The Next Great Adventure

I heard this afternoon that Pope John Paul II died today.  What a wonderful man and what a grand example of how one should face death!  While I did not agree with him on principles of doctrine, I have no hesitation in saying that he was a man that espoused goodness and that he was always a strong voice for good both to those within the Catholic faith and to those without it.  I hope that those who will chose the next Pope will chose as wisely as those that elected Pope John Paul II and I wish him happiness in his next great adventure.

A Life of Ease is Hard to Live and Erasing the Line

I am watching General Conference this morning, as I did most of the day yesterday.  As would be expected, the talks encourage doing good things and being upstanding, caring, righteous people.  As I listen to stories of people standing firm for their convictions even in the face of daunting odds, I realize something:  Life is easy and an easy life is hard to live.  A life of ease means there are few natural challenges to face and so few natural opportunities to build or reinforce our character.  True, there are still trying times, just ask anyone surviving a hurricane, flood, fire, tsunami, violent crime, war or other such disaster but honestly these events happen to only a few of us.  Most people will not face such a disaster in their own lives.  That being the case, the true challenge of our time is having so few challenges.

The reason that I really wanted to make this entry though is to comment on the continuing blurring of the line between good and evil.  I remember my first reaction on reading Isaiah 5:20 Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!  I could not believe that someone would actually have the audacity to call something that is good evil and yet that is now a daily occurance.  Are you hardpressed to believe that?  Consider the phrase That's wicked!  It is possible that the person saying that means that something is evil but more likely they mean that the thing is amazing, awesome, fantastic, astounding or great.  So, why call a great thing wicked or sick or bad-ass?  Just as I did when I first read Isaiah's warning, I still marvel that people have the audacity to call a good thing evil and I find it truly wicked that such a thing has so quietly, so insidiously made its way into our lives.

Tada!

Well, I never said that I would actually write about the change on April 4^th, just that there would be more details available after April 4^th.  I actually wrote all the details of both the beard change and the other change back on March 26^th and even published it all here to the site.  I just made sure that the text wasn't visible.  It is now 8:30 AM and I'm sitting in the Board Room for staff meeting here at CSI and since I've been told to make the other change public in this setting, I can now make the rest of the post on March 26^th readable.