The Useful Duck!

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Saturday, October 19, 2013

I plant clover and listen to talk radio and get my knickers in a knot

I've been driving around in circles again. I am planting clover in a 60 acre field. I have planted for this farmer every year since I bought a no-till drill. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't work. However, he keeps hiring me.
This year I'm planting red clover into worked ground. It is difficult to plant small seeds 1/4" into worked ground with a drill that has just about enough down pressure to plant into concrete. It took a few adjustments and I'm not completely happy.
I should have bought a set of three inch wide press wheels as the two inch wide ones I have just sink into the ground. However, I was too cheap to pay $65 a row from Great Plains. (Could have bought them from Shoup for $40.)
I'm using the small seeds bin on the drill as the seed tubes drop behind the openers and plant at a shallower depth. The main box would handle clover fine but the v-openers are going too deep.
The small seed box is not hooked to the drill monitor which means I have to get out and check for plugged tubes and check the box level. I also am mixing up the inoculant (this very stuff) myself in a garbage can with a shovel.
I'm using Mountain Dew to get the inoculant to stick to the seed. It works really well but it plants at a different rate. And it attracts bees.
The plan is 8 oz of Mt. Dew and one pack of inoculant to fifty pounds of seed. You first dump in the Dew. (I usually take a couple drinks first if it is still cold as 8 oz is just a little too much really) Then mix in the Dew with the shovel. When it stops clumping you dump in the inoculant and stir it in. The inoculant wants to stick together in little clumps instead of sticking to the seed. The Dew helps it stick.
Then you let it sit a few minutes to sort of absorb the stickiness.
USE ONLY the peat or humus based inoculants. The clay based stuff is easy to detect. It is white. It will plug the fluted wheels in the seed metering cups and static electricity attracts the dust to the rubber seed tubes where the slightest moisture makes a nasty sticky mess.

So, I've been listening to talk radio as my Mp3 player batteries went dead. It is pretty depressing.
For many years I've felt that the only way our country was not doomed was if we had a spiritual revival. The problem is that I don't know (and no one else knows) how to have a revival that works in the modern age. (or is it post modern age)
I have already put off half my readership by using the term revival.
You start talking about God and all the haters come out of the woodwork.
You get to hear about all the excesses of people claiming to be Christians. Witch trials the inquisition (which no one expects) TV evangelists, intolerance, and all the proof that there is no God, and blah, blah. blah...
But here is the deal...
The concept of The One True God defines this country. The United States of America was set up as a city on a hill. It was to be the culmination of all the best of Western Civilization.
There were failures. We committed atrocities against the American Indian. We committed atrocities against the American citizen, especially Lincoln, Grant and Sherman's invention of total war against the populace...
But humans are vicious and mean and the evil committed by Christians in general and by the Americans should be viewed as evidence that even a system designed with the intent to bring out the best in an individual and a nation suffers for the curse of humanity.
As we as a society suffer from De-Evolution we cannot handle philosophy above the sophomore level. Witness the favorite argument of the internet atheist, "a bus load of children go over a cliff, did God push them." No one can step beyond the obvious and accept that random horrible things happen and your belief in a higher power is what helps you get though life.
Even with the discovery of the God center of the brain has not made people think a little further. (The spot that gets all excited when people get involved in religious activity...)
I think the human being needs religion. I suspect that human's will manufacture religious beliefs in a absence of a community belief system.
I think that with the loss of our cultural belief systems we are very vulnerable to being exploited by politicians, advertisers and other forces of evil.

So what was the point of my rant?
Click here to read an article about Franklin Graham. I heard him speak on the radio. I'm going to see if I can find a transcript somewhere but now I have to go to work.
He really calls it like it is. This article has some quotes and gives the gist of his premise which is that the USA, from the leaders on down, has essentially lost its collective faith in God.
Look at the comments and see how the haters come out of the woodwork... Most of them just want to be clever. The term I think is sophomoric...
Now think about what the idea of the "one true God" is supposed to mean. In the context of how you think scripture should be interpreted.
Does not the concept of "God" mean the best of everything. Honor, truth, mercy, love, redemption, respect are things that come to my mind. Plus there is there that huge benefit that comes in the New Testament which is God sending his Son to forgive our sins.
That is one thing that is lacking in the modern world. A chance for a "do-over." Repentance brings foregiveness? You don't see that one anymore...
So what I wonder is this...
Even if you don't believe in a supernatural, why can't you see the benefits of understood and universal cultural values? Why not protect those values and give them perhaps a few nudges one way or another?
Instead we threw them all away so we could do what? Buy more crap? Perhaps get laid more often? Feel smug? Really? Why?

7 comments:

  1. Don't worry about the haters, Jesus had them, too. And you will never convert a hater, so don't try. The only ones that we can sometimes influence are those in the mindless middle.

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  2. You will find those good values being "nudged" here with no ulterior motives that I can see. Read the FAQ page.
    http://www.values.com/

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  3. yeah. we need a revival all right. my only comfort is that there is nothing new under the sun...and we'll trudge thru this season also. a pastor i know says that we are looking more and more like corinth every day - everyone wants to be an individual instead of being part of a family, everyone wants to have servants instead of serving, no one wants to be under authority of God, and as far as i can tell everyone wants to worship at the Church of their own Smartypants-ness. forget self control, discipline, and honor. this country might be getting older but we are not getting more mature. :-/

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  4. Revival has happened before. I am as discouraged by what I see as you but I keep telling myself it has happened before; maybe again. Or maybe not.

    I wonder if that atheist would have been so caustic if the busload of Children was from a Christian school?

    Grace and peace.

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  5. I believe we need revival also, but the reality is we are Biblically on a down-hill slope. It just isn't going to get better.
    What to do? What God told us to do in the book of Matthew 28, "Go out and make disciples".
    I just try to make a difference in my little part of the world with the kids I mentor or the fellowship/work I do for God through the church.
    Good post, good thoughts.....

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  6. It is kind of bad when no one really has hope that a renewal of the national spirit will occur.
    We think we are doing something by "living by example," or "nudging" good values but something is missing. The energy is elsewhere.

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