Archives for September 2011

The newly triumphant rebels in Libya have decided one of their very first priorities is rounding up blacks from sub-Saharan Africa and sticking them into makeshift jails. The men being held claim they’re just innocent migrant workers, but the rebels claim they were actually mercenary fighters for the regime of Moammar Gadhafi.

Just last week, we talked about how the rebels were turning out to be murderous thugs, but it turns out that they’re being even more systematic about their thuggery than we thought, because it’s now racial.

There are almost always unintended consequences when one nation sticks its nose into another nation’s business, so that’s not unusual in itself. But how ironic is it that the first black U.S. president is largely responsible for black Africans being unjustly imprisoned in a country he just worked hard to destabilize?

When William showed up about 13 years ago, he was an amazingly confident kitten. He had been wandering the neighborhood for days when my ex-wife brought him inside and declared that someone had to take care of this little guy.

He was tiny then, but he was already a lion in his own mind. He walked right up to the older cats in the household and let them know there was a new sheriff in town. His dominant and fearless attitude earned him the name of William — after William the Conqueror.

There’s little he won’t get into. He has talented paws that are especially suited to opening drawers. Since he enjoys finding soft clothes to sleep on, he has a long habit of opening drawers and setting up shop on top of the clothes for a long nap. Here’s an example of his handiwork. He always jumps up and looks innocent after he’s been caught.

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Are you a coward? For much of my life, I’ve been one — at least a large part of the time. I’ve drifted along avoiding things that scared me, acting as though I could somehow cheat my fears without having to face them. I’m at the point in life where I can’t do that anymore.

I can either face the fears and become who I’m supposed to be or I can go back to hiding in cowardice. Now that I understand the truth about what I’ve done, though, I don’t think I can put it back into a box and hide it on a shelf. I have to confront the fears — and become the person God made me to be.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this issue since the first of the year. Something happened that made me ask myself whether I was going to continue being less than my best or if I intended to make the changes necessary to be who I wanted to be. If I’d realized all the implications of that when I started thinking about it, I might have run. But I didn’t. And once I let myself go down that road, I didn’t have any choice but to follow some trails to their logical conclusion.

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