There’s a disturbing documentary available in Amazon Prime called “Shiny Happy People.” It’s about the Duggar family with 19 biological kids who go to a mega IBLP church headed by Bill Gothard. The outside saintly personas of both the family and Gothard hide the double lives of lust and greed. I highly recommend you watch it; but before you do, just keep a few things in mind.
The boy was lunch for the vulture behind him. That photograph garnered the $10k, 1994 Pulitzer Prize for the photographer, Kevin Carter. Four months after receiving the award, Kevin Carter committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. I knew there had to be more to the story and this led me on a Rabbit Trail of tragic incidents.
Have you noticed there's a strange breed of people among us who carry these strange books? It's easy to spot them especially on Sundays … especially in protestant churches. Yup! You guessed it. They're carrying Bibles!
I practiced with my band last Monday. Yup! Believe it or not, I have a band. We play popsy-folksy-Christian-classic rock. To be honest, we aren’t good. We’re tolerable. Our common love for music brought us together. Despite our lack of talent, we’re very ambitious. We take on difficult songs from popular performers like Chicago, The Eagles, Rondstat, James Taylor, Carole King --- and after all our practicing, we get to perform at the local Art Gallery whenever they have a big event. No sane person would pay good money to hear us so this is our sneaky way of getting an audience. Suckers!
I was excited. My wife was returning from a week-long trip to the Philippines. I was supposed to pick her up on Tuesday. However, Monday started a long list of misfortunes.
On a road to Damascus, a blinding light forces Saul down on the ground. He is unable to see yet he hears Christ’s voice: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:4) The voice explains that Saul was actually fighting for the wrong side. Instead of doing good, he was actually an enemy of God. What a shocker! Saul was actually the ignorant one.
Didn't have time to eat my lunch though …but I needed to stop feeding my middle section anyway.. I did have to squeeze a lot more work in a shorter time because today we had to drive to Temecula, CA (wine country 1.5 hours south of our home). No. This is not a big deal --- at least not for me. I'm just accompanying my wife to one of her board retreats.
Thursdays are my busiest days. It really distracts my flow of thought when people call me on Thursdays for the most trivial of reasons. So it really bothered me when Tonka and Tinker were unusually noisy today. Our corgis were in a Thursday barking mood. The slightest sound, would trigger one to yip! and the other would yap! and the cycle would continue forever. If I grow deaf early I will blame them.
These past weeks, with my wife gone visiting her Mom, I’ve been walking our dogs around the neighborhood. Since then, I’ve gotten to know my neighbors so much more. If you ever want to run for office, owning a dog is one way of meeting people and getting votes. I get all the local news --- crime, home repairs, trusted handymen, best places to eat, and the pooping habits of pets.
How long has it been? A month? Many subscribers got withdrawal symptoms from not having their Friday emails. I apologize. I did send out my TGIF emails but only a few people received it. I was so busy that I couldn’t spend enough time developing my own personal email program. To view the past issues you can always go to Travelingboy.com.