January 20, 2025 a thought for today, The truth stands up, a lie does not. Hebrew Proverb

One of the uploads for yesterday is “where I live”. This is a small part of where I live, a corner of my living room. 

The next upload for yesterday was “stars”. I thought I would use the stars (and stripes) for this one. 

The last upload for yesterday was “black and white”. This one is just one of the church windows in my church.  

Life today. The freeze is on. It’s mid afternoon and 11 degrees. Sweet Pea and I made it through the night with our heating blanket/pads. Yes, I have a heating blanket on my bed, my room is on the cold side of the temperature gauge. I also bought Sweet Pea a pet-style heating pad. She doesn’t quite know what to make of it. We have to get through the next couple of days and we should be more comfortable.

The first upload for today is “real life”. This image seems to fit perfectly for the
weather we are having in our lives right now. 

I had a whole list of things I wanted to get done today. Somehow, it got off track. I spent more time on the bulletin than I thought I would. On top of that I got side tracked on another project or two. All of that not to mention that I have the inauguration on the TV so every now and then when something catches my attention I stop what I am doing to watch part of a speech or to watch this person or that person come onto the scene. Now I am “racing” through my check list to see if I can at least get done what was on the top of the list, besides the bulletin, before dinner time. Isn’t life an adventure?

The second upload for today is “coffee”. I don’t drink coffee anymore. I use to but even when I did if was only one cup a day. It was the first thing in the morning just to get started. My beverage of choice these days it tea. 

Before I move on any further, I must take care of my plants, I have put them off longer than they can wait for water. 

The next upload for today is “made of metal”. This is one of the cups on our rain chain. It has seen and shows all kinds of the touches of weather. 

The word today is round.  Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form. Rumi.  All things come round to him who will but wait. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  Golf is a day spent in a round of strenuous idleness. William Wordsworth.  Forward, as occasion offers. Never look round to see whether any shall note it... Be satisfied with success in even the smallest matter, and think that even such a result is no trifle. Marcus Aurelius. On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round. Robert Browning.  There are some people who need to wear a label round their necks to show that they are Christians at all, or else we might mistake them for sinners, their actions are so like those of the ungodly. Charles Spurgeon.  I had gained the summit of a commanding ridge, and, looking round with astonishing delight, beheld the ample plains, the beauteous tracts below. Daniel Boone.  Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.   Each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle. Marcus Aurelius.  He had a broad face and a little round belly, that shook, when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly. Clement Clarke Moore.  Every one soon or late comes round by Rome. Robert Browning.  

This is another of the days when I have a fourth photo-a-day upload. This challenge  is called “negative or positive space. In this particular image I feel that the sky seems to be both negative space for the sake of the photo image and positive space for all of life. 

Article: This is a timely article about past inaugurations and the influences on the modern day ones. The article title, How Christian nationalism played a role in incorporating the phrase ‘so help me God’ in the presidential oath of office. The presidential oath of office today includes “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” And then it may well be added “so help me God.”  The article related that those four words are not in the Constitution but “for many Americans, the phrase has been a part of the oath ever since George Washington was said to have added it 236 years ago”. It further related that there is a question as to if George Washington actually said “so help me God?..... there is no evidence that he did”. It wasn’t until 1854, 65 year later that “Rufus Griswold, an editor and literary critic, told the story in a book titled “The Republican Court”: “[Washington] added, with fervor, his eyes closed, that his whole soul might be absorbed in the supplication, ‘So help me God!’” The author said that he fact checked in Google, Books, Internet Archives, American Periodicals Series and Newspapers.com for information on this subject, “so help me God” in the oath of office for the president of the United States.  The author as a historian, found that “The best way to understand Griswold’s mythic insertion of “so help me God” into the presidential oath is through the lens of Christian nationalism” which was “big” in the 19th century. I seems “a Protestant evangelical revival movement that peaked in the 1830s, “brought about … a desire to see religious values reflected in the nation’s culture and institutions.”  There was a minister in Philadelphia who told “told his congregation in 1828 that only leaders “known to be avowedly Christians” should be elected”. It seems that in that aftermath the “account of Washington prayerfully adding “so help me God” to the presidential oath became part of America’s Christian creation myth”. There is another ‘so help me God’ story”. It happened later in the “years just after World War II, a time of increased tensions between the United States and the “godless communists” of the Soviet Union”. It is mentioned that religion then was an “important weapon”. After that “the U.S. added “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance, made “In God We Trust” the country’s national motto”.

I think it will be fish and chips for dinner. 

Joy 

                                reflections of what is and what was