Tearing Down Denominational Walls

Pardon me while I dip into my past for today’s blog.  I was part of the church of Christ for about forty years.  My parents and grandparents were members as well, hence my indoctrination of strict beliefs and Biblical interpretations.  The church of Christ is one of several groups who are under the false impression that heaven waits for members of their sect only.  I know that sounds harsh but it is true.  They see themselves as being on the spiritual ark with the door already shut.  God has protected them against the cultural waves of sin that are drowning the rest of humanity.

I believe I’ve always doubted that idea, but it would have been heresy and sudden expulsion if a verbal confession had been made.  So, to let everyone know where I stand today is important.  There will be souls in heaven who have given their lives to Jesus from many different religions.  Obviously some will be there who have gone against the wishes of the denomination they belong to.  That is, in reference to following manmade creeds established  by men either to hold onto power or oppress the masses by their power.

It is belief in Jesus that saves!  We are probably nearing the end of existence as we know it here.  The “last days” have been going on for a while now.  If Biblical prophesy is correct, and it always is, there are very dark days ahead for us all.  Christians will suffer as well as non-Christians but there will be rewards for the faithful.

Ephesians 4:3 says “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.”  That verse has been used, quite often to keep dissenters in line with current church views.  I believe that verse should be applied along denominational lines.  It is time to tear down the walls that separate the family of God.  We need to look for things to unify us as Christians.  Lets face it, Biblical interpretations of first century writings have quite a few gray areas.  We were not eyewitnesses of the way everything was done, so drawing lines in the sand may not be appropriate when it comes to salvation.  For example, you may believe in the Lord’s Supper each Sunday, but don’t condemn another Christian who doesn’t.

In Acts chapter 15 there is great discussion about the burdens placed on people to be Christians.  Verses 10 & 11 say this, “Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear?  No!  We believe it through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.”  I especially like verse 19, “It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God.”  I would say the same rule should apply today among churches.  Ease up on the requirements and focus on Jesus.  More emphasis should be placed on John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that WHOEVER believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” and less on church dogma.

Jesus said in Mark 3:23-30 that a house divided against itself cannot stand. and that “no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up.  Then he can plunder the strong man’s house.”  Our denominational differences have “tied us up” so much that the church is being raped and plundered by the culture we live in.  Christians are no longer even a force to be reckoned with by American politicians.  Islam seems to be the new driving force.

We have no one to blame but ourselves.  Our house is divided and beginning to crumble.  We need to repent and preach unity before it is too late to reach the masses for Jesus.  Please pray for eyes to be opened and hearts changed.  If I can be led to see the truth, anyone can!

I’ve written a long manuscript about my personal journey out of the church of Christ which is ready to be published.  I know God has directed my steps just as he will direct yours.  Change isn’t always easy and encouragement is usually hard to find.  I am encouraging you to meet your extended family of Christians.  They are everywhere.  Try visiting a different church nearby.  Preachers and Pastors, why not have a joint service with the Baptist or Methodist.  Be different for a change.  Lets preach unity that all may be saved!

The Sockalypse

Just like me, many of you received socks as a Christmas gift.  By now you know the true meaning of the Mayan calendar.  It was not the end of the world, just the end of getting a pair of socks that fit.

I was raised in a time when you could purchase American made socks, that, no matter your age, the sizing chart was correct.  A size eight shoe size meant that any eight-ten sock size would work fine.  Not any more…  George Bush and Bill Clinton saw to that by sending all our sock jobs to China and Indonesia where people with tiny feet construct our socks to their size worldview.  NAFTA, GATT and all the other charitable giveaways have put Americans and western civilization as a whole in an awkward situation.  The elves that construct our socks are squeezing us to death!

Honestly, the last three packs of socks I’ve opened have all been two sizes too small.  Of course, as a gift, they have to be worn.  So you pull on these new socks which are beyond skin-tight, they are blood vein tight.  If you can stand the full foot pressure all day long, by the time you take them off, your feet are on the way to Geisha size.  Let me illustrate my belief with a picture.  Here is a normal size sock size 8-12.

Here is the same size from our tiny footed sockmakers.

And a proper comparison…

I have noticed however, that If you wish to pay three times as much, the sock sizes correct themselves.  This is obviously a mind trick to make us send even more money overseas.  Not only are profits higher due to less material being used to make a proper size for the masses, the top 10% are suckered into the scheme as well. A cash pyramid plan where the remaining American dollars(those left after buying Arab oil) are transferred for poor quality socks.  A financial Armageddon would follow bringing down the western world.  Our soldiers couldn’t even fight due to their squashed feet.  How evil and diabolical is that?

We must cancel the sockalypse!  Write your congressman now and demand a return of sock manufacturing to American soil.  Since foreign graft and corruption rule Washington, go immediately to plan B.  Buy all your socks two sizes larger.  We’ll show these tiny people they can’t fool us all the time, just most of it.

2012 Alabama Fall Colors

It’s  been a somewhat strange weather year and it affected our seasons.  Spring sprang about two or three weeks early and now fall has extended itself about the same.  My wife still has flowers blooming outside and we’ve only had two light frosts so far.  With tomorrow being the last day of November, colder weather seems to be still snug in it’s bed after hitting the snooze alarm.

I’m not complaining, fall has been especially beautiful this year.  I took pictures on three different occasions when I thought the colors had peaked, all several days apart.  So, if you haven’t seen an Alabama Fall…enjoy!



And maybe just a few more…


“God looked over everything He had made; it was so good, so very good!”  Genesis 1:31  The Message Bible

Bynum Cemetery at Maynard's Cove

I said in my last blog that we again visited Maynard’s Cove to find the Bynum family cemetery.  This time we traveled County Road 79 from Scottsboro, Alabama and turned right on County Road 21.  This descended into the cove from the west side and is quite a steep drive.  Just as the road flattens out at the bottom Jackson County Road 533 turns right and leads to the cemetery.  It is a narrow road which crosses a cry creek bed.  The road dead ends at a gate and if you aren’t careful, you’ll miss the gravesites.



There is a one car pull-off about two hundred feet from the gate, we parked  there and found the cemetery on a slight rise on the right.  There were no signs at the turn off from Highway 21 or at the end of the road.  My GPS marked it at 34  45.129′ & -86  06.009 and in decimal degrees 34.75215 and -86.10015

We found it to be in a dismal state.  Many of the graves are only marked with rocks not much higher than the weeds.


Most had no engraving or were deteriorated to the point of being illegible.  Of the few that were, these were the pictures;

This might be a good time to mention when near old gravestones, please do not scratch with them any object or use any compound to try to clean the stone.  Everything I’ve read said that you would do more harm than good.

I’ll include one more that was difficult for me to read. 
I also found a link listing the names of those buried there.














In my mind I would assume that the cemetery is near ground zero for Isaac Newton Bynum’s original home site.  Looking past the end of the road, there is one house and you can almost visualize what it might have looked like in the early 1800′s.  River flooding must have made the cove a fertile topsoil area and springs would have provided plenty of water.

The Bynum family was not the only one here.  The Maynard, Holland, and Proctor families were also early settlers.

It’s difficult to find Maynard’s Cove history on the internet but one interesting bit I found was that the churches were destroyed in a 1932 tornado.  God was obviously important because I found a reference to the Mud Creek Baptist Association being one of the oldest in the state.

There is a quote by Alex Haley which says, “In all of us there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage, to know who we are and where we came from.”  I encourage you to look back at your family history and discover the treasures that lie buried beneath the sands of time.

Genealogy Bug Bites Me

I came home from work recently to find that my wife had decided to do a trial membershp with Ancestry.com.  I thought, Ok, I’ve got seven days to fill in the blanks on my six or seven generation list.  At the time, I believed that was plenty, kind of like Bill Gates with his “64k should be enough for everyone”.

Quickly learning that genealogy can be addictive, I spent the next five evenings between arriving at home and bedtime, digging into the past.  I found my way around Ancestry.com quickly and discovered  how difficult it can be to solve the tiniest of mysteries.  On my Grandfather, Wallace Cox’s side, I couldn’t get past the fact no one seemed to know his mother, Emma Cox’s maiden name.  I hit a wall that couldn’t be scaled.  It would have been so simple to ask, “Hey Granddaddy, what was your Mom’s maiden name?”  But I never did, and all those who would have know it, have also died.  I’ve sent out some emails and will come back to solve that problem later.

With that problem unresolved, I jumped over to the Bynum side and traced the family’s migration from John Bainham’s voyage from England to Surry, Virginia in 1616 at the age of 26.  Spelling was more phonetic back then and the name eventually changed to Bynum.  Each generation seemed to want a new place.    There were relocations from Surry, Isle of Wight County Virginia, to Abermarle, North Carolina by 1746, then Pendleton County, South Carolina in 1781.  Isaac Newton Bynum(1757-1845) moved to Maynard’s Cove, in Jackson County, Alabama, after the Indians had been driven out.  His ancentors moved on to Blount and Dekalb Counties.

The name Isaac Newton Bynum intriqued me so I decided to go to Maynard’s Cove to take a picture of his grave marker as a primary photo in my genealogy list.  With the help of Google maps I found the cove near Scottsboro, Alabama, which was only a two hour drive.  Google also marked the cemetery halfway around the loop of highway 28 which was the main road through the cove.  All too easy I thought…

Not wanting to seem overly excited about a road trip to a cemetery, I suggested that we make a shopping trip to an old favorite store we visited several years ago called “Unclaimed Baggage” in downtown Scottsboro.  That worked well, so the next weekend four of us went shopping with only a quick side trip on the agenda for Maynard’s Cove.

The shopping stop was a dissappointment with zero good buys.  I was hoping the Cove wouldn’t be another.  We followed E. Willow St. and turned left on Tupelo Road which is County Highway 21.  The road was narrow leaving Scottsboro and gave me the feeling the asphalt would soon turn into dirt, but it did not.  About ten minutes out of town the scenery opened up to wide vista’s between two or three mountains of the Appalachian chain.  We stopped a couple of times for pictures then turned right on County Road 28.  It was nice scenery all the way and I understood why it would have been a great place to settle in.

We stopped near an old farmhouse to take pictures and suddenly realized there were no man-made noises.  It was awesome.  Another discovery a minute later was there were no bars on the cell phone, again, to me awesome!


Everyone enjoyed the trip to one of our families historical sites.  We did not find the cemetery on that trip and being pushed for time, had to start home.   We finished the Highway 28 loop and turned right on Highway 33 and headed toward the town of Hollywood and Highway 72.  On Highway 33, we quickly were back in civilization with many run down homes and a trailer park which had seen better days.  I was thinking that time seemed to have slowed down, maybe even rewound a bit while we were in the Cove.  That’s about when then the cooling towers of Belefonte Nuclear power plant came into view, a startling reminder that time and progress march on.

Judy and I went back to the Cove the following Saturday when we had more time and I did my research properly.  I’ll tell you about that next time.

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Don't Hate Your Union Either

 Hi, I'm an employee of AT&T and the following is my opinion...

This is just a short follow-up on my Don’t Hate Your Job blog.  Some of you may think I’ve become anti-union but that really isn’t the case.  It’s like the Democratic Party, they left me a long time ago.  I stayed with the union for as long as I could, thinking that they existed for my own good and that they just had a few bad habits.  Habits like supporting every political candidate that I was against and being militantly pro-choice.  Almost every good thread of value that holds our society together, they seem to oppose.  Their work as a protector of union employees seems to me, to have deteriorated at an alarming pace since AT&T purchased BellSouth.  The Union itself needs to do a little refocusing on its core values and what it was designed to accomplish.  I was certainly not the only disillusioned member.  I was sent a link for a CWA District 3: Petition of NO Confidence.  It’s a pretty interesting read with almost 3,000 supporters.  It wasn’t widely publicized or the numbers would have been much greater.

One Union member I know had to threaten Labor Board charges just to get a grievance accepted recently.  It should never get to that point in an organization that is designed to HELP employees!  It’s almost like the Red Cross refusing to give blood because they’re just too involved in sports.

My last blog mentioned how to leave the Union and I want to make sure I don’t mislead you in any way.  Another technician emailed me the procedure so here it is;

 Cancellation requests must be postmarked during the 10 day period preceding the expiration date of this Agreement and the same 10 day period each year during the life of this Agreement. Your opt-out period for 2012 was July 26 to August 4 of 2012.
CONTRACT: CWA District 3 BST Utility Operations
Section A.  Except as provided below, or as provided in Memorandum of Understanding between the parties, or as otherwise provided by applicable law, all cards may only be revoked during the 10 day period preceding the expiration date of this Agreement and the same 10 day period each year during the life of this Agreement.  Revocation of dues must be accomplished as follows (all conditions must be met):
*       Cancellation requests must be written or typed.
         *      Cancellation requests must be sent by certified mail.
         *      Cancellation requests must be postmarked during the 10 day period preceding the expiration date of this Agreement and the same 10 day period each year during the life of this Agreement. Your opt-out period for is 2012 period will be July 26 to August 4 of 2012.

Sometimes, an organization can only be corrected by the shock of bleeding away its members.  If you feel that way, then that information is what you need.  If you think an organization can be changed from within and want to work to that end, great!  I wish you the best, but I feel you have an uphill battle against overwhelming odds.

I will note also that AT&T announced September 28th that “wireline employees represented by the Communication Workers of America failed to ratify a three-year contract for the AT&T Southeast region”.  I consider that good news and a complete rejection of what CWA had negotiated for us.  I pray both sides will arrive at a fair solution.

Don't Hate Your Job

I am an employee of AT&T and the following is my opinion.

I haven’t written much lately about work, so I’ll bring you up to date.  I resigned from the Communication Workers of America (CWA) at the contract anniversary.  Just in case you didn’t know, that letter must be certified and received by the company and the union in the two weeks prior to that date.  I’ll even let you see what my letter stated;

This letter is to notify you of my separation from membership in the Communication Workers of America (CWA).  I wish for all payroll deductions of membership dues to cease immediately! 

 I was a member of the union for twenty-five years beginning in 1978.  I previously resigned membership over the issue of their political support for abortion.  I signed back on after the purchase of BellSouth by AT&T, but find little use for continued membership.

 The counseling entry that was placed in my personnel file on January 27, 2012 over MSOC results was removed July 27, 2012 by management.  My corresponding grievance was never scheduled nor met upon.   My “taxation without representation” will no longer be tolerated. 

The Union was absolutely no help, so it seemed silly to continue membership.  The dues I’ll be saving will be applied to the insurance that was negotiated for me in the new contract.  Thanks so much to CWA, because I know AT&T was having difficulty paying medical insurance with only $31.6 Billion in profit just in the first quarter of 2012!

I want to tell you a little about why I’ve slowed down on MSOC blogs when they are so popular.  The stress that all of AT&T employees feel these days is the same for me.  It seems everyone I talk to hates the management style being imposed on us.  A management source told me that they just want to get as much out of us as they can since they know things are winding down.  Well, when you set targets too high to reach and then punish employees when they can’t make it, the end doesn’t justify the means.  You are punishing good employees for nothing!

It became a tremendous burden for me because I’d always looked at my job as something I was good at.  But now, it didn’t matter what I did at work, I was basically unsatisfactory because I couldn’t leap tall buildings with a single bound!  I had to refocus because it was making me hate the company I worked for, and that just isn’t right!  I started working less overtime and picked up a couple of new hobbies.  I spent more time with family and became more involved at church.  In short, I stopped caring so much about making my numbers or trying to please management.  I still hate the fact that MSOC exists and love the fact that I am closer to retirement than yesterday!

After getting a phone call on a vacation day last week from a manager pointing a finger at something I’d done, I decided to bring the Burr back on line with a few changes.  I’ve allowed almost no comments to protect you from the company.  I know how vindictive they are so I felt shielding you was the best thing.  I think I’ve been a voice in the wilderness too long, some of you need to be out there too.  Beginning today, if you make a comment I’ll post it.  Remember to keep it clean and that I still have editing rights to make it family friendly.

I will also invite you to participate as a ghost writer or as a guest writer, if you have something that will help others that are going through difficult times.  You can drop me a line with any suggestions.
We are all just pilgrims here with an eternal home at stake.  Don’t do anything at work to damage what is waiting on you one day!  We do need to put faces and names on the numbers!  Let’s let AT&T see the hardship they place on people!  Employees are more than just a human resource!