For Cryin' Outloud!?!?

Well, several weeks have passed since i last wrote for my blog and if anything i can say for sure is that i never cease to be amazed by people and the things they say out loud....

Perhaps it's the thought that somehow because we think a certain thing or feel a certain way, we believe that people just have to take whatever we dish out to them... that somehow we can say whatever we want to someone or about someone and that should be perfectly fine.

Well it's not... and if there is one thing every single one of us could learn is how to make sure that what ends up coming out of our "pie-hole", first passes through that thing we loosely refer to as a brain...

By now you are probably thinking... sheesh who ticked Rob off this week... well let's just say, it's not so much a person but an apparent mental and emotional immaturity that's reared it's head again this week in sooooooo many ways, too numerous to count!

Some people say whatever they want no matter how mean because they truly believe that it's best to "speak the truth", the main problem with this approach is that you can speak the "truth" all you want but if haven't gained "the right" to speak the "truth" to someone else, in the end you end up sounding like a really, really mean and ill-mannered, boorish lout!

i also think that some people "spew" their "truth" because it's a really convenient way to hide behind their own "stuff"... you know what i mean... some of us are so busy pointing out where everyone else is a "screw up" that we never deal with where we personally are screwy! And listen, there is nothing wrong with being messed up, the problem is when we choose (even when we know better) to stay messed up!

Anyway, all of that to say, civility is not a lost virtue... c'mon folks that's not so hard... is it? Let me know... maybe you have a different take on this whole subject...

Something completely different....

Wow... the last 24 hours have been truly historical for our nation. And in preparing to write this blog i have gone back and forth with regard with what to say...

See, my problem is that while i strongly disagree with quite a few of the policies that our President-elect Barak Obama indicated he would initiate while on the campaign trail if elected president over the last several months... there is this place inside of me that can't help but...

• Wonder what my uncles feel today... since they were actual participants in the Montgomery bus boycott...

• Wonder what my aunts and mom feel today... since they grew up in a region of our country that it was once said of "sweltered with the heat of oppression and injustice..."

• Wonder what my granddad (if he were still living) would feel today... since he no doubt suffered the repeated indignity of being called "boy" even as a grown man...

• Wonder what my great, great grandfather George, the son of a slave would think... since he lived the reality of being considered a non-human, never laying claim to the self evident truths that this nation's citizens were all "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights"...

If not for any other reason... pondering these things has been (i think) a good thing... my hope is that despite the differences that might continue to divide our nation... we would take a moment to appreciate the historicity of what has just occurred and then collectively "roll up our sleeves" and get back to work doing what God has called each of us to do...