Elections Canceled – Queen Reinstated

My brother-in-law forwarded this to me. I thought it was funny, but he’s British so he might be serious.

To the citizens of the United States of America from Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II:

In light of your immediate failure to financially manage yourselves and also in recent years your tendency to elect incompetent Presidents of the USA and therefore not able to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately. (You should look up ‘revocation’ in the Oxford English Dictionary.)

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas , which she does not fancy).

Your new Prime Minister, David Cameron, will appoint a Governor for America without the need for further elections.

Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated sometime next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. The letter ‘U’ will be reinstated in words such as ‘colour,’ ‘favour,’ ‘labour’ and ‘neighbour.’ Likewise, you will learn to spell ‘doughnut’ without skipping half the letters, and the suffix ‘-ize’ will be replaced by the suffix ‘-ise.’Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up ‘vocabulary’). (I love that one)
2. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as ”like’ and ‘you know’ is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as U.S. English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take into account the reinstated letter ‘u” and the elimination of ‘-ize.’ ‘ (I love that one too)

3. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.

4. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you’re not quite ready to be independent. Guns should only be used for shooting grouse. If you can’t sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist, then you’re not ready to shoot grouse.

5. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. Although a permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

6. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left side with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

7. The former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline) of roughly $10/US gallon. Get used to it.)

8.You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.

9. The cold, tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. New Zealand beer is also acceptable, as New Zealand is pound for pound the greatest sporting nation on earth and it can only be due to the beer. They are also part of the British Commonwealth – see what it did for them. American brands will be referred to as Near-Frozen Gnat’s Urine, so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.

10. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie Macdowell attempt English dialogue in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one’s ears removed with a cheese grater.

11. You will cease playing American football. There are only two kinds of proper football; one you call soccer, and rugby (dominated by the New Zealanders). Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies).

12. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America . Since only 2.1% of you are aware there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. You will learn cricket, and we will let you face the Australians (World dominators) first to take the sting out of their deliveries.

13. You must tell us who killed JFK. It’s been driving us mad.

14. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty’s Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776).

15. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 p.m. with proper cups, with saucers, and never mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; plus strawberries (with cream) when in season.

God Save the Queen!

Apparently this has been floating around the internet in various forms for over a decade, but it seemed appropriate to repost on Election Eve. Happy voting!

No Wonder Marvelous Children Turn Into Dull Adults

Brennan Manning, in Ruthless Trust, challenges us to contemplation:

“Almost all children are born with a natural inclination toward contemplation – toward long, loving looks at the Real – and a tendency to moments of thoughtful silence. A simple thing may absorb children for a long time. Wiggling their toes, for example, is such an engrossing experience that it is difficult to divert their attention to something else. However, their gift starts to wither when we insist, “Hurry up; I don’t have all day.”

“‘No wonder,’ says Brother David Steindl-Rast, ‘that so many marvelous children turn into dull adults. No wonder that their wholeness is scattered and their sense of mystery lost.'”

“The good news is that the child within can be recovered. It can happen right now, with something as simple as giving a little one a piggyback ride or walking slowly down the street and listening tot he music of what is happening.”

What activity helps you recover the child within you?

Three Announcements and an Irrefutable Opinion

1 – Join us tomorrow at Angela’s Cafe at 9:30am in Gap, PA for the second Central PA Writers’ Breakfast. NYT Best-Selling Author Ira Wagler will be sharing his writing journey with us. Also, there will be plenty of time for catching up with other area writers. Everyone is welcome. (There is no cost to attend, and Angela’s will be open if you’d like to purchase coffee or breakfast.) Here is the Facebook Event Page.

2 – Bryan Allain’s new ebook, Community Wins, is free today. It contains everything Bryan knows about building an online community, and, as is usual with his work, is the perfect mix of entertaining and informative. Get it HERE.

3 – Stay tuned next week as I fill you in on (and ask for your help with) my next book, which will hopefully be ready for release by the end of the year.

Irrefutable Opinion: Vanilla Tootsie Rolls are the best Tootsie Rolls.

When Faith Isn’t Enough

Another day, another night. Wake up, get the kids breakfast, go do some work, eat lunch, work some more. Come home, eat dinner, talk to Maile. Bedtime, supervise the brushing of teeth. Go into the room 6,723 times to say, “Be quiet.” Write some more before bed. Fall asleep while reading Brennan Manning on the glowing screen of my phone, in the dark.

In the dark.

Day after day passes, and I realize I can get by with much less than I thought. Week after week slips into the rear view, and my inner self adjusts to this new, lower watermark of comfort. But if I’m not careful, the trust in God that I long to experience gives way to a sense of malaise, and a feeling of calloused contentment.

Oh well, it is tempting to think, this must be as good as it gets. Perhaps the most difficult part about this life of faith is to keep from mistaking callousness for trust. A numbing lack of worry isn’t trust. True trust in God is so much more than finding a comfortable equilibrium.

“Faith in God without hope in his promises is tainted trust,” writes Brennan Manning in Ruthless Trust.

Faith without hope relegates faith to a coping mechanism. It can turn faith into nothing more than  4 1/2 hours of television each day (the national average). It can be my pint of Ben and Jerry’s.

But faith with hope? That’s what injects joy into this walk. Faith with hope feels vulnerable, tender to the touch, like fingertips freshly healed from a burn. Faith with hope means staying vulnerable when I want to withdraw, truthful when I’d rather deceive, unmasked. Faith with hope appears naive to many of those around us.

Poor little child, they mumble to one another. He still thinks he can make a difference. He still has confidence that he can do great things. He still believes.

I do. I have to believe. I have to hope. Because faith without hope is tainted trust, and I’ve felt real trust, perhaps only for moments in my life, but I’ve felt it. And I want to live in that space, not of calloused apathy, but of tender, vulnerable hope.

How do you keep hoping?

That’s What Being a Mom is Like

It’s Wednesday, so that means excerpts from some of my favorite blog posts from the past week(ish):

Perhaps we need to let go of this idea we have about words—that they are clearly definable and, when put together in certain ways, carry a singular, solid meaning. Maybe stories should be approached more like paintings: colors, images, and shapes that are open to the viewer’s own story, experiences, and mood. Rather than writing as one making a statement—”This is what this means”—we should try framing our stories in a question: “What does this mean to you?

* * * * *

God’s solidarity with us is so important to God that God entered into human history to experience this arbitrariness. The experience of Jesus was moments of closeness to God (baptism, transfiguration) and moments of the absence of God (Garden of Gethsemene, Golgotha).

* * * * *

So I’m turning this rock over in my hands and trying to see the beauty in it. And if beauty cannot be found in it, I’m trying to see hope in it. And if hope cannot be found in it, I am trying to see His goodness in it. And the truth is that His goodness can be seen in every common and broken thing on earth.

* * * * *

Find your should and make it go away.

* * * * *

Because the truth is that this world is full of wonderful, godly people who struggle, whether it be financially or physically or mentally. Crappy things happen to the very best folks out there, people living much harder lives than my own. Could I still believe God was good if we never “got out of this phase”?

* * * * *

It makes Christianity more gritty, dirty and authentic like it mostly shows itself to be in the Bible.  Not this pretty Evangelical facade of “being saved” into some four star hotel.  It makes life now real.  It grounds everything for me.  It grounds me.  It grounds beauty and music and all the beautiful things about life on earth.

* * * * *

“Viv,” I said, “collecting other people’s chewed gum is one of the grossest things ever.”

Vivian started re-chewing her gum. “That’s what being a mom is like,” she said.

* * * * *

(War of the Worlds) is one I spent a lot of time researching and analyzing, both in grad school as well as during my time as Radio Curator at the Museum of Television & Radio (now the Paley Center for Media) in New York. I think there are a number of valuable social media lessons we can learn from this broadcast and how it was received by the public.

* * * * *

When we look down at this scene what would we see Jesus doing amidst the chaos and heartbreak? Can you see him standing at a shelter handing out food and blankets? Easily. In your mind’s eye is he healing the sick and comforting the frightened? Of course. Can you picture him opening the church doors and welcoming in people who need shelter? Without a doubt.

But can you even in your darkest imaginings think of him standing off to one side sermonizing about how it is these people or their parents who have sinned and brought this calamity to pass?

* * * * *

What’s your favorite post from the last week?