Addendum

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DISCLAIMER: this blog is mine & mine alone. It bears no reflection on my friends, family, or place of employment.

Part I
One topic I wanted to touch on briefly in my last blog addition was the passing of Jerry Falwell. Title him Dr., Reverend, hate-monger, great man of Christ, whatever you want. Living in Lynchburg, VA lent me a different perspective than some might have, or have thought you would have living here. L'burg is the home of Liberty University and Thomas Road Baptist Church, both creations of Falwell. This was also his hometown. But not everyone here was blindly devoted to him, nor really all that fond of him. Those seem to be misconceptions of those outside of VA, or outside of L'burg. Personally, I despised Falwell for his statements, beliefs, and politics. I have sympathy for anyone or any family that loses a father, son, brother, etc. But beyond that...

Consider the following:
* "Falwell's long career was marked by inflammatory attacks on liberals, Jews, Muslims, blacks, homosexuals, women's activists and civil rights organizations.

Two days after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />United States, he blamed "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians ... who have tried to secularize America."

A year later he called Muslim prophet Mohammad "a terrorist", to which Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khameini responded with a fatwa command for Falwell's death.

* Writing in the Catholic New Times in 2004, retired Catholic Bishop John Shelby Spong, who led Lynchburg-area churches in the 1960s, recalled Falwell as a "race-baiting segregationist" who praised South Africa's apartheid regime as the "bulwark for Christian civilization" and branded black rights activist Nelson Mandela a "communist".

Falwell came under fire from fellow Christian leaders when he accepted several million dollars from South Korean evangelist Sun Myung Moon, who calls himself God's modern prophet.

*In 1999, he shot back to international headlines when he warned that Tinky Winky, a character in the popular BBC children's television show Teletubbies, might be gay.

But his opponents consider his most outrageous words to have been his comments after the September 11 attacks.

"The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad."

Naming feminists, civil rights activists, and Democratic party groups, he said, "I point the finger in their face and say: you helped this happen."

* "I believe that global warming is a myth"

* "If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being."
* "AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals."

This is info that can be freely found from various reputable sources & channels. I cannot mourn the passing of a person like this, call him a "great man", let alone a Christian as I think of Christians.

Part II
I believe that if you do what you love & love what you do, that alone goes a long way towards making you a rich person. A cousin of mine works doing something she truly loves. In fact, she told me that she looks for reasons to work on her days off, and looks for extra activities to do w/the kids she works with. I told her that this is the love of what you do that doesn't make your job "work". No matter how much money you make, the payoff from this kind of occupation is beyond value.

Closing
Well, it's time to close up shop for the night. The thoughts on Falwell I had during my last blog sesh but failed to include them. And the comments from the conversation w/my cousin were - I thought - worth including. Take care of yourselves & the ones you love, and LIVE LIFE, and live it LARGE!