“One of the glorious lines of the Virgin Mary’s Magnificat is Luke 1:51: “He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.” The Greek work dianoia is literally a thinking over, but it is here used in the sense of an independent reasoning, a reasoning without God, and hence “the imagination of their hearts.”
As I have pointed out elsewhere and repeatedly, the Bible has nothing good to say about imagination ( Gen. 6:5; 8:21; Deut. 29:19; 31:21; Jer. 23:17: I Chron. 28:9 Rom. 1:21; II Cor. 10:5). Because ours is an age with a will to fiction, the role of imagination is extremely important.
Men who will not be governed by God’s word will not be governed by reality, because reality is not of their making. God having created all things, reality reflects the mind of God, not man. Hence, it is the essence of sin to resort to imagination to escape God’s law world.
This problem is very urgently practical one, because every facet of the life of modern man is governed by imagination. This is basic to humanism, and it affects all men born of Adam (Gen 6:5), and especially modern man. Because Christians are born into a fallen world, and often educated by it, imagination replaces reality in their thinking and governs it.
To illustrate: As I travel, I encounter a very large number of cases, virtually all alike, of near impotence in the face of reality. Since the writing of Revolt Against Maturity (1977), The Word of Flux (1975), and on or more tapes on the subject of the will to fiction, and imagination, I have had telephone calls and personal visits concerned with this problem. Men in their twenties and thirties, including newly-weds, are impotent with their often very beautiful wives unless they resort to fantasy. Other women are fantasized to replace the real women.
Why should an unreal female be exciting, and a far better and real woman not be so? The key is the essence of imagination: the fantasy woman is totally the creation and creature of man, whereas the real woman is God’s creation and creature. it is essential to imagination to create a man-made world and a man-ordained decree of predestination. It is the essence of sin to demand such a world.
Moreover, fantasy refused to pay any attention to reality, because to accept reality is to accept God finally. As a result, all kinds of myths are propagated to replace reality. George Gilder, in Naked Nomads, made clear that the bachelor is physically, mentally, and morally the most unstable person in society. He is responsible for most crimes, has the highest suicide rate, and is very unstable person. The myth has it that he is the free “swinging,” and happy playboy….
Imagination or fantasy must replace reality.
But this replacement of reality by fantasy is not limited to the sexual sphere. It is basic to the total life of modern man. It governs his law and his politics. Is it not a fantasy to believe that man’s law can replace God’s law? Is it not vain imagination to assume that , by setting aside God and His law, man can have a just social order? The only difference between Marxism and American democratic indifferentism is that the Marxist are more open and honest about setting God’s reality aside in favor of their fantasy. The world today is dedicated to its sinful fantasies.
These fantasies, because they deny God’s reality, are doomed. The Virgin Mary says, “He hath scattered the proud.” This scattering and confusion has prevailed since the dispersion of the peoples at the Tower of Babel. Mary rejoices in a glorious process which is God-ordained, and she sees it triumphing over all enemies of God in due time. They are broken up, scattered, dispersed and confused.
These are the proud, or the arrogant, huperephanos. Proverbs 16:18 says, “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” We fail to see the meaning of this sentence, unless we realize that pride has no sense of reality is therefore as surely doomed as a blind man on a strange mountain pass.
Paganism, however, has exalted pride and despised humility. Aristotle saw pride as the mark of the great-souled man. While earlier Greek thought, as in the Antigone of Sophocles, saw pride as a moral evil, later thought rejoiced in pride, and the Stoics in particular stressed it. Pride is seen by our Lord as evil (Mark 7:22) and an outworking of a depraved heart.
Some time back, Girdlestone called attention to Scripture’s very telling uses of the word torah, usually translated as law, a meaning very important to our study here:
In 2 Sam. 7 there is recorded, first, the promise of God to keep an unfailing covenant with the seed of David, whose throne should be established for ever; and secondly, David’s expression of thankfulness on account of this promise. In the opening of his song of praise (vv. 18,19) he say, ‘Who am I, O Lord God and what is my house, that thou hast brought me hitherto? And this was yet a small thing in thy sight, O Lord God; but thou has spoken also of thy servant’s house for a great while to come. And is this the manner of man, O Lord God?’ The parallel passage (I Chron. 17:17) runs thus: “For thou hast also spoken of thy servant’s house for a great while to come, and hast regarded me according to the estate of a man of high degree.” The word translated manner in the one passage and estate in the other, is torah, which is generally rendered ‘law’. The first passage might be rendered, “And this is the law (or order) of the man,” and the second, “Thou hast regarded me according to the law (or order) of the man from on high.
What Scripture here declares is that the law, order, manner, and estate of man is Jesus Christ and His prophetic law word. Reality is not from man but from the triune God, and it is set forth fro us in the incarnate Word and His written word.
Jesus Christ orders life in terms of God’s reality, whereas man’s imagination seeks to re-order it in terms of the evil fantasies of man as god. Because fantasies are often “private,” men fail to see their implications. Private fantasies become public acts and policies, and unreality thereby governs life. Judgment then is inescapable.
This collision course with reality is inescapable for individuals, groups, institutions, churches, and nations that live out their fantasies. The world was not made by man, and it will never serve man’s fantasies.”

R.J. Rushdoony
Systematic Theology Volume I page 474-476

My midwife’s practice is 75 miles away from me, but much closer to 2 of my married sisters.
I live very near 2 more married sisters: Ashley (actually a sister-in-law) has 3 children, 3yo and under. Steph is pregnant with her first, with a duedate very near my own, and her midwife practices from the same office as mine.
We try to schedule together, ride together, and visit the others when we make the drive.
Yesterday, Steph and I took advantage of our prenatal appointments to have a gathering of sisters: we loaded up my 7 girls, picked up Ashley and her 3 little ones, and we all headed north to the midwives. I love owning a large van: the 13 of us rode together!
After our checkups, the 3 of us and our 10 children spent several hours visiting with our 2 other sisters and their 4 collective children. We hugged, gabbed, held babies, laughed, reminisced, traded babies, talked some more.
When somebody suddenly realized it was 5:00, we talked faster…then it was 6:00. Yikes!
As we began herding children toward the van, little Gracie reached for my hand. She’s a bit shy, so I was delighted. I reached for her hand, and started chattering to her as she wiggled her fingers around in the palm of my hand:
“You want Aunt Kim to take you out?! Let’s go out to your carseat…oh, don’t want to go out yet?…you’re giving me something…what is it?…googa? What is googa?… oh, it’s a booger… Thank you, Gracie.“

It was a business trip:) they had to work two whole hours out of six day and they only had 5 1/2 days to do what they wanted how unreasonable is that! Just kidding While Mom and Dad were there us kids got to stay uncle Justin and Aunt Steph’s house and they have cable TV. I drew the picture on the left. Over the next couple of days I’ll be posting some pictures of Mom and Dad at
_ _ _ _ _ _
fill in the blanks!

Only a Dad with a tired face coming home from the daily race,
bringing little of gold or fame to show how well he has played the game,
but glad in his heart whenhis own rejoice to see him come or hear his voice,
Only a Dad with a brood of seven one of ten million men or more,
Plodding along in the daily strife bearing the whips and scorns of life
with never a whimper of pain or hate,
for the sake of those who at home await,
Only a Dad neither rich nor proud,
merely one of the surging crowd toiling, Striving from day to day
facing whatever may come his way.
Silent when the harsh condem bearing it all for the love of them.
Only a Dad but he gives his all to smooth the way for his children small,
Doing with courage stern and grim the deeds that his Father did for him.
This is the line that for him I pen, Only a Dad but the best of men.

by Edgar Guest

I woke up to a full dose of real life this morning. Are you sure you want to read this?
The dog had an accident during the night. Not Lady, the Good Dog; it was Izzy, the pathetic, aged, perpetually depressed seemingly-harmless stray that was allowed to move in with us a few months ago.
We awoke to a slimy, stinky mess spread throughout the living room and entry way. I started counting the spots as I cleaned them. When I reached 12, I decided this wasn’t improving my attitude so I decided to count my blessings instead.
This morning, I was thankful that:

• none of the children got up during the night to step in it and stand crying helplessly in the dark.
• my sweet hubby, who did wake up to step in it this morning, maintained a great attitude and only apologized for getting up too late to clean up the whole mess for me. With that example before me, how could I complain?
• there was no question which dog did the deed – Good Dog accidentally spent the night outside.
• my morning sickness (which seems to be reviving a little due to jet lag) only stopped me once in the cleaning process.
• my 12yo daughter (who had just had her own unpleasant awakening – maybe she’ll blog about it?) misunderstood when I ran for the bathroom. I asked her to watch the remaining spots so nobody would step in them, but she cheerfully worked on cleaning them while I was otherwise occupied.
• we still have a bottle of commercial strength enzyme-based carpet cleaner left over from hubby’s carpet cleaning days. Good stuff!
• our carpet is a temporary scrap until the rest of the house is finished. That may be quite a while, but it was free and it will be leaving eventually.
• I woke up thankful to be home in my routine. Thank you Lord for giving me a good attitude about this – it’s just not fun to be crabby and complaining.

By the way, does anyone want a medium-sized older female dog of non-descript breeding? Very gentle, generally depressed, needs to sleep outside at night.

God made a wonderful Mother,
A Mother who never grows old;
He made her smile of sunshine,
And he molded her heart of pure gold;
In her eyes he placed bright shining stars,
In her cheeks fair roses you see;
God made a wonderful Mother,
And he gave that dear mother to me!

by Pat O Reilly

And we’re glad. I missed y’all – no internet access for those of us with a prehistoric laptop that didn’t have wireless capability.
Hawaii was glorious, and the water really was warm and looked exactly the same color as the postcards. It wasn’t too crowded since it was winter, and “only” 70 degrees every day – oh the trials of this mortal life! The people really smiled all the time and said “Aloha” instead of hi or bye, and “Mahalo” instead of thank you.
We had dinner in Pearl Harbour on the battleship Missouri; saw the Hula Bowl; went on a whale watching cruise and saw not a single whale; haggled with venders for island souvenirs (most of which came from Samoa, the Philipines, etc). We ate pu-pus with a straight face, and enjoyed mahimahi, taro bread, and other local foods.
We looked at unbelievable landscapes, marvelled at the power of the pounding waves, splashed in the surf, climbed down scenic lookouts and up volcanic craters, oohed and aahed at the tropical fish casually meandering along the shores.
But a week was the perfect length of time to make me miss the laundry and dishes (yes, truly!) and my own bed, and especially our girls. It was very comforting for this always-cold person to leave 70 degree tropical Hawaii and arrive in San Antonio to a temperature of (get this:) 69 degrees.
The flight home was long enough that I still can’t remember what day this is. Is this today or tomorrow, and if this is today, what day is it? I’m still doing the math in my head: we left Hawaii Tuesday night, and it was light when we changed planes in Los Angeles, then we picked up the kids and took them to see Narnia and it was dark again when we got home, and now it’s light…Actually, I think yesterday was tomorrow, so today must be the day after tomorrow…

on the north shore 

a mime in the market 

honolulu bay 

in the cove by the blow hole 

watching the tide 

blow hole