Loading ...Living On a Prayer
Tonight was one of those Council meetings that should have only lasted a couple minutes, but it didn’t! It wasn’t the ad nauseum debate over whether the city should spend up to $500,000 on crime prevention grant monitors, but actually it was the opening prayer that did it for me.
It was CCC member Doris Minton McNeil’s turn to do the prayer. McNeil has been charged with felony battery for allegedly shoving a police officer while intoxicated. She invited her Pastor to lead the invocation, which is not out of the ordinary, but the fact that it took forever wasn’t. I don’t attend church and now I remember why.
It’s one thing to ask the big man upstairs for guidance and wisdom, it’s another thing to ask him to watch for Minton McNeil because her enemies are out to get her. I am not making this up. Her Pastor also asked the Lord to “reign down justice,” whatever that means. He also asked the Lord to give her strength.
Now in all fairness, in what seemed like the same amount of time it took the Lord to make the world, the Pastor did ask for other things, but I thought it was highly inappropriate to turn the occasion into an ecumenical get out of jail free card.
I always chuckle how people call for Jesus when they screw up. Maybe had they been talking to him before they decided to engage in counterproductive behavior, they would have avoided the mess they got into.
October 6th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
Amen to your last paragraph!!
October 6th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
You called that one right, Abdul!
October 7th, 2008 at 12:21 am
Did I drink too much tonight, or is this for real? I’m at a loss of words so I’ll let my brother Jon help me out.
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She says: We’ve got to hold on to what we’ve got
‘Cause it doesn’t make a difference
If we make it or not
We’ve got each other and that’s a lot
For love - we’ll give it a shot
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A shot of what? Maybe that was Love and Tequila she was drinking. Where’s the song about Monroe Gray?
October 7th, 2008 at 1:09 am
Gotta love those democrats! Praise the lord and pass the bottle! ;)
October 7th, 2008 at 6:42 am
I bet Jesus was by her side the night she was arrested directing her speech and action. It is my hope that the Lord does reign down justice and she will need the strength that He gives her.
October 7th, 2008 at 6:46 am
My prayer is that a Gray censure and whatever’s just for Ms. McNeil will be followed by commensurate treatment of any Republican screw-ups. Then, maybe, we can defuse some of racial foolishness on this plane and just be citizens and elected officials, trying to make headway. Amen.
October 7th, 2008 at 7:05 am
i always say don’t ask god for general items like justice unless you are willing to accept what god calls justice. the difference between your justice and gods is vast and wide. ms. mcneil would be better off asking for human justice.
October 7th, 2008 at 7:35 am
RIGHT ON. It has no place in OUR government. P.E.R.I.O.D. I don’t actually mind if politicians say it, use it, ect., BUT for shameless self use…..make me sick….
October 7th, 2008 at 8:38 am
The pastor said “rain down justice” — it’s a popular phrase from the Old Testament: Hosea 10 “Sow for yourselves justice, reap the fruit of piety; Break up for yourselves a new field, for it is time to seek the LORD, till he come and rain down justice upon you.”
October 7th, 2008 at 8:55 am
That makes everything OK then, Wilson. wow.
October 7th, 2008 at 9:23 am
One question-did the maintenance staff have to wipe up the floor after all the “ecstasy” poured out from the prayer leaders? There seems to be a propensity to “lose it”.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:28 am
OMG! I heard you on the radio this morning telling this story. If it wasn’t Marion County center township democrats, I wouldn’t believe it.
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Is it church or a public business meeting?
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Go check out BartLies.com There is a hilarious graphic of Good Doris/Bad Doris
October 7th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
I think we all got the reign/rain thing. It really makes no difference.
Stupid prayer.
But I’m pretty sure my God knows that.
October 7th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Aha! Minton has taken a page from the “Ron Gibson Playbook”!
Whilst attending a CCC meeting last Fall after Gibson was involved in a drunken brawl with a cop, a minister led the opening prayer and made a long-winded, Gibson-centric supplication to God. It took much restraint for me to refrain from hurling…it was surreal to witness such self-serving theatrics on the taxpayers’ clock.
Thankfully Gibson went down in the Fall election. Perhaps God was listening after all???
October 7th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
The Bible says we don’t get what we pary for when we “pray amiss”. I think most of that “prayer” was amiss, except the part about raining down justice. I can’t stomach cop haters, so I hope justice does rain down. And I hope it pours!
October 7th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
God help us….
October 9th, 2008 at 1:05 am
Pity that ‘justice’ didn’t ‘rain down’ from the butt-end of a 4-cell Maglite !!
October 9th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
I never respond to blogs but this one caught my eye and I thought I should explain my actions at the meeting.
It pains me to say this. However, I was offended by the prayer given. It was exactly how you put it. It was a get out of jail plea. After all of Doris’s shouting of Amen and Hallelujah, almost like it was Christ’s last sermon or something, I stood up straight and put my hands behind my back to acknowledge my disgust. I consider myself a faithful christian, but that was not a prayer. It did not deserve the respect of one and I could not support it. It was shameful. I hope the voters of her district see it.
October 13th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
It’s amazing how, almost every time “men of the cloth” open their mouths in terms of politics, they make morons and a-holes out of themselves. Consider the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Rev. Al Sharpton, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, etc.
With these highly publicized antics, it’s no wonder so many people turn away from organized religion.