Empowering Daughters of God

 This July 4th marked the 250th birthday of the United States of America.  The 4th of July was never really a favorite holiday for me, but I'm beginning to feel differently about it.  I've always had fond memories of July 4th.  When I was young, I always went to the parades and was even in them for many years.  We always went to fireworks shows and set off our own!  I have felt that my parents always impressed a sense of patriotism on me.  Every year, the thing I noticed most were the tears in my dad's eyes during the fireworks, the Star Spangled Banner, or when another patriotic song was on the radio.  I never knew what came to his mind at those times, but there was clearly an emotional movement, or something even spiritual going on.   I don't know what it's like to sacrifice my life for freedom or liberty.  I've never been jailed for standing for what I believe.   I've never had the courage to travel to unknown places in...

There once was a lady who lived in a trailer.  After marrying her high-school sweetheart, she was somewhat confined to this trailer.  Her husband didn't want her to work or go to school.  They didn't have kids for many years.  What did she do?  She read books!  She read every science fiction book her husband had. This woman was my mother.  When I was a kid, I always wondered why my mother loved sci-fi TV shows and movies.  When she finally told me this story, it all made sense.  The Star Trek, Stargate, Atlantis, Hercules, Xena, Star Wars, and many more all made sense. My mom was a big inspiration to me when it came to reading.  When I was in high school and college, we would buy different book series and read them in tandem and then talk about them.  It still is one of my fondest memories with my mother.  Even now, I'll send her new books that I read after I fall in love with them.  My mother still reads books all the tim...

In biology " culture " refers to the production of microorganisms in a controlled environment.  In order to multiply a bacteria or other microorganism, one needs to plant the organism in a substance called agar.  Agar is a gelatinous medium that provides nutrients for growth.  Usually when growing a cell culture, the agar plate needs to be incubated at a constant temperature for a certain amount of time.  Growing microorganisms is similar to growing plants.  Microorganisms also play a very specialized and important role in plant growth.  The etymology of the word " culture " goes back to just that: cultivation or rearing of a crop.  Culture very definitively means to promote growth...to tend, guard, till, and cultivate. The meaning of culture as we know it is actually metaphorical, or figurative.   Culture, in the figurative sense, is meant to nurture, grow, tend to, care for, and cultivate a people. When we cultivate or promote the growth of...