason I thought religion was all about the root of the Latin word religare: to bind back, or reconnect, the individual with God. How does putting up God Bless the Troops lawn signs help anyone to reconnect with God? As I've noted before in this weblog, it seems more spiritual to quietly listen for what God might have to say, rather than put words into God's mouth: "God Bless the Troops." Who knows whether God is blessing the troops? And if He is, which troops is he blessing? The American troops, or the Iraqi troops? My best guess is, both sides are being blessed. So, why put forth this sentiment, which sounds an awful lot like a demand, or even a command. God, you will bless the troops!

God, if you must bless anything, please bless America so that this country becomes a mature member of the world community, rather than the self-centered adolescent we are now. Thank you God, for attending to this plea that really makes sense, because I am the one pleading. After that, God, please do something about Fox News. Could you replace channel 205 with a free subscription to the Playboy Channel? That would be a real miracle, which I would share with the world, or at least the readers of HinesSight. (Note: God hasn't come through with my prayer for a Mini-Cooper yet, so I am dubious that this request will be fulfilled--but it never hurts to ask).