Paul Harvey Mourns the Loss of SkyMall

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I will open my sermon tonight with the sad news that America died this week.

We were a nation of dreamers. Designers. Doers. When others said we couldn’t accomplish something, we achieved it.

We were a nation of plenty. Abundance. The forests, rivers, and even the depths of the earth were ours for the taking. And we used it to make ourselves better. Electricity. Refrigeration. Computers. God smiled upon the land and said “Yes. This is good. You should have these things.”

And things we had.

There was a time when we looked toward the horizon and said “we’re Americans. There is no horizon. There is no frontier. We will push further, and when we reach that point, we shall push further still. And we earned it. Because we were America. But that’s gone now.

There was something special about America. Something about the way we looked at ourselves as Americans. But we didn’t deserve it. We didn’t care enough, push hard enough, fight strong enough and now it is dead and we are all to blame. And so we need to acknowledge that, and remember that dark day we allowed the Devil to defeat the beauty of American life. January 22, 2015. The day SkyMall filed for bankruptcy.

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The Concessions of Father Augustine

Author’s Note: essays like this are a result of the creative energy fostered by the amazing Atlanta performing arts community, none more relevant to my life than the talent of Dad’s Garage Theatre Company.  Homeless for over a year thanks to the scourge of commercial construction progress, Dad’s has recently found a potential new home in a vacant church in Atlanta.  Now all it needs is a bunch of money to buy it.  Please donate to the Dad’s Garage Kickstarter today.

What’s that you’ve got there?  Oh, right.  One of those.  An online minister certificate.  Yeah, I’ve seen them before.  A bunch of you have one of ’em.  It’s trendy.  It’s fun!  You can perform weddings and stuff like that.

But you know what else it is?  It’s lame.  Okay, I get it; I’ve been hearing it for years now.  You’re technically a priest.  Congrats.

Well guess what.  I can top that.  In fact, I have topped that.  So to all of you cool kids who think you’re so hip with your Universal Life Churches and your mail-order official licenses, I’ve got you beat.  My paperwork came in this morning, and as of today, I am officially a Trappist monastery.

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