A Cup of Conversation – November 2019

“Gratitude is riches. Complaint is poverty.”~Doris Day

I’m grateful for the freedoms our great nation has provided but afraid Doris’s generation may have been freedom’s last. Privilege of freedom came at great cost born by those before me. I’m so grateful for their sacrifice but fear blood spilled and treasure spent is being darkly engineered irrelevant. I’m grateful for a day’s light left to perceive truth through smog of toxic ideology. False narratives are force-fed by rigged institutions of no choice and media platforms of orchestrated deception.

I’m grateful the social media dopamine hit doesn’t get me high. I’m grateful we are still he or she. I’m grateful gratitude is color blind. I’m grateful for borders, wide gates and wise gatekeepers understanding why we need both. I’m grateful for all making dreaming possible.

I’m grateful for the servant part of public servant. I’m not grateful for self-serving professional liars and cheats enriching themselves while gaming us in the name of service.

I’m grateful when pain reveals purpose, not so much when it doesn’t. I’m willing to be grateful for personal loss so another may gain for a greater need arbitrated by a higher power. I’m not grateful for lesser powers forcing me to do the same via the ballot box or the barrel of a gun. Will there be a difference in 2021?

I’m grateful for not being taxed to dine in our hometown and for decent and good people of influence making that possible. I’m grateful for city elders unafraid to stand for what is right. I’m grateful for having raised children in a small-town and grateful for the rare privilege of walking to work. I’m grateful for customers loving great coffee and grateful for competition making us better at being grateful.

I’m grateful for a small-town publisher affording this voice a platform to speak freely and a courage to suffer blow back from those less grateful. I’m grateful for your freedom not to read these words and grateful for those who do.

I’m grateful for knowing ends almost never justify the means and absolutely never when truth is a casualty. I’m grateful for the strong willing to be hated, vilified and abused to protect the innocent and vulnerable. I’m grateful for truth-seekers and even more for truth tellers. I’m not grateful for under-employed, basement-dwelling soy boys hiding in black, perpetrating petty violence without consequence. I’m grateful one day heavy-handed civil consequence will absolutely find them and grateful this nation will continue to defend these of-age masked children from the real face of violence they know not.

I’m grateful for divinely designed laws of thermodynamics not subject to global-organizing schemes by far lesser minds. I’m grateful for understanding our planet was freezing continents and melting glaciers ions before puny man arrived. I’m grateful for any consideration of this obvious observation as a baseline to evaluate political dogma. I’m grateful for sovereign borders at home and abroad. I’m grateful for nations walking softly and carrying a big stick. I’m grateful the bloody truth about Che, Pot, Mao, and Uncle Joe is still only a few clicks away. I’m not grateful children’s innocence is destroyed with just a single click.

I’m grateful for the design of costly forgiveness, elegance of grace and the hope of heaven. I’m grateful for not having to be everything this desperately flawed world loudly whispers important.

Lastly, I’m especially grateful for family, love and the joy of home. Today, most of all, I’m grateful for the gift of reason and a Creator saying come let us do so together.

-Isaiah 1:18

Happy Thanksgiving, 2019.