Where Did Archie Go?

WHERE ARE WE? Numero Uno RV Park, La Penita, Mexico

This was the Archie we woke up to this morning.  He is tough and scruffy and his face matches his personality.  He bites my nose to wake me up, (not hard) and sticks to a pretty rugged schedule for feeding and walking.  Lately we have been sleeping on a beach it seems, cause he is full of sand all the time and then he crawls in with us.  We have to shake out the sheets every day before going to bed. 

So we decided that it was time to take him for a trim.  Our Mexican groomer has a set of clippers and thats it.  Making an artistic statement with the grooming is not even a thought in her mind.  Just get rid of the hair.  We told her not to touch the tufts on his ears but the rest is gone!!  Our rough tough Archie has disappeared!!!  But is he ever soft, and there will be no sand in the bed for a while.  

Even though it is the dry season here, the grass still grows a bit so Joel had to do some mowing today.  I guess I should have wet the lawn down before but oh well, the grass is done.  

My heart goes out to those involved in the Madison School shooting today, and for some reason I was touched by it. Today's shooting marked the 61st school shooting at an elementary or secondary school this year in the USA.  It is also the 487th mass shooting of the year in general.  A mass shooting is defined as one with four or more victims wounded or deceased. It's hard to get your head around those statistics isn't it?  A student of a Christian school used a hand gun to end the life of  2 others before ending his or her own life.  I point to the fact that it was a Christian school, only to point out that these things can happen anywhere.  I would hope that Christian schools uphold higher moral values as a whole, however, no place is immune to violence if the right circumstances present themselves.  My thoughts were of the shooter and what would have motived her to do such a terrible thing.  This was an violent act in which a young person did something that most of us could not even think about doing.  I don't believe she did it to be violent, but rather as a last resort to deal with issues in her life.  To end someone's life is a very harsh and terminal decision to make and for me to even start to understand what the motivation would be, is far beyond my understanding.  Without even mentioning problems in our society as a whole, our youth have some pretty big burdens placed on their backs by our society, and have not yet developed the skills to cope with some of those things.  When I witness the games they play, which put zero value on human life, and the movies they watch which are disturbing to most adults, I say shame on us for creating this world for them.  Most of these mediums teach that termination is the way to solve the problem.  To say that this was a guns fault is far beyond reasonable, although a gun did aid in this tragic event.  Guns are bad things in the wrong hands, but there will always be a way for someone to access a gun if they want it bad enough.  Rather than concentrating only on banning the weapon, we need to concentrate on cleaning up our world of all of the things that tend make people believe in their altered minds that it is ok to just nonchalantly solve their problem by inflicting death on a person in real life.  Start by banning all violent games and movies maybe.  Why do we need to be entertained by violence!! Perhaps make movies that make people aware of the absolute hell a family goes through when grieving the loss of a loved one.  We talk about the increase in mental illness among our youth!  Duh, you think so?  It would be hard not to be affected mentally when exposed to what our world has to offer youth daily.  Shame on us.  I'm sure this situation will turn to another round of fights on whether to ban guns or not.  Metal detectors in schools have been discussed and the Police Chief of Madison said it best when asked about installing them in schools.  He said "Would you want metal detectors in your child's school?"  The room full of reporters went silent and a ladies voice in the back replied in a quiet voice "No"  If we come to that, we really need to do some radical cleaning up of what we offer our kids as their mentors.  We all grew up knowing there was no place at school for a gun, why can't we continue to teach our kids that too.  At the end of the day, how can we start the process of healing our broken world and creating a warm safe environment for our children to grow up in.  Each one of us can play a small part, perhaps by just being kind.  If we are kind, we can show that there is real value to the life of every human being, and if we can make one person see that, we have succeeded.  I'm not sure why this event hit me so hard, but today I feel real grief for our world.  I feel grief not only for the victims families, but also for the family of the shooter.  They must be in absolute anguish wondering what went wrong and how they could have corrected it.  I believe that the return of Christ is near because it seems like that is the only way this mess will be cleaned up. Make sure your right with your creator, because things will change in the twinkling of an eye.  No time to decide then.  Rant over.  Good Nite!!