Spiritual Ponderings

I have been under increasing conviction of my need to wean myself away from a generational addiction to listening to the news so much. Over the past few years my addiction to reading the Word of God has been increasing so much that I have less and less appetite for worldly news. At the same time I also am becoming more aware of the effect that exposure to much of the news has on my imagination with the parallel negative effect of hijacking my imagination from being usable for meditation in God's presence. Given this noticeable deleterious effect, I feel less and less inclined to indulge in exposure to mainstream media to the extent that I did for much of my life. However, that does not mean I have been completely cut off from what is taking place in the world around me. Yesterday as I perused the headlines and looked into a few stories in the news from an internet source, I noticed the enormous controversy swirling around a man who has grabbed the whole world...

Mr. Gorbachev, Tear down this wall! This is one of the most memorable statements in recent history for those of us who grew up under years of constant fear over nuclear war between the ever-threatening Soviet empire and the 'free West.' With a former actor as president of the United States who somehow used his charisma to unite and inspire his country to dream larger, more noble dreams, coupled with growing signs of a weakening of the repressive powers that had created what was termed 'the iron curtain' that stretched all across Europe holding millions of people in galling bondage, this challenge by Ronald Reagan was like a jolt of reality for people on both sides of the divide. This 'iron curtain' had been like a wall of death for many years against anyone longing to escape the prison of Eastern Europe for the freedom of the West. It had become a symbol of the tyranny of communism that had promised so much to its followers and yet had f...