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Late. Dark. Drunk. Empty. Alone. Sorrow. Silence.

"There is no greater judge of man than what he does when absolutely free to choose."

Never underestimate the gravitational properties of the couch. It's a good thing one can't overdose on Yorkie. He's tired, so he tolerates the affection. I'm not drinking to get away. There really isn't anywhere to go. Before modern anesthesia, we had whiskey. "Whiskey for my men, beer for my horses." I was thinking about the Declaration of Independence and our state as a nation. It is worth a moment of thought to parallel the Declaration of Independence as our blueprint to freedom as a nation of possibility to The Bible as a blueprint of freedom as children of God. I watched Syriana the other day and was sobered at it's accurate portrayal of the reality we live in today as a world society. It is simultaneously sad and sickening at what we have become. Abraham Lincoln once said, "We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which has preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended power, to confess our national sins and to pray for clemency and forgiveness." Are we not sliding down the slope? What lies at the bottom if not ruin? Anyway, I'm tired and intoxicated with the onset of carpal tunnel from clicking through countless cable channels only to find nothing at this hour but paid advertisements and sleeplessness. Hold your loved ones tight and tell them you love them if you are fortunate enough to have the blessing to do so... our independence was founded and fought for by men of virtue and fortitude upholding a belief structure losing popularity these days for modern gratification. The things we seem to take for granted today are near extinction... and everyone is too busy wrapped around triviality to care. C'est la vie on Earth.

I want to know God, not my idea of God;
I want to know my neighbor, not my idea of my neighbor;
I want to know myself, not my idea of myself.
-C.S. Lewis by way of my wife

Happy Independance Day... give thanks, reflect, evaluate. Love. Be good to each other. These can be seeds... or they can just be words. You decide.