December 2006

Dear Friends,

          This is my (Tav) first attempt at a Christmas letter. Not because our lives suddenly became more interesting, but because I am finally realizing how important you are to our lives. This is my feeble attempt to share some of us with you.

Our life seems to consist of nothing but running from one event to another and I know that we allow the urgent things of our lives to overwhelm the important. I have been working at making the important more urgent as I can now see time flowing past our lives ever faster, and real life doesn’t always allow “do overs”. I draw some comfort from the idea that we should all have eternity in heaven to love and laugh with one another.  

          My electrical contracting business continues to do well. Winters have always been a challenge to me with the short days, cold weather, and barren landscape. Trying to be “joy filled” and “jolly” for the wife and children makes me wish I could have some recreational pharmaceuticals for Christmas. My brother, Jim, came to help us with the business in May. He has been a blessing to our family in many ways; helping watch children, and drive teenagers hither and yon.

Kathleen continues to home school the children in spite of the fact that we now see how they are turning out. Seriously, the kids are doing great and continue to blow away the standardized testing. We just hope that Kathleen continues to hold up under the stress of raising, loving and educating the children while helping me with the business and having a life of her own.

          Tayva got her driver’s license this summer after she turned 16 and is a very good driver. Although her mom is terrified every minute her daughter is driving due to the miserable road conditions and the mentally emotionally or sobriety challenged drivers that race up and down our roads. Tayva also got a job as a nanny/mother’s helper on the beach in Florida. She says she had a great time for the 3 months she was there, but she hates sand and spent most of her free time reading in the basement or at the coffee shop.

          When we went to pick her up, I took the whole family to Walt Disney World.  Kathie loved it.  Some of the kids liked it some of the time. I feel that Disney World fun is some thing that they do to you. Some sort of manufactured mass produced fun that they slap on you as they shove you past Mickey to the line for the next ride. Other than that it was great. Kameron was the least excited to be there as he wanted to be back in West Virginia because his girlfriend from Texas was visiting. So I used the standard Walt Disney World speech that I had overheard several fathers give to encourage their beloved offspring. It goes something like this: “Shut your mouth and have some fun or I will twist your lips off”. If you like you can add how much it is costing you to listen to all of their whining and sniveling by the day or minute or second, depending on your math skills and the amount of information your wife gave you on the actual cost of feeding the Mouse.

          Kameron is doing very well at developing a life outside our immediate family. He is a natural born leader, enjoys acting, soccer and hanging out with his friends. He is anxious to get his learners permit on his 15^th birthday (the 26^th) because he believes once he can drive he will never have to come home again except for underwear and money.

          Kaitlyn celebrated her tenth birthday on August 22 and is rapidly becoming a grace-filled young lady.  She loves art and music and is generally kind to her brothers and sisters.

          Tyler at seven is interested in games, spending time with friends and how the lawnmower works.

          Kylee at four is her usual charming self. We believe she will be the first Pierce child to go pro with her charm and wit.

          There is much to be grateful for. We are overfed, over entertained, well clothed and live well.  We truly live lives of abundance. If you get a chance to pray for us please pray that we will learn to be content with what we have, and that I will stay motivated to push our family forward financially and spiritually. We are most grateful for our friends and family and if you read this far you are probably one or the other, so thank you for participating in our lives.

Love, Tav, Kathie & crew

  In 2001 I volunteered to join with a church project to build homes for people living in Juarez, Mexico.  While in Juarez I observed that most of the people were industrious, hard working, and as a whole seemed content with their lives.  However, poverty invaded every aspect of their lives.  People were living in shelters made of shipping pallets, tar paper, old tires, bed springs, and cardboard boxes.  The local home depot seemed as if it was only willing to display a few actual tools or building supplies at a time.
    Over the years it appears as if the people of Juarez are living a little better. But as I left for home I feasted at a local buffet "more food than the children I had met could imagine." After dinner, from a hill in El Paso, I could see the Rio Grande snaking along.  On my side of the river the lights shone, flashed, moved, and boasted. Across no more than a small trickle of water, in the growing twilight, the near total lack of electric lights across the sprawling City of Juarez demanded to know the answer to the question that was flashing brighter in my head than the beer sign across the street.... WHY?
    We did not work harder, we are not smarter, and we are not that much better educated than the kind and inviting people that I now knew lived across the border.  The events of 9/11 and the ensuing regime change along with a picture in the National Geographic that showed a nighttime satellite image of the electric lights of Asia showing a North Korea sized black hole further encouraged me to find out why. What determines the difference between abject poverty and a society where everyone can, if they choose, live better than King Solomon could have ever dreamed of?  Think about it. Travel is convenient, food is safe, and water is everywhere, central heating, air conditioning, medical treatment, toothpaste, and toilet paper. Life is Good.
    The empty heads on TV all speak of Democracy as if it will cure all that ails our planet. I know that they are all pedaling snake oil. I can’t tell if they are intentionally misleading people or if they are profoundly ignorant of our situation. I prefer to believe in the infinite capacity of our society’s ignorance over the idea that any people be so intentionally evil.

            After some thought and reading I am now satisfied that I know how one people prosper and another lives out their lives poking through the dirt and dung for edible grubs.

            I will speak of my opinions as if they are established fact, please feel free to think for your self. I am only describing the model that I use to judge world events with.

            True prosperity springs forth as the natural result of a people experiencing liberty.  There are only three identifiable conditions in which men exist, Chaos, Tyranny, or Liberty.

            Chaos is the natural condition of man. Every man for himself, you can have as much justice as you can beat out of your neighbors. If you can get some club toting friends you can get more justice. Today’s tormentor will be replaced by a bigger more terrible tormentor. This is the condition experienced by many of the people of Africa, Asia and High School.

            Tyranny happens when one guy gets enough friends with clubs to kill all pretenders to the throne. You can have as much justice as the king will allow you to have. The king spends most of his time and money proving that he should stay king. He builds statues to himself; he wears a crown, and has the religious leaders to hold a coronation where the power of god is bestowed upon him by a high priest wearing a funny hat. He claims the divine right of kings or even claims that he himself or his ancestors are gods. 

            Natural Law stems from Christian lines of thought. If Jesus is King of Kings why do we need some Monarch taking our money, land, and crops, just because his great grand pappy could kick the snot out of my great grand pappy?

Natural Law was studied much like physics or chemistry. Natural law was thought to pre-exist human law and if properly applied resulted in minimizing human suffering.

            Richard Maybury has distilled Natural Law down to two ideas, a total of 17 words:

1.      Do all that you have agreed to do.

2.      Do not encroach on other persons or their property.

            The men that forged the founding documents of the United States of America went so far as to proclaim “That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,”  and that no one person but that “We the people of the United States” claim for our selves independence from a king. We actually rejected the divine right of kings. No one man stands taller, shouts louder, or has the right to steal from his neighbor. OK, they had a narrow version of what a person was, but still what a marvelous idea. They got a lot of other stuff right too. They understood the corrupting nature of power, so they divided it up in such a way that those who sought to be king, would be tied up fighting one another for the throne rather than oppressing and stealing from the rest of us.

            The Bill of Rights protects "We" the People from our own Government run amuck.  Not freedoms granted by a governmental overlord but Liberties ordained by God not unlike the Divine right of Kings. We are “endowed by our Creator certain unalienable rights among those the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Those liberties are enumerated and protected by the first ten Amendments to our Constitution.

            Short answer is he who has the most liberty lives the best.  Good day and God Bless