Paul O'Rear -- Thursday, December 3, 2009, 11:59 PM (6 Comments)
Categories: Ashley O'Rear, Favorite Songs, Grief, Hope, Music
Tags: Ashley O'Rear, Dabbs, Fort Worth Texas, Great Smoky Mountains, Jeremy Pate, Justin O'Rear, Memphis Tennessee, Nashville Tennessee, Randy McCoy, Steve Agee, Susan O'Rear, Tennessee, Texas
About four months after Ashley died, Susan and Justin and I took a trip from our home in Texas to visit some friends in Tennessee and then spend a few days in the Great Smoky Mountains. Driving late at night, somewhere between Memphis and Nashville, the idea for a song began growing in my head. It was a tribute to the remarkable life of my Ashley, her profound impact on our lives as her family, and the deep emptiness left in our hearts by her death. But even amidst the palpable sadness of our grief, I found my thoughts, and the emerging song, focusing on the hope that is inherent in my faith — the promise that, one day, we will see her and hold her once again.
The more we drove, the more the song grew and began to organize itself into verses and a chorus. I asked Susan to find some paper and a pen and start writing down the words so that I wouldn’t forget them. I drove and Susan wrote, and by the time we reached Nashville, “Until Then” was a song.
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Paul O'Rear -- Wednesday, November 18, 2009, 6:45 AM (2 Comments)
Categories: College, Music, Texas A&M University, Tradition
Tags: Academic Plaza, Aggieland, Aggies, Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, Albritton Tower, Colonel Richard J. Dunn, Lawrence Sullivan Ross, Ross Volunteers, Silver Taps, Spirit of Aggieland, Texas, Texas A&M Corps of Cadets, Texas A&M University
The Spirit of Aggieland
Some may boast of prowess bold
Of the school they think so grand
But there’s a spirit can ne’er be told
It’s the Spirit of Aggieland.
The Spirit of Aggieland. From the outside looking in, you can’t understand it. From the inside looking out, you can’t explain it.
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Paul O'Rear -- Sunday, November 16, 2008, 2:45 PM (No Comments)
Categories: Moral Courage
Tags: Adultery, Anarchy, Bettie O'Rear, Child Abuse, Consequences, Corporal Punishment, Discipline, Eldercare, Ephesians, Ethics, Family, Gluteus Maximus, God, Grace, Honesty, Jesus, Larry O'Rear, Love, Marriage, Monogamy, Murder, Salvation, School, Sex, Society, Spanking, Stealing, Texas, Waxahachie Texas, Works
What do you think of when you hear the words “moral courage”?
Webster defines “morals” as: “moral practices or teachings; modes of conduct; ethics”. [1]
“Ethics”, then, is defined as: “the discipline dealing with what is good and bad and with moral duty and obligation; a set of moral principles; a theory or system of moral values; the principles of conduct governing an individual or a group; a guiding philosophy; a set of moral issues or aspects (as rightness)”. [2]
So your morals can be defined as “what you believe about what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is bad, what your moral duties and obligations are, and how you should conduct yourself”.
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Paul O'Rear -- Wednesday, September 3, 2008, 11:44 PM (1 Comment)
Categories: America, Politics
Tags: Alaska, Barack Obama, Fred-the-Pooh, Government, Joe Biden, John McCain, Minnesota, Republican National Convention, Sarah Palin, Texas
[Please be sure to read the disclaimer at the end of this article!]
WOW!
I just finished watching and listening to Republican Vice-Presidential Nominee Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Minnesota. (I wasn’t in Minnesota, she was; I was sitting in my living room in Texas watching her speech on TV.)
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