Author: John Morgan

  • The Trouble With Politics

    I don’t know how many of you have been following the American Presidential Race, but I’ve noticed that this one has been particularly bitter and cutthroat, and the fact we’re embraced by the Information Age plays no small part in it. It is easier to find the dirt to sling thanks to background searches on the cheap along with the advances of Google and Wikipedia. Mud-slinging has long been the favorite tactic of the politician; now it’s just easier to dig to the mud.

    It’s unfortunately gotten to the point that I feel I know so little about the good of any candidate. I know just  about every single skeleton in the closets of McCain, Obama, and Palin — Biden’s been oddly untouched by the media. I was fortunate to watch the Saddleback Forum and hear McCain and Obama give answers on the same subjects, which made me like Obama more than I had, but I found myself still more enamored by McCain. In that forum, I felt McCain had stronger, clearer convictions. He was able to answer quickly and to the point, throwing in the occasional joke. He talked like most of the people I have grown up around. Obama on the otherhand, came off to me as unsure of himself and his answers. He scanned the audience a lot which made me feel he was reading their reactions before saying anything.

    After the forum, Obama supporters claimed that they must have given McCain the questions before hand. I doubt that is the case, but I do have this to say. They’ve both had these questions long before the forum was announced. They’re hot button issues, many have been around for at least the last four presidential campaigns I’ve been old enough to remember. They weren’t new. Others were more current issues, but they’re still at the forefront. The fact that Obama’s supporters feel he was unprepared compared to McCain makes me wonder if Obama even thinks about these matters when he’s not in front of a camera or podium.

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  • An Imperfect Analogy

    I actually sat thinking about a a pair of phrases that have long bothered me. They bother me because I feel they both are poor theology, or at least do not reflect my experience or the experience of anyone I know. “God is my co-pilot” and “If God is your co-pilot, change seats”, neither phrase sits well with me. Both phrases were likely coined by non-pilots who have an idealized and, frankly, misunderstanding of how aviation works. However, the latter phrase I feel is fallacious.

    As a human with free will, I am the pilot. That is something that God never takes away from anyone. Even as follower of Christ, I still make choices daily and could choose to turn away at any time if I so wished. No where in scripture have I read that God will take over your body and mind and do everything for you. It is wishful thinking at best, though I do not know that I’d wish to follow such a God anyway. The concept of becoming a spiritual zombie not in control of my own body and mind rather disturbs me. All of scripture calls on you to make the decisions, you pick up your cross daily, you deny yourself daily. God does not make your decisions, God does not pick up your cross daily, God does not deny yourself daily. Only you can do that, that is the way God intended it. It takes faith to follow Him daily and active submission out of love. For God to be the pilot, it would require no faith or love toward Him on your behalf. For God to become the pilot would require no faith, you would sit back as an outside observer as God does it all for you.

    The former phrase is also poor as a co-pilot’s job is relegated to doing minor tasks (or really any task the pilot cannot safely devote time to without distracting himself from his other responsibilities) and being there should the pilot be unable to perform his duties. He is also under the pilot’s thumb, though it is his responsibility to take control should the pilot put the plane in jeopardy. This is not God. God is not under your control. You cannot order Him into action, you cannot tell Him what to do. He is not there for the completion of tasks you have no time for yourself. He will not take control of you should you put yourself in jeopardy. Oh, He may bring a miracle about to rescue you, but He will never take over your body and mind then force you to make an action against your own will.

    If you must use an aviation metaphor to describe the Christians relationship with God, then “God is my Air Traffic Controller” fits much better. When I am flying in low visibility (less than 3 miles), cruising at 106 knots (roughly 122 miles per hour), I am required to be in constant contact with air traffic control, and for good reason. They can see what I cannot. They — like God — know where I am at right now and where I need to go. After all, they have a strip of paper that tells them my origin, destination, planned route of flight and altitude, as well as my aircraft and equipment on board. They also have their radar, which is telling them my altitude and position at all times. In these situations, when I cannot see anything around me, these voices in my ear are the ones I put my faith in to safely get me where I need to be. They tell me to turn, I turn. They tell me to climb, I climb. I let them know my intentions. They let me know if it’s possible or not. Choosing to ignore them and go my own way, flying blind, I likely will find myself slammed into a mountain somewhere. I’d be extremely lucky to do everything right on my own and make it to my destination, but more than likely, I’d end up at the wrong airport. Either way, I’d have to answer to the FAA for my willful disobedience to ATC guidance.

    How much like our God is this relationship. It’s not a perfect metaphor, but it is the closer of the two. I do not plan my route. God has already chosen my plan. He guides and directs me. He leads and I follow. He tells me to do this or that, go here or there, and I obey. I put my faith in Him that I will end up where I belong. I hope you do to. If you haven’t already, take that step into faith. Much like flying in the clouds, it’s a thrilling adventure waiting to be experienced.

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  • A new movie has claimed the title of “John’s All-Time Favorite Romance”

    Yes, you read that right. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a hopeless romantic — some days I feel I lean more heavily on the hopeless than the romantic — and I watch romances on the rare occasion, Rare because I don’t like watching movies that stir up desires in my heart and leave me feeling discontent.

    My favorite used to be “The Princess Bride”, which I have learned is also the favorite of many other men, possibly because there is adventure tied in there with all the things a man long to do: be the hero, save the day, and win the heart of the damsel in distress. Much like Christ did for his Bride, the Church. He put his life on the line to win her heart, and like wise, so we men were patterned the same.

    “The Princess Bride” is nigh over twenty years now and I suppose it was high time that a new romantic adventure movie came out that is of the same caliber. It still holds a place in my heart, but a movie that was released this fall that I hadn’t even heard any hype about despite a few of the high profile cast in it. Robert De Niro , Michelle Pfeiffer, Ian McKellen (Gandolf the Grey from “Lord of the Rings”), and Claire Danes. All give good performances. This movie is called “Stardust”.

    I suppose, for me, what most makes it take the crown from “The Princess Bride” is that the protagonist is an anti-hero. In “Princess Bride”, Westley (Cary Elwes) starts out knowing he loves Buttercup (Robin Wright Penn), and that Buttercup loves him, and his goal is to get her back. Other than the scene showing him as a farm hand, the rest of the movie assumes he’s going to rise to the challenge as he’s already made a name for himself as the Dread Pirate Roberts. In “Stardust”, Tristan Thorn (Charlie Cox) is trying to win the heart of a local girl, Victoria (Sienna Miller), in his mid-19th Century town in England, known as Wall for it is situated on the edge of a wall which is fabled to guard against another realm beyond the gap in it. However, Tristan’s love is unrequited. Victoria looks forward to being betrothed to the more popular Humphrey who — as rumors fly — is preparing to journey all the way to Ipswich for an engagement ring. The same night she tells Tristan this, they see a star fall beyond the wall and Tristan asks if she would marry him if he could fetch the star. So, he sets out on the journey beyond the wall and into the magical realm of Stormhold without a clue of what lies beyond.

    I find Tristan to be more endearing a character than Westley. While Westley is daring, brave, and dashing; Tristan is shy, bungling, and naive. Tristan is me, the anti-hero. I would go further, but I don’t want to spoil the movie any more than I already have, so you will just have to watch it yourselves and see what it’s like.

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  • Canada 2007, Day Seven

    I ended up not going out this morning as what ever I ate last night had me puking this morning, probably the really greasy onion rings. I did get to sleep in though despite having some really odd dreams. They got 9 more geese this morning. When they got back, we ran errands, and ran out to scout a little. We stopped at Jim Tofer’s to talk with him and Neal had some fish and stuff to drop off to him. Tofer was working to combine his wheat field on the north end of the lake before the rain set in, but apparently it has too much moisture. 18.5 he said, which I’m not sure if that’s a percentage or what. He was headed back to the house as we were leaving out and stopped to have a beer with us. His grandson and daughter-in-law came out to visit as well. The 2 year-old was badly wanting to ride in the combine with his grandpa. From there we headed back to the hotel. We plan on hunting the wheat field again as it still had a large number of geese feeding in it tonight. With any luck, we’ll knock a few more down. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow with winds at 15 gusting to 25 miles an hour. Miserable weather, but great for goose hunting as they tend to go out for more food and fly lower, the strong wind also forces them to land a certain direction. Just like aircraft, they land into the wind since they can stop quicker, or in the goose’s case, not trip and stumble over their own feet. Anyway, I need to get sleep since I wake up at 5 am tomorrow.

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  • Canada 2007, Day Six

    We hunted in that wheat field and it was a good hunt. We knocked down 9 geese. Kevin and Randy came out and hunted with us. We ended up setting up a little to close to the edge of the field, but the geese still were coming in. If only our accuracy was good. With 5 people hunting (Kevin opted to just collect our birds and chase down runners), you’d think that when 5 birds come in, none of them would leave. As luck would have it, only two came down, and I think all 5 of us shot at the two as they were pretty shot up. Given four of us have 3 round capacities and Neal has just an over-under shotgun, that gives us 14 rounds flying in the air. By 9am, the birds had stopped flying and we decided to leave the decoys out and hunt it again in the evening when they’d be flying again. We got another 5 in the evening for a total of 14 birds.Packing up, we’ve found we’re now short one full-body decoy. If it’s not in the trailer tomorrow, then there’s a coyote out there that is really disapointed. I also need to strip my shotgun down soon as the action’s jammed twice today. Once when ejecting a spent casing, and once when loading the next shell. It could just be the condition of the old box of shells I was trying to use up today, or it could be all the dirt it’s been in from that one farmer’s field, or maybe I just got wheat in the action when loading shells those two times. Just to be safe though, I should strip it down. It’s frustrating, and a little scary, when you pull the trigger and nothing happens.

    Tomorrow we hunt the pea field we hunted Monday, hopefully the birds aren’t too spooked still, but given we hunted the wheat field twice in one day today, the birds don’t seem to spooky yet this season.

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  • Canada 2007, Day Five

    I woke up tired and groggy and headed out into the cold, 30 degree weather and we put out our decoys and blinds. The wind was moderate at probably eight knots. We actually got set up in time today. We got twelve geese and three mallards all told. We also had a duck and two geese get away from us. There were three wounded and running. In thirty pounds of gear, and shotgun in hand, I was in full sprint for the first one and took him down after chasing him a good 150 yards. The other one I chased for about twenty minutes, sprinting and jogging in this section field (section as in a square mile parcel of land). It was freshly disced and was like running in sand. I never got closer than 80 yards on this goose and he eventually slipped through a wire fence and into the woods. I couldn’t clear the fence or find away around it in any direction on this mile long fence line, so I let him go. Uncle Bob’s got away too. The same thing happened with a mallard. It out ran me and went under the fence. All-in-all, it was a good hunt until we started to leave and check for those wounded birds. The farmer was chasing one on a four-wheeler and had picked it up by the time we got over to him. He was a little pissed we had the wounded goose get away from us and threatened us with his .22 rifle, saying, “See this?” pointing to the rifle, “Don’t ever come back.” The whole time, he was holding this live goose and petting and stroking it like some new pet. We found out later that the old man is losing it in his old age and can be rather erratic and is known for it, which makes the whole thing a little scarrier. Later, we got in touch with Kevin Ophus over at his business. He invented a way to process tar sands to get oil that is 98 percent efficient, meaning they can dump the sand back on the ground when they’ve got the oil out. He currently operates a large field in Utah despite being in Canada. We all headed to Randy’s business, Grande Equipment, to see what fields he knew of and got us lined up with a farmer, named Darren, who has a combined wheat field. There were about 100 geese in the northeast corner of the quarter section of land. He owns 9 sections. We expect we’ll hunt it tomorrow. After Randy showed us around, we went back to his store for drinks. I had three short glasses of Candian whiskey and Sprite while we shot the breeze for several hours. The six of us; Dad, Uncle Bob, Neal, Kevin, Randy, and I; finished off that liter of rye whiskey before heading home. Well, the hotel room anyway. They might come hunt with us in the morning. At least we’re not hunting in Debolt, so we can sleep in half an hour. Wake up is at 4:45.

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  • Canada 2007, Day Two

    It was an early morning but not early enough. We hadn’t moved the truck until half an hour after shooting time and the geese were already in the air. Uncle Bob and Neal had three down by the time we got back to the set-ups. We didn’t bring down any more after that and they were done flying by 10am. It was a good hunt though. In the evening, we went to dinner with Gordy and Allie at Golden Star. We had Gordy order like we did last year and we picked up the tab. The buttermilk shrimp was excellent as always, along with ginger beef, snap peas, lo mien, and a few other dishes that I didn’t catch the name of. I also had a little much to drink but not overly so. Two Caesars and three glasses of wine.

    Tomorrow, we get up at four in the morning rather than five.

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  • Canada 2007, Day Three

    Well, today was mildly productive. We got a late start due to a dead battery in Neal and Uncle Bob’s rental car. They tried to get it exchanged at the airport here, but Budget Rental Cars are independent of one another, so they drove one out from Edmonton for them. Quite nice of them.The late start seemed not to affect much as there were very few geese flying or in the fields. Seems that geese rest on the Sabbath or something. Given the numbers seen yesterday, most may have still been full. By evening, we were seeing far more. There were at least four fields with easily two-hundred birds a pieces. We have permission for two of them and will check about the others tomorrow. It should be a good hunt.

    After this morning’s scouting, we went to Gordy’s — having failed to find a cafe for breakfast as the one in Bezanson abd Debolt are out of business — once there, we off-loaded the trailer. We put the full-bodies together, got our stuff that Gordy stored for us, and then packed the trailer again. I still think the trailer needs shelves and other organization. It should open more space.

    We also got permission for Tofer’s place. It had geese landing in the volunteer canola just the other side of the trees from the lake. Apparently other stuff is growing in it. It’s looking good and I’m excited for tomorrow. We have our licenses and our field lined up, and tomorrow we take Gordy and Allie out to Dinner at Golden Star. 7pm.

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  • Canada 2007, Day Three

    We made it into Grande Prairie, Alberta tonight. Or afternoon rather and dropped off our gift to Gordy. He has a pea field lined up for us, which will be nice. It gives us something to hunt come Monday.The trailer pulled nicely all the way up, though it does cut down our gas mileage. That’s alright though. we can carry more and not worry about it getting stolen.

    We left Airdrie this morning and there was a fair wind blowing. Southward I gather from the small plane nearly matching speed with us as it paralleled the freeway. the rain was scattered all day. Dry to drizzle to deluge all the way here. If the weather holds like this, it could be a decent hunt. The rain usually brings them lower and closer, and conceals the true nature of the decoys longer.

    We’re getting up early tomorrow to do some scounting and to square away the contents of the trailer considering we just hastily threw it all in there. We also need our licenses. With the Canadian dollar on par with the US dollar, it’s going to be pricy. At least it’s fun, not to mention rewarding. And, we found someone willing to pluck them for us.

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  • A Few Well Spoken Arguements On Hunting

    Over the past day or two, I’ve been following a thread on IMDB under “Open Season’s” forum thread at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0400717/board/thread/54564402 that has been rather stimulating debate between hunters and vegans. So far the vegans haven’t shown a compelling argument other than that they feel it’s wrong to take any life, neglecting all the while that plants are life as well. The majority of their arguments so far are either opinion and/or erroneous facts. Here’s one I thought was really well spoken on the hunter side:

    “The arguments of the anti-hunter are completely without merit. They are based strictly on an emotional, kneejerk reaction to something they do not understand. Something they would never take the time to research and actually make a decision based on logic and reasoning. They do not deal in facts. Their perspective is extremely narrow. Unfortunately, they also tend to have the loudest voice, even though they are in the tiny minority.

    The facts are:

    We are not aliens. We evolved on this planet and we are its top predator. Our eyes are in the front for a reason. We should act like it. We have domain over every other living creature on this planet. We have also evolved an intelligence and a sense of awareness not present in other animals. It is our responsibility to care for and protect them. To NOT hunt is to deny our place in the cycle of life on earth. To NOT preserve their habitat is to deny them a place to live. To NOT keep their numbers controlled, is to allow them to die off in large masses from disease and starvation. This is NOT in their best interests.

    Hunters spend more money and put more effort every year towards conservation and wildlife preservation than anybody else, by a HUGE margin. Hunting pays for your state parks, wildlife management areas, etc.

    In Africa, if there was not the big hunting industry, there would be no lions, elephants, rhinos, hippos, leopards, cheetahs, warthogs or the many species of antelope. The revenue from the hunting industry is what preserves these species and their habitat. It is what pays for their game managment departments, those responsible for controlling poaching. In many places, it is the only source of revenue. It is the only way the land can generate revenue AND the wild game be allowed to live there. A very nice coexistence. It is also a huge boon to the local villagers because they receive all the meat. And yes, make no mistake, NOTHING is wasted. No meat is allowed to be exported from Africa. You may judge it negatively as ‘trophy’ or ‘sport’ hunting. But to do so is to ignore the truth and the grand scope of it. Do your research.

    Those are facts, here’s some opinion:

    Hunting is a part of our American heritage and our history as an evolving race. Civizilations were built on the backs of animals. Man has been kept warm by their hides and their bellies full with their meat. Without hunting, WE would not be here. To deny that history and heritage because it is convenient for YOU and makes YOU feel better is about the most selfish thing a person can do. It is extremely narrow minded and if anti-hunters have their way, they will only be pleased with the result in the short term.

    The biggest threat wildlife faces is not the rifle, bow or pistol of the hunter, it is the bulldozer, the dump truck, the housing development and the shopping mall. The uncontrolled development that is so prevalent in many places is FAR more cruel than hunting could ever be. Yet people have no hesitation in moving to another brand new housing development or condominium. As they sit on freshly destroyed woodlands and preach about ‘saving animals’. Hypocracy!

    The sickest part is how they assess value to animal life based on ‘cuteness’. It’s OK to kill birds and pests but not those cute bunny-rabbits! Not Bambi! Hypocracy. I, for one, do not draw those lines. I have an immeasurable amount of respect for our wildlife. More, I dare say, than your average tree-hugger. A rabbit’s life is not more precious to me than a snake’s. Alligators are not detested while Bambi is to be adored. To make such judgements on the value of an animal’s life while standing under the flag of activism is just sickening. What is even more sickening is how they use the term ‘murder’. To somehow equate the life of a human to that of an animal, THAT is a mental disorder.”

    -newfrontier45

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