And it is further true amongst all those who claim leadership by virtue of divine authority we may apply this test with authority - that the man who stands for humanity, first, last and all the time, against all vested interest, religious and economic, is the man who stands as Jesus stood.
Any long-time follower of this space knows that U2 has been the Soundtrack of my life since my Senior Year of High School. U2's ode to Martin Luther King, Jr. titled "Pride in the Name of Love" was the very first U2 song I ever heard. I can still remember hearing it for that first time. I was standing in my bedroom in Beaver Dam, Kentucky getting ready for school and listening to 96 WSTO, which was broadcast from the nearest large town, Owensboro, Kentucky. The DJ was evidently a big U2 fan and the sound I heard that morning coming from the radio was unlike any other band I'd ever heard and strikingly different from the Def Leopard, Journey and REO Speedwagon that had dominated the music of my high school experience.
U2 recently covered John Lennon singing "instant karma's gonna get you" and that's exactly what happened to me that morning -- I was hooked instantly and for good! U2 has been my favorite ever since and until their Joshua Tree album, I pretty much had them all to myself there in rural Kentucky.
Well, I was visiting U2.com today and they've posted a stirring and touching rendition of "Pride" which was recorded by the incredibly talented John Legend as a stripped-down piano version for a 2 hour TV special devoted to the life of MLK. Take a listen below, enjoy and then watch the special Saturday at 4 PM EST on the History Channel:
If you can't fly, run. If you can't run, walk. If you can't walk, crawl. But by all means, keep movin! ~MLK
I discovered tBlog like a lot of folks do -- by doing a Google search for Free Blogging sites. That was over 4 years ago and "blogs" were the hottest Internet thing going at the time. Google had yet to monetize everything that clicked on the Net. MySpace was worth about as much as my first car and Facebook's founder was still looking for a date to his Junior prom. I'd recently moved back to my hometown in the hope of re-centering my life around my most deeply held values. I was living in a town of 400 people in rural Kentucky. Needless to say, my social life suffered comensurately, which was exactly my plan. So, I had a bit of time on my hands that I hadn't had in many years. I also I had some things inside of me that needed to be expressed and a few ideas that I wanted to share with someone other than the usual suspects in my life.
I checked out all the popular blogging sites of that time. It seems like Type Pad and Blogger and Blog Spot were the 3 other blogs other than tBlog that I gave a spin. Posting to all the other blogs was a bit like screaming at the top of your lungs in deep outer space because there was no one there to hear your scream. tBlog was different. tBlog was simple -- sort of like my little hometown. My tBlog was very easy to set-up and to begin posting. I spent some time lurking on tBlurt and eventually began to interact with other tBloggers. I visited their sites and left comments so that I could accumulate tBucks. Others visited my site and left their comments for me. I checked out the Hot Blogs and thought about how cool it would be to become one of the top bloggers on a blogging site.
Although I was just looking for a blog site, what I found was the most unique on-line community that I'd ever joined -- and being the Internet junkie I am -- I'd joined them all. I can still remember late nights in Compuserve forums using a 14K modem. Here at tBlog I became a very active blogger, reader of other blogs and frequent commenter to other blogs. Loving nothing more than a vigorous and spirited debate, I quickly became a bit infamous for my special brand of bloviating in the comments section of other other tBloggers. I believe I can easily claim the title of longest commenter on tBlog without risking a protest! To this very day, what I love so much about tBlog is that even after 4 years of being a member of the tBlog community, I still find tBlog just as oddly authentic... just as refreshingly anti-cool... just as REAL as tBlog was for me those first few weeks of blogging. I truly consider my tBlog friends to be real friends in every sense of the word. Those of you who have been reading my blogs over the past few years likely know more about me than the people I spend time with in the carbon based world. You've been with me through several big changes and you've watched my kids grow up. You were there when I met a very special woman almost 3 years ago to the day that will become my wife next month. You were there when my son, Warren, came to live with me. You were there when I was re-grouping in Centertown, Kentucky and you were there when I packed up the SUV to move to Orange County, California. You were there when my kids got roles in local plays and you stayed with me all the way through to Gracie's recent appearance on the hit sitcom "Two and Half Men".
You were there because tBlog provided a tool for me to share my life, my thoughts and my hopes with you and you were there because tBlog evolved to become best blogging community on the web for regular ol' folks like us all over the world. You were there because I chose to write all down on tBlog and because you were kind enough to read and leave a comment.
Who would have thought that real human community that truly enriches one's life could be achieved by such a simple equation? Here's the equation: 1) Be willing to share your thoughts by writing them down and posting them to your tBlog. 2) Read the blogs of others and be willing to leave a thoughtful comment. 3) When others leave comments, thank them for their input and return the favor.
Only Snoopy May Know What the "t" Stands For
Now, noboby knows exactly what the "t" in tBlog officially stands for -- I think it my stand for "touch", because being a member of the tBlog community has certainly touched my life. Then again, it might stand for "thought", since tBlog is a place where so many of us get to share our thoughts and have our thoughts heard.
The "t" could also stand for "Trademark& quot; because for me there's just nothing like tBlog.
Sure, I've got an outpost on Facebook and I'm a good networker on LinkedIn and Plaxo. But if you cut out my heart, you'd find it branded with that little "t" and that's why despite whatever new trends may come and go in the land of 3 W's -- it'll always be tBlog for me!
Before you start tMailing me about every technical problem or bug that tBlog's ever had, please know that I've struggled through the same membership pains that you have. In many ways, those growing pains have made this community real in the same way the Old Skin Horse in the Children's story The Velveteen Rabbit says we all become real -- by going through a shared experience together. Hey, maybe that's what the "t" in tBlog stands for -- togetherness. My final suggestion for what that little "t" might represent is "Thankfullness" because I couldn't be more thankful for tBlog or for tBlog's great members.
Here's to a bright future for tBlog! If you are new here, you'll want to stick around long enough to find out what makes tBlog so special. If you've been here in Nanna's nursery a very long time like the Old Skin Horse, then don't go anywhere because tBlog could be ready to really hit its stride and you won't want to miss the ride.
If you get a chance, let me know what you love best about tBlog and about being a member of the tBlog Global Neighborhood...
This blog is the creation of Kurt Maddox, an Internet Entrepreneur, Consul tant, Motivational Speaker and Success Coach living in Orange County, California. Kurt welcomes you to contact him anytime by sending an email to kurt@kurtmaddox.com or by phone at 1-800-274-8151!
In Memory of Mr. & Mrs. Lowry ( Pup Pup & Mum Mum) Warren & Gracie's Maternal Great-Grandparents
My son, Warren, has been living with my parents in Kentucky this semester because he decided he wanted to go back to his old school, which he'd been attending for the past year and half before I moved to California. In Kentucky, we lived right next door to my parents on a shared piece of property in a little rural town called Centertown, Kentucky. Centertown's entire population of 400 or so folks is about 1/4 the population of our apartment complex in Aliso Viejo, California! Warren enjoys a terrific relationship with my parents, whom he calls "Nanny" & "Paw Paw", so we all decided that if this was what Warren wanted that we'd give the arrangement a trial. After all, lots of boys Warren's age go off to boarding school and the like.
I'm happy to report that it appears Nanny & Paw Paw's Boarding School is a pretty solid place for 14 year old boys to make the transition from adolescent to young man. Warren continues to be extremely happy and to develop into about as fine a young man as I've known in the environment of his choosing. We haven't decided about next fall yet and right now we're just looking forward to the wedding and then a great summer with Warren hopefully spending most the summer with Nicole and I in Orange County.
Warren has earned the right to be self-directed so long as his decisions are workable and the results are positive. So far, knock on his father's wooden head, so good!
He's such a simple, loving and responsible kid and he prefers his life to be predictable, stable and of a matching simple elegance. His time with Nanny & Paw Paw in the country provides Warren with an idyllic daily existence for his tastes. In fact, I've taken to calling him "Country" after his maternal great-grandfather who went by "Country&quo t; most all his life and was the only name I knew him by before his death early into my marriage to Warren's mother.
We'll call them Big Country and Lil' Country to keep them straight!
Big Country was old-school tough and plenty awnry. He played football at Alabama for a year back when there were no pads and the helmets were just a thin layer of leather to keep your brains from falling out when you rammed your head into other players. Later, he worked in steel mills and was said to have been strong as an ox and just as bull-headed when it came to doing things Big Country's way. He married a gorgeous woman who was still as beautiful and fiesty when I met her and she was nearly 80 years of age at the time! Their beautiful daughter Madelyn is the maternal grandmother that Warren and Grace, unfortunately, were never able to meet. Madelyn was once an aspiring model and actress herself before she got into the birthing babies business and later to moved to Louisville, Kentucky when her husband got a great new job as a Corporate Attorney at General Electric's Appliance Park. GE at one time employed over 12,000 folks in Louisville's Appliance Park, but, now employs only a couple of thousand there on a sprawling campus that is eerily empty and inactive compared to its hay-day.
Warren clearly has a strong genetic connection to Mr. Lowry, including his big head! Big Country's big head was legendary. One of the funniest stories I heard him tell was that when he was a young man and wearing a hat was very much in vogue, his friends would entertain themselves in the city by taking Country into hat stores to watch the flustered attendant attempt to fit Country for a hat. Hat stores apparently didn't stock hats big enough for Big Country's substantial cranium. Country would say "Why don't I try this one" or "that one" and then would model the ill fitting lid for his friends while asking, "How does this one look?"
Each hat, of course, would look completely ridiculou s sitting atop his noggin like a thimble on a baseball!
I can't remember exactly, but, it seems to me that this may be how Big Country met his wife. I'll have to get the details straight, however, before going any further in that direction with this story.
It is really too bad that Big Country never got to meet Lil' Country because they'd have certainly taken to each other very quickly. One things for sure, you don't want to take either one of 'em hat shopping unless you're just in it for a laugh!
I got a text message from Nicole at 3 AM Pacific Time that her mom had just called to report experiencing a 5.4 scale earthquake in Louisville, Kentucky that awoke her from a dead sleep with the sensation of riding a tectonic plate a few centimeters this way and then that. I also had a series of emails from my sister, Melody, who lives in Louisville as well. I spoke with my mom a bit later in the morning and she said that it woke her up in Centerown, Kentucky as well, but, that she went back to sleep without knowing what it was that woke her from her sleep. Warren, of course, slept through the whole thing! lol!
The quake was centered just north of Evansville, Indiana about a couple of hours west of Louisville and a couple of hours north of Centertown.
The funny thing is that everyone from back home always brings up the danger of earthquakes when they learn I've moved to America's earthquake central, Southern California. I always take that opportunity to remind them that they live on one of North America's most dangerous fault lines, the New Madrid fault. The New Madrid fault's last major activity was in 1811 - 1812. Legend has it that the Mississippi River's flow went back-wards for 10 to 24 hours after the quake and that a similar quake today would be catastrophic due in the amount of damage it would likely bring to the area.
So, maybe a few more hillbillies like me might want to consider a move to the West Coast where at least we don't have tornadoes! lol!
With a great big debt of GRATITUDE to a new friend, I figured out how to make a wonderful little collection of Wallace Wattle's wisdom available from my websites. If you believe you can never learn too much about success and happiness, you'll want to click below and download this very special collection of e-books and articles that make up the "Lost Writings" collection. The "Lost Writings" includes Wattle's most popular work, "The Science of Getting Rich" along with and several very hard to find Wallace Wattle's articles.
I purchased this collection last week and the process is extremely easy and no hassle. I was reading Wally's very best works as PDF files right on my computer and could print out any pages I wanted within a couple of minutes.
The collection is an amazing 3 Books & 17 difficult to find articles on just about every subject important to the student of the good life. For you theologically minded folks, Wattle's "New Christ" and several of his faith related articles are thought provoking to say the least.
Here's the link to purchase and download "A Powerful Life: The Lost Writings of Wallace D. Wattles", which includes "The Science of Getting Rich":
I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed my own study of Wallace Wattle's work. I've been implementing many of his best ideas into my own life with some great results!
This blog post is the creation of Kurt Maddox, an Internet Entrepreneur, Consul tant, Motivational Speaker and Success Coach living in Orange County, California. Kurt welcomes you to contact him anytime by sending an email to kurt@kurtmaddox.com or by phone at 1-800-274-8151!
A great big LoK congratulations to my good friend Stewart Cooper on being named the new Crew Chief for Kyle Petty's #45 Wells Fargo Dodge NASCAR Sprint Cup team!
Stewart's been one of the bright "new era" Crew Chiefs who bring a combination of a Mechanical Engineering background and technical focus to the job of getting the most out of a race car. Stewart has spent his entire career working for NASCAR race teams and was most recently the Crew Chief for the Great Clips Racing #38 Toyota driven by Jason Keller in the newly christened Nationwide Series.
Stewart Cooper and Me from the Brewco/Translite Days
Stewart and I became friends while both affiliated with Brewco Racing, formerly a successful NASCAR team which operated out of Central City, Kentucky. Stewart's one of the good guys in racing. He's as humble as he is talented, which isn't always what you expect in such an ultra-competitive sport.
Stewart's got his work cut out for him to turn around Petty's #45 team because they've dug a bit of a hole for the themselves to start the season and now have to qualify on speed each week by virtue of falling out of the top 35 in the Sprint Cup Point Standings. Stewart, however, believes the Petty organization has everything they need to be competitive and simply need to put all those pieces together to get Kyle into each race and then be competitive on the track.
Kyle Petty is one of the most popular drivers in the history of NASCAR and the Petty organization is arguably the biggest name in the history of the sport. Obviously, this opportunity is both a very big break and an incredibly big challenge. If anybody is up for the task, my money's on Stewart Cooper to help Kyle Petty once again compete for top finishes and even wins in short order!
(April 7, 2008 Aliso Viejo, California) Kurt Maddox and ShoutPost.com are excited to announce the launch of "A Certain Way", a blog devoted to the life application of the teachings of Wallace Delois Wattles. If getting rich, having the best possible health and becoming an "Advancing Mind" interests you in the least, then you'll want to learn all you can about Wally's Way to Wealth.
A Certain Way gives the serious student of success a daily Wally's Workshop to keep you on track toward achieving your own success while sharing your experiences, challenges and unique applications of Wally's principles with a unique community of Wallyists!
ShoutPost.com is an dynamic blogging community from the creators of tBlog offering cutting edge blogging and social networking technology within the framework of building a Global Neighborhood for the world's most thoughtful bloggers.
Kurt Maddox is an Internet Entrepreneur, prolific blogger, free-lance writer, public speaker, life coach, sales peformance consultant, relationship managem ent software expert and avid social networker. A life-long student of philosophy, theology and success literature, Kurt recently turned his attention to the work of Wallace D. Wattles, possibly the greatest success guru no one's ever heard of.
About ShoutPost.com
Shoutpost.com was founded by Taylor Bayouth and Nick Morley. ShoutPost.com is a division of TBLOG LLC. ShoutPost.com -- "Where bloggers go to be heard."
Warren and Gracie's aunt, Dr. Lori Warren, has launched a mission to educate women about that fact that they absolutely do not need to be "opened up" to have a hysterectomy. With 85% of all hysterectomies still done in a relatively archaic manner, this is information every woman needs to know.
Dr. Warren is the sister of Warren and Gracie's mother, Kiki. She's a brilliant woman and obviously a top-notch physician whom my kids love very much and they are very proud of their "Aunt Lori", as they should be!
Only the mind open to independently confirmed evidence has any claim to being a seeker of the truth. Any true seeker should live their spiritual life the same way they should live any aspect of your life, by examining the best evidence available and then determining how best to proceed until new evidence, including the evidence produced in the laboratory of personal experience, becomes available. Life, in this way, is much like a Pro Bass Fishing Tournament. Historical data and the collective experiences of every sincere angler to ever live can give the Bass Seeker important insights. Still, the information that matters most is putting all the available information and technology toward the desired result of catching a lot of Big Bass!
Books written about fishing from a few thousand years ago might be entertaining and possibly even enlightening. I'm just not certain that making a burnt offering to Pisces will help you catch any Big Bass when you head down to the river. Of course, the burnt offerings of the past did absolutely nothing to help anyone catch fish few thousand years ago, either! Ancient Fisherpeople didn't have sonar technology capable of telling them exactly where the fish were located. They also didn't yet have our understanding of many of the scientific truths of fishing that have been gained over several thousand years of study, experience and scientific progress.
The Great Fisherperson, however, is never content with today's understandings or with current assumptions based on the always evolving body of scientific knowledge. You must accept that today's certainties often will prove to be tomorrow's nonsensical burnt offerings. As human beings, we have a highly developed ability to recognize patterns and relationships. This ability allowed our ancestors to discover the motion of the stars in the sky and to understand when to prepare for the upcoming seasons. Sometimes, however, humans believed they saw relationships in ways we know today to be nonsensical and superstitious. The very worst of ancient human traditions grew from believing that relationships existed between human actions and God's favor. Today, although no Fisherperson believes that a young human virgin must be sacrificed to curry favor with the God of the Big Bass. However, a few continue to believe that it is beneficial to pray to the God of the Big Bass to curry favor in winning the tournament.
As we are able to gain deeper and deeper knowledge about a subject, we find that some of the assumptions we've been making were little more than non-causal correlations. We learn that neither prayer nor rain dances bring rain when we need it. We also know that a certain number of severe weather events will occur in predictable cycles just as they have for all of time, meaning that living on earth presents inherent risks and that we aren't likely at the mercy of a capricious Deity monitoring our behavior and keeping track of our sins to determine when and where to send the next flood or earthquake in order to discipline mankind for his inequities.
As we humbly find our way to becoming the Best Fisherperson We Can Be and to teach the Great Truths of the Big Bass to our children and to our community, we uncover evidence that many of the Ancient Great Truths were demonstrably false or were simply superstitions, rationalizations and mythologies created in the imaginations of the Great Fisherpeople of Ancient Times. We understand enough about the Ways of the River that we expect future generations of Great Fisherpeople will see us as similarly naive and superstitious. Future generations will recognize that some of our current beliefs were helpful to the Bass Seeker and that others were wasteful distractions, dangerous errors or both.
So, the Great Fisherpeople always ask themselves these questions to guide them to the Big Bass:
1. What can I know about our world that his helpful to my supporting my existence on the planet?
2. How do I know it? What is the evidence? How should I respond to this evidence?
3. How can I use the available evidence to achieve my own self-interest while taking into thoughtful consideration all the interdependent realities of existence?
To the extent that we live free from dogmatic assertions and enslaving philosophies, the Great Fisherpeople have been able to prosper and to live peacefully with the other People of the River. To the extent we live as anything else and by any other method, we live in poverty and in a state of perpetual war.
As Great Fisherpeople, we are tasked not only with finding and then catching the Big Bass. We also must insure that our ancestors are left with rivers full of Big Bass which will continue to nurture the progress of the People of the River for so long as the River Flows in the Hearts & Minds of the Great Fisherpeople.
One might call this process a strategy of spiritual "catch & release"!
uspects in my life.
s we all become real -- by going through a shared experience together. Hey, maybe that's what the "t" in tBlog stands for -- togetherness. My final suggestion for what that little "t" might represent is "Thankfullness" because I couldn't be more thankful for tBlog or for tBlog's great members.
My son, Warren, has been living with my parents in Kentucky this semester because he decided he wanted to go back to his old school, which he'd been attending for the past year and half before I moved to California. In Kentucky, we lived right next door to my parents on a shared piece of property in a little rural town called Centertown, Kentucky. Centertown's entire population of 400 or so folks is about 1/4 the population of our apartment complex in Aliso Viejo, California! Warren enjoys a terrific relationship with my parents, whom he calls "Nanny" & "Paw Paw", so we all decided that if this was what Warren wanted that we'd give the arrangement a trial. After all, lots of boys Warren's age go off to boarding school and the like.
I got a text message from Nicole at 3 AM Pacific Time that her mom had just called to report experiencing a 5.4 scale earthquake in Louisville, Kentucky that awoke her from a dead sleep with the sensation of riding a tectonic plate a few centimeters this way and then that. I also had a series of emails from my sister, Melody, who lives in Louisville as well. I spoke with my mom a bit later in the morning and she said that it woke her up in Centerown, Kentucky as well, but, that she went back to sleep without knowing what it was that woke her from her sleep. Warren, of course, slept through the whole thing! lol!
With a great big debt of GRATITUDE to a new friend, I figured out how to make a wonderful little collection of Wallace Wattle's wisdom available from my websites. If you believe you can never learn too much about success and happiness, you'll want to click below and download this very special collection of e-books and articles that make up the "Lost Writings" collection. The "Lost Writings" includes Wattle's most popular work, "The Science of Getting Rich" along with and several very hard to find Wallace Wattle's articles.
A great big LoK congratulations to my good friend Stewart Cooper on being named the new Crew Chief for Kyle Petty's #45 Wells Fargo Dodge NASCAR Sprint Cup team!
Kyle Petty is one of the most popular drivers in the history of NASCAR and the Petty organization is arguably the biggest name in the history of the sport. Obviously, this opportunity is both a very big break and an incredibly big challenge. If anybody is up for the task, my money's on Stewart Cooper to help Kyle Petty once again compete for top finishes and even wins in short order!
Kurt Maddox is an Internet Entrepreneur, prolific blogger, free-lance writer, public speaker, life coach, sales peformance consultant, relationship managem ent software expert and avid social networker. A life-long student of philosophy, theology and success literature, Kurt recently turned his attention to the work of Wallace D. Wattles, possibly the greatest success guru no one's ever heard of.
Warren and Gracie's aunt, Dr. Lori Warren, has launched a mission to educate women about that fact that they absolutely do not need to be "opened up" to have a hysterectomy. With 85% of all hysterectomies still done in a relatively archaic manner, this is information every woman needs to know.
Only the mind open to independently confirmed evidence has any claim to being a seeker of the truth. Any true seeker should live their spiritual life the same way they should live any aspect of your life, by examining the best evidence available and then determining how best to proceed until new evidence, including the evidence produced in the laboratory of personal experience, becomes available. Life, in this way, is much like a Pro Bass Fishing Tournament. Historical data and the collective experiences of every sincere angler to ever live can give the Bass Seeker important insights. Still, the information that matters most is putting all the available information and technology toward the desired result of catching a lot of Big Bass!
The Great Fisherperson, however, is never content with today's understandings or with current assumptions based on the always evolving body of scientific knowledge. You must accept that today's certainties often will prove to be tomorrow's nonsensical burnt offerings. As human beings, we have a highly developed ability to recognize patterns and relationships. This ability allowed our ancestors to discover the motion of the stars in the sky and to understand when to prepare for the upcoming seasons. Sometimes, however, humans believed they saw relationships in ways we know today to be nonsensical and superstitious. The very worst of ancient human traditions grew from believing that relationships existed between human actions and God's favor. Today, although no Fisherperson believes that a young human virgin must be sacrificed to curry favor with the God of the Big Bass. However, a few continue to believe that it is beneficial to pray to the God of the Big Bass to curry favor in winning the tournament.
1. What can I know about our world that his helpful to my supporting my existence on the planet?