Galilean Fisherman

  Gizzards and Grace            I’m pretty sure you've never used the words “Gizzards” and Grace” in the same sentence. I know I haven't           I was reading an article by Roy Blount, Jr. in a back issue of Garden and Guns ; a magazine devoted to life in the South. He describes the gizzard of a chicken as the organ that acts like teeth. The chicken swallows a bite, it goes into the craw, then into the gizzard where the two halves grind the food much like our molars.           Like most of you, I have eaten gizzards and found them about as tough as an old tennis shoe. Those who like the claim that chewing them longer just allows you to taste them longer. Maybe.           Blount goes on to say: “Politics is . . . the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are its two opposite halves. . . which grind on each other.” Pretty accurate, I say. Especially in the current political climate, where more and more hatred, bitterness, animosity,

               Have you ever been criticized? Of course, you have. To be human is to be criticized. Conversely, to be human is to criticize others. You’ve heard it from parents. You’ve directed it towards younger brothers or sister or cousins. You heard it all through school. It fills every political newscast. It is rampant.             Some criticism is “constructive.” But, too often it is delivered as though it is “destructive.” Proverbs 15:31 says: “Whoever heeds life-giving correction will be at home among the wise.” Constructive criticism can help us achieve our goals, if it is honestly given and earnestly heeded.            Theodore Roosevelt famously said, “It is not the critic who counts; not the person who points out how the strong person stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the person who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again a