This is My Story This is My Song

Blessed are...

2011-11-11T17:24:00.000-05:00

And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

... “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Dandy's House

2011-06-19T18:32:00.001-04:00

I am not certain why I called my grandmother Dandy. Perhaps I was too young to voice the word "granny" or perhaps it was because she would say to me, "You are sure a dandy." Dandy is what I called her.

Today I learned that her former home has been put up for sale. The fellow that purchased it paid $9,000. It was in horrible condition. He gutted most of the house and beautifully rehabbed the property.

Below are pictures from the multiple listing service. Each strip contains 3 pictures except for the 1st with one picture and the last with two pictures.

CANCELLED

2010-09-10T20:05:00.003-04:00

I don't know if the Right Reverend Jones read my blog or if yesterday mornings discussion with the FBI motivated his decision, but International Burn A Koran Day has been cancelled.

However this was not done in time for those in the Middle East to decide not to burn flags and Bibles (which they did).

For the firestarters out there, don't be dismayed. The Westboro Baptist Church, the group that pickets U.S. soldier's funerals, is taking up the cause. They will probably burn some Korans tomorrow.

No worries though, since everyone knows those folk are all idiots.

International Burn a Koran Day

2010-09-09T00:41:00.011-04:00

A pastor in Gainesville Florida is planning to burn 200 copies of the Koran on September 11th. Pastor Terry Jones of Dove World Outreach has announced to the world that 9-11 is Burn A Koran Day.

The whole business has gotten quite out of hand.

General David Patreaus has called on Jones to back off, as it is already causing an outcry in Afghanistan and added fuel to the religious fervor, which could adversely effect the war. Political leaders, including Sarah Palin, have asked Jones to back off. Glen Beck and other conservative spokesment have expressed disdain.

Muslims in Afghanistan and Indonesia are rioting over this action. (Honestly, I think if an American farted in Afghanistan or Indonesia that would be cause for them to riot. These people love a riot. They love to jump up and down and hold Death To America signs and shoot automatic weapons in the air.)

I have very mixed feelings about burning the Koran.

Part of me says what's the big deal. Radical Muslims seem to have no problem beheading Christians. Why do they get all upset when a Christian burns their holy book, which by the way is not a living human being. Radical Muslims certainly did not have any issues when four planes were used as bombs on September 11th, 2001.

In fact I saw Muslims cheering the event on the news that same day.

Besides that, Americans have the right to free speech. If this pastor wants to burn the Koran, despite the consequences, he is within his Constitutional rights to do so. I can recall the Viet Nam war rallies wherein the United States flag was burned. I also recall Iranians burning effigies of Presidents Reagan and Carter, while chanting Death to America the great Satan.

But then the other part of me says, "Didn't we learn anything from history?" Hitler and friends held plenty of book burnings which included Torahs and Bibles and in all probability, Korans. Old Joe Stalin did the same. Do we really want to imitate Hitler or Stalin?

I also am curious if this pastor prayed about what he is setting out to do? Does he feel this act is within God's Will? Would this event be condoned and in accord with Scripture?

Did he need to make a press release announcing this controversial act? Were his motives to promote is congregations feelings about Radical Islam or to promote himself and his church?

I have learned that Pastor Terry Jones leads a congregation of less than 50 people. His church is located within a 20 acre compound. Any Church that is located within a compound sort of sets off red flags in my mind.

Pastor Jones walks around with and automatic pistol strapped to his belt.

Why would someone that pastors The Dove Outreach Worldwide Church need a handgun?

I find this very troubling.

I have learned in the past not to judge other Christians, for God will judge each of us. I am not going to judge Pastor Jones.

However I hope that he and his congregation will put some serious prayer and soul searching before they start a fire they can't put out.

Ndw Song for Christmas CD

2010-09-03T07:49:00.035-04:00

Late in 2009 my friends Deny Brigance and Rick Marksberry decided it would be great to put out a Christmas CD featuring musicians that played at the Jesus House. So they challenged everyone to write at least one Christmas song.

The hardest part of songwriting is determining what message or scenario you want the song to convey. I'm told there are two types of songs; Picture songs such as Christopher Cross's Sailing or Don Mclean's song Vincent paint a picture. The second type is message songs. These can be love songs that express a persons feelings in words or songs that express a writers' feelings about other things.

The song that I wrote falls into the latter catagory.

When I was a kid we had great fun at Christmas. We had Christmas break from school. We had Christmas parties. We had Christmas decorations throughout school and throughout our town. We sang Christmas carols at school. We had Christmas plays.

Christmas was not taboo. I only knew one Jewish kid in high school and his family didn't seem to mind. There were two sisters in my fifth grade class that could not participate in the Christmas party because their parents were Jehovah Witnesses. The family voiced no objection to the Christmas party.

But in these modern days any hint of Christmas at a public forum or public school is grounds for a lawsuit. The separation of church and state has gone to a whole new level.

Subsequently the word Christmas is outlawed as it is offensive to aetheists, Muslims, Pagans, Wicca and other groups that believe the word Christmas will cause our children's minds to become corrupted with ideas about God and His Son Jesus.

So we now have Holiday Season. The children are off on Holiday break. No songs about Christmas. Frosty the Snowman, Down through the Chimney, Jingle Bells and other non threatening, no mention of God or Jesus songs are OK to be sung in public schools.

But sing the First Noel, Silent Night, O'Come All Ye Faithful or Hark the Hearld Angels Sing and the ACLU will send a pack of rabid attorneys to sue your school or town.

Christmas has been the most sacred day in Christian history. The earliest recorded calendar of Christian feast days dates back to 243 AD. So we know it has been celebrated in one form or another for 1767 years.

There are criticisms that Christmas Day was not actually the date of Jesus' birth. December 25 was a Pagan holiday celebrating the solstice. Perhaps the early Christians were aware that non-believers were celebrating and they too wanted to have fun without worshipping a tree or a pole or an idol. So they chose that time of year to celebrate the birth of Jesus. 'makes sense to me.

With that said, here is my song which in a way gently reminds non-believers that Christmas is more than just a holiday.

In fact the songs title is:

More Than Just A Holiday.

Don't you know Christmas is more than a holiday,
it's the day that Jesus came into the world.
So gather all around us as we sing and say,
Jesus is the reason; Christmas is the season
to celebrate the coming of the Lord.

In this modern age when we're politically correct
I don't want to hurt no one on this Noel.
Diversity is smiled upon so show me some respect.
I'll acknowledge your traditions, allow for mine as well.
Christmas has been celebrated all these centuries,
now you want to change it's name. Listen to me please.

Don't you know Christmas is more than a holiday,
it's the day that Jesus came into the world.
So gather all around us as we sing and say,
Jesus is the reason; Christmas is the season
to celebrate the coming of the Lord.

Way down through the ages man has set aside this day
to commemorate the birth of God's own son.
Even if you don't believe there's those of us that do.
I would never disrespect you, please respect me too.
Christmas is the time of year when Christians will unite,
to celebrate the birth of God's own son this holy night.

Don't you know Christmas is more than a holiday,
it's the day that Jesus came into the world.
So gather all around us as we sing and say,
Jesus is the reason; Christmas is the season
to celebrate the coming of the Lord.

Don't you know Christmas is more than a holiday,
it's the day that Jesus came into the world.
So gather all around us as we sing and say,
Jesus is the reason; Christmas is the season
to celebrate the coming of the Lord.

Jesus is the reason; Christmas is the season
to celebrate the coming of the Lord.

A Tale of Two Cities - A List of Present Day Martyrs

2010-07-02T00:25:00.015-04:00

Daniel Pearl

It is an unfortunate truth that there are more Christians and Jews being martyred in this era than any other era in history.

In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens provides a vivid account of life in Paris and a small French town called Saint Anoine during the French revolution, an era when French people rose up against their oppresors, yet succumed to the evil one.

Surprisingly this period of time has aspects of life in some parts of todays world.

Dickens writes:
The new era began; the king was tried, doomed, and beheaded; the Republic of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, declared for victory or death against the world in arms; the black flag waved night and day from the great towers of Notre Dame; three hundred thousand men, summoned to rise against the tyrants of the earth, rose from all the varying soils of France, as if the dragon's teeth had been sown broadcast, and had yielded fruit equally on hill and plain, on rock, in gravel, and alluvial mud, under the bright sky of the South and under the clouds of the North, in fell and forest, in the vineyards and the olive-grounds and among the cropped grass and the stubble of the corn, along the fruitful banks of the broad rivers, and in the sand of the sea-shore.

Members of a Christian Bible Study in Turkey Slaughtered April 18, 2007

What private solicitude could rear itself against the deluge of the Year One of Liberty- the deluge rising from below, not falling from above, and with the windows of Heaven shut, not opened!

Orthodox Priest Daniel Alekseevich Sysoev

There was no pause, no pity, no peace, no interval of relenting rest, no measurement of time. Though days and nights circled as regularly as when time was young, and the evening and morning were the first day, other count of time there was none. Hold of it was lost in the raging fever of a nation, as it is in the fever of one patient. Now, breaking the unnatural silence of a whole city, the executioner showed the people the head of the king- and now, it seemed almost in the same breath, the bead of his fair wife which had had eight weary months of imprisoned widowhood and misery, to turn it grey.

Sister Dorothy Stang

And yet, observing the strange law of contradiction which obtains in all such cases, the time was long, while it flamed by so fast. A revolutionary tribunal in the capital, and forty or fifty thousand revolutionary committees all over the land; a law of the Suspected, which struck away all security for liberty or life, and delivered over any good and innocent person to any bad and guilty one; prisons gorged with people who had committed no offence, and could obtain no bearing; these things became the established order and nature of appointed things, and seemed to be ancient usage before they were many weeks old. Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze from the foundations of the world- the figure of the sharp female called La Guillotine.

The Holocaust

It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for headache, it infallibly prevented the hair from turning grey, it imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine, looked through the little window and sneezed into the sack.
It was the sign of the regeneration of the human race. It superseded the Cross. Models of it were worn on breasts from which the Cross was discarded, and it was bowed down to and believed in where the Cross was denied.

It sheared off heads so many, that it, and the ground it most polluted, were a rotten red. It was taken to pieces, like a toy-puzzle for a young Devil, and was put together again when the occasion wanted it. It hushed the eloquent, struck down the powerful, abolished the beautiful and good. Twenty-two friends of high public mark, twenty-one living, and one dead, it had lopped the heads off, in one morning, in as many minutes. The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief functionary who worked it; but so armed, he was stronger than his namesake, and blinder, and tore away the gates of God's own Temple every day.

Bishop Luigi Padovese

As I read this section of the book it occurred to me both the Cross and the guillotine are devices of execution. This has always puzzled me.

My Catholic friends hold up a cross with the crucified Jesus on it as a reminder of the Crucifixtion. My Protestant friends hold up an empty cross as a sign of the resurrection. I had wondered years ago, what if Jesus was put to death in the electric chair, would we wear pendants of electric chairs around or necks and large replicas of electric chairs on our Church walls?

Father Rageed Azziz Ganni

Thanks be to The Lord our God that He is God and I am just plain ol' Marc, because He knows what is best. If He wants the cross to be a symbol of rememberance than so be it.

The people of the French Revolution certainly had reason to overthrow tyranical rule that they lived under, but to throw away God in favor of man's rule is beyond the pale. However this is going on today in many foreign lands where brothers are executing brothers and Christians are considered to be infidels. May God have mercy on us all.

The Pentagon vs. Christianity

2010-04-27T03:08:00.006-04:00

There is some outrage within the Christian community regarding the National Day of Prayer and the Pentagon.

The headlines state Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham and the entire National Day of Prayer task force, including Shirley and Dr. James Dobson were uninvited to the National Day of Prayer observance at the Pentagon.

The apparent reason the invitation was rescinded was Graham’s post 9/11 comment that Islam, as practiced, is evil. The Dobson’s suggest the Pentagon’s rejection of Christian leaders is much broader than previously recognized.

A Pentagon spokesman, George Wright went on to confirm this information saying, “While we appreciate Franklin Graham’s worldwide outreach and his willingness to speak at this Pentagon multi-faith event, his presence would be inappropriate. Mr. Wright had no comment about Franklin Graham’s organization, Samaritan’s Purse, which aids millions of the needy around the world.

Wright stated the Pentagon event "will continue as scheduled under the administration of the office of the Pentagon Chaplain." Asked which chaplains, representing which faith traditions, will be involved in the upcoming event, Wright replied, "The agenda has not been finalized."

Graham has stuck to his views and stated that he loves the Islamic people. Through his ministry he has provided assistance to people in Muslim countries. He states, “I do not agree with their religion at all...look at what their religion does jut to women...it is horrid. I speak out for people that live under Islam that are enslaved by Islam and I want them to know they can be free.”

Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council had this to say. "This decision is further evidence that the leadership of our nation's military has been impaired by the politically correct culture being advanced by this administration," Perkins said. "Under this Administration's watch we are seeing the First Amendment, designed to protect the religious exercise of Americans, retooled into a sword to sever America's ties with orthodox Christianity.

"For those Christian leaders who have avoided the controversy of political issues, saying they just wanted to preach the gospel -- this should be a wake-up call!"

However, Franklin Graham says, "The military never extended the invitation to me," Franklin Graham explained Friday on CBN. "I got a call from the Pentagon, from the head chaplain, and he asked if I would rescind this invitation. I said, 'Sir, I never got the invitation.' The invitation is actually to the National Day of Prayer (task force). It wasn't give to me. I said 'You'll have to go to the National Day of Prayer. I'm their honorary chairman, but the invitation didn't come to me directly.' So they disinvited, is my understanding, the National Day of Prayer."

While Graham and the National Day of Prayer task force will be excluded from the Pentagon event, Graham will still be the keynote speaker at the other major National Day of Prayer observance to be held May 6 in the Nation's Capital, at the Cannon House Office Building.

On Sunday, President Obama visited Billy Graham's residence in Montreat, N.C. Franklin Graham said that during Sunday's visit, he spoke briefly with President Obama about the Pentagon's decision to spurn the task force, which has participated in the Pentagon event for several years. Graham says he told the president that anti-Christian activists are trying to remove all traces of religion from the U.S. military. "I wanted to make him aware of that. He said he would look into it,"

The National Day of Prayer became law under the Truman Administration. The National Day of Prayer task force is a privately funded organization that has been involved in the Pentagon’s observance in past years.

Graham also said the Pentagon decision was an ominous sign for the future of religious freedom in America.

"I think no question … religious freedom is under attack," he said. "There has been an erosion now for many years, but we have seen it really accelerate in the last 10 years. This political correctness that has crept in, that if we stand for what we believe in, all the sudden we are not tolerant. They almost make it look like we are participating in hate speech, when we say that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life, and there's no way to God except through Christ and Christ alone. They are interpreting that now as being hostile and hate speech."

Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb of Wisconsin ruled that holding a National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional, maintaining it violates the First Amendment's prohibition against the establishment of a religion by the federal government. The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit filed in 2008 by a group of atheists and agnostics.

For what its worth, my suggestion is we all pray for our Country and it's leaders. May they recall the principals under which The United States of America was founded and not forget them.

The Last Supper Grew to Ungodly Portions

2010-04-16T20:08:00.001-04:00

Paintings Reveal That Plate, Portion Sizes Gradually Grew in the Past Millennium

By Bill Hendrick from WebMD Medical News Reviewed by Laura J. Martin, MD

March 24, 2010 -- Paintings of the Last Supper over the past millennium show that plate and food serving sizes have gotten larger throughout history, possibly foretelling today’s supersized portions, according to a new study.

The findings suggest that the phenomenon of serving bigger portions on bigger plates, which pushes people to overeat, has occurred gradually over the past 1,000 years, says co-author Brian Wansink, PhD, a marketing and economics professor at Cornell University and an expert on eating habits.

“We took the 52 most famous paintings of the Last Supper and analyzed the size of the entrees, bread, and plates, relative to the average size of the average head in the painting,” he says in a news release.

Wansink and his brother and co-author, Craig Wansink, professor of religious studies at Virginia Wesleyan College, used computer-aided design technology that allowed items in 52 paintings to be scanned, rotated, and calculated, regardless of the orientation of the objects in the artwork. “To account for the varying dimensions of the paintings, the average sizes of these items were indexed based on the average size of the heads depicted in the paintings,” the authors write.

The main discernable dishes depicted in the paintings included fish or eel (18%), lamb (14%), and pork (7%), and 46% of the paintings had no discernable main dish.

'Last Supper' Portions Growing

The study, published in the April 2010 issue of the International Journal of Obesity, finds that the size of the entrees in Last Supper paintings has progressively increased 66%, plate size 66%, and bread size 23% in the past 1,000 years.

“The last thousand years have witnessed dramatic increases in the production, availability, safety, abundance, and affordability of food,” says Brian Wansink, author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think.

“We think that as art imitates life, these changes have been reflected in paintings of history’s most famous dinner,” he says.

The researchers used 52 paintings depicting the Last Supper that were featured in the 2000 book Last Supper by Phaidon Press.

Craig Wansink tells WebMD in an email that “the use of the head in measuring the size of the bread was simply to focus on proportionality between the paintings.”

In short, the scholars say the trend of larger plates and portion sizes detected in recent years and linked to obesity is a phenomenon that started hundreds or even more than 1,000 years ago.

They examined 10 paintings of the Last Supper completed between 1000-1300, five done between 1300 and 1400, 15 between 1400 and 1500, 13 between 1500 ad 1600, and nine between 1600 and the year 2000.

“Perhaps the increasing portion sizes and food availability we have recently noticed is rooted in a general trend that has been artistically depicted for more than a millennium,” the authors write.

Left vs. Right Article

2010-04-02T11:22:00.091-04:00

I have friends that have conservative views and friends that have liberal views. I love them all, although the ones that are liberal are somewhat of an enigma to me.

A few years back my wife and I were invited to a Reform Synagogue in Cincinnati. If you did not know it, Cincinnati is a major center for Reform Judaism and home to Hebrew Union College. Reform Jews are definitely liberal in their religious views and can have liberal views in politics.

The experience of worshipping with the people that attend this schul was wonderful, unforgettable and treasured.

I don't think we can lump all liberals and all conservatives together as society and the media often portray the two groups. I certainly do not want to be hurtful to anyone.

I found this article yesterday in the Jewish World Weekly online. It was written by Dennis Prager. I have reprinted the text just to share it with my friends and family.

Prager is a gentleman on the far right of the playing field. Some of his views are rather extreme. However I found this article to provide some insight into cultural differences. (I can hear some of my liberal friends groaning.) Email me if you disagree. Keep in mind it was geared to a Jewish audience. And keep in mind Prager's views are not entirely my views. I disagree with some of his points.

Many Americans find it difficult to understand why Jews on the Left — including many who would call themselves "liberal" rather than "Left" — continued to enthusiastically support President Obama after the revelations about the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish views of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the religious mentor and close friend of Obama. This confusion is all the greater now that Obama has humiliated the prime minister of Israel and created the most tense moment in American-Israel relations in memory.

Likewise, many Americans wonder how Democratic congressmen who claim to be faithful Catholics and are pro-life could vote for the health care bill that allows for federal funding of abortions — after opposing it up to the last day.

There is an explanation.

Leftism, though secular, must be understood as a religion (which is why I have begun capitalizing it). The Leftist value system's hold on its adherents is as strong as the hold Christianity, Judaism and Islam have on their adherents. Nancy Pelosi's belief in expanding the government's role in American life, and therefore her passion for the health care bill, is as strong as a pro-life Christian's belief in the sanctity of the life of the unborn.

Given the religious nature and the emotional power of Leftist values, Jews and Christians on the Left often derive their values from the Left more than from their religion.

Now, of course, most Leftist Jews and Christians will counter that Leftist values cannot trump their religion's values because Leftist values are identical to their religion's values. But this argument only reinforces my argument that Leftism has conquered the Christianity and the Judaism of Leftist Christians and Jews. If there is no difference between Leftist moral values and those of Judaism or Christianity, then Christianity is little more than Leftism with "Jesus" rhetoric added, and Judaism is Leftism with Jewish terms — such as "Tikkun Olam" ("repairing the world") and "Prophetic values" — added.

But if Christianity is, morally speaking, really Leftism, why didn't Catholics or Protestants assert these values prior to 19th-century European Leftism? And, if Judaism is essentially a set of Left-wing values, does that mean that the Torah and the Talmud are Leftist documents? Or are the two pillars of Judaism generally wrong?

More questions:

Why are almost no Christians and Jews who believe that G-d is the author of the Bible (or, in the case of Jews, the Torah) on the Left?

Why are so few pro-life Catholic and Protestant Christians on the Left? Do they not care about "the poor"?

Of course, that is what people on the Left believe. As former head of the Democratic Party Howard Dean said, "Our moral values, in contradistinction to the Republicans, is, we don't think kids ought to go to bed hungry at night."

They believe such things despite the fact that traditional Protestants and Catholics have created more institutions to take care of the sick and needy than probably any other groups in the world. And despite the fact that religious Americans give more charity and volunteer more time than secular Americans do.

And why have the great majority of Orthodox Jews rejected the Left? For Jews on the Left, the explanation is simple: Orthodox Jews have primitive beliefs and therefore primitive values.

The obvious response is that for the Leftist, all opposition to the Left, secular or religious, is primitive and usually worse (Racist, Sexist, Homophobic, Xenophobic, Ignorant, Bigoted, Intolerant, Mean-Spirited, etc.). So this doesn't tell us much. What might tell us much is this: With a handful of exceptions, Orthodox Jews know Judaism far better than non-Orthodox Jews do. Given how few of them are Leftist, this would suggest that Judaism and Leftism are indeed in conflict.

But that doesn't matter to most Jews on the Left because to be a good person (and, to those for whom it matters, to be a good Jew), one need not know Judaism, let alone follow Judaism. One needs only to feel what is right (Leftism is overwhelmingly based on feeling); and, when in doubt, one can determine what is right from The New York Times, not from sacred Jewish texts.

One of the many fundamental differences between Leftism and Judaism concerns evil. Jews and others on the Left (everywhere, not just in America) have a real problem identifying, let alone confronting, evil. Yet, for Judaism, identifying and confronting evil is as basic a Jewish value as exists. That is why, for example, there is no pacifist tradition in Judaism.
Regarding evil, the Psalmist writes — and this is recited in synagogue every Sabbath — "Those who love G-d — hate evil." And as regards pacifism, one of the Prophets, Joel (3:10), inverts what became the much more famous quotation of Isaiah and Micah: "Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears." And later, the Talmud, almost equivalent in importance to the Bible, teaches (Berachost 58a): "The Torah has said: If a man comes to kill you, rise early and kill him first."

In contrast, Leftists, including Leftist Jews and Christians:
were the loudest in condemning President Ronald Reagan when he labeled the Soviet Union an "evil empire."

much of their lives to opposing the war in Vietnam, which they labeled immoral even though it was a war against Stalinist tyranny.
opposed deposing the mass murderer Saddam Hussein.
Many even opposed the Gulf War.
believe that the moral wasteland known as the United Nations is, or must be the greatest force for good on earth, not the United States.
oppose allowing the American military to recruit on campuses.

And the further Left one goes, the more one demonizes free Israel and supports the dictatorships that wish to destroy Israel.

Indeed, Israel provides the clearest proof of how Leftism is stronger than the Jewishness of most Jews on the Left. Israel is threatened with a Holocaust by Iran and tens of millions of Islamic supporters outside of Iran, and Palestinian society is saturated with the most virulent Jew-hatred since the Nazis. Yet while today's Jew- and Israel-haters call the Left home, Jews on the Left continue to be proud members of the Left. Such is the power of Leftism, the most dynamic religion in the world for the last 150 years.
And that explains Bart Stupak's vote, too. In his inner conflict between Catholicism and Leftism, the more dynamic religion won.

Romans 12:2

2010-02-06T21:19:00.011-05:00

It takes knowledge, wisdom, and effort to be a Christian. No one said it was going to be easy.

Romans 12:2, which tells us that we are not to conform to the pattern of the world any longer, but rather we are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. In this context what does “World” mean?

I try to think of the fact that Jesus was Jewish. So was Paul who wrote this letter to the Romans. Jewish wisdom tells us that everything which God created in His universe comes into one of three categories:

Creations made up of a combination of form (TzuRA) and matter (ChoMeR). These are constantly coming into being and ceasing to exist: for example, the bodies of man and animals, plants and metals.
Creations made up of a combination of form and matter that do not change from body to body or from form to form in the same way as those in the first category. The form of the creations falling into this second category is permanently fixed in their matter, and they do not change as the others do. Examples are the spheres and the stars and planets that revolve in them. The matter of which they are constituted differs from other kinds of matter and their forms from other forms.
Creations that consist of form but no matter, for example the MaLaChiM, angels. ["Angels" is the usual English translation of MaLaCh, but the Hebrew root, which is related to the word MeLaChaH, meaning "work" or the application of energy, indicates the spiritual "force" that is responsible for some process or other phenomenon in the world.] The creations in this category do not possess bodies or corporeal being, but rather are forms that are separate from one another.

The Greek word used here for “world” is not the Greek word kosmos, the created world, but rather aion, or “age.” The word aion does not just mean “age” in the sense that it is a finite period of time. "Aion" came to mean all that exists in the world under conditions of time.

Aion includes all the thoughts, opinions, maxims, speculations, impulses, and aspirations present in the world at any given time.

Hence we, as new creatures in Christ, need not to form our minds and hearts according to a pattern or mold of the ages past, present and future, but we are to be transformed, as opposed to being a conformist to the age, by not letting others mold you or think for you or becoming a follower and an imitator.

We are to be transformed undergoing real change that continues as we go through life. It is this is a complete change that renews our mind and desire to learn more about God and His Son, Jesus.

PAT ROBERTSON SAID WHAT?

2010-01-14T18:45:00.011-05:00

Wednesday, January 13th 2010, Pat Roberston stated on his Christian Broadcasting Network show, that the nation of Haiti has been devastated by a large earthquake because its people "made a pact with the devil."

In my humble opinion, the honorable Mr. Robertson(a man who has mastered the art of the continuous smirk) should get off his lazy keister and go to Haiti to aide in the earthquake recovery effort instead of sitting on his comfortable couch in his studio and passing judgement on some of the world's poorest people. The man has the resources to do this.

Didn't he make a similar comment a few years ago regarding New Orleans and hurricane Katrina? That was certainly helpful to the citizens of Louisianna. Thank you!

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. What is wrong with this man?

As always, I am expressing my opinion.

THE JESUS HOUSE

2009-12-22T18:53:00.017-05:00

Israeli archaeologists announced Monday, December 21st, 2009 that they had uncovered remains of the first dwelling in the city of Nazareth that can be dated back to the time of Jesus.

The home is not far from Basilica of the Annunciation, where archaeologists found remains of a wall, a hideout behind a wall and a water system that appeared to collect rain water and condensation from the roof. Inside the home and nearby were found were clay and chalk vessels used by Galilean Jews of the time.

The findings indicate the home belonged to a simple Jewish family. They also suggest Nazareth was probably an extremely small village during this era based on evidence from the graves within the city. These graves suggest Nazareth at this time had an estimated 50 houses that were built on a plot of land that is less than four acres.

In antiquity Cities had honor ratings based on the size of the community. Since Nazareth was such a small village, it was at the bottom of the list. No small wonder one of Jesus’ disciple Nathaniel posed the question, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

Until this discovery, very little written evidence exists concerning Nazareth during Jesus’ lifetime. The only actual evidence prior to this discovery was obtained from graves of that era.

Only in the Bible do we have evidence that Jesus was in Nazareth. We now have an idea of what the town dwellings were like.

Alexandre works for the Israeli Antiquities Authorities at the dig in Nazareth and is directing this dig... He states the walls of the house itself and the pottery date this house to the early Roman period, which is to say, the era of Jesus. Palestinian Christians in Nazareth celebrated the announcement of this find as a Christmas gift to them from God.

He also stresses the Jewishness of the find based on the pottery and shards that have been found. Today Nazareth is currently mostly populated by Moslems and is the largest Arab city in Northern Israel with over 65,000 inhabitants. In this era it was a tiny Jewish village.

He also elaborates regarding the stone construction of this home. It suggests stability and the fact the residents were planning to spend their lives in this city. And though no glassware has been found, the stone construct implies permanency. Mud and wood constructed homes would have been built for residents planning on temporary dwellings.

The find gives credence to the fact that Jesus was a Jew living in a Jewish village. The clay and chalk vessels discovered there were used during his lifetime to ensure purity of food and water. The hiding places and caves discovered adjacent to some of the potential home sites bear out the division and politics between Jews and Roman that are outlined in the Gospels and exemplified in Jesus’ birth and death.

As with all discoveries of this nature, we draw closer and closer to actual physical evidence that is detailed in the Bible and sheds light on The Truth.

The Whipping of a 15 Year Old Girl and Christmas

2009-11-29T12:49:00.024-05:00

AP CAIRO — a 16-year-old Christian girl from southern Sudan said Friday she was lashed 50 times for wearing a skirt deemed indecent by authorities in the north who enforce a strict version of Islamic law.

Silva Kashif said a policeman in a Khartoum market arrested her last week for wearing a skirt beneath the knee.

She was convicted of offending public morality and received 50 lashes in the courtroom.

"I was treated like a criminal," Kashif said in a telephone interview. "I am confused what to wear. The trousers were an issue. My skirt was beneath the knee. What more can I do? I am Christian. My tribe and my customs permit me to dress like this."

This troubles me greatly. We just had Thanksgiving, which is the least offensive of the Christian celebrations, since everyone or every faith or lack of can be thankful for something. We are fast approaching Christmas. In everyday conversations we can call it such. However in the business and scholastic world it has been reduced to a Holiday so we don't offend those who are not Christians.

When I was a little guy there were two sisters in my fifth grade class that were Jehovah Witnesses. Back in the 1960's our teacher could read a Bible verse, we could say The Lord's Prayer and we could have Thanksgiving and Christmas parties in which we could sing hymns and carols of the season.

I can still see the faces of Esther and Martha with their noses pressed on the glass of the window of the closed door that blocked them out of the Christmas party. This was at their parents request since Jehovah witnesses didn't believe in Christmas celebrations. Both of the girls were sobbing.

Last week I asked my older grand kids if they sang any Thanksgiving songs at their school. They both said no, they weren't aware of Thanksgiving songs.

The above AP story regarding the poor 15 year old Christian girl appeared around the 24Th or 25Th of November of this year in many newspapers.

Modern society demands that we conform and not express our faith and beliefs lest we offend. We are not permitted to have prayer in school or demonstrate ones faith.

And yet I have known of folks who have traveled to predominantly Muslim countries. Those countries don't seem too wishie-washy in punishing those who don't conform to their ways through strong arm tactics and force as it witnessed in the above story.

Both of these thoughts, the forbidding of Christian Holidays and the brutal whipping of a young girl, bring to mind the words of our Lord that are found in Matthew 18:6.

I will go over the words in different Biblical translations to provide the underlying meaning of His Words.

Within the New International Version;

But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

The passage from the King James Version;

But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

Young’s Literal Translation states;

…and whoever may cause to stumble one of those little ones who are believing in me, it is better for him that a weighty millstone may be hanged upon his neck, and he may be sunk in the depth of the sea.

In a wonderful online site the author Lee Smith has put together an excellent study of Matthew. Here I have consolidated some of his remarks concerning Matthew 18:6;

In the New Testament the word Sin was also used of a stumbling block or something which trips someone up from walking the correct way and the meaning of stumbling block is probably the best in the context here.

The Revised Standard Version's rendering of the word implies that there’s a certain force in the stumbler’s life which makes the childlike believer sin regardless of their own freewill. Their translation which, in Matthew 18:6 for instance, speaks of "...whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin...".

This should be better rendered "...whoever is the cause of stumbling to one of these little ones who believe in Me..." so that the person is not seen to be the force that makes the sin but the lead that encourages it.

Bible teacher Leon Morris therefore interprets the verb used as giving the reader "...its idea of entrapment which indicates that the person in question is leading the little one into something that that little one does not properly understand. The little one is deceived into committing sin..".

Punishing a Christian for being a Christian or causing a child to not have the freedom to believe God's Word is no different from placing a stumbling block before them. This holds true for those that abuse children by beating and whipping them as well for those not acknowledging the Christian historical aspects of Christmas.

Let us celebrate our faith and belief.

Christian (and Jewish) Holiday Gift Ideas

2009-11-25T06:32:00.035-05:00

Do you know a nice Jewish Cat Lady?
Then here's the perfect gift of the holidays that she can use to commemorate the oppressive Syrian rule, the torture of Chanah's sons and of course the Maccabees, all while celebrating the love she has for her 80 plus cats.

Luke chapter 6, verse 38 says; "Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."
Whoo-hoo! Now you can be reminded of this as you chew on squishy, sugary bubble gum. Ain't life grand!

What child would not be excited to spend their play time with the delightful Ten Plagues of Egypt Finger Puppets. After all what is more fun than a plague?

Pass the Word of God with minty-fresh breath by using Testamints. Sinners will love you for it.

I realize that Jesus took bread and said, "This is my body, broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me." I'm not sure that he had baby Jesus cookies in mind. I mean really! Could you eat baby Jesus?

Chocolate and Jesus! I love 'em both. Just not together in one carb-packed serving. The product name is well..it's just not right!
But that's just my opinion.

Next time you go to the beach, display your faith with Jesus Loves You flip-flops. Folks will say, "There goes that crazy Christian."

Don't let your boy grow up with a role model like the GI Joe Action figure. Set him straight with the new Jesus Action figure. My Lord and Savior can whoop GI Joe with both of His hands tied behind His back.

You gotta' start the girls early on becoming good church ladies and taking care of themselves.

And here is the perfect product to "redeem your reputation" as it says on the box. Get your daughter some Lookin' Good for Jesus make-up and bubble bath.

Tackle sin. Coordinate a good defense for your faith. Run with it and pass it on. You can with you new Jesus is my Coach football figures! Rah-rah, sis-boom-bah!

Why settle for reading a comic book...excuse me...graphic novel about the Miracles of Jesus in only 2 dimensions, when you can read about the Miracles of Jesus in 3 dimensions with the Miracles of Jesus with 3 D GLASSES!

Next time you have guests over for dinner, delight them with Grapes of Galilee Wine. Made from grapes grown along the Jordan River and gently aged for two weeks before being packaged in a plastic bag and put into a box. Remember, "He has trampled out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored."

I know, a mutt nativity set!

Nothing says Away in a manger than these delightful mangy critters. Ah, Look, puppy Jesus wants His belly rubbed.

Praise Music At Church - Thoughts of an Old Jesus Freak

2009-11-22T17:36:00.032-05:00

My wife listens to Christian music throughout the day, so she knows some of the newer Praise songs off of the various WOW compellation CD’s that are sold at Christian bookstores and are prominently placed next to the cash register to encourage shoppers to buy the latest version of this CD, which I think comes out on an anual basis.

You will find CD right next to the TestaMints and Scripture Lollipops at the Family Bookstore.

I suppose that is how folks learn the music and lyrics these days. It is a lot of bother to read music, especially for a generation that has forgone learning to play guitar and instead uses a toy guitar and a video game to become a Rock Star.

Something must be wrong with me because of the way I feel at many modern churches during Praise Music time.

I must be turning into a Christian curmudgeon.

Anymore when I go to church, I do not know the tune or the lyrics to any of these songs. The songs all seem to sound alike. The lyrics are certainly similar. Linny knows some of them, but even she is unfamiliar with many.

I guess I am stuck in the 70's.

The sound systems in many of the churches are massive and extremely expensive.

When I was a kid, I sang in two different church choirs. Both had twenty watt Bogen P.A. amplifiers with no EQ and one ceiling mounted speaker on each side of the church.

The pastor used the microphone for his sermon. He had one of those old lapel mics with the cord dragging on the floor. The choir only had their voices.

The band was made up of an older woman who played the organ.

In the end run, perhaps computers, Power Point and computerized projectors may be less expensive than hymnals.

But have you ever priced those projectors? Most retail for around $4,000.

Perhaps it is because I was younger, but it never bothered me to stand up for all five verses of A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. I knew I was going to sit down after we were done and listen to the sermon.

However the Praise Times at church have you standing for 45 minutes or more. I suppose I would not mind, if I actually felt I was Praising God in song. I just don’t feel that way. I am certain that some folks are into this, because they are dancing, waving, clapping and doing the Pentacostal bop. That’s just not me.

Despite what Larry Norman sang, I really like the old hymns. Some of these have been handed down and have withstood the test of time. My daughter got me a couple of books last year about the stories behind the hymns. It was a very interesting read.

In one of my blogs I have done some research on one old Jesus Movement song called We Are One in the Spirit. The song has some history behind it regarding why it was written and how it gained popularity in those days. I know there are some modern Praise and Worship Music, such as those of Rich Mullins’ songs that have history.

As far as Praise Bands vs. Choirs, I like them both, but I sure learned a lot back in my choir days. One of the choirs hired graduate students from CCM as (dare I say) ringers to make the choir sound good. It was a good experience to learn from them and talk music with them. It would seem that more people could participate in a choir than the five or six musicians that form a Praise Band.

I suppose they serve a purpose, but drum cages are just plain weird next to the altar.

It is funny that I started out 35 or 40 years ago singing, playing and writing Christian songs with a rock beat with a guitar backing. We see what this music has evolved (can I use that word?) into in the Church and I cannot say I don't totally care for it, but perhaps it needs some tweeking. Most Black churches have always had a great blend of excellent choirs and bands.

Don't even get me started about Backing Trax!

My Favorites - At The Jesus House

2009-11-08T13:45:00.012-05:00

In response to Terry Fishers recent post on The Jesus House Blog regarding his favorite performers, I have decided to write on the same subject and offer my ten personal favorite singer/songwriters that I recall from those sweet long ago days.

I’ll preface this by saying there are some folks that I never heard perform at the Jesus House. And although some of them are near and dear, I've limited my list to those my 57 year old memory can recall as performers.

For instance Rick Marksberry and Andy Danzl were folks that I knew from the Jesus House and got to know even better at Fellowship Christian Church. I don't believe I saw either of them play music at the Jesus House. I consider both close friends and my brothers in Christ.

Just about everyone I know from the Jesus House comments on Wiloughby Wilson as being a great band. Unfortunately I did not have the good fortune to see or hear Wiloughby Wilson perform. I was living in Middletown Ohio and occupied with business and family during that era.

I’ve since met Jim Wilson and have great admiration for him and and that excellent guitarist and David Gilmour impersonator Ric Fields. I enjoy the music they play as The Perculators.

I also have no recollection of hearing Prodigal play at the Jesus House. As I've mentioned I knew Ric Fields and met a dark haired Dave Workman in subsequent years before he became an old, gray pastor.

There are probably some others that I have forgotten over the years. I do apologize.

With that said, here is my list of favorites. All of which I have seen many times sing and play their songs at The Jesus House.

1. Mike Wilshire was by far my favorite performer. He was and still is an extremely talented guitarist and vocalist. Adrian Belew writes about Mike on his webpage and says that Mike Wilshire could have had a wonderful career in music, except he chose to be a pastor.

Mike wrote the most beautiful and meaningful songs. He performed them on his old Martin double–ought guitar and sang them in the loveliest style.

Beyond talent, Mike was a deeply committed Christian and the most important thing by far to him was to share his faith and love of The Lord. It was a special treat to hear Mike sing and harmonize with his friend Blaine Shepherd. The first time I heard them I couldn’t imagine how so much music could come out of two guys just singing and playing guitar.

I learned most of his songs and made them my own. Without know it, he taught me a lot about playing finger style guitar.

2. Randy Matthews is someone I first say when he was singing at Spiritual Revolution Day in 1971. Later I met Randy at the Jesus House. This was during the times when he would sing his songs and preach of God's Love. (Long before his pirate days. 'ar, 'ar, 'ar.)

Randy’s father wrote the Gospel song Peace In The Valley, which became a hit for Elvis. Randy followed in his father’s footsteps by writing a series of songs about The Lord. Since this all happened in the early days of the Jesus Movement, Randy was one of the originators of what came to be known as Jesus Music. I vividly recall Randy singing a song about the crucifixion and pounding on his Martin D-28 when it came to the part about driving the nails in Jesus’ hands.

3. Rising Hope was my very favorite Christian music group. I have written about them before. At the time they were comprised of Michael and Susan Goldberg and Ross Johnson. Later on they added Chris Adams as their bass player. They were the Peter, Paul and Mary of Jesus music. Their vocal blend was exquisite. Their songs could be moving or humorous. Their performance which usually included a multi-projector slide show with a voice-over by Mikal Keifer set them apart.

Changes happened as change usually does. Michael and Susan went their separate ways and both still hold Jesus above all. Ross Johnson married the lovely Lyndell from Australia and his family still celebrates Gods Love.

4. I met Jim Bankowski one evening when I was visiting with Whitey and Joanna Slayback. Joanna picked him up and brought him to her home to visit and have some homemade vegetable soup. Jim was the scrawniest fellow I have ever seen. He was dressed in a T-shirt and patched bib overalls that were more patches than overalls. Jim brought his beat-up old Martin dreadnaught guitar with him and sang some songs he had written.

He had a deep baritone voice, which was not the usual style of that era. However it worked for him. He also used strange tunings that seemed to be different for each song. He too shared his love of The Lord with everyone he met and was the humblest fellow I've ever met.

5. Rich Mullins is a guy that I met once or twice at the Jesus House and at some other venues in the Cincinnati area. I never really got to know him. As a lot of other musicians, Rich seemed kind of shy and distant when he wasn't singing and playing.

The first time I saw him play, he was seated before the big green Jesus House upright piano. That piano was a wreck. It was missing ivories from the keys and it was out-of-tune. However Rich made that piano sing in a style that was reminiscent of Elton John. He sang with the most amazing voice. I sat there thinking I can’t compare this guy to Elton John, since Rich is so much better. Rich was blessed with amazing talent and insight. I'm glad that God used him and shared his music with many, many others.

6. Adams-Fishy-Odor. When Chris Adams was not playing bass with Rising Hope, he sang in a band that consisted of long time Jesus House director Terry Fisher and long time Jesus House affiliate Kent Odor. It is a good thing to make music with your friends and that is what those guys did.

Terry wrote some very moving Christian songs as well as some extremely funny songs. Kent still has that wonderful and powerful voice. The brother could really belt out a song. Chris is still one of the best bass players around, bar none. Whenever those guys performed it was always a good time.

7. Sharon Wilson and Sherri Fayard always stood out as having some of the most beautiful singing voices that I have ever heard. Sharon took some classical guitar lessons and this style showed up in her playing.

Both girls wrote some of the most beautiful and meaningful songs, that were quite often taken straight from God’s Word. I was always so happy to visit the Jesus House and learn that they would be singing. I would just close my eyes and take in their beautiful voices.

8. Randy Moody was Cincinnati’s comic relief of the Jesus Movement. Randy had a million stories and it was always great fun to sit down and hear about Nate the Snake, Randy’s tales of being a hospital orderly or stories of Randy’s fellow employees at Swallens. Randy came up with some beautiful and well written songs. He also came up with some songs that were just a hoot.

9. Deny Brigance had been a regular performer at the Blind Lemon in Clifton. He was in a rock band called Monk and then he became a Christian.

Being a natural born singer/song writer/Deny turned his talent to writing Christian music. He had a high tenor voice that was extremely powerful. He also had a great ability to organize other musicians in an effort to make the songs he wrote come out the way he heard them in his head. I always loved to hear Deny whenever he was at the Jesus House.

10. Bob Clark sounded like Neil Young meets America (the band). Bob had that sort of pinched vocal quality that stood out. And the guy could write a wonderful tune. I don’t think he performed often at the Jesus House, but when he did it was a joy to hear him sing.

Under The Terebinths of Mamre

2009-11-01T10:24:00.004-05:00

Genesis Chapter 18

1 And the LORD appeared unto him by the terebinths of Mamre, as he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day; 2 and he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood over against him; and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed down to the earth, 3 and said: 'My lord, if now I have found favour in thy sight, pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant. 4 Let now a little water be fetched, and wash your feet, and recline yourselves under the tree. 5 And I will fetch a morsel of bread, and stay ye your heart; after that ye shall pass on; forasmuch as ye are come to your servant.' And they said: 'So do, as thou hast said.' 6 And Abraham hastened into the tent unto Sarah, and said: 'Make ready quickly three measures of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes.' 7 And Abraham ran unto the herd, and fetched a calf tender and good, and gave it unto the servant; and he hastened to dress it. 8 And he took curd, and milk, and the calf which he had dressed, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree, and they did eat. 9 And they said unto him: 'Where is Sarah thy wife?' And he said: 'Behold, in the tent.' 10 And He said: 'I will certainly return unto thee when the season cometh round; and, lo, Sarah thy wife shall have a son.' And Sarah heard in the tent door, which was behind him.-- 11 Now Abraham and Sarah were old, and well stricken in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women.-- 12 And Sarah laughed within herself, saying: 'After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?' 13 And the LORD said unto Abraham: 'Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying: Shall I of a surety bear a child, who am old? 14 Is any thing too hard for the LORD. At the set time I will return unto thee, when the season cometh round, and Sarah shall have a son.' 15 Then Sarah denied, saying: 'I laughed not'; for she was afraid. And He said: 'Nay; but thou didst laugh.' 16 And the men rose up from thence, and looked out toward Sodom; and Abraham went with them to bring them on the way. 17 And the LORD said: 'Shall I hide from Abraham that which I am doing; 18 seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? 19 For I have known him, to the end that he may command his children and his household after him, that they may keep the way of the LORD, to do righteousness and justice; to the end that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which He hath spoken of him.' 20 And the LORD said: 'Verily, the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and, verily, their sin is exceeding grievous. 21 I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto Me; and if not, I will know.' 22 And the men turned from thence, and went toward Sodom; but Abraham stood yet before the LORD. 23 And Abraham drew near, and said: 'Wilt Thou indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? 24 Peradventure there are fifty righteous within the city; wilt Thou indeed sweep away and not forgive the place for the fifty righteous that are therein? 25 That be far from Thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked, that so the righteous should be as the wicked; that be far from Thee; shall not the Judge of all the earth do justly?' 26 And the LORD said: 'If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will forgive all the place for their sake.' 27 And Abraham answered and said: 'Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the LORD, who am but dust and ashes. 28 Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous; wilt Thou destroy all the city for lack of five?' And He said: 'I will not destroy it, if I find there forty and five.' 29 And he spoke unto Him yet again, and said: 'Peradventure there shall be forty found there.' And He said: 'I will not do it for the forty's sake.' 30 And he said: 'Oh, let not the LORD be angry, and I will speak. Peradventure there shall thirty be found there.' And He said: 'I will not do it, if I find thirty there.' 31 And he said: 'Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the LORD. Peradventure there shall be twenty found there.' And He said: 'I will not destroy it for the twenty's sake.' 32 And he said: 'Oh, let not the LORD be angry, and I will speak yet but this once. Peradventure ten shall be found there.' And He said: 'I will not destroy it for the ten's sake.' 33 And the LORD went His way, as soon as He had left off speaking to Abraham; and Abraham returned unto his place.

This is one of my favorite portions of Torah. A terebinth is a tree that grows in the desert and provides shade. Because living things need water, one would assume that a water supply could be found to nourish the tree.

Mamre is a region that lies halfway between Halhul, in the West Bank and Hebron.

Abraham is visited by The Lord as we are told in the first verse. In the second three men appear. As the text goes on we assume one or all of these is The Lord. Perhaps The Lord and Angels or maybe the three aspects of The Lord.

We know it is The Lord, as in the subsequent verses the name for The Lord in Hebrew is HaShem.

In the English version above we use the word "He" with a capital letter. If we were reading Hebrew text the text would replace "He" with the word HaShem. Because it is a common Jewish practice to restrict the use of the word Adonai to prayer only. In conversation, many Jewish people, even when not speaking Hebrew, will call God "Hashem", השם, which is Hebrew for "the Name".

Abraham immediately offers hospitality to the visitors. This is still a common practice not just for practicing Jews, but for Middle Eastern people. The nomadic tribes that still exist today in the Middle East and live in tents will invite a stranger to come in and sit with them in the shade and offer them drink and food, lodging and a chance to wash the sand off of their feet. In return you will be blessed. Abraham offers a morsel of bread and a little water, but instead prepares a huge feast for his visitors. I have always contemplated how long did it take to prepare all this food? A cake was made, a calf was killed, dressed and roasted not to mention that fire had to be started. I suppose the modern concept of time and rushing about is so different from our ancestors.

The Lord asks about Sarah. He tells Abraham that Sarah will give birth by next year when the Lord revists Abraham. We read that Sarah laughed within herself. She is 89 years old and we assume menopausal. She doesn't say anything aloud, but The Lord says, "Why did Sarah laugh? Is anything too hard for The Lord?"

Sarah denies laughing, but The Lord corrects her.

We read that immediately after this the men got up and looked toward Sodom, the home of Abraham's nephew Lot and Lot's family.

Then The Lord has a moment of private conversation with the men and puts forth the question, "Should I tell Abraham of My Plans to destroy Sodom and the five cities that encompass that region?" He decides to tell Abraham of His plans.

At this Abraham bargains with The Lord and finally The Lord says if there are 10 righteous people in the city, He will not destroy it for the ten's sake.

The Lord then goes His Way. But there will not be 10 righteous people found in any of the cities.

Nicodemus

2009-10-03T06:51:00.005-04:00

Nicodemus. The name sounds like a medicinal product to deter tobacco use, doesn't it?

"Quitting smoking has never been easier. Four out of five doctors recommend the new Nicodemus patch.

Results have shown it to be effective in treatment for smoking cessation. Use as directed. This product may cause nausea, headache, fatigue, weight loss, weight gain, loss of muscle mass, impetigo, diarrhea, pyorrhea, wall eyes, itchiness, skin rash and stinky feet.

Use as directed, only under the care of the prescribing physician.

Ask you doctor about Nicodemus.

Call the toll-free number today for a coupon worth five dollar off on your first prescription.

Remember Nicodemus and you. That is the right decision."

Thankfully Nicodemus was not a product. He was a Pharisee.

Pharisees were the Jewish lawyers of the day.

Moses had received all 613 laws from God. From this evolved (can I use that word?) a group of Jews that made it their life's work not just to keep these laws, but to study them and add unravel the meaning behind each of them and interpret each. They made sure others followed the law and punished those that did not. They considered themselves shining examples, following the word and meaning of each rule.

We first hear of Nicodemus when in fear for his reputation and career, he appears under the cover of darkness at a home where Jesus was staying to speak with Him.

John Chapter 3

Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, "Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him."

In reply Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again."

"How can a man be born when he is old?" Nicodemus asked. "Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!"

Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.'

The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."

"How can this be?" Nicodemus asked.

"You are Israel's teacher," said Jesus, "and do you not understand these things? I will tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.

This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God."

The eighth paragraph, John 3:16 is one of the best known of the Bibles teachings. To think that Jesus said this, not to a large crowd of people, but to one individual man is astounding. How could you not be touched by the words of The Lord. Nicodemus was no exception. I feel that in his mindset as a Pharisee and one whose lifework is to study words, he had two choices. He could declare Jesus' words as blasphemy or understand them and come to that eureka moment some of us experience called Salvation.

Nicodemus took the words to heart. In John chapter seven it is Nicodemus who comes to the defense of Jesus, when the chief priest of the Pharisees sends the temple guard to arrest him when Jesus in talking in the Temple court. Jesus went to Galilee in secret to celebrate the feast of tabernacle. The Jews (pharisees) suspected him to be in town and questioned people as to His whereabouts. No one would respond, because the knew the pharisees intended to kill Jesus for what they considered blasphemy. Jesus makes His Presence known by walking right into the Temple Court and speaking to the assembled. The Chief priest order the Temple guards to seize him and bring him before the court. However neither the crowds or the awe struck guards do not lay a hand on him.

John Seven

Finally the temple guards went back to the chief priests and Pharisees, who asked them, "Why didn't you bring him in?"

"No one ever spoke the way this man does," the guards declared.

"You mean he has deceived you also?" the Pharisees retorted. "Has any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed in him? No! But this mob that knows nothing of the law—there is a curse on them."

Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and who was one of their own number, asked, "Does our law condemn anyone without first hearing him to find out what he is doing?"

They replied, "Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee."

Nicodemus has become "one of their number" and is ridiculed by his pharisee brethren. "Are you from Galilee too?" Galilee was considered a back-water type of place populated by what the elite pharisees considered to be people of low class.

We learn that Nicodemus' standing has been diminished in community because of his choice to follow Jesus.

The last we hear of Nicodemus is in John verse 19.

Nicodemus' last act in the Bible was to assist in removing the body of Our Lord.

John 19:38

Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jews.

With Pilate's permission, he came and took the body away. He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night.

Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. Taking Jesus' body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen.

This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs. At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

There are a couple of interesting things going on here.

Burial was considered a sacred duty. Corpses not buried, but left to be eaten by insects and animals were an abomination in ancient law.

Even those slain in battle by the Jews were buried by the Jews. Those instances in which bodies were left to rot and be consumed by animals such as the wicked Jezebel seemly served as further punishment, but the lack of proper burial would abhorrent to Jews. This lack of burial hints at further punishment.

The second reason that Jews considered proper burial to be necessary was to prevent defilement of the land. This requirement is grounded in the Mosaic law:

“And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is accursed by God; you shall not defile your land which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance” (Deut 21:22–23).

It is also expressed in Ezekiel:

“They will set apart men to pass through the land continually and bury those remaining upon the face of the land,so as to cleanse it . . . Thus shall they cleanse the land” (Ezek 39:14, 16).

In the Mishnah, where in the discussion of the rules pertaining to execution, the sages teach that one hanged must not be left overnight, lest the command in Deut 21:22–23 be violated (Mishnah. Sanhedrin. 6:4).

It seems to me highly improbable that the bodies of Jesus and the other men would be left hanging on the cross overnight—in contradiction of Deut 21:22–23—during peacetime and on the eve of the Passover.

Philo explains in his writings that crucifixion victims to be taken down and be buried on the eve of a holiday: “I have known cases when on the eve of a holiday of this kind, people who have been crucified have been taken down and their bodies delivered to their kinsfolk, because it was thought well to give them burial and allow them the ordinary rites . . . "

It is far more probable that arrangements would have been made to have Jesus and the other men interred with the Roman government. The story of Joseph of Arimathea, who otherwise is not known, is probably historical. In the telling of the story, Joseph grows in sympathy and allegiance to Jesus.

Pilate is accused of accepting bribes, so it has been suggested that Joseph may have bribed the governor. It is more likely that Pilate only required confirmation that the crucified men were indeed dead. Having their bodies taken down and out of public view for the Passover holiday would have been desirable.

Jewish tradition dictates that the body be washed with warm water from head to foot and, although they may turn the body as necessary to clean it entirely, including all orifices, they never place it face down. The body is dressed in white burial shrouds (tachrichim), which are purposely kept simple to avoid distinguishing between rich or poor. Men are buried with their prayer shawls (tallits), which are rendered ineffective by cutting off one of the fringes. (Thus discouraging theft) If, however, a person suffered an injury and blood soaked into his or her clothing, ritual washing is not completed. The blood of a person is considered as holy as his life and deserves proper burial. From the moment of death, the body is not left alone until after burial. This practice, called guarding/watching (shemira), is also based on the principle of honoring the dead. A family member or an appointed person, perhaps Nicodemus stays near the deceased person passing the time by reciting psalms (Tehillim) and watching over the deceased.

Joseph acted to provide Jesus a proper burial. Nicodemus provided a proper Jewish burial. Nicodemus (and perhaps helpers came as you would want helpers if you were carrying 75 pounds of spices and a bunch of cloth) and he gave Jesus a more formal burial, but one that did not anticipate his resurrection.

It is here that we can tell Nicodemus loved Jesus very much, and in order to honor him with a proper burial he was willing to make himself unclean for the Passover by touching Jesus’ dead body, but he apparently did not believe Jesus would rise from the dead, as evidenced by his embalming his body.

Although Joseph did not anoint Jesus’ body according to custom, it was he who most honored him by believing his words that he would rise from the dead.

Dream #276

2009-10-03T06:22:00.004-04:00

I met a blind window washer. I walked with #2 and he said, "Look at all this glass on these buildings. The windows are so high on the stores. It would take a long time to clean."

Of course I was downtown on a city street that seemed to be blocked off. There were buildings that seemed to be joined together on either side of me and all of them had massive plate glass fronts. In the center was an isle, so it looked much like a shopping mall, but it was outside. At one end was a marble staircase that was bathed in yellow-tinted light. I do not know where it lead but #2 desended. That is when I went to wash the dust and dirt from the windows.

I needed supplies, so I went to see the blind window washer and his dog and asked if I could borrow some cleaning equipment. I had a large pole with a brush, but I needed a bucket. I was going to put windex mixed with water into the bucket and dip my brush into it. However there was a drain in the center and all the windex kept leaking out. My friends had all left me, so here I was with the blind window washer. I was using some of his supplies, but I didn't want to take advantage of him. His large white and black hound dog was watching me. I kept pouring windex into the bucket, but the drain in the center was broken and would not close. The window cleaner leaked out.

I then left the blind window washer and his dog to go to the hardware store by going behind the building and walking to the front with my leaking bucket, brush and pole. They had a huge container of windex, however I bought a smaller container of generic window cleaner. Since the bucket, which was now mounted on a stand on wheels, was leaking, my plan was to squirt the window cleaner on the brush. Then I would wrap paper towels on the brush to dry the windows.

After paying for the cleaner in the dimly lit store and making small talk with the lady that owned the place I left. I placed my bucket and other equipment in the street so I wouldn't block the sidewalk. The bucket slowly rolled toward a parked car.

The driver was entering the car in an effort to move it. I retrieved my bucket and was walking back to the storefronts, which by now appeared to be less massive. I realized there was no longer storefronts on either side of the street. In fact there was no street. It had been replaced by a parking lot. I wheeled the bucket back to the sidewalk and was preparing to spray windex on my brush on the long pole. That is when I came to the realization the company's decision to shelve my license had nothing to do with a new direction, but was a cost saving measure. I woke up.

New Baby

2009-09-14T14:09:00.008-04:00

Baby Zoey Rose Franxman arrived this morning at around 9 AM and says she is very hungry.

Hooray!

Daddy Glen & Mommy Elizabeth

Big Brother Ben

L'Shana Tova

2009-09-12T14:23:00.004-04:00

From the Jerusalem Post article by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin

And you shall return to the Lord your God and listen to His voice in accordance with every thing I have commanded this day... with all your heart and with all your soul" (Deuteronomy 30:2).

Although this commandment which is germane 365 days a year it is especially relevant during the 10 days beginning with Rosh Hashana and concluding with Yom Kippur.

Though I am a Christian, I recognize that my heritage comes through Jesus or more properly, Yeshua. Further, Christians started out as a sect of Judaism. Therefore I believe in the need to acknowledge and embrace what we can learn from our Jewish brothers. This particular biblical reading, falling as it does only one week before Rosh Hashana, is especially opportune.

How do we fulfill this commandment? The noted 12th Century Rabbi, scholar and teacher Maimonides also known as Rambam who wrote the Mishneh Torah, which has become the basis of codification for Hebrew Talmudic law, explains this in clear terms:

"If an individual transgresses any commandment of the Torah, whether it be a positive or negative command, whether he transgressed wittingly or unwittingly, when he repents [does teshuva] and turns away from his sin, he is obligated to confess before God, blessed be He, as it is written, 'A man or woman who transgresses... must confess the sin they have committed...' This refers to a verbal confession, and this confession is a positive commandment..."

It seems difficult to understand how the commandment to repent, could be reduced to a mouthing of words which may be uttered by rote.

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, whose Jerusalem Post column is the basis for this article states there are actually two aspects to the commandment of repentance:

First: kappara, forgiveness, the mechanical bringing of a sacrificial offering and/or the mouthing of the confessional - which are minimal, at best.

Second: the more optimal tahara, purity, which requires a transformational experience. Maimonides discusses this second, more powerful aspect of repentance in his second chapter, and calls it "complete repentance" (teshuva gemura).

Rabbi Riskin goes on to say that Maimonides hit upon a significant existential truth when he insisted that the fundamental commandment centers on confession. Apparently what many might think of as a fairly simple and even mechanical formula - "Please [God, spouse, parent, child, neighbor, coworker] forgive me, I have transgressed, sinned, rebelled against you by having done what I did; I am contrite and ashamed by my actions and will never do them again" - is exceedingly difficult for most individuals.

Recently we have seen an inordinate number of high-powered civil servants, senators, governors and Wall Street tycoons being indicted by the courts and brought to light in the Press. Some have been found guilty and several are beginning prison sentences. Others have lost their positions and credibility.

A significant number of high-profile rabbis and communal leaders in New York have been apprehended and charged with crimes. To the best of my knowledge, very few of them have confessed to wrongdoing or publicly admitted guilt. Very few have stood before the public that elected them, or the congregants who revered them, and said "I'm sorry; I repent of my actions, I'm ashamed. Please forgive me." They seem more ashamed of being caught than their misdeeds.

Why is confession so difficult? A great sociologist-psychologist once wrote: "There are four 'yous' to every individual:

· Who you think you are
· Who others think you are,
· Who you think others think you are
· Who you would like others to think you are

The distance between these four yous, especially between who you are and who you would like others to think you are, is what can cause a tragic disconnect within the psyche of many individuals, producing hypocrisy at best and psychosis at worst.

Every human being, from the biblical perspective, is a complex creature, consisting of earthly flesh and divine image: "And the Lord God formed the human being of dust from the earth, and He breathed in his nostrils the breath of life, and the human became a living being" (Genesis 2:7).

Hebrew sages have taught us, in a prayer to which we rise each morning, "My Lord, the soul you have given me is pure. You created it. You fashioned it. You exhaled it into me from your divine essence." The essence of every individual is the divine entity within him; the external body is merely the shell, which can be peeled away.

Each of us wears an outer uniform. You may be a businessman, a pastor, a butcher, baker, teacher, even a parent. The word persona or personality comes from the Greek word meaning "mask." Many of our professional identities, the clothes we wear and/or the personality we exude, are meant to express the way we want others to see us. They are the manner in which we want to impress others, but are not necessarily our real selves.

Sometimes the garb, the mask becomes so powerful that it overwhelms the divine image within. And if our transgression is of such a nature that it will cause the mask to fall away and reveal the nakedness of the emperor beneath, then one dare not admit one's guilt - perhaps not even to oneself. There may be nothing underneath the persona. Jesus once spoke of “white-washed tombs.” (Luke 11:44)

If, however, we do play act - utilize an external mask to appear to others the way we wish them to see us, but nevertheless maintain a divine image within us not so far from our public persona - there is still the pristine "you" lurking behind the covering curtains. Then, one can apologize and peel off the external trappings, and the real "you" within the image of the divine can be freed from the mask we thought society wanted us to wear. Then, even a high priest can begin his holy day ritual, despite his eight priestly vestments, with a cry of repentance: "Please, God, forgive." His divine image within was always waiting to come out.

The Talmud speaks of a once-great Rabbi Elisha ben Abuya, who became a heretic during the Hadrianic persecutions. He joined the Roman philosophers and was called Aher, the other one. His disciple, Rabbi Mier begged him to come back, to repent. "No, he said. For me it is too late. Aher had overwhelmed his divine image; indeed, as long as Elisha was submerged, it would be too late for repentance as long as he was Aher. But for Elisha ben Abuya it was never too late.

Reactivate your truest self and no matter how far you may have wandered, you too can return to the God whose essence initially formed you.

'EBN Fireworks Drive Home T-Shirt

2009-09-07T15:35:00.004-04:00

If you get one of those iron-on pages that you can run through your computer you can be the next kid on the block to have your own, "I SURVIVED THE DRIVE HOME FROM THE CINCINNATI LABOR DAY FIREWORKS DISPLAY" T-Shirt. Remember to click on the image to bring into full size.

Although I never attend the show, I seem to get caught in traffic each year. So to voice my opinion I have created this design. Enjoy!

Back In The Hospital

2009-08-05T14:54:00.021-04:00

Dr. Suess, in his book. You're Only Old Once, stated, "Getting old is not for sissies" was quite right. This year I've been to the hospital three times and two of those were through the emergency room.

As of Sunday my bowel movements were full of what medical professionals call frank blood and tarry stool. I think that Frank Blood would be a great name for the hero in a detective novel. Frank Blood investigates the Tarry Stool Murders. Too bad Dashell Hammit and Damon Runyon are around any more.

But I digress. I was somewhat concerned, but thanks to Google, I looked up adverse symtoms of Coumadin and was convinced that was what was wrong with me. So my wife called the doctor early on Monday morning as I was getting ready for work. I was about to leave when the phone rang. I was told to go to the emergency room STAT, which is the medical term for ASAP.

Man was I an unhappy boy.

So I arrived at Saint Elizabeth's emergency room and fitted with a extra large size stretcher and as is customary, stabbed mulitple times to determine the exact color of my blood, which turns out to be somewhere between brickdust #15 and burmese ruby.

I was also treated to experiencing the sensation of a naso-gastric tube. This is an unpleasant procedure wherein a clear tube is inserted in one of your nares, the medical term for nose hole. The tube is then forced up your nose hole and into your stomach. The contents of the stomach are sucked out into a clear plastic cylinder for the viewing pleasure of the hospital staff.

Thankfull I didn't have any blood in my stomach contents. If I did they would have left the tube hanging out of my nostril.

I then was visited by 4 doctors. One doctor had me take off my pants and he used his gloved finger as a dipstick into my hinder and commented, "Oh that's blood alright."

I was whisked off to a room and fitted with a hospital gown. I then was stuck four or five more times by folks that had never seen burmese ruby mixed with brickdust #15. They carted it off in little vials as souveniers of their visit. I was told that my hemoglobin was at 11. Which was sort of low. I'm thinking between the bowel movements and the folks draining me, there is no doubt it would be at 11.

After this it was hurry up and wait. I had a delicious clear liquid diet. Not only did I enjoy chicken broth, but beef broth as well. I had a variety of green, red and yellow Jello.

There was a Marion Davies film festival on The Movie Channel that was pretty interesting. She was a comedic actress that started working in silent movies. Sleep was out of the question.

The noise level of a hospital is pretty close to what you would hear at an Aerosmith concert only slightly louder and more annoying.

The latest invention by Hilldenbrand Industries, ticker symbol HB, is the farting mattress. This feature is exclusive to hospital beds.

To prevent bedsores, medical term would be decubidus ulcers, Hildrenbrand has created a mattress that continually changes positions when anything is set upon it, such as a sheet or a blanket or you. This sounds like a marvelous creation. However the drawback is that once every 30 seconds the mattress emits a sound similar to a whoppee cushion.

So between the racket in the hall and the farting mattress, there is no way to get any sleep at a hospital.

I was told by my nurse that I was scheduled for an espophagogatroduodenoscopy, the medical term for sticking a hose with a camera down your food chute. I was to be anesthetized for this, so I would not feel any discomfort. I asked when this was to take place. The nurse said the doctor had me scheduled after his normal patients. This meant either he would do it late or perhaps I was the beggining of his abnormal patients. Communications obviously were not a priority.

After a sleepless night of watching lightening from my window, filling up the urinal five times (which I actually did) and watching more Marion Davies movies I was visited at about 7 am by my morning nurse and my morning nurse assistant for the complimentary squeezing of the arm, temperature taking, finger poking and blood letting. I was told they needed to do this quickly as the stretcher bearer was here to take me for my procedure. The doc must have worked really fast or his normal patients didn't show up.

So I rode down the hall and up the elevator to the Endoscopy room and was wheeled into a very cluttered cubical. There were several TV monitors none of which were tuned to the Marion Davies festival.

The camera at the end of a scope that was about a meter long was focused on a box of aloe-enhanced surgical gloves, which must have been the doctor's sponsor.

A nurse asked me several questions in a loud voice that sounded like she was used to dealing with geezers, the medical term being geriatric patients. I was asked to open wide as she sprayed something in my mouth. I don't think it was Binaca, because the back of my tongue became numb.

The next thing I recall was the ceiling was spinning. I then recall waking up in another corridor. I was then told some things that I cannot recall because I was focusing on the revolving ceiling tiles at the time. Then it was a quick ride back to my room and more of the film festival. Peg O' My Heart, featuring Miss Davies as Peg, was just starting. Soon after this the house doctor came in an explained that I have several bleeding ulcers in my stomach and a lesion in my esophagus. He didn't really relate how this was affecting my poo. I wasn't questioning him either and don't really recall a whole lot of the conversation as I was still a little tipsy.

My wife came and I explained what I knew to her. She was rather upset that she missed the TV episode of INSIDE MARC, brought to you by Nutricel Aloe Surgical Gloves that leave your hands soft and pleasant smelling. She wasn't at all interested in watching Marion Davies movies.

I was then given my discharge papers from the morning nurse. My IV was removed and I was told that I could put on my clothes and go home. Which I did in record time. Linny and I went to Applebees for some non-clear liquid food.

When our nurse...I mean waitress asked if I would like onions and jalepenos in my chili I started to say Yes, when Linny said, "What are you crazy?" I said, "Just cheese please."

I was still sort of tipsy.

Desecrated Bible

2009-07-29T10:36:00.014-04:00

From the AFP – Christian Post - Telegraph Co UK

Christians voiced anger and dismay Tuesday after a Bible, which was part of an exhibition inviting viewers to add their reflections, was defaced with offensive and foul-mouthed scrawl.

Glasgow's Gallery of Modern Art has decided to put the Bible in a glass case after the exhibit, called Untitled 2009 and part of a show entitled Made in God's Image, was vandalized.

Artist Jane Clarke, a minister at the Metropolitan Community Church, asked visitors to annotate the Bible with stories and reflections, as a way of making it more inclusive.

But visitors to the gallery took the invitation a bit further than she had anticipated.

The open Bible is a central part of Made in God’s Image, an exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow, United Kingdom. By the book is a container of pens and a notice saying: “If you feel you have been excluded from the Bible, please write your way back into it.”

The Times newspaper reported that the publicly funded exhibition ‘Untitled 2009,’ was proposed by the Metropolitan Community Church, which said that the idea was to reclaim the Bible as a sacred text.

But to the horror of many Christians, including the community church, visitors have daubed its pages with comments such as “This is all sexist pish, so disregard it all.” A contributor wrote on the first page of Genesis: “I am Bi, Female & Proud. I want no god who is disappointed in this.”

One writer has altered the first line of the Old Testament from “In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth” to “In the beginning, God (me) I created religion.”

Another has written “The Gospel According to Luke Skywalker”.

The main sentiment, however, is rage at Christianity. “F*** the Bible”, one message says. And another described the Bible as "the biggest lie in human history" and a third wrote: "Mick Jagger and David Bowie belong in here”

The official Web site of the exhibition stated that the exhibition has been created by the artists Anthony Schrag and David Malone, in with organizations representing gay Christians and Muslims. Mr. Schrag, the gallery’s artist in residence, told the Times that he did not believe in God, but that his research for the 7,000 Euros show had underlined his respect for people of faith.

A video by Roxanne Claxton that forms a second element in the exhibition shows a young woman ripping pages out of the Bible and stuffing them in her knickers and bra and in her mouth in a program to promote equal rights for homosexuals. The film showed “the word as power,” Mr Schrag said. “Roxanne gave a performance where she ate a Bible and it became part of her.”

Some Christians are surprised that Schrag and Malone who have explored faith and sexuality with members of The Metropolitan Community Church, Quest, Al Jannah Muslim Group and individuals from a range of faiths, including members of St Mary’s Cathedral, Glasgow before the event were even permitted by the Church to carry out such exhibition.

However, Jane Clarke, the minister at the Metropolitan Community Church and artist involved in the bible exhibit said, “Writing our names in the margins of a Bible was to show how we have been marginalised by many Christian churches, and also our desire to be included in God’s love. As a young Christian I was encouraged by my church to write my own insights in the margins of the Bible I used for my devotions – this was an extension of that idea.”

“As a young Christian I was encouraged by my church to write my own insights in the margins of the Bible I used for my daily devotions – this was an extension of that idea. I still have that Bible, although it’s rather tatty now,” she clarified her position through the official Web site of the exhibition.

She added, “It was never my intention to offend anyone – believers and non-believers alike. I had hoped that people would show respect for the Bible, for Christianity and indeed for the Gallery of Modern Art. I am saddened that some people have chosen to write offensive messages.”

Ms Clarke has requested changes to the exhibit. The bible remains on display, but within an enclosed case, the official Web site stated.

On another plinth next to it are loose leaf sheets and pens for visitors to write their thoughts and feelings in relation to the bible. Those loose sheets will be inserted within the pages of the bible by curatorial staff each day, the statement stated.

The Church of Scotland said it condemned any sacrilegious act. “We would discourage anyone from defacing the Bible,” a Kirk spokesman told the Times.

A spokesman for the Catholic Church said: “One wonders whether the organizers would have been quite as willing to have the Koran defaced.”

On Tuesday over 100 people gathered outside the gallery to protest at what they said was vandalism, Agence-French Press reported.

Letitia Reid, a housewife from Glasgow, told AFP the Bible should not be desecrated.
“As a Christian I am offended by this because Christians hold the Bible to be sacred. For it to be publicly defiled in this way is very offensive,” she said.

Jane Clarke, the artist, asked visitors to annotate the Bible with their experiences, but she has requested the gallery to display it in a glass case after it was daubed with “offensive” comments.

The piece, called Untitled 2009, caused a furore when it went on display in the Made In God’s Image exhibition at Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art.

Miss Clarke, a minister at the Metropolitan Community Church, a ministry for homosexuals, said she had not intended to offend.

“I had hoped that people would show respect for the Bible, for Christianity and indeed for the Gallery of Modern Art. I am saddened that some people have chosen to write offensive messages. I had hoped that people would show respect for the Bible, for Christianity and indeed for the Gallery of Modern Art. I am saddened that some people have chosen to write offensive messages.”

Paper and pens will be provided for visitors to write down their thoughts and will be inserted into the Bible later. More than 100 people gathered outside the gallery yesterday to protest against the exhibit.

Made in God’s Image will be on display at the gallery until August 22, 2009

Magnify

2009-07-18T19:56:00.005-04:00

This song was written by my friend Mike Wilshire back in the early 1970's. It is one of my favorite songs of all time. Mike moved to Virginia a long time ago and has been the Pastor of Cornerstone Christian Church of Roanoke Valley since it's founding. He is an excellent guitarist and at one time a wonderful vocalist. By the way, as you watch the photos, Michael is the guy with the white hair and beard.

This version was recorded by Rick Marksberry in his studio. Kent Odor sings lead vocal and plays 2nd guitar. I sing first harmony and play the 1st guitar part and play bass guitar. Deny Brigance and Diann Marksberry sing the higher harmony parts. Barb & Ric Hine, Deny Brigance, Diann & Rick Marksberry, Terry Fisher and myself are the choir at the end of the song.

May God bless as you listen and watch us record.

Taking Down A Post

2009-07-12T18:24:00.010-04:00

Yesterday I was contacted by someone who objected to a post that I had put up earlier this year. The discussion took place via email. After all we are in the 21st Century. This is the second time since I've started blogging that someone has contacted me to object to an article that I have written.

The first time was when a Cincinnati City Beat editor objected to what I had said regarding the advertisements for Asian massage parlors that used to take up ink on that back pages of that newspaper.

What precipitated that rant was a raid earlier in that week in which the local police, FBI and immigration department rounded up girls working in southern Ohio, Northern Kentucky and Southern Indiana.

The girls that had been arrested were illegal and were not paid by their employer but were allowed to keep much of the money they earned from selling sexual favors.. I equated this to slavery and implied that the newspaper ads were not much different from the slave bills posted in the early and mid 1800's. This was not at all pleasing to the City Beat guy. Although they still run advertisements, they now have some sort of a disclaimer that must be posted in the text of the ad. Apparently I must have been on to something.

Last Saturday, I received an email from someone that I had written about. This person was quite upset with the text I had written and we traded emails back and forth this day.

My point was an objection to the content and the timing of the work. During the exchange of emails the objector reasoned with me and explained that some of my words were construed as hurtful.

That was a very valid point. Although I still object to the timing of the work, I took the post down.

In the United States we are fond of standing on Constitutional grounds and bellowing that we have the right to free speech. And that is a very, very important right, especially when you look at recent World events in Iran and China. However as Christians do we have the right to say hurtful things?

However true it may be, the work I objected to was hurtful to a family and especially to an individual and their friends. But the text and images in that work were not mine. My concern was only that something I said was hurtful. Perhaps I could have reworded my post to give a more fair and balanced viewpoint. I felt the easiest thing was to take down my words rather than dance on a precipice between right and wrong.

In accord with the words of Our Lord in Matthew 18:5; And if thy brother sin against thee, go, show him his fault between thee and him alone: if he hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.

Issac Watts Hymns

2009-06-21T13:00:00.005-04:00

These days at church we sing all these new choruses and praise songs that are designed to bring us into the 21st Century. I guess they became popular during the Jesus Movement Era and the Charismatic Days. Then they blossomed when the Vineyard started composing it's own music.

Historically nothing has changed. Hymns of praise have been written according to the style of a given era. And although music styles change, the message remains the same.

Larry Norman sang, "I ain't knockin' the old hymns. Just give me a song with a beat."

I happen to love the old hymns. Although my family wasn't particularly interested in church, I gravitated to it. And the magnetic pull was the music. As a seven year old kid, I'd ride my bike up to the local church at 7 pm each Thursday night for choir practice with Mrs. Rief. That's were I first learned two part harmony. I sang with the local Episcopal Church choir throughout high school. And my old buddy Kent Odor's love for hymns rubbed off on me back when we played music together.

Music appreciation in school taught me to seek out the where and why behind music. Learning about the composers of our best loved hymns helps to learn why they wrote the words and sometimes the tunes. They had to write them, they couldn't keep their love of God bottled up inside.

I thank my sweet daughter for giving me a couple of books about the origin of hymns. The next couple blogs will be about some of the hymn writers and their works.

I am starting off with Issac Watts.

Issac Watts was considered the father of hymnody. Isaac Watts (17 July 1674 – 25 November 1748) is recognised as the "Father of English Hymnody", as he was the first prolific and popular English hymnwriter, credited with some 750 hymns. Many of his hymns remain in active use today and have been translated into many languages.

As a child he was a prodigious poet, to the point that he drove his parents to distraction. His father was a non-conformist. Which meant he did not hold the same theological viewpoints as the Church of England. At that time in history, this was a crime punishable by incarceration. Issac Watts Senior was incarcerated several times during his lifetime for his faith.

His son was brought up with the same Christian ideals and held to them throughout his lifetime. Issac was sent to a private school, but was unable to complete his education at Oxford or Cambridge due to his dissenting views. He attended the Dissenting School were he studied Latin, Hebrew and Greek.

He left school at age 20 and moved back to his family home. It was there that he wrote most of the work called Hymns and Spiritual Songs. Watts then to a position as pastor of a large independent chapel in London for many years known as Mark Lane Chapel. It was during this period when he wrote many hymns. During his lifetime over 750 hymns were attributed to Watts.

At this point in history all hymn lyrics were based on the Psalms or other Biblical poetry. Watts contribution to hymnody was to use poetic lyrics to praise God. This was unheard of and most controversial. In his own words;

"While he granted that David [to whom authorship of the Psalms is traditionally ascribed] was unquestionably a chosen instrument of God, Watts claimed that his religious understanding could not have fully apprehended the truths later revealed through Jesus Christ. The Psalms should therefore be "renovated". As if David had been a Christian, or as Watts put it in the title of his 1719 metrical psalter, they should be "imitated in the language of the New Testament. The practice of maintaining Biblical lyrics in hymns grew from the 16th Century reformation lead by John Calvin. By introducing new poetry into hymns, Watts created a schism that labeled him as a heretic.

The controversy grew. Watts health was failing. He moved in with a family named Hartropp. A fever shattered his constitution and a nervousebreakdown breakdown ensued. Watts wrote a letter resigning his position as pastor. His church instead rejected his resignation, lessened his duties by giving them to a co-pastor and increased Watts’ salary.

Watts had already been privately instructing the children of a prominent Member of Parliament, Sir Thomas Abbney. Abbney was Lord Mayor of London and though he had to attend The Church of England to keep up appearances, Abbney was a non-conformist.
Watts was invited to live with the family to conveless. Upon the death of Sir Thomas, Watts stayed on as a member of the family and lived in a second home of the Abbneys until his death in 1748.

It was during his residence with the Abbney family that Watt wrote a book of hymns based on the Psalms known as The Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament. This was a result of the controversy and Watts way of establishing resolve. The works were published and became very popular.

In 1728 Watts was awarded a Doctorate of Divinity by the University of Edinburgh.

Aside from being a noted theologian and hymnist, Watts was also a logican and author of several textbooks on logic. In fact one of his texts, aptly named Logic, was a standard text at Cambridge, Oxford, Havard and Yale for over a 100 years beyond his death.

Look through any hymnal and you will see Watts authorship for many of the hymns that we have sung since we were children. Among my favorites are When I Survey That Wondrous Cross, Joy to the World, Great Is the Lord Our God, Alas! and Did My Savior Bleed, Oh Bless The Lord My Soul.

I find it odd that although Watts wrote so many wonderful words of praise in later life joined a Unitarian congregation.

Since nothing really changes in life, Watts popularity of the day lead to parody.
Watts wrote a book of hymns for children and one the hymns, known as Against Idleness And Mischief went:

How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower!

How skilfully she builds her cell!
How neat she spreads the wax!
And labours hard to store it well
With the sweet food she makes.

Lewis Carroll was a contempory and had written Alice in Wonderland. In this book
Carroll wrote a parody of Watt's hymn and giving it the name, How Doth The Little Crocodile:

How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!

It may be helpful to know that Lewis Carroll was the penname of Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson who was also an Anglican deacon, mathimetician, logican and philospopher.

The Waving Guy

2009-06-17T16:39:00.003-04:00

My sister-in-law's brother has a large family. So I suppose by virtue of marriage I am somehow related to the waving guy as he is the son of my sister-in-laws brother.

I've known Brent since he was a little guy. He's a nice kid. He was going to the local university for a while. He works at a nearby restaurant. Brent was my nephew's best friend for many years, until my nephew moved away and got married.

Recently his folks became very concerned about this behavior. My own Mother mentioned to me, "Something is wrong with Brent and his family is concerned. He walks up and down the street waving at cars. He's nuts." This was the consensus among the rest of the family.

Brent walks up and down U.S. 27 waving at passing cars and yelling, "You're Awesome."

You may not be aware but in some parts of rural Kentucky, it is very acceptable to wave at passing cars.

My wife's parents lived in California, Kentucky, which is about 30 miles from here as the crow flies.

If I gave directions to their old home I would tell you to head south about 10 miles, then turn left and drive to the Sticks. When you finally arrive in the Sticks, if the weather is nice you drive past people sitting on their front porch or on their tractors and they will wave at you.

Even if the car was driven by Fidel Castro with Hitler, Bin Laden and Mousolini as passengers, these nice country folks would still wave. The proper protocol is for you to wave back. They do this because they are afraid you may be someone they know or kin to someone they know and they do not want to give the appearance of being impolite. It probably is the norm in other parts of rural America.

So my family was very concerned about Brent's behavior. I wish they would have sought my advice. For I lived through the 1960's and early 1970's and consider myself an expert on this subject. Brent is not sick. Brent is a Hippie.

The newspaper report from yesterday confirmed my diagnosis. Brent has changed his name to Karma Jen Soulace. He states that his philosophy is to fight evil with a smile and wave.

This changed personality reminds me of folks that lived around the University of Cincinnati and used to hang around Eden Park. During Summerfair colonies of these folks emerged. They all smelled of patchouli and burning hemp. They ate a macrobiotic diet which kept them looking malnourished. Usually they were named Sunshine, Rainbow or Moon boy. They were all Hippies. Sounds like Brent, doesn't it?

Poor Brent was born about 40 years out of sync with his people.

Most of the hippies eventually got whacked in the head with reality, went back to school and got a job in marketing or as stock brokers. So Brent's folks need not worry. He will turn out alright.

In the meantime, Keep on truckin' Brent.

Do It Yourself CD Cover and Insert

2009-05-25T13:13:00.005-04:00

So you got your Jesus House CD at the reunion or through the mail and you are thinking, boy I sure wish this came with an album cover.

Well Sparky, this is your lucky day. Here at Blogalot Industries, our head designer Linny O'Hara came up with an album cover using Rick Mapes photo of the Jesus House. Since the CD was a do-it-yourself sort of project, why should the CD cover not be any different?

Step One. Get a couple of blank CD's in jewel cases.

Step Two. Download this picture by clicking on it. It should be 4.75" x 5.5". If it isn't you will have to adjust it to those specs when printing. Be sure to make a copy for each CD case. Cut out your pictures and insert in the jewel cases.

Step Three. Download this picture by clicking on it. Ditto on the 4.75" x 5.5" specs. This can be used for the inside of the jewel case or the back.

Step Four. Enjoy.

Step Five. When you download your CD, why not download the pictures?

For an alternative use get some of those iron-on thingies, enlarge the pictures and make your very own JH Reunion T-Shirt.

And as an added bonus...In the spirit of Where's Waldo?, the collage has a similar game called Where's Fisher's Hightop Sneakers? See if you can find them.

Weird Happenings In My Christian Walk

2009-05-01T05:18:00.010-04:00

I thought I would share some incidents in my Christian walk that were strange but true. Things that didn’t shake my faith, but made me shake my head and think, “Did that just happen?”

When I was around 18 years old I started to spend some time singing songs and talking to my peers at different coffeehouses and churches throughout Northern Kentucky, Southern Ohio and Indiana. I did it for the Love of God and to share with others the change that accepting Jesus into my life brought about in me. I never thought of doing this as a living or getting paid. It was my gift and I shared it.

I spent a good deal of time at the Jesus House in Cincinnati singing, talking and encouraging. I always got a good response. It was such a blessing. Towards the end of each night I would ask the people to stand in a circle and sing We Are One In The Spirit. Afterwards we would pray and then have silent prayer, then praise and then end the night. I felt blessed and figured all were of the same mind. Years later a girl confided in me.

“You remember Marc how we used to get in a circle and hold hands or put our arms around each other and sing? Well one night we were in the midst of this and I was feeling blessed until I felt a hand creep up my back and unhook my brassiere.”

She went on to say that she stood there shocked for a minute and then excused herself to go upstairs and adjust her clothing.

I had no idea. I was shocked hearing about it. I was very naive and believed that all were there to hear about The Lord. One of the rules of life is that creeps live among us. We can't get around that.

Billy Graham came to Cincinnati in the late 1970’s and he spent 4 days holding a revival at the Cincinnati Coliseum, which is now called by another name. Linny and I went to this event for 2 or 3 nights. We even took my Mom with us on this night.

This arena is the same venue where The Who tragedy took place. To get there you first have to find a parking place and then walk quite a distance. Once you are in the gate, you must walk in circles until you find your isle. I think the Graham Crusade was open seating, so you would probably go to the nearest opening to the arena and then you have to climb up or down stairs. The event was packed. It took a lot of exertion for someone young to find a seat, much less an octogenarian.

I had started working at my father’s grocery store after spending almost 4 years at The Jewish Hospital working first as an orderly and then as a surgical technician. I say this since those skills came in handy this night.

We had been seated about 15 minutes when an elderly couple came walking up the stairs, along with the much more elderly mother. These people were in their mid 70’s and the mother must have been in her late ‘80’s. From their clothing I could tell they were country people. The husband and wife sat in the two remaining seats in the isle across from me. The mother took the last seat in the isle above them. Someone on the floor was singing a Gospel song and the crowd eyes were glued to this man.

My eyes were on these old folks since I am a compulsive people watcher. Halfway through the song I noticed the older woman’s head slump on her chest. I had seen that slump before while working at the nursing home section of Jewish Hospital.

She died. Right there at the Billy Graham Crusade.

I immediately got up and tried to arouse her, which did not do much good. Another fellow came over to see what was happening and I said, “We need to get this lady to the first aid department.” I got behind her and grabbed her like I had been taught as an orderly to lift and the other fellow got her legs and we carried her up the steps. By the Grace of God, the First Aid Station was immediately behind us so we carried her in to the stretcher. The nurse thanked us and we went back to our seats. The ladies family followed us up the stairs and into the station.

After the Crusade I went back and talked with the nurse, who confirmed that the lady had expired probably from heart failure.

As a certified Jesus freak, I felt confident to take on anything because God would provide. I still feel that way; however I have come to the realization I am not equipped to handle all situations.

A couple of events occurred when I was spending time with some friends that lived in a Christian Community we called the Christian Information Committee or CIC. Thinking back on the moniker it sounded kinda’ commie, didn’t it? But I digress.

My friend Kirk had lots of problems with his vision. He had developed cataracts at an early age. He was legally blind in one eye. One night I came over to see what was going on, since we usually had a prayer meeting or Bible study. Kirk was lying on the floor writhing in pain and holding his eye. We all laid hands on him and prayed that God would heal him. Nothing miraculous was happening.

Eventually one of the girls, Myra, who was a registered nurse, came home since her 11: 30 shift had ended. She said we need to take him to the hospital right now. So we got into her car and mine and drove to Deaconess Hospital were she was employed.

Kirk had no insurance, no job and no money. He spent his entire day running CIC, working on the newspaper they published as an evangelistic tool and organizing events.

The diagnosis was that a vessel had ruptured in his eye and there was a large blood clot. An opthalogic surgeon was called in for his opinion. Kirk was blind in this eye, if the clot moved the situation would become much worse, so the eye needed to be removed. For the sake of cosmetics, the doctor would remove the contents of the eye and then implant a sphere to maintain symmetry. Kirk would be fitted with a removable cap that looked like an eye.

The miracle was not just that all of this was accomplished, but that Kirk was so well known and had so many friends in Cincinnati the operation and hospitalization was all paid for.

Another episode involved a schizophrenic guy that came to hear about Jesus and then slipped into what we believed was a Trans. I think it was probably some sort of a seizure. But what did we know? He eventually came out of it and became very violent. The police were called and took him away.

We had another such incident at a home that we would go to for Bible studies. This ex-pastors house was crowded every Wednesday night for a teaching that he had prepared and some fellowship afterward. I was not at the house on this occasion, but heard about it the next day.

One of the regulars, unbeknownst to anyone suffered from schizophrenia. He was a normal guy, pursuing an engineering degree and learning more about God’s love. He figured he didn’t need his medication. Big mistake. That night the hallucination began in his mind. He stripped off all his clothing and ran out in the yard dancing and screaming and then ran up the street.

Once again someone called the police.

This fellow came back the next week, apologized and left. We never saw him again.

I was asked to play music at a coffee house. It was not the Jesus house and I am not going to divulge the name. As I recall some folks from CIC went with me. I played for about an hour and took a break.

The director asked that we pray for one of the guys that attended the place on a regular basis. I was familiar with a lot of the folks there. They seemed like a great group and I was used to being asked to pray with someone. So we all went in the backroom and asked this guy what we needed to pray about.

This guy went on to say that he was worried. He had committed sexual sin and wanted God to heal him and give him strength. So we said to him of course brother, we will pray for you and the Lord will answer you. So we all laid hands on him and prayed.

He eventually joined in by saying, “Dear God please forgive me for sleeping with Angie and Reggie and Cynthia and Jackie and Lisa and Mona and Nancy and Jane and Evelyn and Sandy and Janice and Ann and Samantha and Mary and Mandy and Fran and Connie and Betty and Darlene and Edna…

He rattled off the names of about 20 girls and I knew every one of them (BTW I have made these names up to preserve the privacy of those ladies.). I was thinking, "Son you might have a problem, but what the heck’s wrong with these women around here, they have the morals of a jack rabbit!?"

I was also thinking, “Damn it friend. You’ve slept with the entire girl scout troop and me still a virgin!” I don’t know whatever became of that guy. I suspect he eventually got an STD.

By 1977 I was married and living in Fort Thomas in a small house behind the Highland Country Club. I was asked to play in Florence at a coffee house that was run by a new church group called the Vineyard. I was more than happy to go there.

I drove down US 27 to the new exit that took me onto the new exit to I-275 and out to Florence. Halfway through the night someone made the announcement that The Beverly Hills Supper Club was on fire. Beverly Hills was only a couple of miles from my home. We all prayed for the situation that night and decided to go on home.

The exit was blocked and I had to take a roundabout way home. My family was not there when I arrived. Linny had just had our daughter Rachael and was sitting on the front porch when people dressed in even clothes started making their way through our backyard. They had walked down the road from Beverly Hills and through the golf course to escape the fire and some how wound up in our backyard.

Linny and the kids walked up to my parent’s house which was less than a block up the street. I think they later went on to her parent’s house in Newport. We were reunited the next day. I couldn’t get out onto the main street after I got home and Linda and the kids couldn’t get home.

225 people died as a result of that fire. The cause was said to be faulty wiring. From the club’s history, it was probably arson. Our town has never been the same since.

Shortly after that my daughters and their mother were driving down US 27. Linny glanced in the rearview mirror and the kids were not in their car seats. Linny panicked and pulled over. Elizabeth had pulled her sister Rachael to the floor and was lying on top of her.

Linny said, “What are you doing Boo?”

Elizabeth said, “I’m protecting my sissy from Beverly Hills.”

Larry Norman's Grave

2009-04-26T15:09:00.006-04:00

Larry's brother Charles Norman has a link to Larry's Grave as well as some interesting information. Before Larry died he told Charley that he wanted to be buried on a hillside beneath a tree marked by a simple cross.

If you read the story you'll find how this came about. Larry Norman's grave

The family did not know what to put on his grave stone. In going through Larry's papers, Charley came upon some drawings Larry had made of a cross with the epitaph Larry Norman - Evangelist without portfolio - and is small letters - Bloodstained Israelite.

Larry had also written in - 1947 - 2009.

This was all done prior to his death. Larry missed the date by one year.

"...no one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son himself. Only the Father knows."

Pete Seeger's 90th Birthday

2009-04-25T19:36:00.002-04:00

God Bless Pete Seeger on his 90Th birthday.

He has lived a long and interesting life. His parents were both entrenched in the business of music. His father was a pioneer in ethnomusicology and a composer. His mother was a classical violinist and teacher. The apple did not fall far from the tree.

In his travels with his father, Pete picked up the 5 string banjo as his instrument of choice. He acquired a repertoire of race songs and hillbilly songs during this time.

As he grew older he fell in with Alan Lomax, who went throughout the country recording blues music, folk music and mountain music. He also was friends with Josh White, Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly. He played before Presidents and was black listed by McCarthy for being a communist.

He was in part responsible for The Almanac Singers, named after a play about American workers being on strike.

His most famous group was The Weavers, who had some Hit Parade songs with Good-night Irene,So Long It's Been Good To Know You, On Top Of Old Smokey, Tzena Tzena (an Israeli song) and Wimoweh (which was released in 1962 as The Lion Sleeps Tonight).

The Weavers stopped touring in 1953 after the McCarthy hearings blacklisted Pete and he could not get booked. The reunion tour and subsequent performance brought us such songs as Sixteen Tons written by Merle Travis and Kumbaya (which everyone knows).

Seeger penned such great songs as Where Have All The Flowers Gone , If I Had A Hammer and Turn, Turn, Turn. He also adapted a Welsh poem The Bells of Rhymney into a song (which I always was fond of due to the line..."for the vandals in court, the bells of Newport" - it was prophetic since Newport now has the Freedom Bell). Pete has introduced many, many songs into our culture that are now considered folk songs.

Seeger invented his own long neck banjo and had the Ode company produce it. It's neck is 28" long and is tuned a minor third lower than a regular 5 string banjo which has a neck usually 24" to 25.5" in length.

Seeger married his Japanese born wife Toshi and moved his family to New York State in Dutchess County and built a log cabin and later he built a house. In a documentary his children talk about how he built it and how much of the time, they would sleep outside. He heats the house with wood that he still gleans from the forest and draws his water from outside as well. He also built a sailing sloop and sailed up and down the nearby Hudson River to encourage people to clean up the Hudson.

Taking a cue from Woody Guthrie, who posted a sign on his guitar that said, This Machine Kills Fascism, Seeger has stenciled on his banjo's perimeter the words, This Machine Surrounds Hate And Forces It to Surrender.

God Bless Pete Seeger.

Obama Does Not Want To Be Associated With Symbol Of Jesus

2009-04-17T07:49:00.006-04:00

Amidst all of the American flags and presidential seals, there was something missing when President Barak Obama gave an economic speech at Georgetown University this week -- Jesus.
A decision to cover up a symbol of Jesus for the president's speech at Georgetown is upsetting many.

The White House asked Georgetown to cover a monogram symbolizing Jesus' name in Gaston Hall, which Obama used for his speech, according to CSNNews.COM

The gold "IHS" monogram inscribed on a pediment in the hall was covered over by a piece of black-painted plywood, and remained covered over the next day, CNSNews.com reported.

The Washington Times Belief Blog asked the university about the presidential request:
Julie Bataille from the university's press office e-mailed me that the White House had asked that all university signage and symbols behind the stage in Gaston Hall be covered.

"The White House wanted a simple backdrop of flags and pipe and drape for the speech, consistent with what they've done for other policy speeches," she wrote. "Frankly, the pipe and drape wasn't high enough by itself to fully cover the IHS and cross above the GU seal and it seemed most respectful to have them covered so as not to be seen out of context."

While the "IHS" directly behind where Obama spoke was covered over, CNSNews.com said the monogram was still visible in 26 other places in the hall during his speech. Those areas just weren't as prominent. However these other places were not shown during the speech.

The Belief Blog talked with the Rev. Thomas Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Institute at Georgetown University, who said he didn't think "this is motivated by theology, but by communications strategy."

The blog also talked with Catholic University spokesman Victor Nakas, who felt a bit more strongly on the subject:

"I can’t imagine, as the bishops’ university and the national university of the Catholic Church, that we would ever cover up our religious art or signage for any reason," Mr. Nakas wrote. "Our Catholic faith is integral to our identity as an institution of higher education."

As a Christian I object to being pushed aside and having symbols of my faith covered. Would this same cover up occur if a speech were given by our President at a house of worship of another faith?

Rising Hope

2009-04-04T00:28:00.018-04:00

I am working on music for the Jesus House reunion concert coming up this May.

As I do this I am reminded of all my old friends from those sweet days.

One group that had such a big impact on a lot of us in this part of the world were a group of friends, Michael Goldberg, Susan Goldberg and Ross Johnson that made up the Christian trio, Rising Hope.

Michael and Susan were students at Great Lakes Bible College in Lansing Michigan. Ross was from Cincinnati and a student at Cincinnati Bible College. They pooled their assets, lived together and drove around the country fighting crime and saving the world from evil... uh. Well no they didn't actually do that. However they drove around the country playing music at churches, church camps, festivals, coffeehouses and pretty much anywhere they could sing about their love of the Lord.

They were not just musicians. Aside from having an incredible singing voice, Susan was blessed with a gift for visual art and did produced both covers for the two LP's. Michael was a photographer and put together their multi-media slide shows. Ross was a woodworker. Michael had the ultimate Martin 12 string guitar. I think it may have been a D35S12. It was a beautiful instrument.

Rising Hope included some of their friends to enhance their performance. Mikal Keefer didn't sing or play, but he had a great speaking voice. Nancy McIntosh added her flute and voice to their songs. In later days Chris Adams was added as a permanent bass player and permanent member.

The excellent thing about their performance was that it was multi-media. They would play their own songs and then have a visual arts show that utilized Mikal Keefer's voice over recorded music and 3 slide projectors that would blend photographs onto a screen.

Yes folks, this was many years ago in a galaxy far, far away..... before Power Point existed.

They wrote most of their own music or sang songs written by friends. Their voices blended well. Their style was quiet and acoustic-oriented.

Alas all things change and the 3 went their separate ways.

Ross Johnson married a wonderful Aussie girl named Lyndell and raised a family.

His woodworking skills have blossomed into luthery and he creates beautiful acoustic guitars.

Michael and Susan parted ways. Susan, now Susan Rice, became a minister, studied at the American Christian University in France and is currently a missionary in Thailand.

Michael became a radio guy and is currently on WNKU as the morning host. He is also a noted artist in stain glass. I still see some of them on Facebook so it is nice to keep in touch and I listen to Michael aka Michael Grayson (reliable sources say the pseudonym was taken from a favorite professor) on the drive to work.

I miss their wonderful songs and their comradery.

The Jesus House Song

2009-03-26T22:57:00.008-04:00

I'm starting to get ready for the Jesus House Reunion. This is occurring on May 2.

There will be a lot of folks playing music for the day. I'm trying to get a handle on what I will play for my half hour set.

I understand Mike Wilshire is coming for the day. Although he is not aware of it I learned a lot about playing guitar from him and also have sung many of his songs at prior reunions and during those days way back when.

So this time I'm concentrating on my own songs and I'll sit back and enjoy listening to Brother Wilshire's music. I'm really looking forward to seeing Sally, too.

I've already mentioned my one real song that I recently finished, Where Have They Gone, in a previous post from back in February of this year. I spent a couple of days putting some lyrics together to Chuck Berry's old standard, Memphis. I consider this sort of a "throw-away song" since it's probably going to be done only once. Besides I didn't write the tune. But as I always say, "Plagerism is the sincerest form of flattery."

The Memphis shuffle is probably the first thing that all young up and coming guitar players learn since it involves a fairly easy to play. My lyrics are based on how I actually came to play at the Jesus House for the very first time which lead to playing there many, many other times.

Now it is probably not widely known why I seemed to show up there so often, but what happened usually was that I would be sitting at home on a Saturday afternoon and about 4 pm the phone would ring. Mom would say, "Markie, it's for you." (Mom called me Markie.) It was inevitably Terry Fisher and he would say something to the effect of, (close your eyes and think of Terry's voice), "Heh-heh...Marc...uh, heh-heh...you know Rising Hope was supposed to play here tonight...but..a...they all have come down with a serious case of the cold-robbies. We need someone to play tonight. You doin' anything?"

I was always glad to get the call. Although I never actually had time to practice, it was a joy to throw the guitar in the car and drive on up to spend Saturday night at Mount Healthy's greatest establishment with the greatest people in the world.

So with that said, you all know the tune and here are my lyrics:

When I was just eighteen years old,
The Father said to me.
"Now that you're a Jesus Freak,
go play some music."
I went to Cincinnati
and told my friends you see.
They said go to the Jesus House
it's out in Mount Healthy.

So I drove up to this big white house
and I walked inside the door.
There were lot's of people everywhere,
sittin' on the floor.
On stage there was this hairy guy
with a great big happy grin.
He said, " 'you play guitar?
Well come up here my friend."

So I played a song called Praise the Lord
and one called Allelu.
I sang about Simon Peter and
how much I Love You.
When I think back to those happy days,
it brings back memories.
Of being at the Jesus House
out in Mount Healthy.

Is This The Tomb of Mordechai and Esther?

2009-03-11T23:44:00.004-04:00

Folks like me that are not members of the Tribe may not realize we are in the Jewish Holiday of Purim. This is the holiday that celebrates the triumph of Queen Esther over the lies and deceit of Haman, who was a well-known anti-semite.

Briefly the story from the Book of Esther tells us that Jewish exiles from the Kingdom of Judah who had been living in the Babylonian captivity (6th Century BCE) found themselves under Persian rule after Babylonia was in turn conquered by the Persian Empire.

According to the Book of Esther, Haman, royal vizier to King Ahasueres planned to kill the Jews, but his plans were foiled by Esther, his queen. Mordechai, a palace official and cousin and foster parent of Esther, subsequently replaced Haman. The Jews were delivered from being the victims of an evil decree against them and were instead allowed by the King to destroy their enemies, and the day after the battle was designated as a day of feasting and rejoicing.

The feast if celebrated on the 15th day of Adar and is a fun holiday especially for children who wear masks and get to make lot's of noise whenever Haman's name is mentioned.

Incidently the word Megillah or Megila mean's Esther. This book in Hebraic tradition is from the Ketuvim or writings.

With all that said. I came across this interesting article in the Jerusalem Post. Enjoy.

From the Jerusalem Post, March 11th, 2008
By Michael Freund

A few months ago, the normally hostile Iranian regime took the rather unusual step of adding a Jewish holy site to its National Heritage List.

On December 9th, 2008, Iranian news outlets reported that the tomb of Mordechai and Esther, the heroes of the Purim saga, would now be under official government protection and responsibility.

The move cast a brief spotlight on the site, which is well-known to Iranian Jews but largely unfamiliar to those outside the country. And with Purim being celebrated this week, it is worth taking a moment to ponder this relic of our ancient past.

The mausoleum housing the shrine of Mordechai and Esther consists of a simple brick structure crowned with a dome which was built five to seven centuries ago over the underground grave sites. It is located in the northwestern city of Hamadan, about 335 kilometers west of Teheran. According to tradition, Hamadan is believed to be the site of the city of Shushan, which played such a central role in the events described in the Book of Esther.

Various travelers down through the ages took note of the site, with the first having been Benjamin of Tudela, the famed 12th century Jewish explorer.

Iranian Jews revered the shrine, and many would travel to Hamadan to observe Purim there by reading the Megila alongside the tomb. Others held family celebrations, such as bar mitzvas or circumcisions, at the site.

The entrance to the building is said to have been built intentionally low to compel visitors to bow their heads upon entering, thereby engendering a requisite attitude of respect. Inside the main hall, which is adorned with Hebrew inscriptions, lie two large, decorated wooden boxes, or trunks, below which are said to be the final resting places of Mordechai and Esther.

A small synagogue adjoins the tomb, and the site is also considered holy by Muslims and Christians, who come to pray there.

Next to the mausoleum lies a large hollow in the ground, which Iranian Jews believe to be the entrance to a tunnel that stretches all the way to Jerusalem.

Interestingly there is a competing tradition which identifies the traditional burial place of Queen Esther and Mordechai as being on the outskirts of the village of Baram, in the Upper Galilee, near Safed.

As early as 1215, Rabbi Menahem Hahevroni wrote that while visiting the Galilee, he came across the tomb of Queen Esther, "who, during her lifetime, had instructed her son Darius to bring her there [for burial]."

Later pilgrims mentioned the site, and noted that special celebrations were held there on Shushan Purim.

Currently, the tomb is believed to be located in the ruins of a building found in the Baram National Park.

After the area was liberated in the War of Independence, a group of Safed Jews went up to the tomb on Purim in 1949 and read the Megila there to revive the long-standing custom of previous generations.

Hence, we have two conflicting traditions as to where the protagonists of the Purim story are buried, with one placing them in Persia and the other much closer to home.

And while we cannot say with any certainty which of the two traditions is more authentic or correct, of one thing we can all be sure: The deeds of these two great Jewish heroes will never fade from our collective memory.

As the Megila (9:28) tells us: "And these days of Purim shall not pass from among the Jews, and their memory shall not lapse from among their descendants."

POINT - COUNTERPOINT

2009-03-11T01:19:00.004-04:00

The following article ran in today's Christian Science monitor. It is gleaned from a blog by Michael Spencer http://internetmonk.com/

I thought I would set out the article as the point and then provide my opinion.

So here is the article:

An anti-Christian chapter in Western history is about to begin. But out of the ruins, a new vitality and integrity will rise.

By Michael Spencer from the March 10, 2009 edition

Oneida, Ky. - We are on the verge – within 10 years – of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West.

Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the "Protestant" 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century.

This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good.

Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline. I'm convinced the grace and mission of God will reach to the ends of the earth. But the end of evangelicalism as we know it is close.

Why is this going to happen?

1. Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This will prove to be a very costly mistake. Evangelicals will increasingly be seen as a threat to cultural progress. Public leaders will consider us bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society.

The evangelical investment in moral, social, and political issues has depleted our resources and exposed our weaknesses. Being against gay marriage and being rhetorically pro-life will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of Evangelicals can't articulate the Gospel with any coherence. We fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith.

2. We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we've spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.

3. There are three kinds of evangelical churches today: consumer-driven megachurches, dying churches, and new churches whose future is fragile. Denominations will shrink, even vanish, while fewer and fewer evangelical churches will survive and thrive.

4. Despite some very successful developments in the past 25 years, Christian education has not produced a product that can withstand the rising tide of secularism. Evangelicalism has used its educational system primarily to staff its own needs and talk to itself.

5. The confrontation between cultural secularism and the faith at the core of evangelical efforts to "do good" is rapidly approaching. We will soon see that the good Evangelicals want to do will be viewed as bad by so many, and much of that work will not be done. Look for ministries to take on a less and less distinctively Christian face in order to survive.

6. Even in areas where Evangelicals imagine themselves strong (like the Bible Belt), we will find a great inability to pass on to our children a vital evangelical confidence in the Bible and the importance of the faith.

7. The money will dry up.

What will be left?

•Expect evangelicalism to look more like the pragmatic, therapeutic, church-growth oriented megachurches that have defined success. Emphasis will shift from doctrine to relevance, motivation, and personal success – resulting in churches further compromised and weakened in their ability to pass on the faith.

•Two of the beneficiaries will be the Roman Catholic and Orthodox communions. Evangelicals have been entering these churches in recent decades and that trend will continue, with more efforts aimed at the "conversion" of Evangelicals to the Catholic and Orthodox traditions.

•A small band will work hard to rescue the movement from its demise through theological renewal. This is an attractive, innovative, and tireless community with outstanding media, publishing, and leadership development. Nonetheless, I believe the coming evangelical collapse will not result in a second reformation, though it may result in benefits for many churches and the beginnings of new churches.

•The emerging church will largely vanish from the evangelical landscape, becoming part of the small segment of progressive mainline Protestants that remain true to the liberal vision.

•Aggressively evangelistic fundamentalist churches will begin to disappear.

•Charismatic-Pentecostal Christianity will become the majority report in evangelicalism. Can this community withstand heresy, relativism, and confusion? To do so, it must make a priority of biblical authority, responsible leadership, and a reemergence of orthodoxy.

•Evangelicalism needs a "rescue mission" from the world Christian community. It is time for missionaries to come to America from Asia and Africa. Will they come? Will they be able to bring to our culture a more vital form of Christianity?

•Expect a fragmented response to the culture war. Some Evangelicals will work to create their own countercultures, rather than try to change the culture at large. Some will continue to see conservatism and Christianity through one lens and will engage the culture war much as before – a status quo the media will be all too happy to perpetuate. A significant number, however, may give up political engagement for a discipleship of deeper impact.

Is all of this a bad thing?

Evangelicalism doesn't need a bailout. Much of it needs a funeral. But what about what remains?

Is it a good thing that denominations are going to become largely irrelevant? Only if the networks that replace them are able to marshal resources, training, and vision to the mission field and into the planting and equipping of churches.

Is it a good thing that many marginal believers will depart? Possibly, if churches begin and continue the work of renewing serious church membership. We must change the conversation from the maintenance of traditional churches to developing new and culturally appropriate ones.

The ascendency of Charismatic-Pentecostal-influenced worship around the world can be a major positive for the evangelical movement if reformation can reach those churches and if it is joined with the calling, training, and mentoring of leaders. If American churches come under more of the influence of the movement of the Holy Spirit in Africa and Asia, this will be a good thing.

Will the evangelicalizing of Catholic and Orthodox communions be a good development? One can hope for greater unity and appreciation, but the history of these developments seems to be much more about a renewed vigor to "evangelize" Protestantism in the name of unity.

Will the coming collapse get Evangelicals past the pragmatism and shallowness that has brought about the loss of substance and power? Probably not. The purveyors of the evangelical circus will be in fine form, selling their wares as the promised solution to every church's problems. I expect the landscape of megachurch vacuity to be around for a very long time.

Will it shake lose the prosperity Gospel from its parasitical place on the evangelical body of Christ? Evidence from similar periods is not encouraging. American Christians seldom seem to be able to separate their theology from an overall idea of personal affluence and success.

The loss of their political clout may impel many Evangelicals to reconsider the wisdom of trying to create a "godly society." That doesn't mean they'll focus solely on saving souls, but the increasing concern will be how to keep secularism out of church, not stop it altogether. The integrity of the church as a countercultural movement with a message of "empire subversion" will increasingly replace a message of cultural and political entitlement.

Despite all of these challenges, it is impossible not to be hopeful. As one commenter has already said, "Christianity loves a crumbling empire."

We can rejoice that in the ruins, new forms of Christian vitality and ministry will be born. I expect to see a vital and growing house church movement. This cannot help but be good for an evangelicalism that has made buildings, numbers, and paid staff its drugs for half a century.

We need new evangelicalism that learns from the past and listens more carefully to what God says about being His people in the midst of a powerful, idolatrous culture.

I'm not a prophet. My view of evangelicalism is not authoritative or infallible. I am certainly wrong in some of these predictions. But is there anyone who is observing evangelicalism in these times who does not sense that the future of our movement holds many dangers and much potential?

Well thank you Brother Spencer for your gloom and doom assessment. I agree that you are not a prophet. I agree with some of your observations, however I disagree with many of your comments.

First of all, newspapers love big scary headlines. Anyone recall God Is Dead?

God is in charge. For us to think otherwise is plain foolish. I know there are geniuses that would say, this boy is an idjit. But I'll say it again. God is in charge.

If the evangelical church crumbles into a million pieces, I say, "So what!" There have been believers around since we switched from B.C.E. to A.D.

(I wonder if they had news hearlds hollerin', "Set your sundials forward an hour! The change is coming.)

It's 2009 and more folks that are believers than ever all over the world. Sadly there are more Christians being martyred today than in all of history.

I just learned my old friend Jim Bankowski is preaching in Viet Nam. My wife tells me southern India is undergoing a revival that is being championed by the women. China is full of underground Christian churches as is Russia. Back in 1969 and 70 folks got tired of the same ol', same ol' and took the church to the street.

I have to agree on some points. "There are many Evangelicals that cannot articulate the Good News coherently." Yep! However there are many more that can. Have we ever lived in a time when there is so much information available about the Bible that all we have to do is point and click to be able to study God's Word?

"Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community." Is this any different today than it was 40 years ago? Or even at the turn of the century in Azuza California? The Jesus Movement was a fad for some and an awakening for many.

If the mega-churches lose population, if the Christian media and publishing industry goes belly-up, if the rich and the famous find themselves on the receiving end of a sign that says "I used to be Benny Hinn and will do tricks for food", I find it a will be a sad situation. But there are precedents.

Do you recall that Jesus told a parable about a sower and the seed. If the focus of the church is not on Christ, His Lordship and learning about God's Will in our lives, then failure is apparent.

Will the prosperity Gospel go away? I hope so as Christian grow and turn eyes on treasure above. Will Christians give up on conservative politics? I hope not. Sarah Palin took more brickbats from the Left than anyone deserves for being a born-again, evangelical, charismatic Christian. God bless her and all other Believers that will stand up to the foxes in charge that are now raiding the hen house. They need to be called out.

You say, "Aggressively evangelistic fundamentalist churches will begin to disappear."
Do you know David Copperfield? I don't think so.

You must not have cable television with all it's fine public access channels. We have the screaming preacher with asthma channel, the old man and woman playing the guitar and singing really out of tune channel, the Gospel Karaoke channel and the guy with the long shaggy hair- wearing a flat cap-playing electric guitar-jumping uncontrollably-singing Gospel music channel. Brother Spencer, are you sure you live in Kentucky? I think aggressive evangelistic fundamentalists will be around for a good while.

God has chosen His people and the Holy Spirit dwells among us. As the old song says, "Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full on His wonderful face and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace."

TEN COMMANDMENTS - THE SOUTHERN VERSION

2009-03-09T00:00:00.003-04:00

The Southern Ten Commandments

Some people have trouble with all those 'shall's' and 'shall not's' in the
Ten Commandments. Folks just aren't used to talking in those terms. So, in middle Tennessee they translated the King James into Jackson County language.....no joke The following was posted on the wall at Cross Trails Church in Gainesboro, Tennessee.

(1) Just one God

(2) Put nothin' afore God

(3) Watch yer mouth

(4) Git yourself to Sunday meetin'

(5) Honor yer Ma & Pa

(6) No killin'

(7) No foolin' around with another fellow's gal

(8) Don't take what ain't yers

(9) No tellin' tales or gossipin'

(10) Don't be hankerin' for yer buddy's stuff

Now that's plain an' simple. So follow them rules an' y'all have a nice day!

Freedom Of Choice Is OK - As Long As It's Not Your Choice

2009-02-27T23:41:00.005-05:00

By Saundra Young

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Obama administration plans to reverse a regulation from late in the Bush administration allowing health-care workers to refuse to provide services based on moral objections, an official said Friday.

The rule protects the rights of health care providers who refuse to participate in certain procedures.

The Provider Refusal Rule was proposed by the Bush White House in August and enacted on January 20, the day President Barack Obama took office.

It expanded on a 30-year-old law establishing a "conscience clause" for "health-care professionals who don't want to perform abortions."

Under the rule, workers in health-care settings -- from doctors to janitors -- can refuse to provide services, information or advice to patients on subjects such as contraception, family planning, blood transfusions and even vaccine counseling if they are morally against it.

"We recognize and understand that some providers have objections to providing abortions, according to an official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

*The official declined to be identified because the policy change had not been announced. "We want to ensure that current law protects them.

*(Official declined to be identified making policy statement is a code word for coward who is presents a possible policy to test the waters.)

"But we do not want to impose new limitations on services that would allow providers to refuse to provide to women and their families services like family planning and contraception that would actually help prevent the need for an abortion in the first place."

Many health-care organizations, including the American Medical Association, believe health-care providers have an obligation to their patients to advise them of the options despite their own beliefs. Critics of the current rule argue there are already laws on the books protecting health-care professionals when it comes to refusing care for personal reasons.

*Dr. Suzanne T. Poppema, board chair of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health, praised Obama "for placing good health care above ideological demands."

"Physicians across the country were outraged when the Bush administration, in its final days, limited women's access to reproductive health care," she said. "Hundreds of doctors protested these midnight regulations and urged President Obama to repeal them quickly. We are thrilled that President Obama took the first steps today to ensure that our patients' health is once again protected."

*(From her own web page Dr. Suzzanne Poppema has a statement on why she is an abortion doctor:

“I had an unintended pregnancy when I was an intern. Despite my extensive education, I was in denial until the second trimester. At the time of diagnosis, I felt appalled at my blindness and stupidity. The doctor who treated me, a very wise and humane physician, said, ‘You will be a much better physician because of this experience. You’ll have much less of an urge to rush to judgment about people.’ He was very kind, and he was right.”)

But Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said, "Protecting the right of all health-care providers to make professional judgments based on moral convictions and ethical standards is foundational to federal law and is necessary to ensure that access to health care is not diminished, which will occur if health-care workers are forced out of their jobs because of their ethical stances.

"President's Obama's intention to change the language of these protections would result in the government becoming the conscience and not the individual. It is a person's right to exercise their moral judgment, not the government's to decide it for them."

An announcement reversing the current rule is expected early next week, the HHS official said. Any final action would have to be taken after a 30-day public comment period.

Where Have They Gone?

2009-02-16T10:29:00.013-05:00

The Jesus House is going to have a reunion on May 2nd and I've written a song for the occasion. Actually I've had this tune in the back of my mind for quite a few years and never put it down on paper until recently. I ask the musical question, where have my old friends gone, do they still care about Jesus?

Here are the lyrics:

Where have they gone,
all the friends I have known,
all the ones I have met on the way?
Do they still care,
if Jesus is there,
or has the world swept them away?

I once knew a man,
he had a wife.
His family was the
center of his life
He loved his children,
he loved the Lord
he was a shining light
to this old frosty world.
But my friend became ill
and the Lord called him home,
and his wife and his daughters were grieved
Oh the things I had learned
from being with him
have made a better man out of me.

chorus

Once I knew a girl
she was so smart.
The love of God shone in her heart.
She could have been wealthy,
she turned it down
to live with the poor
in some old Haitian town.
She gave up family and friends
just to follow the Lord,
and to give of herself to the poor.
Now she's richer by far
than anybody I know.
For she has her treasures
stored above
and not down below.

chorus

Oh my dearest brother
where have you gone?
You once gave us such hope
and helped to make us all one.
But you denied Him
and went away.
You ran into the night
and hid from the day.
Well I cannot believe
all the things I have hear
of the terrible things
you have done.
Brother won't you come home
we are still praying for you.
You cannot hide from the dark
in the Light of the Son.

chorus

(bonus verse)
You know this song,
could be about you.
I've seen so many faces
with stories so true.
I hope that in your life
you've learned to trust
in the One True God
Who takes care of us.
So my wish is that you
know the love of The Lord
and take time out to talk to Him each day.
And may your life be a light
that shines in the World.
and may you delight
to study His Holy Word

chorus

I don't know if I'll include the bonus verse, as the chorus may become too lengthy and redundant after 4 verses. We'll see. The song itself is about 3 very real people that I know. Each one has influenced my life at some point. They all are people that I admired.

So if you are reading the blog, you will know exactly who they are.

The first is a man named Whitey Slayback. I became close friends with the Slayback family in my final year of high school. I must have been around 18 or 19. Joanna was Whitey's wife. She was and still is a staunch Christian. God bless her! During the time I spent with them Joanna and Whitey (Charles) were concerned about their two daughters, Sandy and Kim, who were 16 and 11 years old. There was a big drug problem in their community. Of course they prayed their girls would become Christians. So Joanna went about organizing a prayer meeting at her home and then decided to open up a Christian meeting place. This was in the basement of an Episcopal church near their home. Whitey worked the second shift at a chemical company. Joanne, her daughters and I would drive out to pick Whitey up after work and we would all talk. Whitely developed problems with his kidneys and He eventually succumbed to his illness at an early age. By this time I was married and raising my own family. I sort of lost track of the Slaybacks. But I will always recall what a great father Whitey was and the wonderful example he set. One thing about Whitey was his very light blue piercing eyes. I can still picture him in my mind. May God bless his soul! I will never forget him.

The next verse is about a friend I met when I first became a Christian. Her name was Brenda Gilfillan. She was a registered nurse and was working at St. Francis Hospital and doing pretty well for herself. At the time she was also attending the Cincinnati Bible Seminary. Gillie as we called her was living with some other friends in an apartment in Price Hill. She invited my then girlfriend Linny and I for dinner. We met a lot of folks that night that became close special friends. Later on we had Bible studies in this same apartment.

Gillie decided early on that she wanted to be a missionary. She left us and a rather nice well paying hospital job and joined YWAM,Youth With A Mission. She came back sometime in the mid 1990's and called Linny and I. We invited her over to our house and she told us all about her career. It was fascinating. Her first mission field was in Haiti and she lived in a tin building with a dirt floor. When she arrived in Haiti she had a pet cat, however the kitty became dinner for some local family. She stuck it out and became friendly with the locals, mostly the women and tried to help out. She was then sent to Brazil and lived their for many years. At first she lived among the poor. The last time I Googled her name she was a trainer for YWAM, but still living in the Amazon. I admire her. (If you google her name, you will come up with a hit for some young girl that works for the Democratic party. This is a different Brenda Gilfillan.)

Finally my old friend, my old brother Kirk Prine. What a sad story, although I doubt if he would agree. Kirk was a student at the Cincinnati Bible Seminary. During his college years the Jesus Movement came upon the nation. Kirk hitchhiked from Cincinnati to San Jose California and lived with a couple for about a year while he attended San Jose State College. Back hen tuition was free in California to State Universities. After being there a year Kirk came back and was a ball of fire for The Lord. He had seen the Jesus Movement on the West Coast and he brought it with him to Cincinnati.

Kirk was always the crusader, the warrior and the leader. He started a Christian newspaper, lead Bible studies and organized Spiritual Revolution Day. This all occurred back in 1971. Kirk became my friend, my brother and was sort of a mentor. We would go to churches and schools and speak about the Jesus Movement to raise awareness. Kirk was a self proclaimed "healed homosexual". If you knew him at this time, you would find that he was totally asexual. He had women admirers, in fact he lived in a community with at least 3 or more women the whole time I knew him, but he was only interested in putting forth The Word of God. Romantic love was of no interest to him. (BTW, the girls lived upstairs and Kirk and the other guys shared a room on the first floor.) During these years Kirk witnessed many events that could not have possibly taken place without God intervening. Back in the day he acknowledged this.

After I married, I sort of lost track of Kirk as a close friend. We met at different events, but I was devoting all my time to my wife and I was studying to be a OR Tech.

Kirk went back to school and received a post doctorate degree was employed by a large local church as a minister to help homosexuals get out of the lifestyle. During this time, the church paid for him to continue to receive a doctorate in counseling. Sadly the position they placed him in just threw him back to the wolves. He left the church and his position and received a doctorate in counseling and moved back to California.

Linny and I have never stopped thinking and praying for Kirk. The last time we sat down and spoke with him, he had put the same fervor and zeal into promoting the gay life and he did God's Word.

After writing the verse I thought I'd do a search for him and discovered that he is now using a Christian phrase at his web page "How to Live The Abundant Life" to promote his cause.

People are what the are. I cannot change any one's life but my own. At one time I thought I could. God changes hearts. Old Robert Frost was right when in what he said about that road less taken.

I cherish all the memories and considered old friends to be friends no matter what. Whitey has gone to the bosom of The Lord. Gillie is still, for all I know, still a missionary. Kirk is living in San Francisco. May God Bless them all and may they all seek Him still.

Uncle Richard

2009-02-04T18:39:00.003-05:00

When I was around 15 or 16 and dating the woman that would become my wife, her family invited me to visit their relatives that lived in a wealthy section of Cincinnati. They lived in a house large enough to keep a pony in, as Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced Bouquet) would say.

The largest room contained a huge indool swimming pool. My wife's cousin Vicki was a few years younger than we were. She was always good company. In earlier days when my wife was a baby, her mother would drop her off at Aunt Edna's house and she and Vicki were crib mates.

I never knew too much about Uncle Richard except that he owned a successful dry cleaning and tailoring business, he had a nice house and drove a big car. A few years later he even bought Vicki a horse and built a small stable in their large backyard.

Time went on and this family moved to a smaller house. I could not confirm this, but perhaps the business was not doing as well. He eventually sold his business and moved his family to Kentucky. After that they lived a rather nomadic life moving to Florida and then California and back to Florida again. Vicki had been married and had a son. From viewing the family pictures at Uncle Richard's funeral I could tell the boy was the apple of his eye. Vicki divorced and continued to live all her life with her parents. Her mother died around 10 years ago.

Uncle Richard died a few weeks ago. He had become a Christian and finally settled down. However the last two years of his life were spent in bed due to a rare neuromuscular disease that caused his limbs to contract. Even through this Vicki said he tried to find joy in small things such as watching squirels scamper in the yard or seeing children playing from his window. He saw the glass as overflowing and was thankful that he lived such a good life. Although he was in a lot of pain, his concern was not for himself, but for those around him. He was especially concerned for a care-giver that was not a Christian. He spoke with her about her faith many times.

At the funeral I learned a few things about Richard that he never shared. His mother was Jewish. He never mentioned this fact until he spoke about this dicotomy with his Baptist pastor.

Richard also served in the Marines and in the Army during WWll. Usually a person is a member of one branch of the armed services, but Richard was in both.

There had already been one funeral for Richard in Florida for friends and neighbors at a packed church in Jacksonville. His daughter had another for him at a little country church in Kentucky this past weekend. His remains were laid to rest next to those of his wife. May you be well and be in the bosom of God the Father Almighty.

Babylon

2009-01-23T22:20:00.006-05:00

Here it comes folks! And remember you asked for it. The love feast has ended. What was hidden can now being revealed.

President Barack Obama on Friday lifted restrictions on U.S. government funding for groups that provide abortion services or counseling abroad, reversing a policy of his Republican predecessor George W. Bush.

When the ban was in place, no U.S. government funding for family planning services could be given to clinics or groups that offered abortion services or counseling in other countries, even if the funds for those activities came from non-U.S. government sources.

"For the past eight years, have undermined efforts to promote safe and effective voluntary family planning in developing countries," Obama said in a statement.
"It is right for us to rescind this policy and restore critical efforts to protect and empower women and promote global economic development."

How' you figure that abortion will promote global economic developement? I'm scratching my head.

It is ironic that this comes a day after Obama announced plans to close Guantanamo Bay due to the nasty treatment of the murdering terroristic blackhearts that have killed and plotted to kill and acted against American soldiers and our Nation. And now today he wants "our tax dollars" to be used to assist Planned Parenthood and other such abortionists to empower women to kill.

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung our lyres, for our captors there required, of us songs, for our tormentors mirth, saying "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!" How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?

If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy. Remember, O Lord, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell. "Tear it down," they cried, "tear it down to its foundations!"

O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us, he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.

My Response to: A Real Lesson In America History

2009-01-18T00:19:00.009-05:00

I’ve made mentioned before of our town’s local free paper, CityBeat. The tome is written and published by some well-meaning but very liberal-minded folks. I am rather conservative in my views, but try to keep an open mind and it is interesting to see the pretzel logic of the other side. So I pick up the paper regularly and cringe at times while perusing the op-ed pieces.

The latest issue had an article by Kevin Osborne called A Real Lesson In American History that strove to make a point against some extreme conservative organizations effort to place the Ten Commandments in a Tennessee courthouse. The grounds for his objection being the nation was not founded on the principals of God since our founding fathers were derelict in their Christian beliefs.

The author used the article to expose George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin as Deists. Writing about our first President he stated that although George Washington regularly attended church, he refrained from taking communion since his beliefs were in the god of nature instead of Jesus Christ. Benjamin Franklin was described as being raised Presbyterian, but not being much more devoted than Washington. Jefferson was given an equal if not lesser marks when it came to religion.

Now I am a devoted believer in the Lordship of Jesus, the Son of The Father Almighty God, Blessed be His Name. I stand firm that the Bible is The Word of God and is His love letter to the world. I claim no religious affiliation other than Christianity. I am saying this to show that when it comes to what was said in the CityBeat article regarding the beliefs of the founding fathers, I not only agree with the author but I will take it several steps farther as I find American History, that is Real American History, to be fascinating.

Washington, Franklin and Jefferson were geniuses. Their achievements speak for themselves. I don't know much about George Washingtons religious beliefs, but Franklin was definitely an oddity. He was a married man. His wife was named Debbie. (that is a fact!) But Benjamin cavorted about with French courtiers and was given to opening his bedroom windows on warm days and lying in bed naked as a jaybird taking what he called, an air-bath. These days folks are arrested for such behavior.

Jefferson believed that Jesus was a great philosopher. (So do Muslims) Jefferson went so far as to write and publish the Jefferson Bible. In this work Jefferson surgically dissected all the sections of the New Testament containing supernatural aspects as well as perceived misinterpretations he believed had been added by the Four Evangelists.

William Bradford lead the Separatists out of England to the Netherlands and then on the Mayflower to Plymouth Massachusetts and went on to become the governor for years. We commonly refer to this group as Pilgrims. The Pilgrims were considered Separatists by the Church of England, since they wanted to separate from that church. Though hailed historically, Bradford’s own writing speaks for itself.

Throughout our childhood we are taught the first Thanksgiving was an event of brotherhood where the White man and the Red man sat down together for dinner and fellowship. Bradford’s own writing speaks different and perhaps undermines his stature. For the people of Plymouth were giving thanks for the massacre of 700 Peoquat Indians.

"Those that scraped the fire were slaine with the sword; some hewed to peeces, others rune throw with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatchte, and very few escapted. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fyer, and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stincke and sente there of, but the victory seemed a sweete sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to inclose their enemise in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enimie."

The Pequot massacre came after the colonists, angry at the murder of an English trader suspected by the Pequots of kidnapping children, sought revenge, rather than fighting the dangerous Pequot warriors, John Mason and John Underhill led a group of colonists and Native allies to the Indian fort in Mystic, and killed the old men, women, and children who were there. Those who escaped were later hunted down. Bradford is remembered historically for his leadership in the new world. However he was by no means a saint.

Kevin Osborne of the CityBeat article also mentions John Adams quote from the Treaty of Tripoli;

“As the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

“Musselmen” is an antiquated term for Muslim people, while “Mehomitan” is another term for Islamic.

Of course we need to set these words in context and not put the entire onus on Mr. Adams.
At the time the United States had broken ties with England. Even before independence was declared, American ships were pirated and their Christian crews enslaved by Muslim pirates operating under the control of the “Dey of Algiers”—an Ottoman Islamist warlord ruling Algeria. When the colonists rebelled against British rule in 1776, American ships lost Royal Navy protection. A Revolutionary-War era alliance with France offered French protection to US ships, but it expired in 1783. Immediately US ships came under attack and in October 1784 the American trader “Betsey” was taken by Moroccan forces. This was followed with Algerians and Libyans (Tripolitans) capturing two more US ships in 1785.

Lacking the ability to project US naval force in the Mediterranean, America tried appeasement. In 1784, Congress agreed to fund tributes and ransoms in order to rescue US ships and buy the freedom of enslaved US sailors. In 1786 Thomas Jefferson, then US ambassador to France, and John Adams, then US Ambassador to Britain, met in London with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the Dey’s ambassador to Britain, in an attempt to negotiate a peace treaty based on Congress’ vote of funding. Hence the reason for the wording of the treaty.

In a splitting hairs sense, this treaty does state that the United States is not founded on Christianity. However The Declaration of Independence does state that "...we are to assume the powers granted us by nature and nature's God." And goes on to state we "...are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights." I must admit that is right in line with the reasoning of the founding fathers.

I can agree with Mr. Osborne’s evaluation of the character of the aforementioned men. (Although he never brought up Bradford) His argument that because the faith of our fathers was questionable, therefore the United States was not founded on Christian principals, and hence the Ten Commandments should not be displayed in buildings paid for by the public just does not stand up.

The Commandments, The Noahide Laws, The Magna Carta and other historic documents should not be diminished because by nature they are ascribed to one religious group or another. Although the Commandments mention God, which apparently offends and causes atheists to blush, we all live in the same world and need to be accepting of each other. And isn’t that a prime tenet of Liberalism?

Let me point out, the Ten Commandments do not necessarily belong to one religious group.

I have no problem with the Ten Commandments being in a courtroom and I am not sure what the religious beliefs of Washington, Jefferson & Franklin’s have to do with this matter.

Link to the Citybeat article:
http://www.citybeat.com/cincinnati/article-16956-a-crash-course-in-(real)-us-history.html

Jacob Wrestles an Angel

2009-01-14T23:42:00.012-05:00

I last discussed some gleanings from Torah studies regarding Jacob’s plan to meet Esau.

This two-fold plan included splitting his tribe in two and preparation to send members forward with his herds and flocks “drove by drove” to impress his brother with his wealth and position. In the event the first group was massacred the other members would survive.

In Chapter 32 we read that Jacob finally set forth his remaining family members. These were the ones that were dearest to him. Jacob helped them to cross the river.

That night he met a man. He wrestled with this man throughout the night until the break of day.

These few verses intrigue me. So I had to do a study on the subject. I came up with some differing comments and viewpoints on the subject. So I am going to let the reader ponder each and leave the decision up to you.

My personal viewpoint is that Jacob was scared to death his brother would kill him and his family. Perhap scared is not an intense enough word. He was terrified and worried to the point of obsession. I believe he first sent his family, not as a test, but because if they were killed he wanted to know the outcome and claim responsibility with his own life.

God had made it clear to Jacob to go back to his birth home and meet his brother. When God tells you what to do, you must do it, for God will not cause you to do something that would cause you or your family harm. And although I am sure Jacob knew this, his own human thoughts, feelings of guilt and remorse got in the way. After all he had twice deceived his brother and had gained Esau's birthright and Isaacs blessing. And though God had intervened in these matters, Jacob still felt uncomfortable with the situation.

Adding to this he had just left his father-in-law, Laban, under similar circumstances. Laban attempted to cheat Jacob after promising rewards to him and would have taken back all of Jacob’s possessions had Jacob not fled in the night.

I have read several translations including those literal translations in Hebrew and all say that Jacob wrestled with a man throughout the night. Going back to the beginning of verse 32 we read;

21So the present passed on before him, while he himself spent that night in the camp. 22Now he arose that same night and took his two wives and his two maids and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23He took them and sent them across the stream. And he sent across whatever he had

24Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. 25When he saw that he had not prevailed against him, he touched the socket of his thigh; so the socket of Jacob's thigh was dislocated while he wrestled with him. 26Then he said, "Let me go, for the dawn is breaking."

But he said, ")I will not let you go unless you bless me." 27So he said to him, "What is your name?" And he said, "Jacob." 28He said, "Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel; for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed." 29Then Jacob asked him and said, "Please tell me your name." But he said, "Why is it that you ask my name?" And he blessed him there. 30So Jacob named the place Peniel, for he said, "I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been preserved." 31Now the sun rose upon him just as he crossed over Penuel, and he was limping on his thigh. 32Therefore, to this day the sons of Israel do not eat the sinew of the hip which is on the socket of the thigh, because he touched the socket of Jacob's thigh in the sinew of the hip.

At the beginning of the verse, Jacob is left alone. However he still has the task of taking his immediate family, two wives, two maids and eleven children and sending them on the way to the land of his father Issac where his brother Esau lived. Although this was his plan it had to be very devastating to imagine you were sending off your very family to an uncertain future. And Jacob thought the worst.

For the great Rabbis that originally gave us their interpretations of scripture, crossing a body of water was a sign of a life event that would bring about change. Jacob assists his family over the fjord of the Jabbok. And though it is unsaid, he too must have crossed this water-way.

In Hebraic studies of ancient civilizations there was a belief that rivers were inhabited by river demons. Some interrupt that Jacob believed he was being attacked by a river demon upon his return to the camp and he thought he was wrestling a demon all night until by light of dawn he realizes it is not a demon but an Angel of God. At this point he asks for God’s Blessing. The Angel asks his name. Jacob is given a new name, Israel. And the word Israel contains part of God’s own name EL.

Jacob then asks the Angel his name. The Angel offers a rhetorical reply, “Why do you ask my name?” I interpret as the Angel of God saying “Do you not know you are in the presence of The Angel of The Lord God? You need not ask who I AM. You need to acknowledge and trust."

The Angel did not prevail against Jacob.

Think about that.

Despite how he is portrayed in the earlier chapters as the weaker younger brother, Jacob hardships must have transformed him into a man of great strength.

The Angel had to use supernatural power to stop the fight by dislocating Jacob’s hip.Rabbinical interpretations say this was an outward sign of the change in Jacob resulting from God’s blessing and go so far as to say that Jacob limped for the remainder of his lifetime.

It is difficult for me to say, reader this is how it is, that’s my interpretation. The Bible is open to interpretation. This is the way it was meant to be and why we have so many different Hebrew and Christian groups.

Bottom line on this study is;
Listen to God by whatever means works for you. Be it Bible/Torah study, prayer and worship or worshipping with others. Change happens. As long as you feel lead by God embrace the change and do not fear. You are a child of The King. Remember the words of John when he said, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.”

Joan D'Arc

2009-01-03T08:21:00.012-05:00

Over the holidays I read a book called Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc. This was a fictional account of the life of Joan D’Arc written by Mark Twain under the pseudonym of Sieur Louis De Conte and said to be translated by Jean François Alden.

Essentially what we have is an author, Samuel Clements, who uses the pen name of Mark Twain to write a story adopting another pen name and a third pseudonym for the translator. By the way the name Sieur Louis De Conte is derived from the initials of Samuel Langhorne Clement or SLC.

Clement dedicates the book to his wife. He has written it after the death of his beloved daughter. It is said that he used his daughter as a basis of the character of Joan.

The details of the life of Joan of Arc from a biography which is unique among the world’s biographies in one respect: It is the only story of a human life which comes to us under oath, the only one which comes to us from the witness-stand. The official records of the Great Trial of 1431, and the of the Process of Rehabilitation of a quarter of a century later, are still preserved in the National Archives of France, and they furnish with remarkable fullness the facts of her life. The history of no other life of that remote time is known with either the certainty or the comprehensiveness that attaches to hers.

In my Christian walk I have questioned the Catholic Church’s position on appointing Saints. My wife has explained to me these are merely people that the Church feels have lived extraordinary lives and/or done extraordinary things. Even at that I still find it difficult to understand why the Church venerates some to the position of Saint. Understanding Joan of Arc has taken an understanding of this one step further for me.

Joan was a shy peasant girl of simple faith. She had friends but kept to herself. In doing so she began to be visited at age 13 by Angels of God.

Let me pause here. A few years ago, we in the Christian community and the not-so Christian community had this Angel fad going on. There were all sorts of gurus and no-it-alls writing books, visiting Churches, holding seminars and appearing on Oprah to let you know how you could find out about the care and feeding of your own personal Angel. For a fee they would even communicate with your Angel for you or perhaps draw your Angels portrait.

I say phooey on those folks. Joan's story and life have nothing to do with this nonsense.

The Bible clearly says that Angels are messengers of God. We also learn from the Bible the proof that a prophet speaks the Word of God is when the prophecy is fulfilled.

I have no doubt in my mind, not from reading this fictional account of Joan of Arc, but from reading the transcripts of her trials and knowing that historically the things she states she was told by her “visions” did indeed come true.

How is it that a poor uneducated peasant girl could wind up confronting the dethroned King of France and convince him to allow her to lead his army to drive the English invaders out of France? Although she was unskilled in battle and probably had never ridden a horse, miraculously she became the force that convinced the French to take up arms and revolt against their invaders. Incredibly by listening to God’s voice she was able to lead her army into battle and win while the learned men of war were still making their battle plans.

Joan D'Arc became the scourge of the English.

During her trial this unlearned country girl was given words for her defense and boldly said them to her accusers.

In her own words, her capture came about when she did not listen to God when He told her to stay at a town called St. Denis. Instead when her army moved out she went on to do battle and was captured at the town of Clariox.

During her imprisonment she attempt to escape twice and severely injured herself when she jumped from a tower. In her trial transcript before there is a verdict she tells her accusers that God said she would be a martyr.

I know, that I know, that God speaks to each of us. Most often it is through actions in our daily lives. At times it is in answer to prayer. And it is also a small voice or a thought that comes at us. There are those that God speaks to and uses in a dramatic way. He gives them a vision and they drop everything and follow it. We’ve seen this with Billy Graham and Mother Teresa and others.

In Twain’s book, the narrator states that Joan had a “seeing eye”, meaning that she could predict and she could view the heart of a man. I disagree. I believe she had a listening heart and availed herself to be used of God. I suppose that would be the definition of a Saint.

http://smu.edu/ijas/1431trial.html
The Trial Transcript

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/conte-joanofarc.html
E-Book of Twain's Personal Recollection of Joan of Arc

Happy New Year

2009-01-01T22:35:00.000-05:00

Baby Trevan, his Momma and I wish everyone a Happy 2009

Deck Us All With Boston Charlie

2008-12-25T02:55:00.000-05:00

There are a few of us boomer that recall the joy of getting the newspaper, after Dad finished reading it. My first stop was the funnies. Although I never caught on to the humor in Mary Worth. But I digress. Every year until 1973 I could always find my favorite Christmas song in those pages. So I now present it for you. You all know the tune, but you may not remember the correct lyrics. So sing-a-long with me: 1-2-3 and...

Merry Christmas

2008-12-21T22:11:00.009-05:00

Remember Christ Our Savior was born this Christmas Day

Katonti

2008-12-19T18:45:00.004-05:00

In Genesis 32: 9-11 we read:

And Jacob said, "O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O LORD who said to me, 'Return to your country and to your kindred, that I may do you good,' I am not worthy of the least of all the deeds of steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant, for with only my staff I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps.

We all know the story about Jacob deceiving his father and stealing the blessing and birthright that was due to the first born son, his brother Esau. He was sent from the home by his father Isaac and mother Rebecca. His mother knew that Esau was plotting to kill Jacob.

Two decades later Jacob is a man of wealth and possessions. He has wives and servants, land and cattle. He is living in peace and comfort. God now calls him to return to the home of his youth. Jacob is frightened by God’s command. What would Esau do to him? Jacob obeys God’s command and begins the journey.

He has a strategy. We read that as he approached the land of his youth, he divided his people into two camps. If Esau attacked one camp, the others would survive. He also decided to impress his brother and divide his herds and flocks and send them “drove by drove” with a space between each drove. By doing this his brother would be impressed with the wealth and acquisitions of Jacob.

During the eve of crossing the Jordan rive Jacob speaks with God. We read this in the above verses. Jacob says “I am not worthy…” The Hebrew word is Katonti and literally means “I am small” or as some translate, “I have become unworthy because of the grace you have done for me.”

I feel the same way. God has done so much for me. I am not wealthy by any means. However I look back at my days and am amazed that I have managed to have such a blessed childhood, I met and married a wonderful woman, a woman of God. I have raised two wonderful daughters and now have four incredible grandchildren. I have embarked on my third career at the age of 50.

My parents were wonderful and giving people that instilled in me a sense of caring and nurturing. I was fortunate to devote my life at an early age to God through His Son Jesus. I have met and befriended so many wonderful people and learned so much. I have not had formal Biblical education, but through my love of reading and study I have been blessed. I have been given the gift of music. I have had the oportunity to study and find solace in playing guitar. Which is a wonderful way to decompress from life's issues.

In looking back I am amazed that I have come this far and know that I have not accomplished this through my own attempts. God has been there and been faithful in His Grace.

I feel that I am small.

Katonti.

Veritas - Alexander Solzenitsy speech to Harvard Class 1978

2008-11-08T19:53:00.000-05:00

Text of Address by Alexander Solzhenitsyn at Harvard Class Day Afternoon Exercises

Thursday, June 8, 1978

I am sincerely happy to be here with you on this occasion and to become personally acquainted with this old and most prestigious University. My congratulations and very best wishes to all of today's graduates.

Harvard's motto is "Veritas."

Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate with total attention on its pursuit. And even while it eludes us, the illusion still lingers of knowing it and leads to many misunderstandings. Also, truth is seldom pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter. There is some bitterness in my speech today, too. But I want to stress that it comes not from an adversary but from a friend.

Three years ago in the United States I said certain things which at that time appeared unacceptable. Today, however, many people agree with what I then said...

A World Split Apart

by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The split in today's world is perceptible even to a hasty glance. Any of our contemporaries readily identifies two world powers, each of them already capable of entirely destroying the other. However, understanding of the split often is limited to this political conception, to the illusion that danger may be abolished through successful diplomatic negotiations or by achieving a balance of armed forces.

The truth is that the split is a much profounder and a more alienating one, that the rifts are more than one can see at first glance. This deep manifold split bears the danger of manifold disaster for all of us, in accordance with the ancient truth that a Kingdom -- in this case, our Earth -- divided against itself cannot stand.

Contemporary Worlds

There is the concept of the Third World: thus, we already have three worlds. Undoubtedly, however, the number is even greater; we are just too far away to see.

Any ancient deeply rooted autonomous culture, especially if it is spread on a wide part of the earth's surface, constitutes an autonomous world, full of riddles and surprises to Western thinking. As a minimum, we must include in this category China, India, the Muslim world and Africa, if indeed we accept the approximation of viewing the latter two as compact units.

For one thousand years Russia has belonged to such a category, although Western thinking systematically committed the mistake of denying its autonomous character and therefore never understood it, just as today the West does not understand Russia in communist captivity. It may be that in the past years Japan has increasingly become a distant part of the West, I am no judge here; but as to Israel, for instance, it seems to me that it stands apart from the Western world in that its state system is fundamentally linked to religion.

How short a time ago, relatively, the small new European world was easily seizing colonies everywhere, not only without anticipating any real resistance, but also usually despising any possible values in the conquered peoples' approach to life. On the face of it, it was an overwhelming success, there were no geographic frontiers to it. Western society expanded in a triumph of human independence and power. And all of a sudden in the twentieth century came the discovery of its fragility and friability. We now see that the conquests proved to be short lived and precarious, and this in turn points to defects in the Western view of the world which led to these conquests. Relations with the former colonial world now have turned into their opposite and the Western world often goes to extremes of obsequiousness, but it is difficult yet to estimate the total size of the bill which former colonial countries will present to the West, and it is difficult to predict whether the surrender not only of its last colonies, but of everything it owns will be sufficient for the West to foot the bill.

Convergence

But the blindness of superiority continues in spite of all and upholds the belief that vast regions everywhere on our planet should develop and mature to the level of present day Western systems which in theory are the best and in practice the most attractive. There is this belief that all those other worlds are only being temporarily prevented by wicked governments or by heavy crises or by their own barbarity or incomprehension from taking the way of Western pluralistic democracy and from adopting the Western way of life. Countries are judged on the merit of their progress in this direction. However, it is a conception which developed out of Western incomprehension of the essence of other worlds, out of the mistake of measuring them all with a Western yardstick.

The real picture of our planet's development is quite different.
Anguish about our divided world gave birth to the theory of convergence between leading Western countries and the Soviet Union. It is a soothing theory which overlooks the fact that these worlds are not at all developing into similarity; neither one can be transformed into the other without the use of violence. Besides, convergence inevitably means acceptance of the other side's defects, too, and this is hardly desirable.

If I were today addressing an audience in my country, examining the overall pattern of the world's rifts I would have concentrated on the East's calamities. But since my forced exile in the West has now lasted four years and since my audience is a Western one, I think it may be of greater interest to concentrate on certain aspects of the West in our days, such as I see them.

A Decline in Courage [. . .]

may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations.

Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course there are many courageous individuals but they have no determining influence on public life. Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity and perplexity in their actions and in their statements and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable as well as intellectually and even morally warranted it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And decline in courage is ironically emphasized by occasional explosions of anger and inflexibility on the part of the same bureaucrats when dealing with weak governments and weak countries, not supported by anyone, or with currents which cannot offer any resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.

Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?

Well-Being

When the modern Western States were created, the following principle was proclaimed: governments are meant to serve man, and man lives to be free to pursue happiness. (See, for example, the American Declaration).

Now at last during past decades technical and social progress has permitted the realization of such aspirations: the welfare state. Every citizen has been granted the desired freedom and material goods in such quantity and of such quality as to guarantee in theory the achievement of happiness, in the morally inferior sense which has come into being during those same decades. In the process, however, one psychological detail has been overlooked: the constant desire to have still more things and a still better life and the struggle to obtain them imprints many Western faces with worry and even depression, though it is customary to conceal such feelings.

Active and tense competition permeates all human thoughts without opening a way to free spiritual development. The individual's independence from many types of state pressure has been guaranteed; the majority of people have been granted well-being to an extent their fathers and grandfathers could not even dream about; it has become possible to raise young people according to these ideals, leading them to physical splendor, happiness, possession of material goods, money and leisure, to an almost unlimited freedom of enjoyment.

So who should now renounce all this, why and for what should one risk one's precious life in defense of common values, and particularly in such nebulous cases when the security of one's nation must be defended in a distant country?

Even biology knows that habitual extreme safety and well-being are not advantageous for a living organism. Today, well-being in the life of Western society has begun to reveal its pernicious mask.

Legalistic Life

Western society has given itself the organization best suited to its purposes, based, I would say, on the letter of the law. The limits of human rights and righteousness are determined by a system of laws; such limits are very broad. People in the West have acquired considerable skill in using, interpreting and manipulating law, even though laws tend to be too complicated for an average person to understand without the help of an expert.

Any conflict is solved according to the letter of the law and this is considered to be the supreme solution. If one is right from a legal point of view, nothing more is required, nobody may mention that one could still not be entirely right, and urge self-restraint, a willingness to renounce such legal rights, sacrifice and selfless risk: it would sound simply absurd.

One almost never sees voluntary self-restraint. Everybody operates at the extreme limit of those legal frames. An oil company is legally blameless when it purchases an invention of a new type of energy in order to prevent its use. A food product manufacturer is legally blameless when he poisons his produce to make it last longer: after all, people are free not to buy it.

I have spent all my life under a communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either. A society which is based on the letter of the law and never reaches any higher is taking very scarce advantage of the high level of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society.

Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relations, there is an atmosphere of moral mediocrity, paralyzing man's noblest impulses. And it will be simply impossible to stand through the trials of this threatening century with only the support of a legalistic structure.

The Direction of Freedom

In today's Western society, the inequality has been revealed of freedom for good deeds and freedom for evil deeds. A statesman who wants to achieve something important and highly constructive for his country has to move cautiously and even timidly; there are thousands of hasty and irresponsible critics around him, parliament and the press keep rebuffing him. As he moves ahead, he has to prove that every single step of his is well-founded and absolutely flawless. Actually an outstanding and particularly gifted person who has unusual and unexpected initiatives in mind hardly gets a chance to assert himself; from the very beginning, dozens of traps will be set out for him. Thus mediocrity triumphs with the excuse of restrictions imposed by democracy.

It is feasible and easy everywhere to undermine administrative power and, in fact, it has been drastically weakened in all Western countries. The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals. It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.

Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime and horror. It is considered to be part of freedom and theoretically counter-balanced by the young people's right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil.

And what shall we say about the dark realm of criminality as such? Legal frames (especially in the United States) are broad enough to encourage not only individual freedom but also certain individual crimes. The culprit can go unpunished or obtain undeserved leniency with the support of thousands of public defenders. When a government starts an earnest fight against terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorists' civil rights. There are many such cases.

Such a tilt of freedom in the direction of evil has come about gradually but it was evidently born primarily out of a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which there is no evil inherent to human nature; the world belongs to mankind and all the defects of life are caused by wrong social systems which must be corrected. Strangely enough, though the best social conditions have been achieved in the West, there still is criminality and there even is considerably more of it than in the pauper and lawless Soviet society. (There is a huge number of prisoners in our camps which are termed criminals, but most of them never committed any crime; they merely tried to defend themselves against a lawless state resorting to means outside of a legal framework).

The Direction of the Press

The press too, of course, enjoys the widest freedom. (I shall be using the word press to include all media). But what sort of use does it make of this freedom?

Here again, the main concern is not to infringe the letter of the law. There is no moral responsibility for deformation or disproportion. What sort of responsibility does a journalist have to his readers, or to history? If they have misled public opinion or the government by inaccurate information or wrong conclusions, do we know of any cases of public recognition and rectification of such mistakes by the same journalist or the same newspaper? No, it does not happen, because it would damage sales. A nation may be the victim of such a mistake, but the journalist always gets away with it. One may safely assume that he will start writing the opposite with renewed self-assurance.

Because instant and credible information has to be given, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be rectified, they will stay on in the readers' memory. How many hasty, immature, superficial and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, without any verification. The press can both simulate public opinion and miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters, pertaining to one's nation's defense, publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: "everyone is entitled to know everything." But this is a false slogan, characteristic of a false era: people also have the right not to know, and it is a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information.

Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic disease of the 20th century and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press. In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema to the press. It stops at sensational formulas.

Such as it is, however, the press has become the greatest power within the Western countries, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. One would then like to ask: by what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible?

In the communist East a journalist is frankly appointed as a state official. But who has granted Western journalists their power, for how long a time and with what prerogatives?

There is yet another surprise for someone coming from the East where the press is rigorously unified: one gradually discovers a common trend of preferences within the Western press as a whole. It is a fashion; there are generally accepted patterns of judgment and there may be common corporate interests, the sum effect being not competition but unification. Enormous freedom exists for the press, but not for the readership because newspapers mostly give enough stress and emphasis to those opinions which do not too openly contradict their own and the general trend.

A Fashion in Thinking

Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day. There is no open violence such as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to match mass standards frequently prevent independent-minded people from giving their contribution to public life.

There is a dangerous tendency to form a herd, shutting off successful development. I have received letters in America from highly intelligent persons, maybe a teacher in a faraway small college who could do much for the renewal and salvation of his country, but his country cannot hear him because the media are not interested in him. This gives birth to strong mass prejudices, blindness, which is most dangerous in our dynamic era. There is, for instance, a self-deluding interpretation of the contemporary world situation. It works as a sort of petrified armor around people's minds. Human voices from 17 countries of Eastern Europe and Eastern Asia cannot pierce it. It will only be broken by the pitiless crowbar of events.

I have mentioned a few trends of Western life which surprise and shock a new arrival to this world. The purpose and scope of this speech will not allow me to continue such a review, to look into the influence of these Western characteristics on important aspects on [the] nation's life, such as elementary education, advanced education in [?...]

Socialism

It is almost universally recognized that the West shows all the world a way to successful economic development, even though in the past years it has been strongly disturbed by chaotic inflation. However, many people living in the West are dissatisfied with their own society. They despise it or accuse it of not being up to the level of maturity attained by mankind. A number of such critics turn to socialism, which is a false and dangerous current.

I hope that no one present will suspect me of offering my personal criticism of the Western system to present socialism as an alternative. Having experienced applied socialism in a country where the alternative has been realized, I certainly will not speak for it.

The well-known Soviet mathematician Shafarevich, a member of the Soviet Academy of Science, has written a brilliant book under the title Socialism; it is a profound analysis showing that socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death. Shafarevich's book was published in France almost two years ago and so far no one has been found to refute it. It will shortly be published in English in the United States.

Not a Model

But should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society in its present state as an ideal for the transformation of ours. Through intense suffering our country has now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive. Even those characteristics of your life which I have just mentioned are extremely saddening.

A fact which cannot be disputed is the weakening of human beings in the West while in the East they are becoming firmer and stronger. Six decades for our people and three decades for the people of Eastern Europe; during that time we have been through a spiritual training far in advance of Western experience. Life's complexity and mortal weight have produced stronger, deeper and more interesting characters than those produced by standardized Western well-being.

Therefore if our society were to be transformed into yours, it would mean an improvement in certain aspects, but also a change for the worse on some particularly significant scores. It is true, no doubt, that a society cannot remain in an abyss of lawlessness, as is the case in our country. But it is also demeaning for it to elect such mechanical legalistic smoothness as you have. After the suffering of decades of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer and purer than those offered by today's mass living habits, introduced by the revolting invasion of publicity, by TV stupor and by intolerable music.

All this is visible to observers from all the worlds of our planet. The Western way of life is less and less likely to become the leading model.

There are meaningful warnings that history gives a threatened or perishing society. Such are, for instance, the decadence of art, or a lack of great statesmen. There are open and evident warnings, too. The center of your democracy and of your culture is left without electric power for a few hours only, and all of a sudden crowds of American citizens start looting and creating havoc. The smooth surface film must be very thin, then, the social system quite unstable and unhealthy.

But the fight for our planet, physical and spiritual, a fight of cosmic proportions, is not a vague matter of the future; it has already started. The forces of Evil have begun their decisive offensive, you can feel their pressure, and yet your screens and publications are full of prescribed smiles and raised glasses. What is the joy about?

Shortsightedness

Very well known representatives of your society, such as George Kennan, say: we cannot apply moral criteria to politics. Thus we mix good and evil, right and wrong and make space for the absolute triumph of absolute Evil in the world. On the contrary, only moral criteria can help the West against communism's well planned world strategy. There are no other criteria. Practical or occasional considerations of any kind will inevitably be swept away by strategy. After a certain level of the problem has been reached, legalistic thinking induces paralysis; it prevents one from seeing the size and meaning of events.

In spite of the abundance of information, or maybe because of it, the West has difficulties in understanding reality such as it is. There have been naive predictions by some American experts who believed that Angola would become the Soviet Union's Vietnam or that Cuban expeditions in Africa would best be stopped by special U.S. courtesy to Cuba. Kennan's advice to his own country -- to begin unilateral disarmament -- belongs to the same category. If you only knew how the youngest of the Moscow Old Square [1] officials laugh at your political wizards! As to Fidel Castro, he frankly scorns the United States, sending his troops to distant adventures from his country right next to yours.

However, the most cruel mistake occurred with the failure to understand the Vietnam war. Some people sincerely wanted all wars to stop just as soon as possible; others believed that there should be room for national, or communist, self-determination in Vietnam, or in Cambodia, as we see today with particular clarity. But members of the U.S. anti-war movement wound up being involved in the betrayal of Far Eastern nations, in a genocide and in the suffering today imposed on 30 million people there. Do those convinced pacifists hear the moans coming from there? Do they understand their responsibility today? Or do they prefer not to hear? The American Intelligentsia lost its [nerve] and as a consequence thereof danger has come much closer to the United States. But there is no awareness of this. Your shortsighted politicians who signed the hasty Vietnam capitulation seemingly gave America a carefree breathing pause; however, a hundredfold Vietnam now looms over you. That small Vietnam had been a warning and an occasion to mobilize the nation's courage. But if a full-fledged America suffered a real defeat from a small communist half-country, how can the West hope to stand firm in the future?

I have had occasion already to say that in the 20th century democracy has not won any major war without help and protection from a powerful continental ally whose philosophy and ideology it did not question.

In World War II against Hitler, instead of winning that war with its own forces, which would certainly have been sufficient, Western democracy grew and cultivated another enemy who would prove worse and more powerful yet, as Hitler never had so many resources and so many people, nor did he offer any attractive ideas, or have such a large number of supporters in the West -- a potential fifth column -- as the Soviet Union. At present, some Western voices already have spoken of obtaining protection from a third power against aggression in the next world conflict, if there is one; in this case the shield would be China. But I would not wish such an outcome to any country in the world. First of all, it is again a doomed alliance with Evil; also, it would grant the United States a respite, but when at a later date China with its billion people would turn around armed with American weapons, America itself would fall prey to a genocide similar to the one perpetrated in Cambodia in our days.

Loss of Willpower

And yet -- no weapons, no matter how powerful, can help the West until it overcomes its loss of willpower. In a state of psychological weakness, weapons become a burden for the capitulating side. To defend oneself, one must also be ready to die; there is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being. Nothing is left, then, but concessions, attempts to gain time and betrayal. Thus at the shameful Belgrade conference free Western diplomats in their weakness surrendered the line where enslaved members of Helsinki Watchgroups are sacrificing their lives.

Western thinking has become conservative: the world situation should stay as it is at any cost, there should be no changes. This debilitating dream of a status quo is the symptom of a society which has come to the end of its development. But one must be blind in order not to see that oceans no longer belong to the West, while land under its domination keeps shrinking. The two so-called world wars (they were by far not on a world scale, not yet) have meant internal self-destruction of the small, progressive West which has thus prepared its own end. The next war (which does not have to be an atomic one and I do not believe it will) may well bury Western civilization forever.

Facing such a danger, with such historical values in your past, at such a high level of realization of freedom and apparently of devotion to freedom, how is it possible to lose to such an extent the will to defend oneself?

Humanism and Its Consequences

How has this unfavorable relation of forces come about? How did the West decline from its triumphal march to its present sickness? Have there been fatal turns and losses of direction in its development? It does not seem so. The West kept advancing socially in accordance with its proclaimed intentions, with the help of brilliant technological progress. And all of a sudden it found itself in its present state of weakness.

This means that the mistake must be at the root, at the very basis of human thinking in the past centuries. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world which was first born during the Renaissance and found its political expression from the period of the Enlightenment. It became the basis for government and social science and could be defined as rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and enforced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of everything that exists.

The turn introduced by the Renaissance evidently was inevitable historically. The Middle Ages had come to a natural end by exhaustion, becoming an intolerable despotic repression of man's physical nature in favor of the spiritual one. Then, however, we turned our backs upon the Spirit and embraced all that is material with excessive and unwarranted zeal. This new way of thinking, which had imposed on us its guidance, did not admit the existence of intrinsic evil in man nor did it see any higher task than the attainment of happiness on earth. It based modern Western civilization on the dangerous trend to worship man and his material needs. Everything beyond physical well-being and accumulation of material goods, all other human requirements and characteristics of a subtler and higher nature, were left outside the area of attention of state and social systems, as if human life did not have any superior sense. That provided access for evil, of which in our days there is a free and constant flow. Merely freedom does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and it even adds a number of new ones.

However, in early democracies, as in American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted because man is God's creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding thousand years.

Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual could be granted boundless freedom simply for the satisfaction of his instincts or whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were discarded everywhere in the West; a total liberation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming increasingly and totally materialistic. The West ended up by truly enforcing human rights, sometimes even excessively, but man's sense of responsibility to God and society grew dimmer and dimmer.

In the past decades, the legalistically selfish aspect of Western approach and thinking has reached its final dimension and the world wound up in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the glorified technological achievements of Progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the Twentieth century's moral poverty which no one could imagine even as late as in the Nineteenth Century.

An Unexpected Kinship

As humanism in its development became more and more materialistic, it made itself increasingly accessible to speculation and manipulation at first by socialism and then by communism. So that Karl Marx was able to say in 1844 that "communism is naturalized humanism."

This statement turned out not to be entirely senseless.

One does see the same stones in the foundations of a despiritualized humanism and of any type of socialism: endless materialism; freedom from religion and religious responsibility, which under communist regimes reach the stage of anti-religious dictatorship; concentration on social structures with a seemingly scientific approach. (This is typical of the Enlightenment in the Eighteenth Century and of Marxism).

Not by coincidence all of communism's meaningless pledges and oaths are about Man, with a capital M, and his earthly happiness. At first glance it seems an ugly parallel: common traits in the thinking and way of life of today's West and today's East? But such is the logic of materialistic development.

The interrelationship is such, too, that the current of materialism which is most to the left always ends up by being stronger, more attractive and victorious, because it is more consistent. Humanism without its Christian heritage cannot resist such competition. We watch this process in the past centuries and especially in the past decades, on a world scale as the situation becomes increasingly dramatic.

Liberalism was inevitably displaced by radicalism, radicalism had to surrender to socialism and socialism could never resist communism. The communist regime in the East could stand and grow due to the enthusiastic support from an enormous number of Western intellectuals who felt a kinship and refused to see communism's crimes. When they no longer could do so, they tried to justify them. In our Eastern countries, communism has suffered a complete ideological defeat; it is zero and less than zero. But Western intellectuals still look at it with interest and with empathy, and this is precisely what makes it so immensely difficult for the West to withstand the East.

Before the Turn

I am not examining here the case of a world war disaster and the changes which it would produce in society. As long as we wake up every morning under a peaceful sun, we have to lead an everyday life. There is a disaster, however, which has already been under way for quite some time. I am referring to the calamity of a despiritualized and irreligious humanistic consciousness.
To such consciousness, man is the touchstone in judging and evaluating everything on earth. Imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now experiencing the consequences of mistakes which had not been noticed at the beginning of the journey.

On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it. This is the real crisis. The split in the world is less terrible than the similarity of the disease plaguing its main sections.

If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism.

It would be retrogression to attach oneself today to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Social dogmatism leaves us completely helpless in front of the trials of our times.
Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction. We cannot avoid revising the fundamental definitions of human life and human society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man's life and society's activities have to be determined by material expansion in the first place? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our spiritual integrity?

If the world has not come to its end, it has approached a major turn in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will exact from us a spiritual upsurge, we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life where our physical nature will not be cursed as in the Middle Ages, but, even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon as in the Modern era.

This ascension will be similar to climbing onto the next anthropologic stage. No one on earth has any other way left but -- upward.

Notes
[1] The Old Square in Moscow (Staraya Ploshchad') is the place where the [headquarters] of the Central Committee of the CPSU are located; it is the real name of what in the West is conventionally referred to as "the Kremlin."
Source: Texts of Famous Speeches at Harvard
Re-formatted in HTML by The Augustine Club at Columbia University, 1997
augustine@columbia.edu

President Kennedy - Inaugural Address

2008-11-08T16:23:00.007-05:00

John F Kennedy - Inaugural Address

Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You

Inaugural Address by John F. Kennedy
January 20th 1961

Vice President Johnson, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Chief Justice, President Eisenhower, Vice President Nixon, President Truman, reverend clergy, fellow citizens, we observe today not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom - symbolizing an end, as well as a beginning - signifying renewal, as well as change.

For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three quarters ago. The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe - the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.

We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans - born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage - and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. This much we pledge - and more.

To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United, there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided, there is little we can do - for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.

To those new States whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom - and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.
To those peoples in the huts and villages across the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required - not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. To our sister republics south of our border, we offer a special pledge - to convert our good words into good deeds - in a new alliance for progress - to assist free men and free governments in casting off the chains of poverty. But this peaceful revolution of hope cannot become the prey of hostile powers.

Let all our neighbours know that we shall join with them to oppose aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas. And let every other power know that this Hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house. To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge of support - to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective - to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak - and to enlarge the area in which its writ may run.

Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction. We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed. But neither can two great and powerful groups of nations take comfort from our present course - both sides overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind's final war.

So let us begin anew - remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.

Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belabouring those problems which divide us. Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms - and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations.

Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce. Let both sides unite to heed in all corners of the earth the command of Isaiah - to "undo the heavy burdens -. and to let the oppressed go free."
And if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new endeavour, not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved. All this will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin. In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than in mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course. Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty.

The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe. Now the trumpet summons us again - not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are - but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation" - a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself. Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort?

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shank from this responsibility - I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavour will light our country and all who serve it -- and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.

My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.

Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you.

Obama's Words and Opinions

2008-11-01T21:50:00.001-04:00

Does it matter who is elected President? Here is an excellent article. The Obama political machine scolds John McCain for voting 97% of the time for issues that President Bush wanted passed. After reading this article I must agree that anyone who respects the life that God has given them would have voted 97% or more with President Bush's initiatives.

http://www.priestsforlife.org/elections/consequences.htm

The Born Alive Infant Protection Act was first introduced in the Illinois legislature in 2001 after nurse Jill Stanek revealed that babies born alive in Christ Hospital in botched abortion procedures were left to die, unattended by medical personnel. Read the following to learn Barak Obama's actions regarding the bill. Remember he is a Senator from Illinois.

http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3989&Itemid=48

Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King Jr., understood how the right to life is fundamental. “I and my deceased children are victims of abortion,” she has said. “The Roe v. Wade decision has adversely affected the lives of my entire family. I pray often for deliverance from the pain caused by my decision to abort my baby.”

This article includes quotes from Barak Obama such as: “Whenever we define a pre-viable fetus as a person that is protected by the Equal Protection Clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we’re really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a child, a 9-month old child that was delivered to term,” he said. “That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place.” I respectfully say to the Honorable Senator from Illinois, "So what's your point?"
http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/14928

Barak Obama is taking up the mantle from Ted Kennedy for Universal Health Care, unless of course you are a "pre-viable fetus" or perhaps disabled to the point of being totally incapacitated. We are so over whelmed by issues of the day. News comes at us quickly and then we forget since we have new problems with which to deal.

Do you recall Terri Schiavo? Her family wanted her to be maintained within a nursing home until she died a natural death. Her husband wanted her dead as after suffering a stroke, cardiac and respiratory arrest she became severely brain damaged and was unable to do anything but breath. Her feeding tube was removed and liquids withheld. She died 14 days later of starvation and dehydration.

This article contains Barak Obama's response to the Schiavo Bill when it came before the US Senate. In my humble opinion it hints at how unprepared he was as a junior Senator.
http://spectator.org/archives/2008/02/29/no-obama-care-for-terri-schiav

Think of the consequences before you vote.

hexakosioihexekontahex

2008-11-01T12:12:00.004-04:00

In the midst of the war he offered us peace. He came like a lover from out of the east. With the face of an angel and the heart of a beast, his intentions were six sixty six.

He walked up to the temple with gold in his hand. He bought off the priests and propositioned the land. And the world was his harlot and lay in the sand, while the band played six sixty six.

We served at his table and slept on the floor, but he starved us and beat us and nailed us to the door. Well, I'm ready to die, I can't take any more and I'm sick of his lies and his tricks.

He told us he loved us, that was a lie, there was blood in his pockets and death in his eyes. Well my number is up, and I'm ready to die, if the band will play six. If the band will play six sixty. If the band will play six sixty six.

Get out and vote.

2008-10-31T21:51:00.003-04:00

For more years than I can recall academia state the Bible is great literature, but come on! It's a work of myths and legends that only a fool would believe.

Like one of my favorite hymns says, "Farther along we'll know all about it, farther along we'll understand why."

There have been so many important and exciting archeological finds recently and with each discovery we come a little closer to discovering perhaps the Bible, The Torah, The Tenach is historically correct. Perhaps the judgement of academia is somewhat hasty.

By Carolynne Wheeler and Gil Rone in Jerusalem

The tiny shard was unearthed at the site where the Bible says the shepherd boy David killed the giant Goliath.

It is said to feature the oldest-ever Hebrew inscription, predating the famous Dead Sea Scrolls by at least 850 years.

Researchers have not yet been able to decipher the full text of its five lines but they have translated the words for "king", "judge", and "slave," suggesting it was written by a trained scribe in the king's court.

The lead archaeologist says the shard and the fortress-city in which it was uncovered are rare evidence of the biblical kingdom of David.

In Christian and Jewish tradition David became a great king of the Jews and founder of Jerusalem.

The experts said the latest finds suggested the area was home to a powerful civilisation rather than a small tribe of little importance.

"This is the revolutionary aspect in our excavations," Yosef Garfinkel, the lead archaeologist in the case and a professor at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, told the Daily Telegraph. "It is the first time in Israel that you have a fortified city from the kingdom of David. This has never been found before."

The pottery shard, with its five lines of inscription in a proto-Canaanite script that is a predecessor of Hebrew, was found during the excavation of the Elah fortress at Khirbet Qeiyafa, just south of Jerusalem.

The fortress is thought to have been a checkpoint guarding a main route between the Israelites and territory controlled by the Philistines. About 600 square metres (718 square yards) have been excavated, revealing the remains of a 10.5-metre-high (11.5 yards) gate and a city wall about 700 metres (765 yards) long.

The pottery shard has been dated to as early as 975 BC, based on burned olive pits found nearby that have been carbon-dated at Oxford University.

Professor Garfinkel said the discovery of the fortress, close to the large Philistine capital of Gath, suggests the Biblical tale of David and Goliath was in fact a metaphor for frequent battles between people of the Elah fortress and the neighbouring Philistines.

The text is written in ink on a pottery shard. It is made up of five lines of text in Proto-Canaanite characters separated by lines. The discovery, by archaeologists Prof. Yossi Garfinkel and Sa'ar Ganor of Hebrew University, is being hailed as one of the most important finds in Israel since the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Carbon-14 dates to King David. The writing predates the Dead Sea Scrolls by about 1,000 years.The writing on the shard seems to be a letter sent from one person to another and archaeologists have still not deciphered it completely.

Preliminary analysis shows that it contains the words "king" (melech), "judge" (shofet), and "eved" (slave), but the terms seem to be parts of names, as in "Achimelech" or "Evedel" (lit. "King's brother," "Servant of God").

Carbon-14 dating as well as chemical analysis of the pottery found at the site shows conclusively that it dates from between 1,000 and 975 B.C. – the time of King David's reign. David – who wrote the Psalms, unified the tribes of Israel and made Jerusalem the capital of the Israeli nation – is considered to be Israel's greatest King, whose reign ushered in the period in which the First Temple was built.

The writing therefore predates the Dead Sea Scrolls by about 1,000 years.

Suit against God thrown out over lack of address

2008-10-17T18:23:00.012-04:00

I thought this story was blog-worthy. It addresses a several of what I refer to as Marc's Natural Laws.

1. Ignorance is bliss and there are an overabundance of very happy people

2. It's a darn shame someone left the cage door open.

3. Darwin may have been right, as some men behave like apes while others behave as asses.

So I have gleaned this from the Associated Press. Formulate your own opinion.

By NATE JENKINS
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A judge has thrown out a Nebraska legislator's lawsuit against God, saying the Almighty wasn't properly served due to his unlisted home address. State Sen. Ernie Chambers filed the lawsuit last year seeking a permanent injunction against God.

He said God has made terroristic threats against the senator and his constituents in Omaha, inspired fear and caused "widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth's inhabitants."

Chambers has said he filed the lawsuit to make the point that everyone should have access to the courts regardless of whether they are rich or poor.

On Tuesday, however, Douglas County District Court Judge Marlon Polk ruled that under state law a plaintiff must have access to the defendant for a lawsuit to move forward.

"Given that this court finds that there can never be service effectuated on the named defendant this action will be dismissed with prejudice," Polk wrote.

Chambers, who graduated from law school but never took the bar exam, thinks he's found a hole in the judge's ruling.

"The court itself acknowledges the existence of God," Chambers said Wednesday.

"A consequence of that acknowledgment is a recognition of God's omniscience."
Therefore, Chambers said, "Since God knows everything, God has notice of this lawsuit."

Chambers has 30 days to decide whether to appeal. He said he hasn't decided yet.
Chambers, who has served a record 38 years in the Nebraska Legislature, is not returning next year because of term limits.

He skips morning prayers during the legislative session and often criticizes Christians.

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