Today, Wednesday, we had some of the best of an Indian summer, which is an autumn that seems stuck in reverse. 80 degree temperature on the beaches, but I had to refrain from going out and lying on the sand because I did that yesterday, and have already red-tinged my wrinkled countenance. I had arisen before sunlight lifted its way out of the forest this morning, and sat beside an early morning bonfire to ward off the chill that lingered in the air from the night before. I often sit out doors, but more often with an evening fire than with a morning fire.

I switched on my new Samsung Tablet PC and took a quick look at the news. The stock market, the Dow-Jones, had lifted like crazy overnight, just the opposite of what I might have expected on just the day before the expected massive shutdown of government because of the political wrangling in our capitol city of DC. Perhaps the term "capitalism" needs to be updated to "capitolism", and the meaning of the term to be changed to something like "plutocracy".

What caught my eye next, after reading about the unpredictable markets, was a statement from a well-know, old-time, American figure--that of Franklin Graham. He's the son of the evangelist Billy Graham, whom Americans have listened to on TV and in major tent revivals for more than half a century. Billy is too old now to be as effective as he once was, so Franklin has perhaps inherited the throne that filters the voice of God for others to understand. I grew up in a fairly tightly religious home--Sunday morning and evening worship services, along with some Sunday schooling and some Wednesday night prayer meeting. I really did get what they were talking about, after so much exposure for so many years, so I knew the message of Billy Graham quite well, and it is apparently pretty much the one that Franklin is now delivering (oh, and, concurrently, has a new book for sale, too!).

Except for a bit of self-promoting, the man means well, and probably thinks he knows the solution to our capitol's problems. It is also admirably brave of him to speak his thoughts to a large crowd of non-believers who would enjoy tossing him to the lions. The gist of Franklin's message is that our national leaders and our nation are in moral decay, do not know the difference between right and wrong, and their hearts are full of lust, greed, and wickedness. I question whether he means that this is a recent turn of events, or whether it has always been that way. Many would say the greed and the evil began with the man who discovered that America had already been here for a long time, Christopher Columbus.

When I was a regular church-goer, I never heard of anybody in any church desiring peace for the nation, but rather that our savage war tactics might continue successfully overseas. I seldom heard from church people of any challenge to the crooked practices going on in the capitol. And maybe that's not their fault. We believers had always been told to act like sheep and follow the voice of the shepherd. I had been in many churches where people fell to their knees in fervent prayer that God would maintain the status quo. And yes, Billy Graham was always there in the capitol city holding prayer breakfasts with the politicians, soothing them when they were busy blowing up people on other continents to keep the bankers happy.

I lay this crazy pattern of cards out on the table so that I might better understand them from my own perspective. I had to leave the mainstream version of American Christianity behind me long ago. Some of the reasons had to do with sound logic, and me wanting to keep mine rather than freely give it away for others to play with, while the other reasons had to do with huge gaps in understanding as to whether my sins had been forgiven after I accepted Jesus, or if it was okay for church hierarchical members to renege and override Jesus' promises, and put me back on the shame and guilt train from which I thought I had jumped.

The universe is too big and wonderful to not believe something much bigger than ourselves is running it. If I believed all was mere cosmic accident, I'd be working for my millions on Wall street, and forget all else about morality and decency! I think Franklin is wrong to say that all us middle-class commoners need to get down on our hands and knees and turn to God to fix Washington.

The evil ones in power need to do that, while us commoners need to become proactive in fixing some laws that give us back the power to rule over our own destiny, as well as learn how to sharpen our own conscience, rather than lapse into Orwellian group-think. The monetary and political system in DC is corrupt, has been for a long time, but is now accelerating. I think there are tools we can use to take back control of our economy and government. If not, we have the ability to invent some.