My subscribed or following readers have mostly stopped reading. Occasionally I’ll see a spike in views because, most likely, someone new has come across this site and got curious. There are no likes, no comments. I don’t know if they’re enjoying this place or if they’re just confused.
That’s a pity, because I feel like I’m not doing any good. Except for “The Insanity Syndrome,” my attempts at fiction have been dismal. My posts on politics have made me more furious and inarticulate. My life events haunt me. I only wanted to help people, the survivors like myself. I wonder if any of it even made a dent in the despair and dysfunction faced every day by the survivors of childhood trauma.
They have to go on living in a country where they were always laughed at or fed bags of drugs that were expensive but never helped. Family members don’t want to be seen in public with them and the public hates and fears anything it doesn’t understand.
Meanwhile, politics, every bit as corrupt as the devil himself, tore this country apart and the destruction continues. The economy is so bad that people are starving.
The rich get richer, and they have no compassion.
War is happening right now in different places. More of it looms on the horizon.
These are dark times and if you let them break your spirit and steal your joy, they will.
What we need is a bit of pre-holiday cheer.
I can never forget the classic cartoon about how Christmas without gifts or food could not steal the spirit of the holidays in Dr. Seuss’s Whoville.
That’s how we all need to be.
This time of year many religions have celebrations, but Christmas is the one I observe, and usually it gave me great joy until my children passed away. Suddenly, I had only grief, emptiness and a broken heart.
But I knew that my friends had my back, and they were more than helpful. They showed me that a little sympathy and love can become huge. That love is medicine for the soul and the heart. And that perhaps before I faced my last day, I might find some peace.
It’s a lesson I needed and one I must never forget. Their words may have faded in my memory, but the love is always there. I return it with everything I have.
In Hebrews chapter 13, there appears God’s promise never to leave or forsake us. I have believed that, except for in my weakest moments, for a very long time. Yet miracles–which is all I can call them–kept me alive perhaps hundreds of times when I should have died.
We have, each of us, a usefulness to the Lord if we are willing to have even an ounce of faith. And faith is trusting, believing in something when everyone else tells you that you’re a fool, a magical dreamer.
Yet faith is sustaining and powerful. It keeps us going through things that make us cry, make us want to lie down and surrender to death. I know. I’ve been there.
Something in me, something deep, refused to give up, no matter how much I cried, how alone I felt, how sick I was.
I could feel it. I was never alone.
What I mean to say is this:
Right now a neighbor across the street and three houses down is putting up a mammoth light display. It’s going to be beautiful.
That’s the spirit we all need. We have to fight for it, pray for it and then have faith. Slowly, we will feel better. We get back what evil has worked so hard to strip from us.
When we can feel peace, joy and love, we are stronger than any enemy we can face. Once we have it back, we’re aware that we must guard it jealously. And we will.
Christmas lights before thanksgiving? I never used to see that. Now I think it’s a worthy, perhaps even crucial thing to do. The stores want your money. The decorations are up, the candy canes are stocked, the music playing on their PA. I say, enjoy it. Be thrifty, sure, but enjoy the atmosphere while you can. Then, keep it past the holidays as something that can be remembered later as you look back. You’ll know how you got your family through it all.
Weather forecasters are not sure about snow, but say it could be one of the coldest winters in decades. You need to be prepared. I recommend keeping tabs on YouTube channels Ryan Hall, Y’all and Max Velocity. Buy extra blankets and winter clothes. Stock up canned goods.
And let nothing break your happiness. Or your faith. Look at the lights. They’re prettier than any fireworks; and you can gaze at them for as long as you like.
Don’t forget to say a prayer of thanks. I assure you, it will be heard.
Every time I forget to keep it down and I speak in a normal voice, it hurts. My voice goes to a painful whisper.
I’m losing my battle.
Lately I sleep day and night. I’m exhausted. Depression weakens me further, takes my energy away and leaves me in helpless despair.
I don’t want you to pity me, I have no need for sympathy. I want you to look back on my archives (they go back to 2019) and learn from me. About mental illness. About heartbreak. Betrayal. Of my outrage at the state of my country (United States)and how we have alienated allies and trade partners by letting a president be a boob and a bully.
Looking back, you’ll see my brushes with real evil, something people like to refer to as “the supernatural,” which is really a part of our natural world that we can’t understand.
I don’t think we’re meant to understand everything. Sometimes, God wants us to trust him for help and guidance. Without God, this existence makes no sense, and I have yet to hear one argument by an atheist that was able to shake my faith, or, for that matter, make any sense.
I want you to read about mental illness from one who has endured it all his life. Learn where you can, what you can, and give me the benefit of the doubt. Don’t close the link too fast; there’s something here for everyone.
Humor, demonic encounters, being an Army “shitbird,” child abuse, great tragedy through loss, heartache at a life I should have lived, but never had a chance to, and more. I’ve done movie reviews, videogame reviews, talked about dumb criminals, and more.
I’d be honored to have you stop by and see me in my raw, unplanned posts that reveal my mental illnesses. Before I go, please take advantage of what I’ve been through and learn. If nothing else, at least see where I’ve been and the horror I’ve known. Please sign in and “like” (hit the little star at the bottom so I can know you were here. Share links. I’ll gain nothing but you may gain a crude understanding of what happens when children are beaten and raped by their own parents. See how I climbed out of the pit of racism, taught to me by my parents. How I had to choose to climb that ladder.
Most of all, see what smoking has done to me. I’ve killed myself.
My life wasn’t always a nightmare. There were good times when I know someone was praying for me, and God answered those prayers with miracles.
I’ve lived a hard and bitter life. I don’t want anyone to trace my steps. I don’t hate anyone enough to wish that on another.
And remember: hating someone poisons your soul, not theirs. Hate will drag you to Hell.
I’ve overreacted to the news lately. As I’ve said, it’s a trap, the figurative equivalent of quicksand. I said I hated someone. Left comments I regret. Ugly ones.
That’s the only way I can truly lose this fight.
The battle to save my body was over before I was aware that it was this bad.
The fight for my soul is another thing. I don’t plan on losing it.
I’m not losing the battle. No, I’m not going down there.
A Poem to Make You Think
“You lived next door to me for years; We shared our dreams, our joys and tears. A friend to me you were indeed, A friend who helped me when in need.
My faith in you was strong and sure; We had such trust as should endure, No spats between us ever rose; Our friends were like – and so, our foes.
What sadness, then my friend, to find, That after all, you weren’t so kind, The day my life on earth did end, I found you weren’t a faithful friend.
For all those years we spent on earth, You never talked of second birth. You never spoke of my lost soul, And of the Christ who’d make me whole!
I plead today from hell’s cruel fire, And tell you now my least desire – You cannot do a thing for me; No words today my bonds will free.
But do not err, my friend, again – Do all you can for souls of men. Plead with them now quite earnestly, Lest they be cast in hell with me!”
If you don’t believe there’s a devil, he’s already beaten you.
“Evil” is a word that gets slung around so much that it’s lost its meaning. We can see a war, watch boxes being sent home, see footage of atrocities, and call it “evil.”
And that’s true enough.
But it is unclear if enough people feel it.
We can hear of a mass shooting and call it “evil” and that’s true too.
We act like we’re outraged. But are we really?
We can tell a lie and watch as it spreads, causing a cascade of ever worse consequences and we know we’ve done an “evil” thing. But do we feel guilty?
And even if we may hate those who do evil and punish ourselves for doing an evil thing, evil goes on. It continues no matter what we say, do, or think.
Everything that comes from the president or out of Washington is best described by the word “evil.” I believe that good people aren’t fighting very much against the evil ones. And they are going to die.
It’s true that there will always be evil men and women whose cruelty leaves us stunned and then outraged. The entire world knows that rage; there is no possibility that any country regards him as a good man interested in peace and respect for human lives.
Say what you will about Russia being in bed with Trump or vice versa. There’s no way that when they’re finished with him that they will want him to remain prosperous, or even alive. Trump is being used and is clueless about it. His ego and tendency to delusion prevents it. Men far more evil than he are in the governments of both Russia and the United States, and Elon Musk is but one of them, and he only stands out because he was already a high-profile idiot (or a zombie, which is at least possible.)
I’m not here to tell you what to think, or to believe. I’m certainly not interested in telling you what to do; if you choose to follow evil, you’ll do so without any thought given to the well being of others.
“Evil” is not some concept made up by any religion to keep people in line. It’s not a mind control device to trigger shame. That’s what some people think (and have thought for thousands of years). It begs the question: “how has humanity managed to survive to the present?”
People who lack a conscience can still see the difference between right and wrong, but neither one seems to drive them. Even the worst of us can do good, and likewise the best of us have the capacity for great evil. Life is a constant fight, through hundreds of decisions a day, to do good while trying to survive. People without a conscience don’t care about those choices except when they will be harmful to themselves.
But you don’t have to be a sociopath to do evil things. You need temptation and you need the means. That’s it.
Another question is, why do people so quickly fall for lies, why does that lead to victims of liars on a larger scale, by which I mean following lies into the grip of mass delusion and cultism?
If we attempt to answer, we’ll be met immediately with variables threatening to stop us from learning anything at all.
Human behavior is a worthy study, but putting it under a microscope soon shows us how reckless our attempt is, and why most questions will be forever unanswered.
“the crazy son of a…”
CHAOS
Let us suppose you have a swing set in your yard or at a nearby park. The supports form triangles with the ground, and a transverse metal tube of sturdy metal joins those triangles at each apex. Suspended by chains, three swings hang from the horizontal section.
Let’s say that we have been watching those swings for any length of time. We’ve seen children on them as well as adults. Everyone loves a swing, right?
We have observed that, young or old, people will impart motion to the swing by moving their feet and arms and hands. They remain steady for a period of time, or so it seems. In reality, every swing backward is not the same. As gravity and inertia fight unseen, the smallest of motions will cause the swing to move differently. The person fails to compensate, eventually wobbling slightly sideways and at an angle that, if not compensated for, results in a collision with the triangular support or another person in the next swing. The swinger then drags their feet to a stop, or bails, which is not the best choice, but one made in panic.
Because of course we’ve all experienced hand and knee injuries in a similar fashion. They’re not usually serious, but when I was young, the pain of mother’s merthiolate was worse than any cut or scrape, and we learned to “rub some dirt on it and stay out of the house.” The memory of things like tincture of merthiolate guides us to avoid the wobbling effect, either by never using the swing again or by stopping faster the next time.
The cause of the wobble is understood, if only crudely, to even a small child. They learn control and balance. They do not know, however, the complexity of the entire problem, and why it happens again, no matter what.
On a cold and windy day, let us assume that we are pleased to be inside, yet we watch through the window as the wind moves the empty swings.
Here we see the swings move in ways they’re not meant to. They wobble, then they go higher with a straight line wind coming in perpendicular to the horizontal bar. If the wind is hitting the swing from the front or rear, then, why do we see that the swings move irregularly, recreating the out of control wobbling effect? Why do the swings also move sideways?
After the winds lash it all night, we awake to see a mystery. Now, one of the three swings has been repeatedly looped over the bar, and is tightly wound around it. You can’t even reach it to unwind it.
The two remaining swings have tangled up together, tightly entwined, and it appears as though they will be impossible to separate.
Now how did that happen?
Chaos mechanics apply to this situation. It tells us that nothing can hold the same pattern of behavior in the open, where winds are variable no matter where they’re coming from, and that differences in the chains, even in single links, can be moved differently. There’s no way to control the swing or to predict how they will behave in a wind storm.
The wind hits one of the angled bars and is diverted to hit the chains from the side or at an angle. But that may account for the two entwined swings, yet not the third, which must have moved to the side, yet ended up looping around the bar until there was no chain left hanging.
As contrary and confusing as this seems, it has been observed time after time, even in controlled experiments. One would think that by attempting to limit chaotic results, chaos can be prevented or lessened. That’s not the case.
In Egypt, there lies a giant obelisk, still in its unfinished form, never raised to point into the sky like others. This is because it cracked significantly during its carving from the stone around it.
These ancient spires had been successfully raised before, and a few remain standing today. Clearly, the ancient Egyptian masons knew what they were doing. So why does the one in the Aswan quarry lie broken?
If the stone cutters knew what they were doing, how did it crack?
The granite did crack, almost certainly because it was larger by one third the size of the next largest ones. In cutting out the bottom, maybe the weight itself caused it to crack. No one is really sure. Here again, we see Chaos at work. The obelisk is indeed huge. The cutters and masons did not anticipate that the extra weight could be too much to go unsupported.
Whenever we try to control anything, we are proceeding from the assumption that we know everything.
Well, we don’t. Giant cranes fall over because their counterweights are not enough, winds come along, or an object is struck. Loose earth may be misjudged, and it doesn’t support the heavy machine. Watching the TV series Engineering Disasters will demonstrate quickly how chaos mechanics work.
Now that we’ve seen the effects of chaos on a small scale, it’s time to examine the phenomenon with people.
People who voted for Trump should have known what he had planned, yet they were driven by fear of continuing inflation. Too many were also driven because of evil agendas. They cry out for jobs that “are all taken by Latinos.”
Racism we know about. But ignorance is something that can rarely be combated. Ignorance feeds itself through a person’s fears, hatred and anger. What was already chaotic becomes even worse, and therefore more dangerous, when ignorance, hate and fear enter the picture. You never know what evil will drive a person to, and you can guess, but never know — until it’s too late — what an unstable mind will come up with.
Mental healthcare has been a black spot on America since it became a nation. I know the story: I’ve been in hospital before. I’ve met people that I became friends with, and I feel sorry that those friendships didn’t last.
I’ve likewise met some of the most violent people I’ve ever known there, and had to subdue two of them because the nurses were being attacked and security wasn’t there fast enough. One woman I’ll never be able to forget was one of the three people I’ve met in my whole life that truly terrified me. She set off alarms with her mere presence. There was nothing in her of civility, reason, or sanity. There was only a pervasive sense of evil and danger. She was like a snake: treat her gently, she would strike; provoke her, and she would kill. The only one she didn’t seem to be a danger to was me, and I have no idea why.
I figure it this way: cats and dogs like me (obviously they are very perceptive). An owner walking a dog often gets frustrated when their dog pulls on the leash to come and greet me. Twice, escaped cats, 3 in all, have gotten lost and been frightened. They sat right under a bush by my window where I could hear them crying. And yes, cats really do cry. You can’t ignore it. Somehow they seemed to know I would help, and readily came to my gentle voice. One only lived next door, but was obviously too scared to go there. I didn’t even need to pick her up. I just said, “Come on, let’s get you home.” She followed me right to the neighbor’s door, which he answered and with a startled look said, “I didn’t even know she got out.”
It wasn’t negligence on his part. We all know cats can be curious and find ways to go exploring.
I guessed that perhaps the scary woman being evaluated on my ward for criminal trial competency sensed that part of me. But I was very happy when she left.
Mental hospitals are not places known for great patient care. And that has always been true, but if you think that egregious crimes done by staff and patients are only in the past, you’re mistaken. It may be less true now, but legal restrictions prevent the best care for patients regardless of staffing, because of time limits and more.
****
Way back when, the bodies of dead patients would be buried in a communal graveyard without anyone to mourn them. But they’re not alone. The campus of the hospital I went to after my third suicide attempt has two “known” cemeteries. One sits on a hill under a huge cross at the top. The graves are numbered. Nobody knew or cared about their names. These are graves covered with nobody to mourn the dead; nobody was there except men with shovels.
The other graveyard is not marked. One can cross it on foot and never know what lies beneath.
It is a mass grave, and no records exist to give any names or how many bodies lie beneath the grass. This is a shameful place, a place where tortured and battered and butchered patients were unceremoniously dumped.
Human behavior is, because of these reasons, a futile study, an unending quest for control and the ability to predict and anticipate what someone will do.
Chaos mechanics in physics is something most practitioners avoid. It’s a black hole they can’t account for. Almost always, there is an underlying order to things: the swings hang on chains and go to and fro, and that’s what they’re supposed to do. When erected, the angled stands and the crossbar are almost perfectly placed. But eventually forces are applied that are not possible to anticipate. The weight placed on the seat, the tubing of the steel legs settle or rise up, the chains become worn, weathering is ever present. It cannot stand but for just so long, then it becomes unreliable and a safety hazard. Or it just collapses.
Chaos rules the galaxy. It has its tentacles wrapped throughout the cosmos, frustrating science and even the simple act of observation. Recently we were told that our universe is expanding much faster than was previously thought to be. Who could have seen that coming?
It’s true with almost everything we think we know. Sometimes a paper is published and later found to be embarrassingly wrong. While crank scholars do, and have always existed, they’re not often the reason for us tripping up. Chaos just does its thing and leaves us with red faces.
And forget what I said about an open system. There’s no such thing. Human behavior can be observed but only on this planet and a limited distance into space. The place we inhabit is a closed system. If that’s true, then, why haven’t we conquered more of humanity’s problems than we have so far? We should have mastered ourselves by now.
We haven’t, and never will, because of chaos and evil.
Wherever chaos exists on Earth, we find evil. The devil moves best, and does his best work, when people are confused, frustrated, frightened and angry. He and his demons know how to get to you. They know your vices, what tempts you and especially what scares you most. When you are so engaged and compromised, you’re wide open to attack. And they don’t waste opportunities to exploit fear.
You may ask, if you like, how I know that true evil exists. Evil that can act in ways, through demonic beings, that constitute a real attack, sometimes physical, always spiritual. How do I know?
I don’t claim to know anything, but I’ve seen enough to have little doubt.
One afternoon, when Autumn turned the sky dark early, I was heading out to get pizza with my friend. I got to the car, though, and I didn’t have my keys. No fobs back then; you had two keys, one for the doors and ignition and a different key for the trunk. I didn’t have them. I went back into the house to get them. I knew where they were: on a small desk on the far side of the room. That put the bed to my left, beside the desk, and the door behind me, right next to the closet door, which faced toward the desk also.
Knowing where the keys were, I chose not to turn the light on. Midway across the room, I froze. I was not alone.
Something incredibly evil was there, somewhere in the dark, and I was too terrified to move. How long I stayed so still, waiting to be attacked, I never knew. Then my father said, “Yeah, I’m in here” and stepped out of the closet.
He was the worst man I have ever known. His abuse knew no limits, and until he spoke, all I knew was that I felt evil in there with me. I can’t describe what it feels like to be in the presence of great evil, but, deprived of my sight in the darkness, I didn’t know that it was him. Why he went to my closet was a weird story, but for now, the major point is that in those petrifying moments, I felt evil. Evil that was dangerous and life-threatening.
I had felt evil before. The records say the house in North Shore was finished and sold in 1963. While still very young, I had a room to myself. It was upstairs and faced Dutch Ship Road. I was put down for naps on long summer days and the room, two levels up from the one I was just talking about, was… Inhabited.
Back then, the afternoon sun was descending on the opposite side of the house, and cars with chrome everywhere would drive by, neighborhood fathers coming home from work. I saw the reflections from the sun hitting the chrome traverse my ceiling and I knew what that was.
But the upper walls had a shadow,d too. It moved around occasionally, not like the reflections, but faster, just a blur. It would dart across the room. I’d see it on the ceiling, crossing to an opposite wall, where it stayed well within my sight.
I’d often call, “Mommy!” and she’d come, but she never saw it.
Children often see things that adults cannot.
Perhaps some dark spirits choose not to reveal themselves to adults.
It is also possible that they lack the power to show themselves to adults, while children are well equipped to see the things and, more importantly, to feel them.
The thing wasn’t exactly a shadow, not a black one, anyway. It was gray, and wasn’t filled in. Just outlines. Three or four inches tall, two dimensional, and the lines crossed to form what looked like a tornado wearing a fireman’s helmet. Below the Line that made the bottom of the helmet there was a single eye. Just a dot, but a big one that left no doubt that it watched me.
I could feel the bloody thing. It hated me. I knew it. It focused a lot of intense hatred right at me.
At night, it was there, in an alcove made for a desk or a toy chest or shelves. At the time, I had a truck called “Johnny Express” which was a plastic tractor-trailer with a rubber driver. With my Popeye night light, I could look at it and swear that the driver was moving.
Well it wasn’t, and the eyes play dirty tricks on us all in the dark.
Now, the shadow wasn’t always there, but it always came back. If that happened at night, it could really scare me, and that’s what it wanted. Our fear gives demons great joy and power. They eat the energy of intense negative emotions. They feed on your fears. And at night, I didn’t need to see it to know that it was there. The hate it projected was enough to know.
After almost ten years in that room, I was moved downstairs. But first, something terrible happened.
One night I woke up from this thing intensifying its power, feeding off some nightmare. And the hate woke me up. My father would sometimes beat me with a belt if I scared him at night by screaming. But this night I didn’t care. I’d take the belt, but I wanted that thing out of my room and I couldn’t understand why my parents couldn’t see it or chase it away.
This time it was on the closet wall. Both parents came in quickly and I suppose my voice had some extra fear in it. They were taking me seriously.
They turned on the wall switch and like I always had, I pointed at it. They hadn’t seen it, but this night, they did.
“What is that,” they asked in succession. They saw it!
And then the most dreadful thing happened.
It leaped a short distance, very quickly, onto my mother’s chest. I couldn’t process it, but I saw it. She felt the thing on her and ran from the room as if trying to brush it off like lint. My father ran with her. As bad as that was to see, I wonder even now how she felt. What it must have been like. Other times I fight that memory because it’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen.
My mommy before that night, she joined my father in his many abuses afterwards. None of us, eight children total, were spared; every single one was raped or beaten in some way, week after week, year after year, and even after he was sent to prison I feared my father. And my mother took most of my resentment and anger; it was her betrayal that hurt me the most. The rug pull I never got over, so to speak.
Father Malachi Martin once said that some demons are generational, meaning that a demon, or demons, being (for now) immortal, could and did attach to families and their descendants. They are not omnipresent, but they can move so fast that you won’t know what’s going on. And they have a definite effect just by being present: see how an argument starts at the dinner table. See how people, friends, argue over the simplest things, petty issues. Don’t you think that maybe they are working to keep us divided? Their close proximity can stir anger, rage and jealousy where there should be none, and far worse: those deep suspicions you develop about your neighbor are insane, but you can’t know that; the emotional grip you’re held in renders you blind to reason.
People kill that way. And they cannot blame the devil. That doesn’t hold up in court. The fact is that we all make decisions in the heat of the moment, bad ones, and sometimes they are life-changing for the worst.
My life has been a bunch of train wrecks, so many that I barely had time to catch my breath between each one.
I’m not bitter anymore.
I’m old, worn out, more so with each day, and yet even though I hate the pain inside and out, I must continue to live as if God could call on me one of these days to help someone. He knows I’m willing, in a chaotic world, to hang on until I meet the person I can help, or until I die. That’s up to Him. I believe suicide is no option. It is an act which many regret before taking their last breath. Yet by then it is too late.
Evil, in the form of fallen angels, surrounds us. Remember in the midst of Yeshua’s ministry when a young man was exorcised, delivered from “legion,” or “many” demons? They begged not to be sent back where they belonged. A place described as very sandy, hot and dry. So Christ cast them into a herd of pigs, which of course the animals couldn’t take, and the lot of them charged off a cliff to their deaths. If swine can’t tolerate evil, then don’t believe me, believe that story instead.
The devil is real.
Evil is real.
You can see it all around you, and all you need to do is open your eyes. If you do, remember that you must open your heart, because with that sitting idle, evil can’t make as much of an impression on you. You’re protecting yourself. To feel love, sorrow and pity, to feel heartbreak, you must first open yourself up, revealing your heart to be a target. If you can be hurt, it’s a sign that you’re human.
At no time has this thing we call “humanity” ever been free of evil.
It has never known a day free of chaos.
And God won’t change that.
He is not a sadist, he loves us, but we were warned that it was going to be a long haul down a highway full of potholes. He knew what hardships would do us.
Because it is never in the calm, peaceful times that we learn. Our best learning tool is chaos, conflict and intense pain. Those teach us the lessons we need.
EPI
I’m thankful to God for my life. As bad as it was, I did have some good times, especially with my children.
You may not agree with the concept of chaos mechanics, or evil, but as long as you can freely love, forgive, and pass on what you know, you’ll be fine
I should never have written the essay on porn that was published yesterday. The research really hurt me, especially when it came to Linda Lovelace (Boreman). Her horrendous abuse was something that agonized me.
She’s gone now, but my empathy is still making me suffer.
With every click, we encourage more porn. We create more demand. And more women suffer.
Men suffer too in that world. They force or manipulate their wives to do things that no loving husband, no kind of a real man, would do. A curse by God falls on them because they mock His laws and ruin the sanctity of marriage. And yes, I do still believe that marriage is a sacred bond.
Imagine what would happen if, all of a sudden, nobody watched porn anymore. The sponsors would leave the sites, and those sites would shut down.
We have to be real about it, though, because we all know that the demand has never in history been this high. Addiction has never been so easily fed.
I don’t want you to be as down as I am, but that piece needed to be written. And iOlANDEMELODY’s video had to be included because she handled the subject with eloquent patience and wisdom.
I also don’t want you to suffer worry about the End of Days prophecies because, if you are saved, you have no worry. You just have to keep your faith. If someone you love isn’t saved, I know how you feel. The great rebellion is gearing up, and there’s been a lot of people leaving churches everywhere. I’m very sorry to tell you that there’s little you can do about what others believe. Try to talk to them, being gentle and subtle. Think of how Jesus must have spoken. But in the end, it’s up to them. You plant the seed. If it raises a shoot, that’s wonderful. If not, then you tried. And that is all you can do.
But the Antichrist? Don’t be sitting around, scared so much that you can think of nothing else. You still have a life to live. Be cheerful and take each day and give thanks for it, then get on with the things that need to be done.
Don’t forget to be kind to others, but be good to yourselves as well; spend time with what you like to do. Maybe you’re raising a garden. Or reading a cracking good novel printed on paper. Read some scripture. Give someone your company and attention; there’s magic in listening to others. It helps them to feel valued, and that in turn makes you feel good, too. Most people seem to me to be good at heart, and listening to someone who’s feeling lonely or poorly can change their life.
Eat well, get lots of good sleep. Restrict fluids before bedtime so you won’t wake up needing to stumble into the latrine. Especially if you’re a man, because you are bound to miss. Your wife won’t thank you for that!
Give your spouse attention. Have date nights. Go for rides or walks. Hold hands. Give them a smooch along the way.
I’ll never again have lips to kiss or a hand to hold. Trust me: it’s a hard life. Mostly, in my case, it’s for the best. All I’ve ever brought to a relationship is pain. I understood a long time ago that it was going to end like this. That should not be the way for you. So long as you love and don’t cause pain, you’re worthy.
Remember prayer. A relationship with the Lord is the most important part of your life. God already knows your sins. He just wants to know you’re sorry for them. He knows what you need. He just wants you to ask. Most of all, just talk. Like He’s right in front of you. Because He is.
And don’t be hard on yourselves. Haven’t you already done enough of that? Put it away and give thanks for all that you have. The good and the bad, the dark and the light, the hard lessons and the easy ones.
***
Before posting yesterday’s blog, I went to the bank. I needed to use the ATM machine. I got to the checkout at the store, and my card was missing. I frantically traced my steps, but it was gone. I called and canceled out the card, which caused a lot of trouble. I had left the card in the machine, and the manager found it on her way to her car. I’ve never done a thing like that before. The porn blog had triggered me, more than I have been in a long time. I was somewhere else, not in my body, dissociation taking me to I don’t know where. I talked to my doctor today and told her that I believe my diagnosis is wrong; as I’ve said before, this ain’t PTSD. It’s CPTSD. I grow older. Further in time from my trauma, I keep getting worse. She offered an anti-psychotic. Thanks, but no thanks. The healthcare system is a stacked deck of cards, leaving less hope for the sufferers of trauma with each passing year.
You’re probably not like me. I hope that is the case. But I’m sure I’m going to pray for you.
Thank you for letting me be a small part of your day. I just want to help. You have my love.
There are so many videos on YouTube about the end times that they’re impossible to miss.
Granted, some are nothing more than a bowl of lies.
Others make you think about it. But with the warning that the time of the return of the Son of Man is known only to God, and of that time and day, we are not to speculate, let’s dip into it just a little bit.
First, there’s this article from The Hill about how dangerous AI has become. It is quite a read. Everyone should read it; it’s scary, but unfortunately, it’s true.
Next, let’s hit the scripture. Daniel, Psalms, Isaiah, the Gospels, and the Book of Revelation to John all say what will happen just before, then during, the return of Christ.
I’m not going to itemize chapter and verse.
As I’ve often written, all of the ingredients are in place. The four horsemen may be currently releasing one at a time… or all at once.
The first horseman has a nature always in debate. He is wearing a crown, and he goes forth conquering and to conquer. Some have said he is the Antichrist, others that he beats whole countries into submission with lies and other types of deception. See where deepfakes now become part of that possible identity? I don’t believe that this is the Antichrist, but it is possible. He will be the embodiment of evil, and Satan, as Jesus said, is the father of all lies. The first horse is white, the rider carrying a bow. Do not confuse this with the white horse that will be ridden by the returning Christ.
It’s okay to guess, but remember that there are three more with him.
The second horse is red. He that rides this horse carries a battle sword. He goes forth after the second seal is broken by the Lamb (Jesus). This rider looks battle-hardened and tough. He will bring war and make already hostile internal conflicts in certain countries worse, bringing the Earth to disaster and death.
The third horseman rides a black horse. He is the only one John hears receiving orders. Wheat and barley measured by a scale the rider carries, a quart, and 3 quarts each, respectively, for a day’s pay. He is also cautioned by the voice not to harm the oil and the wine. The oil is not petroleum. This would be an oil associated with food or food preparation; remember that this rider appears wan and starving, very thin. This oil could be olive oil because grapes and olive trees can adapt to growth in places they did not before. Global warming has already caused vineyards to stop producing, and vines are being planted in places they wouldn’t have survived before. The idea that wine and oil are not to be touched by the bringer of global famine seems trivial until you consider that there will be widespread unemployment and a failure of wages to keep up with the cost of living. These things are already happening, and they will only get worse. The tipping point for global warming has been passed, and anyone who tells you otherwise is badly deluded. We haven’t seen anything yet.
Oil could also symbolize water, strangely enough. At the rate we’re going, potable water will be scarce. Heat will drain reservoirs, and rain will become more toxic. Microplastics have been detected in the drinking water of every state tested; they’re found in blood samples and in organs, including the brain. Not only that, but lead, arsenic, and other “forever chemicals” are also present. There are currently no filters capable of rendering pure water.
The fourth horseman is the most terrifying of all. Covid was bad enough; this rider, on a pale horse, has a name: Death. Along with him, trailing behind is Hades. Not the Greek god, but literally, “the Pit.” A place only unbelievers can go.
Most scholars believe that the true Christians will not be here when Death arrives, that a “rapture” will occur when the faithful will be taken up to Heaven. Pentecostals believe this because they posit that the Holy Spirit can’t be present when these calamities begin. I tend to agree, but I’m unwilling to bet my soul on it. I want you to be ready now because even tomorrow isn’t guaranteed to any of us. Besides, would you really want to see these things happen, sure that you can keep sinning and repent at the last minute? I pity anyone who thinks that’s possible. It isn’t.
The rider named Death has orders to kill by war, pestilence and wild animals desperate to eat, driven mad or bold by heat, starvation, and lack of water. Some would be driven more savage by the spread of rabies.
Pestilence means disease and a proliferation of invasive predator insects thriving in elevated heat. Forget insecticides and fungicides; they can’t stop what’s coming.
Some diseases, rare in the West, like ebola, will easily live in the higher temperatures we’re about to reach. Don’t be tempted: no source that I consider reliable can tell us when the temperatures reach the breaking point. First, I read an article that says global warming is accelerating and much faster than anticipated. Then I come across an article that says it’s slower than they thought. The layperson doesn’t know what to believe. I have a rule about this. Believe that terrible things are happening right now, and far worse is yet to come. Forget choosing which ones are right; live each day as if it is your last. Walk with God, pray often, resist temptation, and stay alert. Urge others to take the opportunity to believe in Christ and turn away from sin because time really could be running out. I believe it is. I urge you not to bet your soul on having time enough to sin now and turn later to Christ.
When the events of the end times continue after the first four seals are broken, people will know what’s happening. The whole world will be shaken, like one big earthquake everywhere at the same time. By then, they should already know, but they’re going to be stubborn. They will be full of hate at God. They’ll try to escape falling buildings to caves and beg rocks to fall on them because the terrible judgment of God is coming. But they won’t talk to God and beg forgiveness. They’ll talk to rocks. How pitiful those souls are. God, however, will not have any pity for them. They had their chance and more and turned away from God. That’s earning them eternal punishment. Eternity in agony.
I’m telling you, God doesn’t want that for you. There’s time. You can still be saved by the sacrifice that has already been made for your salvation. You’ll be free of sin and gain peace in your heart and mind that you have never known. The ransom has already been paid.
Please don’t waste that.
I’m not a preacher. I’m uneducated. I’m poor. I make no money from ads you may see here. I don’t seek sponsors, and I don’t care about money. I’m simply putting out the distress signal that trouble is coming, and I don’t want you to miss the call to repent. You must forgive what can’t be forgotten. You must let go of hate, anger, and bitterness. Stop blaming others for your every tribulation. Let go of lust and the sins of the flesh. None of these things have ever truly benefited you. They just drag you down deeper into darkness, and I’ve seen that darkness. I never want to see it again. And you shouldn’t either.
This is the time. Repent, because you may never get another chance.
May you be moved by the Holy Spirit, and may Jesus Christ come into your heart. I’m praying for you.
Wasn’t that lovely?
My friend, my brother, my sister,
I know you’re hurting. I have, too. I still do.
I know you are lonely. I used to be.
I know you feel like this is all so pointless. Hopeless. I’ve been there.
I know you’ve known great loss. So have I. I feel your grief.
I know you feel lost. You need a direction. I’ve spent most of my life lost in the dark.
I know that you are tired. Tired of everything. I have carried that burden. This is your time to find rest and hope, a new direction, a way to escape bitterness and anger and hatred. And this is your time to be renewed, to let go of your burdens and emotional things that drag you down. Here are the lyrics to the beautiful song I’ve posted above. I’ve known people who cried before they could get through these words. But that’s not because they’re sad. It’s a touching call to you from Jesus. He wants to be in your life. He doesn’t like seeing you hurting and trying to get through everything by yourself when He can help if you just answer this call.
Lyrics:
Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling Calling for you and for me See on the portals He’s waiting and watching Watching for you and for me
Come home, come home Ye who are weary come home Earnestly, tenderly Jesus is calling Calling, “O sinner come home”
O for the wonderful love He has promised Promised for you and for me Though we have sinned He has mercy and pardon Pardon for you and for me
Come home, come home Ye who are weary come home Earnestly, tenderly Jesus is calling Calling, “O sinner come home”
Come home, come home (come home) Ye who are weary come home Earnestly, tenderly Jesus is calling Calling, “O sinner come home”
I was recently faced with the statement that some past events that had occurred had been because of fate. In fairness, I can’t remember what was said or by who, or even what it was about.
I don’t always file bullshit away for future use; it gets put into the shredder that an old man’s mind regretfully keeps in “standby” mode.
The main idea I tried to get across to the person was that I no longer have such a belief. It’s bullshit and a protective thing we use on ourselves to soften the bruises to our egos after a failure.
Maybe there was a time. I don’t want to think that I did, but if I once believed in fate, then I didn’t understand what free will is.
Fate is a concept. Oh, it works well in assuaging guilt, calming the tears of a broken heart, or soothing the mind after finding out that the one person you’re really into doesn’t like you at all, but rather holds you in contempt. That’s the hurt before getting far enough to even get a broken heart. It’s called rejection and scorn.
But let’s say for a moment that maybe, if not fate, there are some pretty cool or weird things that happen, which we utterly fail to understand. Because of course there are. Random, whether we think so or not.
And if you believe in God, then tell me how fate is decided by him. Does that mean that he is always holding you by strings like a marionette, reading from a script that he laboriously wrote before time existed?
The evidence that God is real is all about; one has only to be willing to see. Hawking and others devoted their lives to proving that the Big Bang was random and spontaneous, but they failed, all of them. Einstein himself wasn’t exactly a believer but did write in a letter, “There is a God, but he is never listening.”
Bitter experience in his early years and his subsequent exposure to science prompted him to call scripture many things such as a book of lies used to condition children and a bundle of myths from various cultures in ancient times.
He did, however, believe that the universe had an order and a beauty that seems to be a description of a Creator God’s work. The fact is he changed throughout his life and deeply regretted writing the letter to Roosevelt that started the Manhattan Project. He said if he had known what would happen, he would have been a watchmaker.
Here we see a burning question: was the atomic bomb an inevitable creation? A matter of fate?
If one believes in the multiverse, then at least one Earth, parallel to us in time, never had the H-bomb. It’s possible that World War Two never happened.
The concept of different timelines or parallel worlds is fringe science at best. If there is no way to prove a theory, the concept remains just that. However, in this world, what if Hitler never took power, and the Empire of Japan never decided that war was necessary to get what they needed? What if it had favored trade instead of a military expansionist economy?
The possibilities are infinite.
World War Two did not happen because of fate, no more than any other war in world history. It happened because men chose things that led to it. Their actions and verbal abuse, and speeches of racial supremacy did it.
When the American Army found its first concentration camp, high command had been hearing through military intelligence what amounted to rumors, but ultimately, intelligence had confirmed that something terrible had been going on. It did not help that the troops who found the camp had not been told. They were in shock at the sight of men emaciated and pale, all but dead, some dehydrated to the point where their sobs terminated in their throats. And that first camp was a work camp, which wasn’t even an extermination center where Zyklon B, which superseded the original Zyklon, was used to kill Jewish people, political dissidents, Christians, homosexuals, people with disabilities, especially mental disorders, and others. Jews bore the brunt of Nazi hatred, though no one can explain why it went that far. Heinrich Himmler was suspected of being more cruel and far more sinister than the others who decided that the use of the pesticide was a humane way for a “civilized” nation to kill its enemies. The war crimes trials at Nuremberg proved otherwise. Antisemitism wasn’t new; the Nazis just industrialized their hatred. It was not humane (as if war crimes ever can be). It was an agonizing death.
These camps were to be visited at Eisenhower’s orders, later, by command officers. In one instance, General George Patton refused to enter a shack with dead bodies stacked in it. General Omar Bradley communicated, “Georgie wouldn’t go in. He said he’d throw up.” That’s a quote from memory and not exact, but I can’t stomach researching it right now.
George Patton was a true-blue, cocky, tough son of a bitch. I’m not so sure that the allies could have ended the war without significantly more casualties without him. He knew that the German people, military and civilian, would be massacred by the Soviets who had suffered horribly in Leningrad and Stalingrad and everywhere between those cities and the border. The Soviet Army shelled Berlin mercilessly before moving in, but when they did, anyone they found in house-to-house searches was shot, the women raped, random torture was used, and Patton knew that all of it would happen. He hated it. Protested the splitting of Berlin. Out of this, a myth was formed: Patton wanted to invade the Soviet Union. In fact, he knew better and was a keen tactician and historian. What he wanted was to get them back across the border. To put them in their place. George never liked the Soviets and he bristled at never getting the chance to fight them.
The result was that the war in Europe ended. The Soviets declared war on Japan, but before they had the chance to do much, the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war.
Einstein lived ten years past those bombings. He lived to see the Soviets use the same dreadful weapon in tests. Thus, we have his final words about regret at not being a watchmaker.
There is nothing whatsoever that I’ve written in this thought experiment that lends any credibility to the concept of fate. Himmler was a sadistic man with power, and he did what all sadistic men with power do. All his choices speak to that.
While I believe God is real, I see from history that he simply doesn’t control the affairs of humans. All of humanity has the gift of free will. Only one man was ever born for a set purpose. Yet, he still could have easily saved himself from the cross. He chose not to.
When each of us wakes from sleep, we don’t really consider how many choices immediately present themselves. For the needy, the poor, imprisoned, and the infirm, there are fewer possibilities than other more fortunate people have, but, yes, there are still choices. We choose with our free will.
But wait! There are so many things that can influence that will. You need to shower and go to work. That’s routine, right? Not so fast. Maybe you don’t feel well. You’re tired, sore, and you have a headache. Is that an excuse not to go to work?
Not sure? Well, wait until you step out of the shower. More tired, lightheaded, and no appetite. Little bit of nausea downstairs, too. You’re awake fully now, and your body is sending signals to your brain: don’t make us go.
What’s your choice? Call in sick, or go to work?
This decision is unique to every person and their jobs, their supervisors, their economic situations, their modes of transportation, and more. What they choose has nothing to do with fate.
Some people believe, as do I, that opportunities and chance encounters are the presentations of a higher power. In other words, God does not control your life. There is no fate. But consider how and when you met your spouse. Which types of things had to happen leading up to your crossing paths with each other? Now you see the complexities of life. You meet, but do you ask that person for a date, or do you let them go out of your life, most likely forever? Is that the right one to be with? Are you the right one to be with them?
A chance encounter can lead to happiness or misery. Did God drop a gift in your path for you to choose to take or refuse? Think of what that person makes you feel. How can you know even then?
The answer is simple: if, as many believe, there is true evil out there, and I promise you that there is, then is there not also good? God and Satan. The former wants what’s best for you, but ultimately, you’re the one who has to choose, as the latter puts tempting but destructive people and things in your path.
God gave us free will. He didn’t want to create just another animal. Even the earliest humans chose, developed, lived in peace, or became violent as a matter of choice.
This freedom is extended to our beliefs in him. He didn’t want us to automatically love him without deciding to. If that were so, we would be nothing more to him than what a child keeps trapped in a bird cage. The parakeet may appreciate getting food, but it can’t tell the child that it loves him. In fact, it has never known freedom, but at the first opportunity, it will fly away. The old saying applies: if you love it, let it go. If it comes back, then you can probably keep it. If it doesn’t, it never belonged with you at all. We can’t force love. We know if a dog loves us because they express it. But if that dog shows no affection, you have to let it go to someone it will be happier with. That’s what I think God’s dynamic with us is.
We are free to love. Free to choose. With that said, so is everyone else. So what they do isn’t up to you. Bad or good, they affect us. Sometimes, it’s not his will for us to suffer. Prayer goes a long way, and he does give us miracles, but pain can teach us things we never would have known. He sees that. He may know how we will be treated and what we will do with what pain teaches us. But that doesn’t mean that he controls it.
“Fate” is a false concept that we use to give up, take a pass, or deny our part in something negative. And all we really have is our faith and each other. That is why love and kindness are so important.
“A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”- Jesus Christ
King Kong didn’t have to climb up the Empire State Building with a woman he could never mate with. He chose that irrational action. And then he was killed for it. But he was an animal. We are not, and we shouldn’t act like one.
I know that life can be brutal. It’s all here in my archives, and it’s stuck in my head. I know the feeling of pain in mind, spirit, and body. I’ve been through so much.
I often wonder how one man could take it all and yet keep living. I’ve been dead, went to a deep, dark place with eternity all around me. Alone. Just suspended in darkness that could not be defined nor described except to say that the pitch-black void had no boundaries and above, below, front and back, and side to side,there was nothing. I couldn’t move, but I felt that I would be able to after time. Without seeing or hearing, there came an awareness that below me, to my right rear, a curtain moved as a breeze I couldn’t feel came from the other side of it. Foul, evil things were beckoning me to go and join them.
It was not a place of comfort. I believe Hell could be entered through that curtain.
I did flat-line, but for how long, I can’t say. Time meant very little there in the dark place. All I can say for sure is, I don’t want to go back.
Before that, I had littered the east coast with my blood and a few small body parts.
You name it, and there’s a chance I’ve been through it. It’s not anything to brag about or to be proud of. And I only survived by the grace of God because nothing else explains my being here except the word “miracle.”
My soul, my body, my mind. Sick, through and through. And I am never free from my anguish, pain, regrets, or broken heart.
And still I go back to wondering, Why am I still alive?
Anyone else would have given up the ghost. It’s not that I’m tough. Not that I am strong. Not even that I was lucky.
Because luck wouldn’t be so cruel. You have to figure, after a while, luck would let you off the hook.
Or maybe that God would.
Oh, he’s up there, alright. And he’s forgotten about me. I’m sure of it.
I used to think, until recently, that God had saved me, kept me alive, and had done so for a reason. Maybe so that I could, by sharing my life, help someone in a crisis to say, “If he kept going, then it can be done. I’ll do it better than him.”
And I wish that could be the case. The thing is, though, I wouldn’t know if I had. That’s another way that life can be brutal. So many of us have asked, “Really, Father, is there no more to life than this? If not, then it’s a joke.”
We really shouldn’t, but yes, at one point or another, we do ask. Fortunately, he’s patient with our lapses of faith and our stubbornness that makes us try to strike out on our own. We always fail when we’re on our own. Even when we don’t think we’re failing, he’s ready to catch us if we return to faith in him.
Still, how could he have forgotten me? I’ve been ready for a long time. But I’m alone all the same, and the demons I couldn’t outrun taunt me, taking turns at making sure that I can find no rest, no peace. I knew when my son died, following his sister to an early grave, that my foreseen death, alone and with no one to hold my hand or kiss my cheek, would come true. The only one there will be Christ. He will lead me to a place to await the day when God sentences me.
I just hope that he remembers on that day that days like this with news like this truly affect me. I hope he remembers that an asshole like me cares about the women and children of the world and hates that evil takes their lives so readily. And I hope that he remembers that the killers like Vladimir Putin and Netanyahu never believed in him at all and that all sinners have been warned that they would be judged equally. A one-time murderer will still suffer just as Hitler is, although the degree of suffering each get might be different. But eternity in suffering is still suffering to infinity, so why seek it so intensely?
For the wages of sin is death. Hmm, I don’t know what to make of that. Does it matter? I think not. Because death and hell may be different, but without God, who needs it? I don’t hate myself enough to think about choosing such a thing.
I’m an asshole. That’s the truth. I don’t let myself off the hook because of PTSD and other conditions; I take complete responsibility for my own life, and refuse to claim that “PTSD” or “the devil” made me do anything. I did those things. It is not about me so much as the people I’ve wronged and hurt. It doesn’t matter if I acted out of conditioned fear, triggered by a horrible memory. I’ve pushed people away and knew that it would hurt. I acted anyway. I regret doing so.
The most important things in all our lives are love and how we treat each other.
We sure don’t act like it, do we? I don’t. I know better, but I constantly fail. The post I wrote about pro wrestling is full of expletives and acidic rage. I stand by what I wrote. Former wrestler Kevin Nash has taken to the defense of Vince McMahon, and that shows me what kind of man he is. I never liked him anyway, but I’m not supposed to judge him. How, though, can I avoid it? Vince and others like him have ruined lives. He will reap the whirlwind without my help, but why am I so outraged at them? God will repay. Vengeance belongs to him. Right?
Except that, yes, while we live, we have a duty to stand up for the hurt, the injured, and the wronged.
If we are neutral, uncaring about the pain others go through, then we are as evil as those who hurt people. I can’t be that kind of man. I refuse to be that kind of man.
I hate what predators do. Having been a victim too many times, I can feel their victim’s pain. I can almost hear them when they weep. And they all weep. Their pain is forever. And if good people do nothing, they get covered up in the same sulfurous stink of evil as those who do evil.
I’m sorry that I’ve lived my life being hurt and seeing others hurt. This race we call “civilized” is capable of incredible horrors.
But I’ve seen beauty too. I’ve known love, and I still get to feel it, even when I’m alone. I still watch the sunrise and sunset, hear music, see people being kind. That makes me more sad than happy; kindness is such an amazing thing, awesome in its power to do everything from making someone smile to saving lives. Yet cruelty is so often chosen over it, and that is plain to see. It’s everywhere. Vladimir Putin grows more evil and more powerful with each passing day. A terrible food shortage already exists, and it will get worse. Governments of the world refuse to help. They’ll send weapons and ordnance before they’ll send food.
I’m sorry that I’ve had to see that as a fact of life, a policy of death before life. Don’t you wonder if God expects better? Does anyone? I don’t see people trying to take him into account, yet he asks so little: be good to those who use you. Pray for your enemies with your heart. Do things to help others. Give to those who have nothing and do it quietly without expecting anything in return. Be humble and listen because you never know when God might just whisper in your ear. If you’re busy yelling, you’ll never hear him.
I’m so tired. I’m always so tired. And yet here I am, still alone, still in pain, inside and out. I have nothing to offer anymore. I’m sure that I never did. Stormy romantic relationships got to me so much that without choosing celibacy, i chose to stop everything. I was meant to be alone.
We suffer while we’re here. Through that, we learn. What we learn, the most dreadful of lessons, we are obligated to pass on to others. We do this through music, like composing a sad violin concerto, writing a book or blog, podcasting, word of mouth, a song that tells a story, a poem, or by just being nice to others, which teaches by living an example, an ideal, which, in the end, has usually been learned from pain. Long, drawn-out, and intense pain.
What matters most? Love. Love, and how we treat each other.
I am tired, but I’m not going to curl up and surrender. I would never treat another person as I have in the past; haven’t I felt the pain that the cruel so easily inflict?
Whatever I say here, however full of anger and outrage at what I see, I won’t mistreat another. Venting and social commentary end on this site. I can’t allow myself to be a villain. I haven’t lived through so much to let that happen. I am a sinner. But I trust God to know what’s in my heart.
I also trust him not to forget me for too much longer. Sometimes, though we fight on, folks do get a bit tired, you know?
August of this year marked the 50th anniversary of the release of the film Jesus Christ Superstar.
It is an historic event, celebrating a masterpiece of art and culture from a time so long ago that you may not have been born yet. That’s too bad, because this is a musical film every bit worth seeing, but also a snapshot of popular culture and music from a time when people felt lost and teens were searching for their identity amid very troubled times.
Shot on location in 1972, released in August of 1973, the first thing to know is, it stirred up a lot of controversy.
That is no understatement, either. Protests happened outside of cinemas, then the entire Christian community became divided. When given a screening of it by director Norman Jewison, Pope Paul VI praised it. He found it inspiring and said that it “would bring (a lot of) people to Christianity.”
The pope also felt stirred by Mary Magdalena’s song “I don’t know how to love him” and felt that it was inspired.
There was, however, the age-old controversy of the Romans versus the Jews as to “who killed Christ”, and some of course claimed that it had an antisemitic theme.
It did not, but you would first need to understand what was already happening at the time of Christ. The movie chronicles the final week of the life of Jesus, what we Christians call “the Passion Week” which begins on Palm Sunday.
Contrary to belief, the Romans never flogged a condemned prisoner before saddling him with a cross. Known as the “half-death”, Rome had a set of rules to be followed to the letter regarding flogging and execution. Pilate had no intention of giving the Jews what they wanted. He hated his post and dreamed of a promotion, but Tiberius was slowly going mad and threatened to punish the prefect if he stirred up the Jewish people again, which he had, heretofore, taken great joy in doing. Giving in to Caiaphas was inevitable. He had no love or sympathy for Jesus, but there is reason to believe that the auxiliary soldiers (barbarians) consisted of semitic men who hated the Jews and wielded the lash with nothing held back, causing Pilate to recoil on seeing Jesus afterward. No victim of such a beating was ever supposed to be crucified; they would not last long, they wouldn’t be able to carry their cross, and the purpose of public execution to deter crime was rendered useless.
Also, the “39 lashes” was a Jewish custom and carried out not with a flagellum but with rods. Then, the act of washing his hands while pronouncing the death sentence, that, too, was a Jewish custom. He was throwing it in their face in a spiteful act.
One can argue these and many other details ad nauseum, but the act of the Sacrifice is always there, no matter what. It was meant to happen and no one race or group was responsible.
There’s really nothing here to fight over. Except one glaring detail…
The movie begins very curiously. A camera in some ruins pans, then shows a red, blue and silver bus raising dust as it approaches. When it stops a bunch of hippie actors begin unloading props to put on a project, and we know it’s a movie. The cross lashed to the bus roof is not a surprise; we know what this movie will be. As the Overture plays, Ted Neely (Jesus), wearing hippie threads, walks past the now grounded cross and looks down at it, a detail I missed for 20 years. I did see the movie on the big screen, which is still the best way, but details escape me.
As everyone dons costumes and makeup, the music intensifies until we see Neely changed into his Jesus costume and Judas (the one and only Carl Anderson) walks away, symbolic of his isolation from the other Apostles.
Since Anderson played Judas and was black, another protest sprang up. But the production could never have been done without him. His voice, the notes he could hit, his expressions, all made him the best man for the job.
In the heat of the deserts of the Holy Land, the crew and actors required 5 quarts of water or more a day. Temperatures reached 120°F, causing heat exhaustion, dehydration and they were all overdressed. Metal helmets, bloused military boots, heavy robes, even tunics…this production was brutal.
But everyone stuck it out. Friends were made. Their was love, a joy among them. That’s pretty special. Ted Neely even met his future wife, Leeyan Granger, on set, and their first encounter is sweet and romantic. She literally took his breath away.
The cast became so close that during the shooting of the Crucifixion, the actors watching cried.
The magnum opus is “Gethsemane”, and Ted nailed it in a single take. In the song “Superstar” we see a renewed, resurrected Jesus is clothed in pure white, while Judas asks him “Did you mean to die like that, was that a mistake or did you know your messy death would be a record breaker?”
In the Bible, the priests of the temple were greatly disturbed by the buzz created by Jesus of Nazareth. Stories of miracles worried them enough, but his words to the crowds filtered back to Jerusalem and caused High Priest Caiaphas to picture a revolt by the people against temple authority. By Palm Sunday when Jesus arrived in Jerusalem, he was already a marked man. This is shown in the movie. And in the Trial Before Pilate, the Roman prefectus tries to help Jesus escape death, but Jesus does not defend himself. It turned into a chess match (in the Bible) between Pilate and Caiaphas, one in which Pilate made mistakes with every move, underestimating the high priest and his frenzied crowd.
Following the Crucifixion, the actors board the bus to leave. Some are happy, some somber, especially Mary (Yvonne Eliman). Carl Anderson is the last to board and we see what he keeps looking at: the cross, now alone and bare, the sun setting behind it. Ted Neely doesn’t get on the bus. Jewison didn’t believe in the resurrection and it hadn’t been in the original play anyway. But some say that, if you look closely, in the foreground of the cross, a shepherd with his sheep just happened to walk across the scene. They take it as symbolic of Christ leading his sheep (believers) even after his earthly life had ended.
After seeing the movie, I was forever a fan. The double vinyl LP soundtrack became my favorite record of all time. It always will be. I hope you give it a listen or watch the movie. A Universal Pictures release, it still bears a G rating. You can buy a digital copy on Amazon or find the DVD.
The Overture
“Superstar” from the soundtrack album
The very emotional final number, the instrumental “John 19:41” bookend to the Overture.
The masterpiece that could not have been made without every piece falling into place exactly as it did. Jesus Christ Superstar, from 1973.
In any layperson’s study of mental illness, there is always a search for the timeless question, “Who am I?” and this search never ends. It has no true solution, no answer. We never know, because no one does. And if nobody else knows who they are, then the search is in vain. With a mental illness, though, it is a quest worthy of Don Quixote and not an exercise in futility: “I need to know”.
Enter Dissociative identity disorder, DID. This is like multiple personality disorders which, of course, exist more in novels and bad movies, usually in pop culture fodder of the 1970s than in the medical sense.
While fools like Doctor Phil, who actually gave up his license to practice medicine and probably is no more qualified than Tom Cruise to tell anyone what’s best for them (neither man is qualified to wield the power they’re using), and the man says he’s not convinced that personalities can exist together in a single patient, I cannot and will never be positive about human behavior or mental illnesses.
I’ve dated women and seen this up close, and it’s sad and frustrating and really quite chilling to see distinct and telling traits each replacing others right in front of you. One of them passed away 6 years after I last saw her and I have no idea how. I know enough that she was progressively worse and that she probably suffered more than she should have. And life is not fair to anyone, but it goes into overdrive when a person has a pronounced mental illness.
What I think is that we don’t know enough about the subject of multiple personality or its bastard cousin, dissociative identity disorders to speak in absolutes, and the gods of the American psychiatric disorder community can’t tell you any different. Look at the World Health Organization and the American mental health establishment and you can start to see how close-minded we really are. This results in discrimination and denial of desperately needed healthcare.
And whether anyone wants to believe it or not, people with mental illnesses can and do lead productive and meaningful lives. They do it every day, and I defy anyone to pick them out of any workforce. Yes, I am counting schizophrenia, which the uneducated public thinks very wrongfully about. In fact, some of the finest human beings I’ve ever known were diagnosed with something others ostracized them for.
And no, schizophrenia is not multiple personality disorder. Not even close.
When it comes to dissociative identity disorder, America treats it like it’s a new concept, when it is hardly so. Problem is, no doctors here know or are closed to it and couldn’t diagnose it if they tried. Which they don’t.
I’ve had to open my mind to get this far. I researched symptoms, behavioral problems, my own diagnosis, and there were questions I just couldn’t answer until I found articles, recent ones, that listed CPTSD, and in a descending menu included other disorders and one was DID. I don’t know if it is exclusive to CPTSD, and I rather doubt it, but it it does seem to occur coincidental with it.
Others may see it in you far before you discover that you can’t understand certain things about yourself. Maybe even before you notice symptoms.
How many people get cancer and never know it until it’s too late? We may think it can’t happen that way, but it does. With DID, same thing, except eventually someone close to you will say something. Unless of course you’ve isolated or been shunned. A change in accent, regional or foreign, jumps out at people who know you. But, your personality, your traits, your moral views never change, or don’t at first. Some people will avoid you, some will laugh at you, and still others may speak up.
I’ve spoken in several different ways, even changing vocabulary. Or usage. A Christian leader will tell you that you need an exorcism, a conservative psychiatric doctor will tell you to turn off your television, and there’s really no help for you. No sympathy, and no acceptance. And definitely lots of enmity, even fear, especially in the case of the Christian.
I’m not bashing here; I identify as Christian. But I’ve learned to shed the restrictions and mandated behavior that conservatives use to make you listen to their bullshit and which I call brainwashing. I am a flawed, damaged and dysfunctional human being, and I believe that God knows this and will be more understanding of it then people of the pulpit ever will be. I am free to think, to choose, to make progress when I can, or to make mistakes and, hopefully, to learn from them.
I find it to be very sad that I have lost friends, neighbors who are Christians and pastors. They, like so many, cannot listen or take me for who I am. They judge, and they act from judgment. To me, they’re hypocrites. Like pharisees which Christ read the riot act to. He called them “whited spulchurs” or whitewashed mortuaries, putting on a pretty show but full on the inside of dead bones: decay.
Society in America does not have a single safe place or function that will not demand conformity. You’re with this group or that, hated by other groups, or you’re worthless. Free thinkers, philosophers and the mentally ill will always fall into the laughed at and the ostracized. We are a doomed nation and we will answer for it. A house this divided cannot stand.
Another neighbor who is in denial of his own problems claims that I can be healed with enough faith and daily Bible reading. You should hear his claims. He’s a nightmare in real life. Faith healing is not possible with things we must endure as a part of life are inescapable. Child abuse, war, imprisonment and learned dependence are things we need to fight. We’ll have spiritual help, but life isn’t always cookie cutter Bible study; it’s hard work, it’s a fight, and it mostly sucks. The reward for the struggles we endure are nothing that the rich and the conservatives understand anything about: a life honorably lived.
I’m sorry it has to be this way. But as I search for resources to share with you, someone to help, remember that no matter who you see yourself as, no matter your struggles, you’re not alone. You are not worthless, and you rock! That means there’s always room for one more day, so hang in there!
I was in the bathroom. I stood up from the toilet, began to pull my trousers up, and I got dizzy. Then I found myself draped over the side of the tub, a pain in my right side. I knew I had passed out. I slowly got up, carefully. My head was hyper-clear.
I’ve felt that before. It is a bad sign.
I leaned against the wall and towel rack and I knew it was happening again. A wave of dizziness and pain in my lower back. My legs grew weak and I felt like peeing.
Then I saw colors I can’t describe and thought that this time I would die.
I found myself on the opposite side of the bathroom near the wall. Everything hurt. My head would not clear so I stayed down this time. My right side had something wrong with it. Like a rib was out of place. Not broken, not bruised. Out of place.
Two years ago an MRI revealed degenerative disk disorder. The pain had been promethean. My advantage plan denied that I needed the scan no matter what it showed and denied coverage. They also denied that I needed follow-up care. I was trapped. Aneurysms were also evident. Two aortic, one lower. My doctor sent me for a CTI scan. The Johns Hopkins Healthcare Advantage plan denied coverage for that as well. Again I was stuck. They were never going to pay for any portion of follow-up care and diagnostics. They couldn’t care less if I died.
For two years now I’ve received denials for anything I’ve had done. They even send me monthly blank denial of payment forms. It’s the shittiest way any insurance company can ever treat a client. It’s harassment and insult on top of everything else shitty that they do.
For two days I have restricted myself to bed rest. Lots of clear fluids, very little food; my appetite is worse than ever. I weigh 170 pounds in full clothing including waterproof tactical boots and winter jacket. Most of my lean Mass is gone.
In this state I believe that a collapsed disk sometimes causes a major nerve to be pressured. Along with nerves there are always veins and arteries. I believe they too get pressed. Less feeling in my legs, incredible pain in the spine and an interrupted blood flow to the head: I pass out.
It’s been ongoing but I didn’t know why until the back pain got worse.
I am on the road to being a cripple — or dying.
I’m already crippled. I can’t walk without a cane, but since I was small, I’d get these visions — just flashes — of my older self in a wheelchair. The reason I knew it was me was that I always saw this in a first-person perspective.
I know giants confined to wheelchairs, and yet I know I wouldn’t be one of them. I would be placed out in the streets or some barbaric nursing home. And I’ve already sworn that because people die in those places, I won’t go. It ends for me before that happens.
I have always, even when I didn’t know it, been a fighter and a survivor. I even fought my own attempts to end my life. But even so, there may come a time to surrender. It may be soon. It may not come to that. There is no way to tell right now.
My spine is going to collapse one day. If I’m lucky, I have another heart attack in my sleep and die first.
Later today I will see my principal doctor. My expectations are nil. No matter.
And no matter what sudden thing may happen, I’ve been honored to have you read my life, and I hope you pass on what bits of my experiences you deem worthy. Because what makes this life worth living, no matter our struggles, is the joy of helping and loving each other. My faith in God and His Son will see to the rest.
Warning: The following contains graphic and disturbing material and it contains triggers. This is intended for mature readers only and must be read with caution.
Present Day
In a hospital somewhere in the Big Apple lies a young man near the end of his life.
It is just another day in the city that never sleeps: the patient will, without a miracle, die. And it will not matter, nor even be known, to any but the handful of doctors and nurses treating and tending to him.
And one earthly angel who knows how beautiful he truly is.
Because they adore him, these nurses. He is mostly silent, but despite his condition, despite his loneliness, his sadness, he is polite and warm.
And on any given hospital floor or ward, patients like him always seem to affect one nurse, perhaps more. In this case, more. He received no visitors.
There came no calls inquiring as to his condition or prognosis. No one cared. Nurses tend to feel at least some sorrow or anger over such things. For some, their necessity of a disconnect fails. No one should be left alone to face death.
And it did look bad; his kidneys had failed. His recovery from a coma was a great development, but the young man was in critical condition. He still is. He had HIV or AIDS before, but treatment had made the virus undetectable in his lab work. Then he contracted COVID-19 and the virus returned. Now, but for the Grace of God, he would already be dead.
But who knows? Perhaps God keeps the dying alive for a reason, because there remains a chance that they can find peace before death. And, just maybe, He plans on a miracle because He loves us all, equally, and does not want us to perish in the Pit.
I cannot say, but without speaking for God, I nevertheless have faith in His unfailing love and forgiveness.
If ever a young man needed a miracle, it’s surely this young man.
His story begins in Texas, where far too many horrible stories seem to start.
His father was the pastor of a church, and his mother was a nurse. Neither should have been so employed, for the father was far more evil than good, and the mother was his carbon copy.
His father the preacher man sodomized him while his mother held him down.
She held him down.
And there is more. When he came out as gay, his father called him a “faggot” and beat him. Whether he was kicked out or ran away is unclear but it does not matter.
Eventually the young man wound up in New York. In his ears it must have reverberated, his father, who routinely sodomized him, calling him a “faggot”. The damage was no doubt extensive. There is no reason given for his attraction to New York, but many gay men move there, most seeking acceptance and some type of human compassion.
But for him, if ever he found it, nothing good could last. Haunted by his past, he could not find lasting friendship nor any other relationship. At one point he wound up in a mental health facility. It is easy to see why. What is more difficult to see is that some part of him, despite loneliness and severe depression, wanted help, wanted to survive.
While he was there, a young woman was also a patient. She had clearly been through a hell of her own, and she was still in it. He decided to not only befriend her but to watch over her as well. And this he did, because his own broken heart hurt even more to see someone trying to fight back from a break, from loss, from addiction, from too much time spent hounded by demons.
The two bonded, improving over time, each very much a part of the other’s recovery. Then, she went home, and although they exchanged phone numbers, and did talk from time to time, the miracle girl he had watched over began getting very serious about finishing her recovery.
The system of replacement therapy is rigged, as I’ve said before. Rigged to keep you dependent on methadone so the clinic keeps getting funded. She emerged from a life-threatening breakdown to realize that the only way to regain her life and her soul was to fight the battle of a lifetime. And she argued with the clinic about stepping down her doses. They would alternatively encourage and discourage her and, with most, that strategy of manipulation works.
But the young woman was never going to be tricked again by the system that would not let her go.
Consulting a doctor not affiliated with the clinic, she did receive support, but also caution. Yet, in all his years of practice, he had never seen anyone so determined who might actually be able to do what she claimed she could, and would do.
Just like she said, exactly as she had said, she stepped down her doses rapidly. The clinic fought her but she was not having it. Finally she had had enough, and got her intake of methadone so low that despite her doctor’s concern, she ceased taking it. Silencing every critic and every rule of the system, what she did would not seem astounding to you or to me, but for her it was the drug equivalent of jumping from a second story window, landing as gracefully as a gymnast, and getting the winning score. And her doctor was astonished. What she had done, in the time in which she did it, with no lasting effects, was something he had never seen before. He was proud, but not of anything he had done; it was all her, she who possessed the fighting spirit of a tigress.
And that analogy is not off: a tigress is among the fiercest fighters in the animal kingdom, an apex predator with almost no fear of humans. The young woman had put up a fight, the like of which few have ever survived.
That fight was not short nor did it come without pain.
She continues to fight. Every day. But the entire time she was suffering, prayers came from all directions including her priest, who lit the tapirs and said the rosary in her behalf.
Her past was known to the priest. A violent multiple rape while a young teen. Comfort sought in hard drugs. Dysfunctional relationships that only lowered her closer to the abyss. Until death and shock and trauma piled upon trauma broke her and she met the lonely young man in the hospital.
She had lost her way. Lost everything she was, everything she thought she knew. The lonely man was there to help her get that back. These things are never chance meetings. God knows when two lost people need each other. He leads them to the quiet waters but never forces them to drink. That’s always up to them.
I always found in my worst stays in hospital that there was one person I could be comfortable around. It’s funny, that. And it always helps.
But as time went on, the young woman began grabbing her life back. An awesome man came into her life and a romance began. She made fast friends with his family and his friends. She had begun to live after decades of being a prisoner.
Then came a day when she found an unknown number on her phone. A number she did not recognize. Usually she would let such a thing go, but not this one. She felt strongly about it and knew she had to return the call.
It was the lonely man she had been watched over by in the hospital and he’d come out of a three-week coma and was very weak. It was difficult to speak because of the tube he had been sustained by, but she knew: he needed to see her and she needed to go to him.
Her boyfriend made a stop along the way, took her to the hospital, but because of covid protocols had to remain in the car.
Upstairs, the lonely man lay, withered, 60 pounds lighter, weak, fearing death. His friend walked up to the nurse’s station and one nurse smiled and said, “I’m so happy to see you. He’s had no one come in or even call and he’s so sweet.”
She went into the room, greeted him, and had to lean close to hear him. Clad in protective gloves, mask and gown, she listened.
He said he was happy that she was here. She gave him the stuffed unicorn she had bought on the way over. He loved it. Bending low she heard him say, “I’m scared of dying. I’m scared I’ll go to hell.”
She assured him that it wasn’t true. He would not go to hell. God knew the kindness of his heart, and would never allow such a kind soul to descend to the pit.
She asked him if he would like to talk to the priest they had both met before. He said yes, he would, and he seemed comforted by the suggestion. She said she would get the priest to come and see him.
After a few more moments that I will leave private, he thanked her for remembering him, for answering his call, and said, “I think I can sleep now.”
Before leaving home, someone had asked her why she had to go see this guy. “Because,” she said, “he’s my friend. He looked after me and protected me, and now he needs me.” It wasn’t about owing him or feeling obligated; it was love that drove this extraordinary woman to go. And nothing on this earth is more powerful than love.
This truly heartbreaking story is also a reminder to us all that no act of kindness, no show of friendship and loyalty ever goes unnoticed by God or under-appreciated by those we give the kindness to. We were given a command: love each other. When we fail, things happen that hurt. When we do it, the world is better for it. You and I may not feel it, but I know it’s the truth.
I am often personally offended by the audacity of the rich.
The balls it must take to flaunt the trappings of wealth to the whole world.
First of all, it really pisses off those who have to watch how much the people around them suffer from need and want. Not of material wants. No, just a meal and a pillow to lay their heads down on. Even a bowl of gruel is a feast. That’s just wrong.
And we all know that there are things that can’t be counted. The poor around the world is a population that never gets numbered at all. Mainly because they are invisible to people because they are homeless. How do they get heard or seen? Can you count them by the bodies bearing the stench of death gathered by the hapless who draw such duty?
No.
Can you go through an alley, the stink of waste necessitating HAZMAT suits, doing a headcount?
Of course not.
How about by the number of people evicted from housing or put to the streets by foreclosures?
Hell no.
Then how? How to count those squatting in shells of condemned buildings? You’ll never find them. Police can’t go there. A fire built for warmth in winter on a frigid night in the row homes with no cars ever parked there, a city block driven past by day but never at night, spreads. Out of control, it could build for far too long before anyone in the distance sees flames from the roof and calls in to 911.
Only when the adjacent occupied buildings on the next street out back are threatened does anyone care. They’re evacuated in the cold night and stand, bitterly smelling of smoke, enraged that an abandoned building has disturbed their sleep. Until that moment they had forgotten about the place. And what about the squatters? If found dead, it’s a crime statistic. People shouldn’t squat; it’s illegal. If found alive, the people want blood. The squatters are charged with trespassing and arson.
Just another statistic for the crime blotter. The Red Cross helped the displaced. They’ll either be okay, or, in short order, join the ranks of invisible men and women and children who huddle under blankets and piss all over the sidewalk. They stink of zombies, making passersby in the day gag or heave.
Then they are never counted again. They are not people. Not human. The only way they are identified is by default, an unfair one. Drug users who have refused housing or been kicked out for violating the conditions of the program that placed them are everywhere. One street in the Bronx grows to three; in Brooklyn and Queens it slowly rises in a literal Fibonacci sequence. In Winter the police round up these wretched and take them to shelters in a van. Some hide. In the morning if the night stayed below freezing long enough, they’re just dead bodies. That’s it.
By summer they get methadone in the morning, then with panhandled or stolen cash, follow the replacement drug with heroin, pills and anything else they can. Used needles litter the streets and gutters. They’re everything you want to avoid from their stench to the savages they morph into when coming down from fentanyl-infused pills and smack. And the glass pipers are the worst of the lot.
In New York City, you get to know where you can walk, and that your route to the train, market or McDonald’s might change tomorrow.
Most of those are dual-diagnosis patients, once evaluated as having a mental illness and drug or alcohol addiction. The law prohibits keeping them hospitalized beyond 72 hours. Then they’re back and once again the scary things that give others nightmares.
It is hardly fair. But then, neither is it fair for evicted people who don’t have substance abuse problems to be avoided by association. They need help. They beg for it. But most often there isn’t any. Housing for poverty-level families and individuals is short. By lottery they are called to interview and biased people judge who is and who is not “desirable” or “qualified”.
It’s all chaos. Cruelty. Those two mix, and people suffer.
And then they die.
In all this, the concrete and asphalt canyons, is it any wonder then, that the man who still doesn’t know what he did wrong, and worse, tells himself that he did no wrong at all, became a victim?
It hardly baffles me, because such a man is arrogant, and in his arrogance, reaped a bit of what he sowed.
Or did he? That is a valid question right now.
During a livestream sermon, Brooklyn preacher “Bishop” Lamor Miller-Whitehead (he’s not really a bishop. He took the title!) was interrupted by two gunmen and robbed along with his wife of jewelry. The take: one million in fine jewelry and gems including rubies, emeralds and diamonds. The thieves were spotted in a white Mercedes.
Say what?
A Mercedes…
That just seems off to me. However:
The so-called pastor with the qualifications of a tech school certification is crying out for vengeance. He calls it justice but I know that if this is really a legitimate heist, he wants more than arrests. He is thirsty for revenge. His offer of 50 grand for information on the thieves seems odd to me. The man must be tripping in money.
How does that happen?
Because when it comes to religion, the gullible sheep, hungry for hope and for Godly help have been conditioned to give money to get something in return. Lies about riches from God pouring down on them are old lies perpetuated by the likes of Joel Osteen and other rich preachers who care nothing about us but very much about our money. They don’t speak for God, they speak only for themselves.
Is that the case for Whitehead?
Yes. Obviously so.
For appearances he’s brought in a therapist for those present. In light of his lifestyle, he just doesn’t want to lose paying parishioners. I doubt very much that he gives a damn about them.
Known for having custom clothes, each suit likely costing two or three mortgage payments, the man flaunts his wealth and possessions in direct opposition to Christian doctrine. Christ said “A man cannot serve two masters, God and money.”
He followed up with “I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” That’s one very dark warning. The eye of a needle he spoke of had nothing to do with sewing. It refers to a gate, usually arched but extremely narrow and with such low clearance that a tall beast of burden could not pass. In other words, Rich men will rarely go to heaven. In his travels, Christ warned, “Woe to the rich, for they already have their reward.” They would go no further. Death was the end of the line for them.
Leading by example, Yeshua ish Nazareth lived on what he and his Apostles could scrounge or the food offered them. Yet he never failed to serve others first. He washed the feet of his own followers, went hungry, and Judas ish Kerioth was the purse keeper who up until his betrayal was otherwise a seemingly well-intentioned man. Even then, Christ insisted on giving to the poor.
Such humility and kindness is never to be seen these days. Charitable people make a big deal out of it. There are exceptions like Spike Lee and Taylor Swift who do great things you’ll never read about. The best of us can’t boast. Silent are the ones who give from the heart with love and compassion. Rich clergy are not among them.
I’m going to pray for Mr. Whitehead. Not for him to gain revenge or to recover what was stolen. No, I cannot be put upon to do something so petty in prayer. Instead I will pray for him to see the error of his materialism and the sin of misguiding the children of God, stealing from them all the while. For the present, he has no idea what he did wrong.
The question, in the end, is, did this ersatz bishop get so arrogant about his wealth, did he flaunt it so much, that even during services he was bound to be a target?
Or was it a setup for insurance money? If so, it almost had to be public. Perhaps that explains the getaway in a Mercedes and why the video has vanished.
As he put it, “this is about me purchasing what I want to purchase.”
It’s not.
Leading a church is not about that. It’s about giving people hope through the example and sacrifice of Christ. It’s about helping them, not fleecing them of their money. And it certainly isn’t about a leader adorned in rings, pendants and custom suits.
But then again, you can only reap what you sow. A lesson to be learned and held close to your heart.
May you be well and at peace until we meet again. God bless.
I believe that I have changed much this past year. Looking back on the “Level-Up” post in which I wrote negatively about my birthday, I can see it. Now, at level 62, you’d be forgiven to think another birthday would make me more cynical, more depressed, more likely to complain.
Lately, I have thought of lots of things, and my faith is stronger. This has benefits I’ve never felt before. I resist temptation more. I’m more likely to check my swearing. I’m kinder than I was. Less depressed. I took an insult so well recently that I no longer recall it, while usually insults ring in my ears for months, and some for decades.
The search for God has been difficult and I was a believer. You could never imagine what’s changed or how simply it happened.
The change is real, but not enough for me. I want to do better, and do something good with my new faith. If that’s meant to be, I will. I’ve lost my greatest fears and will meet the end of life without them.
But I have these scars and still-open wounds, inflicted when I had no control. These injuries I cannot ask God to heal instantly. Time, friends who were patient with me, therapy, medicine and a dogged refusal to surrender along with the tiny bit of faith I had has led me here. And sometimes miracles come from the smallest of faiths, and sometimes you can’t get what you want immediately.
It just doesn’t work out like that. Pain and suffering are universal; there is no way out of or around it. I find that many suffer more than I, and maybe I don’t know what to say to them, and it’s true that no matter what I’ve been through, I can never imagine what it’s like for another, whose experience with suffering and trauma must be absolutely terrible.
And sometimes words of reassurance and comfort only bring anger and bitterness to those who hurt. Words are usually ineffective. But being there for someone who weeps, even if they do so silently, internally, is far better than any words. Just wait until they’re really ready to talk, pray for them, and then listen. Justlisten. If they need your shoulder or a hug, they’ll let you know.
Sometimes saying nothing is the most powerful medicine we have to offer. If words are necessary, be careful with them and keep it simple. The stages of healing from trauma and loss are never to end, and patience with all the people you long to comfort does not remain strong. They may be especially needy or cry a lot. That gets to be burdensome.
I think that is our greatest weakness and it was always a problem for me, because I go through my own pain. I’ve learned that my pain is something others cannot comprehend, but also that when I help others, I heal a bit more.
The Boondock Saints
I watched “The Boondock Saints” years back, and it really makes me think. Seeing it again made me think about much more.
The film begins in a “Catholic” church (it’s not actually filmed in one because Duffy was denied permission). The priest begins to talk about an incident in which a girl was stabbed to death and nobody helped her or called the police. He says, “Now, we all must fear evil men. But there is an evil we must fear most and that is the indifference of good men.”
The McManus brothers, fraternal twins, have prayed at the statue of the Holy Mother, and are on their way out when they hear this.
Connor, played by Sean Patrick Flannery, bears a tattoo on his left hand, “Veritas,” Latin for truth. His brother Murphy, played by Norman Reedus, bears a similar tattoo, “Aguitas”, Latin for equality and justice. These actors fully committed to their parts for a film that is truly a masterpiece. However…
In the United States, only 5 theaters showed it, and those had limited runs of one week because it followed the Columbine massacre so closely in time; it was felt that such a violent film would cause controversy and that it would be in poor taste as well.
Columbine Massacre
On 20 April, 1999, 18-year-old Eric Harris and 17-year-old Dylan Klebold went to their school, Columbine High School. Just like any other day, but on this one, the two carried out a plan one year in the making. They very quickly, using semiautomatic rifles and pistols, racked up a victim count of 12 dead 21 injured. Two propane bombs in the cafeteria could have killed many more, but didn’t detonate. The boys left behind, after killing themselves, a shocked nation and families who can never be healed from such sudden, violence-caused deaths of their children. One teacher was among the dead.
The film was released in Denmark well before the horrifying event, but not until November in the United States, some 7 months following the massacre. Thus, the limited release and dreadful critical reception. There was so much fallout after Columbine that people wanted to end all violence on the big screen, television and video games. The boys had played the game “Doom” which is a first-person shooter, and then had improvised their own “game” in a school setting. Instead of monsters, the enemies were students. Harris was most responsible for the modifications.
Video Release
Only after video release did the praise for it become unavoidable; a sequel, years in the making, did much better but failed to reach its full potential.
The first movie shows how the brothers stick together and protect each other no matter what. On St. Patrick’s Day, the Irish twins, who have never met their father, are working in a meat packing plant. They’re told to train a new employee. Connor mentions a rule of thumb and she’s offended, saying that in the early 1900s, men were allowed to beat their wives so long as they used a stick no wider than their thumb. This rule never existed in any form except as a possible unit of measure in Medieval Europe. Connor holds up his hand, thumb extended, and says you can’t do much with a stick that thin and suggests, “Maybe it should have been a rule of wrist”, at which she goes off. Explaining that it’s just a joke, she gets more enraged and kicks Connor in the groin. When she turns to face Murphy, he delivers a powerful right to her face. When one is hurt, the other avenges the wrong. You do not want an Irishman getting that angry with you, and sometimes I think the Irish in me can evoke reactions I later regret. But it is also a part of me that strengthens my faith.
This is not to bash my heritage or to stereotype, but it remains a fact that, on coming to America, the Irish were enslaved, discriminated against and paid less for hard labor than others. They were shunned for no reason at all. When driven too far, they were well known as fierce drinkers and even more fierce fighters. Drunk on Saturday night, they attended Mass on Sunday no matter how hungover they were. In a fight, getting up after being knocked down was a bad idea. Perhaps the stereotypical Irish temper comes from that; but things improved after World War Two in which they proved their patriotism and courage.
Connor and Murphy are turned into heroes when, after a bar fight, Russian mobsters come calling. The Russians are killed by the brothers, afterward turning themselves in to police, where FBI Agent Smecker (Willem Dafoe) questions and releases them because it was self defense.
They wear Celtic crosses, are devoutly catholic, and they are not finished killing. They go to a hotel and kill 9 Russian mobsters including the boss. They place pennies or quarters on the dead men’s eyes, questionable for them except that Roman mythology held that this must be done for them to pay Charon, the underworld ferryman who conveyed them across the Styx to be judged. It is not a modern or a Christian tradition. They say a prayer over the boss’s body that ends with “in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” spoken in Latin:
Enter: Rocco, an abused errand boy for the Yakavetta mob family in Boston. He is sent to kill the Russians with only a revolver. The boys, who are fast friends with Rocco, try to tell him that his boss set him up. He doesn’t believe them until he goes to the Lakeview Lunch cafe and questions two wiseguys who laugh at him. He shoots both, then the old bartender who knew about the trap.
After this, he joins the “Saints” as the press have dubbed the brothers and his first idea is to whack the underboss who obviously hated him and came up with the plan to kill him. Played with delicious, hateful and scummy malice by Ron Jeremy, the Saints kill him. The Boss believes Rocco is getting revenge and that he’s good at it. He asks the retired underboss to help him call in “the Duke”, a non-Italian killer once used by his father to kill wiseguys because they didn’t like to kill their own. The old man warns him that the Duke is a Monster and to be careful.
After another mob killing, the trio exits a house only to face the Duke, waiting for them with six guns strapped to his body. The gunfight is vicious, and all four shooters are wounded. Rocco loses a finger, and in the next scene Agent Smecker is out front of the house, surrounded by detectives who at first were resentful that the Feds had sent him. He thinks for a few minutes and his brilliant mind recounts what happened. He gets very agitated and growls, followed immediately by “There was a firefight!” as he raises his arms over his head just like he did in “Platoon”. Smecker then finds Rocco’s finger and now knows he’s with the Saints.
After the boys and Rocco cauterize their wounds with an iron, they go to morning Mass while Rocco waits outside. Rocco sees a hungover Smecker walk into the church and follows him. When Smecker goes to a confession booth, Rocco holds the priest at gunpoint and forces him to tell Smecker that he’s right to believe the Irish twins are doing something necessary. Then the boys call Smecker and tell him they’re going after Yakavetta at his house that night. But the boys are captured trying to get in through the basement, and tortured. Yakavetta kills Rocco, and the twins get free, overcome their captors and say their generations-old family prayer. The Duke, who knocked out Agent Smecker upstairs (Smecker, who is gay, dressed in drag to pose as entertainment hired for the men). Smecker shoots two wiseguys before being knocked out (the Duke never killed women or children).
He walks into the basement and is ready to kill the twins until he hears their prayer, at which he finishes it: he’s their father. For 25 years he was in prison after being set up. He’s never seen his sons but now, he puts a hand gently to their cheeks and the family is reconciled.
Then the Duke and the boys, father and sons, with aid by the detectives and Agent Smecker, bypass security at the courthouse where boss Yakavetta is on trial. They execute him and warn the gallery that if they cross the line, they will find the Saints right on their trail.
But sometimes the very negative, the depiction of evil done in God’s name, can have a profound effect for the greater good. For one, the boys actually believe that killing evil men is righteous and necessary. Everything in the gospels say otherwise, and expressly so. For another, they didn’t have to be Irish; this story could work with anyone, but their devout prayers and deep accents really made this movie a classic. I had multiple issues with it yet when forced to face my own feelings, found an awareness and sensitivity to what is evil and what is not. It was their crosses that inspired me to shop cross pendants on Amazon.
By sheer accident I found rosary beads and crucifixes. One drew my attention and held it. I didn’t know why but ordered it without hesitation. On researching it, I found that the Saint Benedict Rosary is strong protection against Satan. Benedict guards one from temptation, Satan, vices and bad health. He is also believed to be there upon one’s death to escort their soul to Heaven along with St. Michael the archangel, and one’s guardian angels. He is also the patron Saint of Europe. Wearing a bracelet or rosary with St. Benedict medals is therefore quite powerful in spiritual combat against Satan.
I also bought a celtic cross pendant. This cross is said to have been created by St. Patrick himself. He placed the cross over the disc that symbolized the sun god to prove that Jesus was more powerful. Often seen in cemeteries, it is still worn by Irish, the Welsh and Scots.
Ultimately it is faith, not an object, that frees us from the devil’s grip. Faith that we are loved and watched over by God can make a huge difference in anyone’s life.
The question now is, can my new faith hold fast? With the cross on my chest and the beads wrapped around my hand, I am far less likely to think and behave badly. That’s a great illustration of hypocrisy and I refuse. Temptation will always be real and pervasive to all humans. We don’t get special powers. We get faith in Abba, the Holy Father, our creator. Through faith, few things are impossible.
I need to make clear, though, that intervention for people in danger is Godly, noble, honorable. Self sacrifice is a mark of a good person. It can never exceed that, and vigilantism I cannot condone. And all killing in God’s name must stop. War and murder is hateful to the Lord.
Top: the Rosary of St. Benedict; at the bottom is the Celtic cross.
Note that the rosary has nothing else but medals of Benedict. As you pray the Benedictine Rosary, each medal is a place to stop and meditate on the Mysteries. Benedict stood for abstinence, prayer and hard work along with studies. He advocated the resistance to Satan who brings harm and disease, causes covetousness for possessions; in turn the Benedictine monks began taking a vow of poverty.
You don’t have to say the Rosary if you’re protestant. But just holding it, and prayer in silence, makes me stronger in faith. And to think I got this from a movie…
Until the next time I’m leaving you with the main title music from the first Saints movie. Beautiful Irish music you can’t get out of your head.
Marcus was seven-and-a-half years-old. He loved Tonka trucks, cartoons, teddy bears, ducks and puppies. He had a soft spot for Clifford, The Big Red Dog.
For one so young, he left all who knew, who were with him in those days, with the unforgettable memory of every minute spent with him.
Every minute.
All children were always special. Always have been, always will be.
They’re known, especially, for handling serious illness with great courage and an amazing compassion toward those charged with their care.
And so it was with Marcus. He had a condition known as aplastic anemia. This, back then, was a dire condition. And now you can see where this is going, except, no. You really don’t.
For Marcus was, you see, very abused. So the condition inflicted on him was twice the tragedy. Twice the pain and suffering.
It, the disease that is, can be treated with stem cells and things I can’t remember now, but back in 1978, the doctors fought an inevitable conclusion. One that often leaves both doctors and nurses with emotional pain they also cannot cure.
Many times I’ve been told that a detachment must exist between medical professionals and their patients, and it is the truth. If it didn’t work, men and women would be so filled with grief that they would never stop crying. It would come from every pore. So much suffering and death does one see that there are, however, exceptions to the self-discipline rule of distance.
For the treatment team of Marcus, he was an exception.
Doctors visited him just to make visits. Nurses played with Tonka trucks with him. They sat and watched cartoons with him. And he loved to draw. Ducks and puppies, of course.
While he was in the hospital, Marcus grew on everyone. And yes, children do that to professionals more than you think. They were always amazed at the courage children have when sick. Often, the sicker, the more courageous.
One nurse bonded with him, a special bond. She promised to be present when he was scheduled for a spinal tap. For anyone who doesn’t know, that’s the extraction of spinal fluid straight from the space around the spinal column, and it bloody hurts. I knew a guy who had spinal meningitis and even coughing made him “see stars”. But nothing he was going through, nothing in his entire life had hurt like the spinal tap. It’s also called a “Lumbar Puncture” which even sounds painful.
The nurse kept her promise and talked him through it. He said, “It hurts, it hurts, it HURTS!”
But he did not cry.
He did not scream. My friend, a grown man, screamed. Marcus told the nurse, “I can’t scream. I’m not a girl.” No doubt a speech his abuser had imprinted and imposed on him. Predators don’t often like screaming.
But courage of that type has its rewards. One day, Marcus said, “I see them. They’re real.”
“What’s real,” someone asked.
“Angels. They’re talking to me.” He was smiling.
And with a child’s faith, as his organs were failing, the day came when he told the nurses, “Jesus is here.”
He told them, “Don’t cry,” and looked at the nurse who had bonded so much with him. She knew it was happening. Perhaps she didn’t want to let go. Surely she didn’t want to see him die.
She may just have wanted to know: “What’s he look like?”
“He looks very nice. He’s smiling at me.”
Marcus lost consciousness. Five minutes later, he died.
He had a smile on his face.
Two of the nurses present saw what happened next. Something very bright, mist-like, arose from his body. Then, the room became very bright.
Yeshua, Jesus Christ, had come for brave Marcus, who had suffered a life of pain yet believed with a child’s faith. Had come for him with a smile, and Marcus had met him with a smile.
Faith is not the same for everyone. It is debated whether faith alone, or baptism, or repentance is also necessary for true salvation. And I cannot answer questions like those. I am not qualified; I don’t know.
I cannot judge someone, however, whom I believe in my heart to have had the simplest faith of all, who must have been innocent, without mortal sin. To have been overjoyed at being the center of attention despite his pain, because he had never known any attention so caring before in his short life.
A child, with a child’s faith.
People can debate salvation all they want. But I never cared for those who used rules and the threat of eternal damnation to keep people in line and keep them coming to church, and keep them tithing their income. Hypocrites! Religion, the belief in a higher being, is supposed to comfort people, not frighten them into unloading their purses while the preacher speaks words he’s forgotten the meaning of. You won’t find penance by giving ten percent of your annual income to a building run by men who exclude women, who molest children, spend church money on themselves. No debauched man can give you salvation.
Only the Father, through his Son, can do that.
Perhaps it is best, then, to tell the story of a boy with faith and courage, who never went to confession but was happy and pure and who told everyone he knew he was going to Heaven.
A boy who, despite his own pain, told others he loved, “Don’t cry.”
Because he reminds us, even now, the way to Heaven is best seen through the eyes–and faith–of a child.
Memoirs of an American Asshole 