My Prejudices

Today's Link
It's All Good

Saying for the Day
If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same race, creed and color, we would find some other causes for prejudice by noon.
~George Aiken

Picture of the Day
My Grandson's Python

On Tuesday I blogged about our prejudice boxes and it got me to thinking about my own. I do have some you know. I wish I didn’t but I do.
The difference in my life is that they are no longer locked shut. AS I discover them I open them up and dump them out. Sometimes the bottom falls out and they empty by themselves.
When I started blogging I had a very strong prejudice against people who rode motorcycles and had tattoos . In my mind they were all members of gangs that terrorized the countryside. That’s the way television portrayed them. I was afraid of them and fear produces prejudices.
Then I came across a blog from a lady in Detroit. She fit right in the box. She rode a motorcycle, she had tattoos and she swore a lot. But as I read her blog I discovered she was a single mother doing the best she could to raise her kid. She was a nurse who really cared about her patients. My box was starting to show some cracks. Then came the day when she got up early so that she could go with other motorcycle riders and form an honor guard at the funeral of a Veteran that some group was threatening to disrupt. And if that wasn’t enough she read on my blog that we missed phone calls because our only phone was in the kitchen so she got in touch with my son and arranged to send me a cordless phone without my knowledge. When it came I cried and the prejudice box was gone.
I might add that because of our interactions on the blogs she came to see Christians in a different light and one of her prejudice boxes dissolved as well.
Listening to, and seeing people helps to destroy the boxes. People are seldom the way we see them to be.
That’s why my Church belongs to Esther which is a group that brings Muslims, Jews, Christians and anybody else together just to talk and share. It’s just people meeting people but in the process the boxes are dissolving.
I think blogging does that too. In the safety of our own home we can interact with people we would never spend time with because of our prejudices. In the process we break our images of them and begin to see people. People that hurt. People that are afraid. People that get sick. People just like us. In the process our fears, our anger, our hatred for that group can no longer stand.
The sad thing is that there are those who use their blog to reinforce their prejudice. They seek out other blogs with the same prejudice and then praise each other for being brave and speaking the truth. Their prejudices end up set in cement.
As for me I am going to keep praying that God will open my eyes to my prejudices so I can empty the boxes.

News from Pigeon Falls

The little town in my basement where the trains still run, dragons fly, and life is back to normal
Well Herman went down to the Happy Pigeon last night. He had seven Haltvers . He was so drunk he couldn’t walk home so two of the regulars from the Happy Pigeon walked him home. His wife, against her better judgment, let him in and they dropped him on the couch. He slept like a baby. But when he woke up this morning with a headache to end all headaches he realized he had had no vision. There was no light. There was no voice. He didn’t even remember dreaming.
Needless to say Herman was upset. After all he is a seer and he had done everything necessary to get a vision and none came. Worse, the people at the Happy Pigeon knew he had done everything they would be expecting a vision. He considered the possibility of making up a vision but he couldn’t think of any to make up. His wife suggested that it was possible his last vision was so important that he would have no more until they had figured out that one. Of course, she didn’t really believe that but anything to keep him sober for a while .
And the shadow on the western edge is growing bigger. It has reached the edge of the Bob Maki farm.

Wrap Up

It was a little better day and I only went through one little tank of oxygen. I finished scanning the last of the slides. I scanned over a thousand since I got the scanner. In the afternoon we got the study ready for the grand sons who will be sleeping in it on Friday and Saturday. Betty and Pennie have gone to a concert in Green Bay. I visited three tiers of links. Now I need a breathing treatment.
GBYA

*************************************************************