A Brief Hello:

Beginning sometime around the first of July, an x-ray of my lungs gave me cause to all but come to a serious slow-down, or at least I am going to blame that on my temporary absence from Meander With Me. The second x-ray proved all to be well. The problem seems to have been caused by pneumonia, not a cancerous lesion. I did get my book of poetry, Butterflies and Bumblebees edited and ready for self-publishing, but little else.
On the 28th of this month, next Tuesday, I am heading northward to Bird In Hand, Pennsylvania for our annual family reunion. I will do my darndest to get back to my blogsite after returning, but for now, I am going to share a copy of my reply to a friend who sent me an email featuring Bob Cosby and a few of his thoughts on keeping the United States of America a strong and forceful force in the world. I think the following is self-explanatory.
Dear Friend, Neither you or Bob Cosby stepped on my toes. With few exceptions, I agreed with everything Bob Cosby said. One exception concerns the pledge of allegiance. I agree it should be repeated in the schools, Congress, Senate and anywhere people are gathered in a public building funded by taxpayers, but … I pledged allegiance to the flag every school day during my pre-highschool years and was never forced to say something of which I had no knowledge, and which cannot be proven. The lack of two words, “Under God” did not cause me to want to give up my citizenship to this country and leave for another.
The original Pledge of Allegiance did not contain the words “under God” and should never have been added. Strange, so many people always seem to know just what God is thinking at all times, and so certain God has chosen the United States of America as his own special project to look after. Let’s see: at one time the Romans ruled the known world for … goodness, can’t remember just how many hundreds of years, but it was for a hell of a long time. How did they do so all on their own … or, was America’s God looking out for the Romans during those years? Come to think of it, England did right well for a considerable length of time. Was America’s God looking out for England, and then switched his allegiance to America after we won the Revolutionary War?
According to most Christians, this country has been under God’s protection since 1776. That is just a little over two hundred years, not near as long as either the Romans or the English were “top dog”. How do we know that God isn’t going to change his mind again? How does anybody know that God hasn’t already started to withdraw his protection of America, and is now behind the influx of darker-skinned, Spanish-speaking people from the South. I predict that if something drastic isn’t done, it won’t take much more than another hundred years or so before America is a Spanish-speaking country. If God is behind the influx of Spanish-speaking people, how do we stop God from doing what seems to be in the process of happening right now? Perhaps God is tired of war and has decided on a more subtle method of changing his allegiance from America to that of Mexico and other Spanish speaking countries? Can anybody prove otherwise? Can anybody picture this—the Pledge of Allegiance spoken in Spanish and instead of “Under God”, the pledge reads—under God’s Vicar On Earth—the Pope? That requires the addition of just three more words and what was accomplished once, could be repeated, no?
Just musing, Mary