I've nearly forgotten how to blog!

The nice thing about abstaining from something for forty days before an election is that no matter who wins, you still get the fun of breaking your fast. Like this morning-- I'd given up chocolate, so I had a Milky Way for breakfast. :) I'm totally going to make brownies later too.

I'm not surprised but sad that most of the folks in our country voted for someone whose devotion to abortion rights is so extreme he even opposed the bill requiring care for infants who manage to survive one. But there it is. Looks like the most vulnerable members of our society are in for it even more than before. Perhaps with time we can persuade more people to our side. (My own guess is that really changing minds on abortion would require a serious Christian revival, because the demand for abortion is nearly inseparable from the insistence on a right to have sex whether or not you're prepared for a baby.)

When elections don't go my way I tend to avoid politics for a while and try to focus on my own duty. And I also like this saying from Paul Harvey: "In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these."

I've been slowly reading through Sirach and this morning I happened to be on Chapter 10. The whole thing seems very apropos-- some of it in a comforting way, and some of it definitely not.

In the Office of Readings we were on 1 Maccabees 3. Now there was a society with serious political problems: the Israelites were being forced on pain of death to sacrifice to pagan gods. Then Judas Maccabeus takes over leadership of the resistance: "All his brothers and all who had joined his father supported him, and they carried on Israel's war joyfully." How cool is that? Joyfully!

Reminds me of this quote, which to my delight I just discovered is from none other than G.K. Chesterton:

For the Great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry
And all their songs are sad.

And with that off-topic quote I shall end the post. :)