Christmas Guest

I hope you have a Christmas guest...


Merry Christmas from Plumb and Square!

God in Grand Junction Article in Huffington Post

I read the Huffington Post so you don't have to....

Michael Conniff: God in Grand Junction

Craftsmen of Honor - Chi-Chi-Chi-le-le-le

This month's Craftsmen of Honor goes to the 33 Chilean miners and their rescuers. The miners were underground for 69 days and at least at first were living off meager rations, in cramped quarters. At first the miners had to be wondering if they would ever be found. Once they were found they had to ponder their fate even as they rose up in the rescue capsule. Those miners working as a team for those 69 days, not knowing your own fate, is truly honorable.

The rescuers also deserve this award. There were hundreds (thousands?) involved all over the world to free the miners. This was truly remarkable how many people with many different skills and cultures did everything they could to free these men.

A special honor of note: Manuel Gonzalez was the first rescuer to be lowered into the mine via the rescue capsule and he was the last man pulled from the mine. It takes incredible courage and honor to be lowered via an untested capsule, 1/2 mile down a newly drilled hole, not knowing if you you will survive or the rescue, all to save your fellow man.

Watching the men as they arrived at the surface was an awesome sight to see. One in particular choked me up a bit. The second man removed from the mine, Mario Sepúlveda got to the surface and went into a bag he brought up with him from the mine and started pulling out rocks and giving them to his rescuers and the Chilean President. All I thought was this man has given them all he could give, all he had was rocks and he gave them to the rescuers. A very touching site.

The last thing that I noticed as I watched the rescue efforts through out the day was the patriotism of the miners, their families and the rescuers. I don't think I could have seen any better examples of honoring God, family, then country. I know much will be written about this event (as should be) but let me start by saying...

Chi-Chi-Chi-le-le-le

Update - 33 Chilean miners

The holes that are being drilled to free the 33 Chilean miners are expected punch through today or tomorrow. Then the engineers will examine (by camera) the whole shaft to decide if it needs to be cased or not. Right now they are deciding the order the miners will go up the hole. The entire update story on FOX can be found here. This is the link to my original blog post about the incident.

Continue praying for these miners they really need a bit of comfort from God at this time.

Crowd Estimates at the Restoring Honor Rally

Because I am a bit of a geek, I decided to make my own estimates on the crowd size at the Restoring Honor Rally held yesterday in Washington D.C. I broke out my abacus and slide rule and made a few calculations based on some photos online (OK, so it was a computer and Google maps but same thing).

I estimated the square footage of the area of the crowd at about 1.8 million square feet and used 3 square foot per person as the density and came up with about 600,000 people in the crowd.

So my guess of 600,000 people at the event, and according to the little counter on Facebook the count watching was about 127,000. Plus who knows how many people watching it on CSPN. I would say that equals over a million, but who knows?

Does the size of the crowd actually matter? Nope. Will it change the direction of this country? Nope. Esentially it is just a "pissing match" between media sources. What really matters is what people learned from the event.

This was an event based on God and love. Not race and hate (as some would have you believe). Let's say that there was only one person at the event and it changed his or her life. If that one person wanted to make a change in this country and that person prayed to God asking for help, I believe that person could do anything.

In Matthew (17:20), Jesus tells us; "If you have the faith of a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you."

What I do know is, that there were more than two or three gathered together. Jesus also said, in Matthew 18:19-20; "Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them."

Since I know that there was at least 56,000 people there (the lowest estimate made by CBS) I think God will be doing some awesome work in this nation.

Restoring Honor - A Class Act

I watched the Restoring Honor Rally online, that was held in Washington D.C. this morning. I also watched an interview with Rev. Al Sharpton and his opinion of how this rally was a "bad thing", and all I could think of during the rally was that who would actually oppose honor? The dishonorable?

The extreme liberal left had been saying that the rally was going to be completely made of racists who's whole objective was to see how many crosses they could burn and black people they could lynch in a three hour period. What was really there was Americans who wanted to inspire other Americans to return to their God and restore the honor of our country.

It was a very moving event to watch and I'm glad I did. I would have loved to be there but I'm glad I watched it online because several times it made even me cry like Glenn Beck (if you don't know Glenn Beck that is a lot). More importantly what it did was, inspire me to want to do more for our country, what the more will be I do not yet know. I do know I will be doing more.

Pray for the Miners

Those that know me or have read this blog, you know that in a former life I was a gold and coal miner. There are two occupations where you are required to wear a tag on your body so others can identify you if you are killed; one is the military the other is an underground miner. Which makes this one of the most difficult occupations on the planet, and for 33 miners in Chile it just got a lot more difficult.

You may noticed on the news that there was an explosion sealing 33 men inside an underground gold/copper mine in Chile. For 19 days nobody knew if they were alive or dead. They have be found alive, that news is awesome. The bad news is; it is going to take up to 4 months to drill a hole big enough to get the men out. There has never been a successful rescue after than long of a time frame.

This will be very difficult, physically, emotionally and psychologically for these men. These men will need our prayers and lots of them. Until these men are freed, I am going to say a little prayer for these men every time I turn on a light switch. I just need a reminder and I thought a fitting reminder would be to turn the dark to light using the resources provided by an underground miner.

We Remember - No Mosque at Ground Zero

Here is the ad called We Remember by a group of 9-11 families and the mosque at Ground Zero, very powerful...

National Day of Prayer - May 6, 2010

I know that the National Day of Prayer is not until the 6th, but I wanted to post these videos early so you might have time to watch them before that time. This is the Ecumenical Prayer Breakfast in Dallas on August 23, 1984. It is a great speech about religion and politics.....

Part 1

Part 2

Pray for the miners

I once was a coal and gold miner and every time I hear of a mine disaster like the one in West Virgina, I have to take some extra time to pray. These are good men doing a job few people would ever want to do. Pray for the men who are still lost. Pray for the families of the fallen. May the Lord bless them and keep them and wrap His arms around them and give them peace.

Happy Easter

My favorite gospel song sung by one of my favorite singers Tennessee E. Ford...

Obama going to Mass

Today, President Barrack Obama is headed to Massachusetts to try to fend of Scott Brown for the inept Martha Coakley.

In related news B.H. Obama also went to church today. That is something he could not even do at Christmas. Of course it isn't to learn, pray or fellowship. He went to talk. Maybe he really does think he is the Messiah. A church home is a difficult decision for a family I agree, but it usually takes less time than destroying the American economy.

Maybe he can't find a pastor that is willing to "damn America" the way that Rev. Wright did for him in Illinois. For someone that claims to be Christian the President has funny ways of showing it, that is for sure.

Merry Christmas 2009

This is my Christmas post for 2009. If you were expecting a card, well this is the only Christmas card I distribute. Oh, it's not because I'm lazy or I forgot. It's because I really hate greeting cards. I am a pretty conservative man (OK, Pam says I'm cheap) and it just seems like a waste of time and money to me. One place I worked as a Supervisor, I had to sign birthday, get well, condolence, and of course Christmas cards for for all my employees and often for other employees at the facility. I had 30 employees and there were about 300 to 500 other employees at the facility where I worked. My name was on a lot of Christmas cards of people I didn't even know. So I guess greetings cards just lost their meaning.

I do love Christmas; even though I am a Christmas card Scrooge. I like the music, I like to see all the decoration and lights. I like the general festive mood people on the street have, as they give it one last try to make it to the "nice list" before Santa comes.

I like to remember the real reason for Christmas. Of course, I remember what Jesus has done for us and celebrate his arrival during this season. There is another Biblical person I really think a lot about this time of year....The worlds most famous step-dad; Joseph.

Being a step-father myself, I see Joseph's faith and strength amazing. I mean this is a guy, that has to believe that somehow his girlfriend got pregnant from God. I can imagine the ridicule at the time, from the people in town talking about Joseph and his pregnant girlfriend. I am sure Joe had some difficulty defending his and Mary's honor during that time. I don't think everybody would have believed that Mary was a pregnant virgin. Pretty tough pill to swallow. It took an angel to tell Joseph that it was real, before he believed.

So during this time of dealing with the fact that he was going to be the step-father to God, getting ridiculed by his peers, taking care of his pregnant girlfriend, and normal every day stresses of the day (not an easy time to live in). The government thought they needed a census. Instead of some guy coming to your door to count you, they decided to have everybody in the area travel to Bethlehem to be counted.

So now Joseph is forced to travel to Bethlehem with his wife, who is near time to deliver a child. Of course since everybody is in Bethlehem to be counted, there is no accommodations. Joe had to scrounge for a place to sleep and as a last resort they found a barn. This is where Mary gives birth to Jesus. Then the family (mainly Jesus) is visited by all these people. Now, to add to Joe's stress level, he gets to have royal company, in a barn of all places. He has no way to host these Kings, nothing to give, not even a comfortable place to sleep.

Think of what was going through Joseph's head as he raised Jesus. He had quite a chore, I mean how do you raise the Son of God? Talk about stress. Can you ground him if he does something wrong? Or spank him? Talk about intimidation. I guess my point to all this is, Please don't forget what this season is really all about, the birth of our Lord.

Another birthday (much less significant) occurs on the 31st of December. Plumb and Square will be turning 1 year old. I would like to thank all my readers for taking the time to visit my little blog, I have enjoyed writing it and all the comments that you have made over the last year.

Merry Christmas from Plumb and Square. T²

Seperation of Church and State

I saw this video of Cris Matthews and Bishop Thomas Tobin discussing; Bishop Tobin's actions of not allowing Rep. Patrick Kennedy to get communion, because of his stance on abortion rights.



My first thought on the whole thing is; the Roman Catholics can do whatever they want with their own religion. It is the Catholic Churches, Constitutional right, of freedom of religion. So if they do not want to allow for a Representative to have communion in their church because of his beliefs, then so be it, it's their church.

My next thought was that Cris Mathews can't get a grip on the fact that the law is actually secondary to a person's religious beliefs. People follow their religious leaders over their legislators, because laws are made by man and not by God. God = perfect, Man = flawed.

Mr. Mathews often asks the Bishop (many times) what law should be in regards to abortion (the only card the left likes to bring out when in comes to religion, is abortion). The Bishop tells Mr. Mathews what he believed..."make laws that preserve and protect human life"

Mathews made the statement of: "You're instructing people how to vote, so tell Catholics now, on television, how they should vote, as members of Congress....."
Mr. Mathews you do realize that this is a representative for of government? ( Educational tip for Mr. Mathews: That is a government where our legislators are chosen to represent it's constituents).

The question to me sounds like: You're a lowly "commoner" and you are not as smart as our great and wise elected officials so why don't you write the bills. If I was Bishop Tobin, I think my answer would have been: "I may not know how to make the laws, but I can tell you what laws my parishioners are allowed to be made in order to be pleasing to our God and allowing abortion is not one of those laws. "

I keep hearing about this mysterious "separation of church and state" and this interview is yet another example. In the Constitution, it states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;"

OK, let me break it apart, the way I see it...

First: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" to me that essentially just says their will be no national church, much like the Church of England in 1787.

Second: "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" to me that says you can worship (or not worship) as you see fit.

So every time I see people saying there should be a separation of church and state, I wonder where the hell they are getting this, defiantly not from the Constitution, which happens to be the "Law of the Land" in the United States.

Oh, by the way Cris, when you are trying to make a point about how we should be separating church and state, and maybe you should have looked up the Bible verse you used. The verse is Matthew 22:17. The point of the original question stated there; "Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?" was to trap Jesus into choosing between to bad options. If Jesus said no to the question, he would have been executed for treason. If he said yes to the question, the Pharisees would have portrayed him as disloyal to the nation.

So Mr. Mathews you made the point for the Bishop, using the Bible. Bishop Tobin was trying to tell you that he is not a legislator, yet you wanted him to "write" legislation. But he is a Bishop, and he did what God told him to do and did not allow a person blatantly disobeying God's law from partaking in communion. He did not do what "Caesar" wanted him to do in making legislation. So what are you Mr. Mathews a Heretic or a Pharisee?

Is this Little House on the Prarie?

Sleepy Eye, MN is the place where Pa would take Mary to see the doctor when she was going blind on the show Little House on the Prairie. Now it is the focus of another trip to the doctor, which could end not nearly as happily as a 1970's drama.

The story....
Daniel Hauser is a 13 year old boy with Hodgkin's lymphoma. The doctors treating him believe that the cancer has an 80% to 95% of going into remission for at least 5 years if the boy is treated using chemotherapy. The parents, Colleen Hauser and
Anthony Hauser, do not wish for their child to be treated using chemotherapy. They say because of religious reasons their child should be treated using holistic medicines.

The case went to court and a judge ruled in favor of the doctors and ordered Daniel to under go the chemotherapy. After the judicial order, the mother decided to take manners into her own hands and took off with the child. They are still missing as of this posting.

Another added element to the story is that Daniel is reported to have a "diminished capacity" and can not make an informed decision on his own.

Because I really hate it when the government tells you what to do and I respect the first amendment of the constitution, I really wanted to be on the side of the parents. I came to the conclusion that I could not agree with the parents in this matter. This is a child who's parents believe you can treat cancer with echinacea and herbs. That is just stupid and crazy.

You say that they can use freedom of religion to treat the cancer anyway they want, it is their child. If it is part their religion to treat a child using holistic medicine, why was he at the doctor in the first place?

The child can not make these decisions on his own because he is of a diminished capacity, and he is a sick, scared, child. The court needed to step in and I think they ruled correctly. What the mother is doing now is what I would consider attempted murder. Is this woman at all sane? What woman would rather give her sick child a whole grain bar as opposed to life saving treatment? What is the father doing to help find her, anything?

My religious belief is that if you are sick, you go to the doctor and he helps you get well. God gives us doctors with the tools to help heal you.

On Little House on the Prairie, Pa didn't give Mary an aroma therapy candle and call it good. Pa took Mary to Sleepy Eye, MN., where the doctors were to help her get better.

Colleen Hauser, if you are out there: Please take Daniel back to Sleepy Eye and start getting him treatment. Save his life, not your pride.