Meditation

Meditation used to be something I misunderstood and viewed with a mixture of skepticism and awe. Some Baptists/Christians say meditation is too New Agey and invites the Devil in... or something silly like that. I think they say such things because they don't actually understand what meditation is. See the definition here and/or allow me to sum it up for you.
To meditate is to focus on something, particularly something spiritual.
Prayer is meditation. Thinking about Scripture (as commanded in the Bible) is meditation. Mary meditated as she "pondered these things in her heart" after she found Jesus in the temple speaking as a learned adult rather than the child he appeared to be. Quoting passages like The Lord's Prayer or the Twenty Third Psalm is meditation. Meditation is Biblical.
Anyway. Growing up I viewed meditation as some weird thing Asian monks did. Pastors and teachers warned against the evils of meditation, yoga, and anything else "New Age" so I saw these things as negative. Negative and mysterious. Fast forward to my post-Christian days as I explore forbidden fruits and discover the truth about them. In looking for ways to help myself heal from and cope with chronic illness, I read a lot about meditation and guided imagery. What was this nebulous thing called mediation? How did people sit and think about nothing for hours upon end? Was it just craziness? I looked into it some, but it wasn't until a few months ago that I came to understand meditation.

This Is What Fundamentalism Looks And Sounds Like

A KJV-only pastor bashing men who don't stand up to pee. Why? Because real men stand up, and God wants you to be a real man. The funny/sad things is, this man could have been any number of men I heard preaching at my school, church, or in other Baptist churches I attended.
His blog can be found here: Steven L. Anderson. His wife blogs at http://stevenandersonfamily.blogspot.com/ . I show the entire link because I think it does a good job of illustrating the way the husband dominates his family. I suppose it could just be because the husband is more famous or something, but after reading through their blogs I sincerely believe they want their identity to be dominated by the husband. This family is very Quiverfull, patriarchal, the whole shebang. The wife, Zsuszanna, is quite passionately devoted to the patriarchal ideals that dominate her world - this is clearly seen in her writing. From what I've gathered she is originally from Germany and was raised as a Catholic. Steven witnessed to her while visiting in Germany when he was eighteen, she eventually converted to Baptist beliefs, and they were married very shortly after that. Baptist fundamentalism appealed to her so she dived right in and marrying a loud-spoken, KJV-only (1611 version, baby!), hyper-conservative guy and the rest is history. They are against voting, against any form of family planning/contraception, and a long list of other things that only make sense in the world of religious fundamentalism.
I'm so glad I left this world before marrying into it and being further entrapped in its hold.

Conservatives & the Status Quo.

http://www.politicususa.com/shut-up-role-die-gops-2012-platform.html?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed

As always, take what is linked with a grain of salt. That being said, the author seems to hit the nail on the head in this piece.