Posted on 04/01/2013 9:23:05 AM PDT by JerseyanExile
America’s mainline Protestant seminaries are in crisis, but so far they seem to be spending more energy dodging tough choices than preparing for the future. A recent article at Inside Higher Ed describes the enrollment collapse at Luther Seminary in St. Paul. Luther is one of the most important Lutheran seminaries in the country, but its status wasn’t enough to insulate it from the forces upending seminaries everywhere. Enrollment fell off sharply, and the institution ”was running multimillion-dollar deficits, spending down its endowment and relying on loans.”
The seminary’s response? It’s making some painful cuts, letting go of some staff and reducing the number of degree programs it offers. Luther isn’t alone; seminaries all over the country are facing tough choices.
In many cases, survival has required selling off property or losing independence. More seminarians enroll later in life than in the past, meaning that seminaries often don’t need buildings filled with dorms and apartments. Others have worked to develop online programs, requiring less of a physical footprint, and selling or leasing their additional facilities.
These may be steps in the right direction, but they are baby steps at the beginning of a very long march. Higher ed is in trouble in every branch of learning, but the crisis facing seminaries is worse than that facing any other professional degree program. Seminaries, and especially those serving mainline Protestant denominations, have to change faster than law school or PhD programs if they want to survive. And selling some property or firing some staff, though sadly necessary in many cases, is just the start to a wrenching period of transformative change.
In effect, these churches are clinging to the ministry model that dominated mainline churches in the 20th century. Seminary leaders act as if the average seminary grad will still earn an average salary in an average church, that that salary can still support the loan payments that keep tuition levels high enough to support a traditional seminary, and that denominations or rich believers can and will make up the difference between tuition and cost. These assumptions are almost certainly false.
As noted before, the modern American church, especially among mainline Protestants, but also to some degree among Catholics and evangelicals, got mixed up in the blue social model. The clergy became a ‘profession’ like the others. People pursued careers in the ministry, complete with grievance procedures and pension programs. Denominations built up regional and national organizations that were staffed with professional staff. Progress was seen as replacing volunteers with certified, graduate educated professionals: Directors of Sacred Music and Directors of Christian Education. People built lots of buildings they couldn’t afford to maintain. From an organization perspective, denominational bureaucracies were like GM and IBM in the 1950s and 1960: hierarchical, growing every year, and offering employees jobs for life.
Neither Jesus nor any of the twelve apostles could get a job in any self-respecting mainline church in America today; none of them had a degree from an accredited seminary.
So part of America’s contemporary religious crisis has to do with the decline and fall of this blue model church, and any solutions to that crisis need to involve creative ways of transitioning to a post-blue era. More and more mainline Protestant ministers can expect to be part time or volunteer. The traditional denominations (each with a network of expensive seminaries and bureaucracies) will have to consolidate. Church bureaucrats will largely need to disappear.
This means that seminaries will have to change much more fundamentally than firing a few professors or selling off some dorms. Christianity is going to have to be more of a mission and less of a profession in the future. It may be that future ministers will learn the trade the way Peter learned from Jesus and Timothy from Paul: they watch the masters at work, and start their own pastoring careers under the supervision of someone they respect.
It’s not surprising that most seminaries and denominational bureaucracies would rather think about anything than the collapse of their business models. But rethinking the way the churches work is an essential part of the mission of Christian leaders today, and their failure to engage bespeaks a much broader failure to grasp the challenges of our times.
Pivoting off of the Inside Higher Ed piece, Rod Dreher asks about possible solutions to the wider troubles facing US seminaries. He writes:
What liberal Christians will say is, “Be more liberal!” What conservative Christians will say is, “Be more conservative!” Neither strategy seems suited to the nature of this crisis.
Dreher is completely right that the problems facing seminaries aren’t just theological. And it’s more than a question of budgets; penny-pinching won’t see them through the storm. It’s time for new leaders with vision and imagination to take the church beyond the blue. Since the colonial era, the genius of American Christianity has lain in the ability of new generations of Christian leaders to reinvent institutions, find an authentic theological stance and voice that appeals to each new generation, and put Christianity in the forefront of individual lives and social challenges from age to age.
Theology can be debated; liberal, conservative, protestant, catholic, fundamentalist, modernist. There is much to be said for each of these positions, and the debates need to continue.
But there’s a much more critical difference: the difference between life and death. There is a lot of dead wood in American Christian institutions today, and the carters are coming to clear it away.
And just what to you use as the source of absolute truth?
And how do you know it’s the Holy Spirit talking to you and not some other spirit?
What criteria do you use to know that you are not being deceived?
What blessings? Material blessings? Are they the measure of whether we are on the right path or not? When it’s good it’s God, when it’s not, it’s not?
And how do you know what the fruit of the Spirit is?
Where do we find that kind of information?
Could you cite us another source that tells us about our need for a savior and how to recognize Him. and what He did for us?
Or does whatever spirit that is whispering in your ear tell you?
I do not count my blessings by the value of the things I could sell, but in those things I would not sell at any price.
The Fruit of the Spirit is "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control" (Galatians 5:22-23).
Peace be with you
1) Jesus... not words about him. but he, himself..
2)The Holy SPirit "IS" some other Spirit.. we are all spirits..
If you mean Satan?.. I've seen Satan in the mirror.. Have you seen her?..
3) We are all deceived on some level.. some more than most..
Thats why there are so many denominations.
If you think you are not deceived... you are the most deceived..
I leave you with I Cor 2;9 my fav verse..
***
Ain't that the truth!
Could you cite us another source that tells us about our need for a savior and how to recognize Him, and what He did for us?
You mean other than the bible?... Well yes I can..
The Holy Spirit.. but you must first believe that he/it “IS”...
The Holy Spirit IS MORE REAL than the Bible...
The Bible without the Holy Spirit is nothing...
The Holy Spirit without the Bible is everything..
The Bible is Lore/Stories/Legends about the Holy Spirit..
If you have the Holy Spirit as an Invisible friend the Bible is minutia..
I do not wish to be confrontational or to be needlessly insulting, but with due respect to Pope Leo XIII, whose excepts you quote (and to you and to Fulton Sheen), but I fail to see how Leo’s injunctions have been better followed in any government claiming allegiance to his religion, than to any other religion (including the “religions” of Secularism, The Enlightenment, or to Atheism)
If you feel compelled to continue to attack our Founders with charges of depravity and evilness, then a decent respect for the opinions of your fellow forum members requires that you provide a reasonable degree of specificity in alternatives you might propose.
I cannot presume to speak for our friend boop, but that is certainly my thoughts on the matter.
Being that I have much work to do along with my Mom being very sick I will give you a few articles that were posted here on FR over the years.
Bear in mind there is some sarcasm in a few of these, but they get to the core of enlightenment pluralism ,the reformation and total depravity
Reflections on Pluralism
by Donald P. Goodman
http://www.seattlecatholic.com/a050511.html
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1856746/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2457550/posts
The pre enlightenment world after Christianity was legalized was far more moral than the world we live in now and it survived much longer than modern western culture ever will
Right out of Scripture.
Thanks for making my point.
Did God really say....?
God’s word is forever settled in heaven.
Have fun following your invisible friend but don’t say you weren’t warned.
And how did that Scripture get to us?
Peace be with you
God’s word is forever settled in heaven.
The Bible says, God don’t speak words.... God “IS” the word..
That may even be correct.. if you understand what that means..
Most DO NOT.. they want to lock God up in a legal contract..
Spiritual shysters.. trying to hamstring God.. with legalese..
Thats why Jesus NEVER advocated reading anything.. even the Tanach..
Except to the Rabbi’s, Jewish lawyers of that day..
WHO I might add were very busy creating the Talmud..
The New Testament is much like the Talmud...
That is IF you know what the Talmud actually is..
Not that it’s worthless but it isn’t Gods WORDS..
Except to superstitious people that worship it..
God is the word.. bibles are opinions.. about God..
Very useful to folks that do not have the Holy Spirit..
**Note: “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the LORD. “((- I -)) will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.”
-OR- you can read the bible.. and do it yourself, kinda sorta..
Sorry to learn of your mom’s illness. May she enjoy a speedy and complete recovery.
Thank you for all the interesting material you’ve referenced. Be assured that I will pursue that material avidly. Although interesting, I do not wish a conversation with Dr John Rao, or Donald P. Goodman. It is you, as much as they, who has portrayed our founders as evil and depraved, and I would appreciate it if you would accept responsibility for your advocacy by explaining, specifically, what egregious wickedness they have committed, in what manner have they given offense, and how you propose they should have gone about their task alternatively (with respect to this last, I’ve gone into some detail in earlier posts).
I understand that you are burdened with a great deal of work, so I understand if a delay in your response becomes somewhat protracted. I also understand that you are under no obligation to respond in any event.
Thanks ,dear friend. Doctors have given her a short time but my mother has defied the odds since she was young. She exudes the light of Christ and heals others with that love though all of her pain
It is you, as much as they, who has portrayed our founders as evil and depraved
It was many founders of this country who promoted the error of Calvin that man is depraved . I never said all the founders were evil, some may have been ignorant of this error since many were influenced by it throughout their lives .
Let me set the record straight, the error of Calvin's teaching on depravity is evil.Man is injured due to sin as historical authentic Christianity has always believed. Man is not totally depraved
Alexander Hamilton and others promoted the error of depravity , like it or not
Some examples..
Alexander Hamilton
"And making the proper deductions for the ordinary depravity of human nature, the number must be still smaller of those who unite the requisite integrity with the requisite knowledge. -FEDERALIST No. 78
"But though we may find in these causes a solution of the fact calculated to abate our solicitude for the consequences; yet we can not consider the public happiness as out of the reach of danger so long as our principles continue to be exposed to the debauching influence of admiration for an example which, it will not be too strong to say, presents the caricature of human depravity--Alexander Hamilton on the French Revolution [Philadelphia, 1794]
From George Washington..
"[F]ew men are capable of making a continual sacrifice of all views of private interest, or advantage, to the common good. It is vain to exclaim against the depravity of human nature on this account; the fact is so, the experience of every age and nation has proved it and we must in a great measure, change the constitution of man, before we can make it otherwise. No institution, not built on the presumptive truth of these maxims can succeed." -George Washington -To THE COMMITTEE OF CONGRESS WITH THE ARMY [Head Quarters, January 29, 1778
"Good God! who besides a tory could have foreseen, or a Briton predicted them! were these people wiser than others, or did they judge of us from the corruption, and depravity of their own hearts?-George Washington To HENRY KNOX, December 26, 1786.
From Patrick Henry
"The Northern States will never assent to regulations promotive of southern aggrandizement. Notwithstanding what gentlemen say of the probable virtue of our representatives, I dread the depravity of human nature.-Patrick Henry, The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution [Elliot's Debates, Volume 3] Thursday, June 12, 1788
Ratifiers of the Constitution
"We ought to consider the depravity of human nature, the predominant thirst of power which is in the breast of every one, the temptations our rulers may have, and the unlimited confidence placed in them by this system. These are the foundation of my fears, They would be so long in the general government that they would forget the grievances of the people of the states. But it is said we shall be ruined if separated from the other states, which will be the case if we do not adopt."-Ratifier of the Constitution, Wm. Lenoir. The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution [Elliot's Debates, Volume 4]DEBATES IN THE CONVENTION OF THE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA, ON THE ADOPTION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION.
I would appreciate it if you would accept responsibility for your advocacy by explaining
Why? You're going to get the same information that DR Rao, Fulton Sheen, Pope Leo XXI and others have known and explained in detail.
My suggestion to you is read the early Church fathers on man's condition after Adam's sin. It's not in line with Calvin. Blessed Augustine wrote some error regarding this but retracted them and submitted to the historical teaching of the Church.
It's easy to see why our country is failing when morals were not defined enough and the idea of man is depraved leading the powerful during the founding of this country to think their prosperity was grace from God even when some were involved in things like slave trade for example.
Oh, I see; merely some of the Founders were evil and depraved. Or is it that most of them were not evil and depraved, merely that they were too ignorant and too stupid to know that all of their lives, poor dears, they had been manipulated by ideas too complicated for them to understand? The choices are rather limited here.
Now you quote several Founders (and can provide many more, I’m sure) in support of your thesis, but let’s begin with Washington (the most interesting of those you name, in my opinion):
“. . . reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”
. . . . . George Washington, Farewell Address, 17 September, 1796
Reconcile, if you will, the above with the quotes of Washington you’ve provided. In fact, permit me to recommend the whole of Washington’s Farewell Address (it can be accessed easily on the ‘Net). The whole of it gives us a much better window into Washington’s mind than what you provide.
In view of the FR assembly’s demonstrated knowledge of the Founders’ labors to construct a government most able to provide a maximum of liberty consistent with Natural Law, and yet establish a government able to sustain itself for more than a few days, please explain with some specificity why your interpretation of the Founders’ remarks you quote are definitive.
Why? you inquire of my request you have back quoted: I would appreciate it if you would accept responsibility for your advocacy.
As with Dr. Rao, Fulton Sheen, and Donald Goodman, you deliver every declaration by implication and seemingly expect us to receive them as dispositive and final without further elaboration. If you wish to deliver everything by implication do not expect to be taken seriously.
The Founders put themselves out there, unreservedly. They devised a system of government (the Constitution and the Bill of Rights) in every detail, and left a philosophy (the Declaration of Independence and a great deal more) explaining why. They left nothing unspoken, nothing hidden in the shadows. You are fulsome in your criticism of the Founders’ efforts, yet, when asked for specifics, you turn coy, reluctant to delve into detail. Why?
You remind me of a certain young fellow who, for over four years now, has demanded a virtually unlimited sum of resources, yet, when pressed for details, makes a lot of generalized comments, but will not go into detail as to how it is to be spent. That’s not how we roll in JR’s shire.
Thank you, dear brother In Christ, for your prayer for my recently-departed father. May God ever bless you for your kindness.
* * * * * * *
It appears that you and I are counterparties in a dispute or debate about the superiority of a theocratic model of government to the model of government we have under the U.S. Constitution and its predecessor documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble, which clearly call for a “separation” of church and state while guaranteeing freedom of religion and its exercise, and of liberty of conscience generally.
In an earlier post, you averred that
“The US set themselves up as a Church even though you don’t seem to realize this … separation of Church and State is condemned by the Catholic Church.”Where is your cite for this alleged “condemnation?” I have never heard of such a thing. While I honor Bishop Fulton Sheen as a great theologian and evangelist, I’d give him a grade of “F” for his knowledge and understanding of American history, particularly of the Founding Period.
I’m a realist. Thus I believe that we have to look to historical American experience as the context for understanding what is meant by “pluralism.” Ultimately it refers to a state of existence of a secular community wherein each and every individual conscience is free to think and believe according to his best lights. (Not to mention that the American polity is composed of the descendents of immigrants, and new immigrants, from points all around the globe.) Though I believe in the absolute superiority of the Light and Grace of Christ Jesus, and am personally committed to same, as guides to human thinking and behavior, not all people share this view. (More’s the pity — but one cannot command faith. Faith must be “free,” or it means nothing.)
In contrast, it appears that Bishop Sheen is taking a more reductive or doctrinaire approach to the question. Somehow it seems that “pluralism” in his book is premised on “the Myth of the natural goodness of man [which gives] the assurance of an ever-increasing progress,” and he (properly) hangs this myth on Voltaire and his ilk. (You might as well blame Darwin. I know I do.)
Your good friend wrote:
“Pluralism is the catalyst for merging together the contradictory themes of … three western historical influences into a truly irresistible, degenerative, and ultimately globe-trotting disease. On the surface, it merely seems to outline a pragmatic program of peaceful control of the potential for violence emerging from heretical divisions and the unraveling of naturalist secular society….”Be that as it may; but the Founders/Framers definitely did not believe in the “Myth of Benign Human Nature and the Infinite Perfectability of Man.” I gather these were Voltaire’s main preoccupations, as fertilized by a rabid, radical anti-clerical ideology. (Also these were Rousseau’s main preoccupations — who is probably one of the nastiest examples of human degeneracy, hypocrisy, and maniacal self-obsession in the history of the human race. You’ll remember, he’s the guy who first proposed that man is born “a noble savage” who is spoiled, “degraded,” by any contact with human religious, cultural, and social institutions; i.e., by the educational process itself by which one generation transfers its knowledge and moral legacy to the next.)
Neither did they believe in a purely “naturalistic” view of man, world, and society. For their foundational premise (stated in paragraph 2 of the Declaration of Independence) is that God created both the natural world and each and every individual human person, creating the latter in His image — that is, as possessing reason and free will — and as divinely endowed with the unalienable rights of Life, Liberty, and “Happiness” (i.e., securely-held property). The DoI explicitly refers to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” Thus the “secular” government formed under the Constitution must guarantee these original divine endowments of human rights, which are inviolable by any just State. Violations of same by the State legitimize the withdrawal of the consent of the governed, and even armed rebellion by the citizens against the State: “… [W]hen a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce [citizens] under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
Not only that, but the Framers believed that God is the Creator Who structures all of the reality He made, and thus is the Ultimate Lawgiver with respect to natural and moral law; also He is final Judge of that which He has made. Moreoever, as Christians, the Framers were all too aware of the legacy of Original Sin which burdens each and every human soul….
You wrote: “Madison got his ideas of pluralism from Voltaire. Just read Madison’s “multiplicity of factions” and it’s as if he copied it from the anti-Catholic Voltaire.”
This is purely tendentious, dear brother stfassisi, as James Madison himself makes clear in his discussion of “faction” — what today we might call “interest groups” — in Federalist 10. There is no way I know to read these lines and draw the conclusion that Madison thought that man is “naturally good”:
AMONG the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. He will not fail, therefore, to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it. The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished; as they continue to be the favorite and fruitful topics from which the adversaries to liberty derive their most specious declamations…. Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. However anxiously we may wish that these complaints had no foundation, the evidence, of known facts will not permit us to deny that they are in some degree true.What any of this has to do with Voltaire’s view of man and society is beyond me.By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.
There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: the one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects. There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.
It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.
The second expedient is as impracticable as the first would be unwise….
The latent causes of faction are … sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points; … an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts….
No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time; yet what are many of the most important acts of legislation, but so many judicial determinations, not indeed concerning the rights of single persons, but concerning the rights of large bodies of citizens?…
It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all without taking into view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interest which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another or the good of the whole….
To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of … faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed….
By what means is this object attainable? … [W]e well know that neither moral nor religious motives can be relied on as an adequate control….
The problem for the Framers was to design a form of government that (1) guaranteed and protected the God-given liberties of American citizens by (2) separating the institutional powers of secular government at every level — federal, state, and local — so that (3) the powers would “check and balance” each other, so that (4) no consolidation of State power sufficient to destroy the liberties of We the People could be effected. The U.S. Constitution is just that design.
As I said before, I am a realist. As such, I do not believe that man or any humanly-ordained government, secular or religious, can instantiate the Kingdom of God in this world. Which, I gather, is the object of theocracy in principle.
We’d start by having to organize government along the same lines as Iran or Saudi Arabia, where religious police haunt the streets, and non-conformers are put to the sword. Personally, I’d rather put up with the social disorder caused by the lost souls who have rejected God, whose behavior expresses in the detestable forms of pornographic, pedeophilic, rapine, life-destroying behavior and try to deal with it through the legislative and judicial processes, than ever to see such a thing as theocracy established in the United States of America. At the very least, there are insurmountable practical difficulties in any attempt to do that. Plus what such a thing would do to human liberty is horrible to contemplate. Meanwhile, I am consoled by the fact that those who reject God will ultimately be judged by God, very likely to their peril. I leave this issue to Him.
Meanwhile, the social order must be defended by (hopefully!) wise and just secular laws. That’s the best human beings can do.
But we should never forget that human laws and divine justice are not the same thing: And that the former are ultimately judged according to the standard of the latter. Just because something is humanly said to be “legal” does not necessarily mean that it is “lawful,” let alone “just.”
It seems to me that all of America’s present difficulties reduce to the fact that We the People have forgotten that (in the Framers’ view), We the People are a nation “under God.” That is what makes America “one nation, indivisible, with justice and liberty for all.” Absent this core understanding, the culture becomes increasingly divided, sick, insane, irrational; and cultural consensus about anything at all becomes virtually impossible. Thus we commit our nation to chaos. For “a house divided cannot stand.”
One last thing before I close (thankfully!): You suggested that “self-evident truths” could be anything at all, whatever man says they are. But if you say that, you miss the point of what Jefferson was referring to as “self-evident truths”: They are the logical conclusions to be drawn from a primary (indeed primal) foundational premise: That God made the world and all things in it; that He made man in His image; that He gave all of His Creation the form He willed, in which He instantiated His laws, natural and moral. He is, as Sir Isaac Newton put it, “the Lord of Life with His Creatures.”
Thank you ever so much dear sfassisi, my dear brother in Christ, for writing! I look forward to your reply.
p.s.: What exactly is your beef against Calvin? (It's true that many of the Framers were of Calvinist inclination.) Is he not a Christian, though not of your particular persuasion? Doesn't our God command us to "love thy neighbor as thyself?" Especially those neighbors who know and love Christ Jesus according to their best understanding, which may not be the same as ours? The Body of Christ ought not be divided by sectarian quarreling. I believe such a thing is detestable in the eyes of Christ, our Logos; our Savior; our Final Judge. FWIW.
WHAT A CONCEPT!.. even love all the STUPID christians TOO?..
I think you might have something there..
You may have "BOOPed" this conversation UP a notch..
And especially, thanks to you for your kind condolences on the recent passing of my dearest father, at age 92, peacefully in his sleep after a long illness: He is free now, which is what he wanted. May God ever bless him!
Dear 'pipe, Daddy (the "rider" in your usage) "fired" his donkey; or put him out to pasture whichever you prefer.
The "rider" moved on, into the loving arms of God, and now knows the astonishing peace and love of the Lord.
The "donkey" is now fully within the grip of the Law of Entropy, that is, of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. That donkey is literally "ashes and dust" now; for now it lacks a Rider....
All of which is to say my Dad is well; and the family is adjusting well, too. Though it is a difficult transition, for my Mom especially: She and Daddy were an "item" for some 66 years....
Me, I just miss him terribly — he left a big hole in my life when he left. But I hope to catch up with him later, in God's time....
God bless you, dear 'pipe!
With deep thanks and hugs,
bb
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