Protecter

Perfect love 

Bearing vulnerable hearts

Bleeding bind up 

We

Your cherished toddled warriors 

Sent to be love

NSA uses data to keep us safe?

   The work of writing in digital is complicated. I have three blogs and four connected emails to remember passwords. When I figure out all the special keys to open up the books, I forget why I was getting into the blogs In the first place. Granted, I complicate things because I distrust the ubiquitous cloud and the vigilant presence of google so eager to help me should I kindly allow them to track my whereabouts. They want my cookies! It is the price we pay for social media and instant information.

    

I'm not sure our constitution authors had all this in mind when outlining our liberties. I'm pretty sure that Verizon, Apple, Google and Microsoft are taking liberties with our liberty by selling our digital cookie crumbs to multinational corporate high bidders. Our digital lives are now pieces for profit; gleaned, categorized, analyzed and packaged into decision by the numbers.

Edward Snowden has risked his life to reveal that big data has leaped the cookie divide. Our personal data is avaiable and scrutinized by our government.  Wait, Did I sign something that said it was okay for my digital presence to be viewed by a government that I elected to protect my liberties?  The NSA claims to need our data for our own national security. What price protection?

Corporate big data is inevitable. Corporations do not rule our lives. We can vote for TGT, MCD, VZ etc, with our money and our feet. However, allowing our government access to our digital lives is another thing all together. We cannot vote out the NSA. We are vulnerable to their practice of prying into individual's digital pieces for polls, politics and policing. 

 

The constitution and the bill of rights are living words written with intention to protect and defend our liberty. That protection is under assault not by any foreign terrorist, but by those who have sworn an oath to preserve our freedom. 

Will we buy the NSA security story? Should precedent allow internet and cell phone information to be used to scrutinize and define terrorist behavior? Silence rights, search and seizure law and free speech hang in the balance. They are all rendered moot when government officials are a few clicks away from all the streamed records of our lives. Pandora's box opens to kangaroo courts, officer Krumpky presiding as judge and jury. Who are terrorists? Who defines them? Are they protesters that threaten government security? What constitutes a threat? Who decides?

"The need for this data is for our national security." Is absurd.  Every American teenager demands and every American parent struggles to allow freedom to trump security.

The ultimate security is a jail cell.  No terrorist can harm prisoners unless of course the jailer is a terrorist. Terrorists are everywhere!" says government, "Be afraid! Be very afraid,"  

Is this freedom from fear? Freedom of speech? Freedom of worship? Freedom from want? 

Who decides? Apparently not us. 

Several years ago a different government offered this country protection in exchange for an ever increasing intrusion on personal liberties.  There was this guy who made this speech about it at a convention in Virginia. Let me think, what was it he said?......

Well, Is it really that important?

Water and Willow

Water and Willow

Willow, my youngest niece. is receiving baptism by Laurel, another dear niece, newly ordained.

A very sweet occasion especially since my mother, recently recovered from a small stroke has kept her eyes on the prize of attending this event.

Some do not care for infant baptisms. I for one celebrate and drink deeply of the waters of grace wherever the font may flow.

So, in honor of your baptism, here,  dear Willow Augusta, enjoy and celebrate these truths:

water - life
eternal - spirit
child of the king of love
beloved beyond measure 

travel on the waters of grace
to vanquish your fears

dwell in the house of the Lord

forever

The stick still silence of birdless limbs

There always seems to be a pause come November. between the end of things and the beginning of things. Its fitting to have Advent at the end of November, to stop in grace, prepare for the great beginning, 

No gleeful birdsong. Now bare twigged trees beckon us to listen for direction.

I love the smell of Ohio woods in November. The crisp smell of crimson and orange, maple and oak leaves tumbling over across the lawn. 

obeying the wind, moving on. 

The birds fly frenetic, whirling, cyclone patterns, 

obeying the wind, moving on.

Then, the silence, the crack and creak of rubbing tree limbs. You can hear your own Mind. The sun lower, the light pensive.