Yesterday, after visiting the Spring market at Audley Farm, English and I went to The Locke Store in Millwood. While there, we purchased a lovely treat–a maple glazed rolled pastry stuffed with sausage, and garnished with sage leaves. Oh, my goodness! It was absolutely delicious. Thankfully, we only bought 1. Because this thing is addictive. Addictive in the way that Krispy Kreme original glazed donuts are addictive. You just cannot stop eating them.
We did vote. We voted “No”. We visited with friends at the Spring Market, and bought some wonderful fresh asparagus and apples from MacIntosh Farms. And we purchased a few surprises for Gram and Rufe. They will have to wait until English visits later this week to learn what they are.
“As long as there are final exams, there will always be prayer in the schools.”
–President Ronald Reagan.
This Sunday, Easter II, is also known as “Good Shepherd Sunday.” The Gospel is from S. John, Our Lord’s discourse on His role as the Good Shepherd. The theme is also found in the Epistle from First S. Peter: For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.
We may recall that S. Peter wrote this epistle to Christians living throughout northern Asia Minor (now southern Turkey) who were beginning to experience rising persecution. As well as the danger of apostatizing, many were feeling discouraged in their daily lives. Writing from Rome, where he himself was undergoing the persecution that would culminate in his martyrdom, S. Peter attempts to encourage his readers by invoking the example of their Lord, who was persecuted to the point of death though completely innocent of any offense.
Persecution is difficult, especially when rights are being taken away, such as participating in the workplace or in the marketplace. When one can no longer provide for himself or his family because of his beliefs, it becomes challenging in the extreme to hold on to one’s faith. In the first serious wave of persecution under Nero, Christians lost their means of livelihood and were stripped of their property. The incentive to recant and burn incense to the emperor was intense. This was the backdrop to S. Peter’s first epistle.
S. Peter makes several points: the first is that all suffering is in accordance with God’s will for us, for it tests our character. In the case of Our Lord, when tested, He revealed even more profoundly God’s love for us. Although He could have responded by cursing those who abused Him, instead He accepted the abuse silently and unhesitatingly.
Secondly, when we are tested, it is important to remember that it is not because we are cursed. Instead, we are blessed to be able to share in the same mistreatment Our Lord experienced. We are able, as members of His body, to walk that same Way of the Cross. Following His example, we are then privileged to take up our cross to our own Calvary.
Finally, suffering not only tests our character and allows us to participate more fully in the life of Christ, but also builds our character. Each trial and time of testing has the potential to make us stronger in our resolve. By looking through the suffering towards our ultimate end, we can endure with patience each trial, knowing the glory that awaits us.
Christians in our present culture are being tested in ways that are similar to the waves of persecution that swept over first centuries of Christianity. Tenets of the Catholic faith are being challenged in the courts of “progressive” states, and those of strong conviction have had to relinquish their livelihoods. Those who uphold the notion that marriage is “instituted of God” for procreation and the establishing of families are held up to public scorn. Articles in “prestigious” newspapers and magazines ridicule marriage and childbearing for women. “Tradwives” are despised.
But we are not left alone to weather these challenges. Our Lord has gone before us and shows us the way: who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: who when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously. No, we have the Good Shepherd, who does not abandon us to the wolves, but rather stops at nothing to carry His sheep to the safety of the sheepfold, His Church.
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America Needs a New Class of Leaders
Division is also opportunity.
BY: J.B. Shurk, The American Thinker (March 8, 2026).
In the United States — and the civilizational “West” more broadly — we are a society divided by slogans, propaganda, and social media memes. It is an unfortunate part of our present reality that we no longer engage in honest “public debate.” We haven’t done so for a very long time.
The Founding Fathers wrote essays and pamphlets and delivered hours-long speeches during which they articulated the reasons for their beliefs. We get pink-hatted people — who may or may not identify as women — “shouting their abortions.” We get automatons screaming, “Black lives matter,” “Free Palestine,” “Trump is Hitler,” “Hands off Iran,” and whatever other mindless chants billionaire-funded NGOs churn out.
If you approach people yelling these things and ask them why they believe what they believe, they have no idea. They can’t explain why “all human lives,” more generally, shouldn’t matter just as much as those with dark skin. They don’t know anything about Israel’s ancient history, the United Kingdom and France’s colonial carving of the Middle East, the Soviet Union’s promotion of a “Palestinian” identity to cause the United States and its allies problems during the Cold War, any of the multitude of ways that the international community has broken its promises to the Israeli government for the last century, or how the United Nations has spent most of its existence targeting Israel for alleged “human rights” abuses while ignoring unspeakable evils committed by far too many regimes in power today. They can’t explain why illegal aliens are breaking into America if “Trump is Hitler” or why the president’s determination to protect American citizens from foreign nationals by paying for those foreigners’ return to their own countries is somehow equivalent to Nazi atrocities that included the mass murder of six million Jews and millions of Soviets, Poles, Romani, disabled people, and other so-called “undesirables.” They don’t have any idea why Iran’s theocratic tyrants and Islamic terrorists deserve to be protected when those tyrants and terrorists have killed, maimed, and kidnapped Americans, Europeans, and Jews around the world for nearly fifty years.
Our ancestors benefited from Thomas Paine’s polemical pamphlets in favor of American independence. They listened to Sam Adams’s fiery arguments for revolution. They attended church services where they heard political exhortations from learned men delivering passionate sermons. They read newspaper editorials and political essays aloud while drinking ale in local taverns. Common people heard and debated uncommon ideas that birthed a new nation and altered the historic trajectory of the world.
We, on the other hand, get hypocrites such as Senator Chuck Schumer, who was last year telling Americans that President Trump was “chickening out” on holding Iran’s Islamic regime accountable for nuclear saber-rattling before telling Americans this year that Trump has no business holding Iran’s Islamic regime accountable for its nuclear saber-rattling. We get Democrats calling federal law enforcement agents “Trump’s Gestapo” because those agents put their lives on the line arresting criminal illegal aliens — including murderers, rapists, and other violent felons. We get apocalyptic doomsayers such as Al Gore and Barack Obama who have told us that the “science” of “climate change” is “settled,” even though nothing those frauds have predicted has ever come true. We get public school teachers indoctrinating students with ridiculously false ideas, such as (1) biological sex isn’t real; (2) the January 6, 2021 protest for election integrity was worse than the 9/11 Islamic terror attacks, the Pearl Harbor attack, and the Civil War all wrapped up together; (3) Muslims built America; and (4) America has never been more racist, fascist, or authoritarian than it is today. We get a left-wing corporate news media establishment pushing the ludicrous argument that requiring voter identification (a basic electoral safeguard enforced around the world) is both racist and an impossible burden for legal voters to surmount (even though Americans must present valid ID to board planes, buy liquor, and enter government buildings).
Notice that these sources of misinformation never advance anything that remotely resembles a rational argument. Democrats don’t explain why they used to consider Iran a major national security threat but no longer do. They don’t explain why it’s perfectly reasonable to attack federal law enforcement officers arresting criminal illegal aliens, even though they’ve spent five years calling the January 6 election protest an unacceptable “attack” on cops. Barack Obama and other wealthy “global warming” fanatics can’t explain why they own expensive beachfront homes if those homes will soon be under water. Democrats can’t explain why it’s too difficult for their voters to get photo IDs, or why boys should undress in girls’ locker rooms, or why white men are a “viral disease,” or why all of their political opponents are “racist, fascist Nazis.”
All of these false statements are simply represented as undisputed “facts” that cannot be questioned. As a kind of “political correctness” tripwire meant to ensure that these false ideas are never questioned, Democrats further insist that anyone asking questions must be a “racist, fascist Nazi,” too. Rational argument no longer exists. In its place, Democrats give us name-calling, self-censorship, circular reasoning, and empty tautology.
America is very divided today. For most of its two-hundred-and-fifty-year history, though, America has been divided. It was birthed in revolution. It survived numerous attacks from foreign powers while still in its infancy. It grew up through radical social change, profound technological innovation, and endless waves of immigration. It has gone to war against itself, and it has gone to war against the world. It has endured hardships that have destroyed other nations. Nevertheless, its people have persevered, united, settled the wild frontier, built a continent, and prospered. We look over our shoulders and applaud American achievement without reflecting on our near escapes from American disaster.
Division does not signal disaster. Division is also opportunity. When societies are forced to confront great change, some wilt, while others rise to the occasion. America has been blessed with rare resilience. Our nation is unique in human history because it is predicated on the still revolutionary principle that legitimate political power originates with the people. We do not look to kings to tell us what we may or may not do. As our rights come directly from God, aristocrats just get in the way. Our institutions matter not because they are invested with power over us, but rather because we have lent those institutions some of our inherent powers so that they can properly defend our inherent rights. Neither presidents nor congresses nor corporations can grant us what is already ours.
It is with this understanding of our natural rights in mind that I encourage everyone to protect those rights personally. Read, learn, debate, and most importantly don’t give up just because giving up is in fashion these days. This country has been through far worse and survived. People who tell you that this is the end for America have a vested interest in seeing America end. Those stubborn enough to resist will ensure that our country lives.
To be sure, we deserve more than slogans, propaganda, and memes. We deserve civic leaders who can speak in complete sentences. We deserve members of Congress who can introduce cogent arguments — supported by salient facts and not calumnies, falsehoods, or red herrings. We deserve a new generation of leaders who remind us of Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Sam Adams, and George Washington. Perhaps they already move among us.
Do not mistake division for disease. Division is the engine that often spawns greatness. What we require is discernment. We require wisdom. We require courage. We require leadership. We require renewed faith in God’s grace. These are not always in abundant supply. But they are very American things.
GFK
Observations From The Fifth Estate 