The  Ending

       Part  A

          An Earthly ending precedes a Heavenly beginning, where the school of life is over. Then we will apply what we have learned.  There fear will not be a concept anymore.  Only love will prevail as the existing paradigm.  Imagine, we won’t even need to imagine; for the image of the ultimate jinn will be ours, whosoever wants to go home again.

           Here, we should hear again how God Biblically describes it: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it ever entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love Him”.

           Look at tropical fish.  We couldn’t see them in their God-given beauty until recently with the fabrication of rubber and glass to make a face-fitting diving mask.  As hippies, we used to say, ‘Wow, far out, man!’  But, one doesn’t hear any such appreciative admiration in secular scientific circles.  Would praise to God, even as simple written acknowledgement of God, be an impediment to scientific observation?  If not during an experiment, then how about during lunch?  And if during lunch, why not then during your breakfast bowl of Hypothetical Hunch?

          Looking at Hubble satellite photos before bedtime last night, my thinking then carries over to now.  That, the place we call space is too small for a creator.  Jesus explained to the woman at Jacob’s old well that God is spirit, not an increment of spirit, but spirit itself.  And that, God must be approached that way.  Remember, outer, and inner space is physical.  Something much bigger is going on.  'Let’s not eat like a big pig.  Let’s eat like a big snake that eats the pig.  Let’s raise our sights!'

          Yet, “Heaven and earth are filled with thy glory; hosannah in the highest!”  God does enjoy the work of his hands.  So much so, he biblically said he’s going to wrap this one up like a scroll, chuck it in the fireplace, and write a new creation story.  Jesus reminded us that God’s ten rules can be crystalized or condensed into two big ones.  ‘Love the Spirit of Love, God, with everything you’ve got; ‘and love the odd fellow next to you even as much as yourself’.

          So is it science fiction, all of this, or science non-fiction, big-time?  Maybe this is why so much fiction is being read instead of true stories.  Shall we be like in the old movie Being There?  Shirley marries Peter unwittingly, not knowing he’s been raised abusively in front of a television set, abandoned there for years and years.  You know, fed and cleaned, otherwise left there like in a cage.  Frankly, I think Shirley’s character cops out by acquiescing to Peter’s oblivious standard instead of her aware one.  That’s all I remember of the film.

         Part  B

         Well, I’ve got a few notes written to share, then I’ll get out of your way.  Parental love is to be owned, not merely rented.  A box of packaged food that I noticed describes its product as ‘crazy good’.  What kind of mad world is Madison Avenue appealing to there?  For, no way is good crazy, said by a former crazy person.  Crazy is bad.  Good is good.  Where else is hope?

           Actually, advertising gave me work indirectly at Montebello, a grandfather of my employers once a legal advocate for Nabisco, a very cool calm and collected corporation.  My brother Peter sold Count Chocula cereal first thing out of college, after managing the State of Delaware's participation in Hands-Across-America.

           Then Pete got hired by Rosalynn Carter in her scheduling office.  We got to meet she and her man Jimmy.  Pete told Mom, Jamie, and I who was visiting for Christmas to come on over to the lobby, the vestibule of Rosy and Jim Carter's house.  Pete would notify their staff of our arrival, for security.   Because it was the White House.

           A whole bunch of other people were in the White House vestibule also, hoping as we were to visit with the first family.  Who were still visiting with business house guests  from earlier in the day.  Actually for days, for it was Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin.

            They all were over in the east wing of their house hashing out details of agreement.  'Funny word, hashing, those guys coming from that part of the world.  The Carter's helicopter was idling on the lawn for to take them to their mountain cabin at Camp David for X-mas.  I guess their guests would drive home, neither one of a nativity orientation as far out as I know.

           So everybody bided their time in the White House lobby.  We struck up a conversation with a woman with a British accent.  She was a longtime U.S. citizen, but her grand-daughter with her was visiting the United States for a first time.   As a group, our two families  decided to go out back on the lawn to continue waiting.

           There was even more people out there and we walked along in front of the crowd out of anybody's way to find a place to stand and still be able to see any action.  We only found a place way over in the dark by some fir trees.  The Carter's only child Amy Lynn Carter was kicking around on the top step of the helicopter ladder waiting for her parents.

           And out they came, leaving their house guests to depart another way.  Rosalynn 'n Jim Carter came out of the east wing directly adjacent to where we were standing.  They stopped and talked with us.  Our woman acquaintance and her grandchild and Peter chatted with First Lady Rosalynn.  And Jamie and Mom chatted with President Jimmy.  I stood behind all and smiled in amazement.

           Just after the Carters bid their adieu to us, Mom got a last word in to President Carter.  Mom raised her voice a bit necessarily and said, "Jesus bless you Jimmy!"  James Earl Carter Jr stopped his departure to turn around and look Deborah Tovar square in the face and reply, "I thank you; he does."

           A few years later I heard people yelling the same respectful "Yay" for George 'Dad' Bush.  Presidential motorcycles were gathered in front of a Tex-Mex restaurant back over a rise in the street where I rented a studio apartment.  I asked a man across the street to explain.  He was the owner of a restaurant on that side.  And he lamented "I wish the president would visit my restaurant some time"; but Dad Bush favored the Tex-Mex.

           I hurried home, from work as I was, and hungrily ate a half-frozen burrito.  I stepped back outside and started up the street to hear people yelling "Yay" without me.  My point here is, the exclamatory word 'Yay' is also phrased 'Hallelujah'.  God's existence is evident in such instinctive protocol.  Here's another example.

           I've learned to not say 'thank you' to someone who says 'thank you' to me.  Because really, I've re-learned to say what is correctly appropriate in a given situation.   It is to say 'You're welcome' meaning for the service I've rendered to you.  It is because we are made in the image of God.  Who has first rendered unto us the gift of life itself, even his self.   

           Here's another.  The saying 'Have a nice day' is now 'Have a good day'.  I question it in recollection of the man who said to Jesus one day, "Good master."  Who retorted, "Who're you calling good?  There's only one that is good, and that is God."  Jesus spoke as the Son of Man, not only fully divine, but also fully human.  

           I politely add if possible that I'm not a 'bad boy' per the Cops TV show and its theme song.  Note as that is rap hip-hop, so is one of my liners.  It says 'It's a blood pact contract fact, Calvary!'   Then there's the question 'How are you?', so much more pointed than the old 'How're you doing?'  And the answer I usually hear people say is "Good; I'm good!"  'Oh? 

           Did I tell you the especially nice story of John, one of my charges at a group home?  It was my last week working there and over at the women's house and John and I were sitting on the couch watching country-music videos.  And John leaned my way and clearly said "How're you doing?" 

           It surprised me because John had never spoken before to anyone, officially non-verbal.  Charles the house manager who was once given a ride home to Cabin John by Rick Nixon in his presidential limousine dearly loved John, and had given up shaving cantankerous John's face and let him grow an awesome beard, lol.

           It showed me that this minority group of the mentally handicapped do not "show their pearls to pigs" to paraphrase Jesus' words.  And the regional manager came by later and I told him, "Shawn, John talked!"  He said, "There's not a chance in hell that man will ever talk!"  I said nothing in response.  Shawn didn't seem to know-tice what he's missing.

           An interesting book to recommend is by Pierre Berton’s mom.  Pierre was a panelist on the show on Canadian Sunday evening television, Front Page Challenge.  His mom grew up in Dawson Creek, British Columbia.  And, Ms.Berton’s book describes the interesting people she had been neighbors with.  Ms.B. started her book: ‘They say everybody has at least one book in them, so here’s mine’, I Married The Klondike by Laura Beatrice Berton.

          An old story, I was four, and watching my oldest brother’s dog eat in its supper bowl.  He was in our house's parking area, his Malayan name Etam meaning Blackie.  That’s where the servants fed him, there on Kenny Hill in Kuala Lumpur.  From what I saw happen, they may have been in the wise habit of putting Etam’s bowl in the parking area for necessary privacy. 

         The whole event was really quite strange.  There I’m standing in the late afternoon in an empty and quiet driveway-parking area.  The older-aged neighbor girl whom I don’t remember seeing before or after walks in our driveway and right up to the dog.  Seriously, her body language was as if this was her mission in life, at least since she got up that morning and was determined to do this.

         The poor dear must have been spoiled since birth and with no familiarity with animals.  With a confident smile on her face, she started teasing Etam by poking his back with her fingers.  Twice or thrice she did this, Etam turning and growling a fair warning to then turn back to his food.  The tall girl did it again and Etam gave a full chomp on her right forearm.  No artery was cut, but she was seriously punctured.    

         Still thinking about Etam, I remember lying awake in the big bed I shared with Pete.  He was asleep, and Chris over in his crib.  A 20x15-inch window was high up in the wall there.  It afforded a view of the steep hill directly behind the servants’ quarters and chicken coops.  Moon light had the hill clear to see. 

           The hill had a little trail Pete and me would use to go up and play in an excavated pit of small stones.  We called it Crystal Mountain, in our delightful childlike way.  So, I’m lying there staring at where the trail is, and Etam goes trotting by to hunt up there.  

           On the way to school one day in the front seat with the driver, he pointed out some young monkeys playing on a tree branch overhanging the road.  Mom said high above that road a tiger liked to rest on a ledge and watch the cars.

          Another event on Crystal Mountain I think of often is a birthday party.  Apparently, the house highest on Kenny Hill–we were third, the tall girl’s second, on the other side of the road–had a boy about Pete's and my age.  I don’t remember playing with him, only always Peter.  But, Pete and I were invited, along with a dozen other boys.

          The birthday party would be held in their amazing dining room.  It was easily forty  feet long, a separate wing of the house extending straight out of it.  The view from their property was probably much better than ours.  And, we could see the Cameron Highlands far across the big valley.  Plus, their dining-room extension was all glass, completely glassed in.  I wonder what the Malayans would name the Scottish Highlands.

          This story is about the birthday party.  We boys were all hanging around the side patio.  We were rather quiet, most of us strangers to each other.  But then, the call was made to enter the Crystal Mountain birthday party room.  Boy after boy after boy filed in to the great glass room.  Except me, for I was too shy about it.

          I remained seated on a patio chair, content to watch through the glass panels.  All the boys looked like they were having the time of their lives.  I could see Peter in there blowing curly whistles with one hand and shoveling with the other.  The mother came out a time or two to ask me to reconsider.  I remember looking at her kindly face and saying no.

          Part  C

          Yesterday, I listened to Ron Wyatt’s sons (Ron’s dead now, maybe Mary Nell also) recounting their and their dad’s finding of chariot wheels underwater in the accumulated-sand shallow-cross (90-degrees to the coastline) of the Gulf of Aqaba, at the big sand spit.  Erosion since the great flood of Noah has dumped a lot of sand out of the Sinai Peninsula.  North and south from the sandy and shallow crossover to Arabia is very deep water, part of the Rift Valley, I think. 

          That was the first time they had really gone scuba diving, since learning how to, back in Tennessee.  Everything went well, and they successfully filmed numbers of wheels, even one of the fancy gold ones mentioned in the bible text about the exodus escape.  Take a gander yourself; they sure look like chariot wheels.  They’re encrusted, but very distinctly shaped.

           (editor's note, Mike here; i'm trying to find where I mentioned the pillars Solomon set up on both shores of the Gulf of Aqaba, that Ron Wyatt found.  I just listened again to his account of it.  To correct, the pillar on the west side is not Israeli, but Egyptian, and Solomon's engraved words have apparently been erased.  They did stand it upright, positively.

           ...However, when Ron found the eastern pillar, on the Arabian shore, also partly in the water, he could clearly see a vertical list of eight words.  Ron notified authorities in Arabia of its existence.  On the pillar was a vertical listing of single words.  If I may pass them on from Ron Wyatt Archaeology, then they are, top to bottom: Pharoah, Mizraim (which means Egypt), Moses, death, water, YHWH or Yahweh, Solomon, Edom.)

          Another line of history, secular but still interesting, check out if you like the two American guys who, years ago now got to the bottom of why southern Illinois is called Little Egypt.  Their observation is that some children of Roman prisoners of war became lifelong fugitives of Rome when grown up and married.   On YouTube, see their video 'Tomb Tape # 2', as I recall; I'd like to see it again myself.

          Then, they buried their dead as usual up a Nile-like river, including the mummified remains of their ancestor, Alexander.  One of their dads or grand-dads, a Mauritanian was known by Rome as Master of the Atlantean Sea.  Who fell out with Rome and was killed.  The boy would grow up to marry Celine, I think it is, daughter of Cleopatra, who with Marc Antony fell out with Octavian.  They were school-mates, children or orphans as political prisoners.  Later, being familiar with the Nile, they chose a similar river, but safely far from Rome to bury their dead.

          Now, what Nile-like river can you sail straight over to from Morocco/ Mauritania where Grand-dad lived when he fell out of favor with Roman Italy?  Check out their website, the Illinois Cave(s) Mystery, especially one particular cave, a man-made one.  Because, there’s no natural caves in southern Illinois ( Mississippi–Ohio–Wabash–Little Wabash watershed).   

          Also to note, if you’re wondering how I freely speak in terms of Euro-African and American sail-and-oar maritime activity, Columbus wouldn’t have even tried his trip without the ancient precedents of the likes of people we’re talking about, especially with the orienteering accomplishments of the fifteenth century Chinese explained publicly now by Gavin Menzies.

          And if you’re unaware of it, rowing up a river is done on the sides, along the banks with the dependable back-current there.  You can use the sail when you need to cross the river, if there’s wind to do it.  Note, later ships were strictly sail, many lost in the doldrums of the Sargasso Sea in the central Atlantic, not equipped to row out of it.

          Okay, back to the deep black sea (for real shark stories, read the ornithologists’ stories of sidelining their bird-watching with sub-surface filming of the great whites at the Farallon Islands.  The book is called, The Devil’s Teeth (the traditional nickname for the islands, no offense to the whites).  

          Part  D

          Alright, the born-again experience.  I took another glance today online at some people’s explanation of baptizing babies.  The Philippian jailer’s family precedent is a plausible one, like a tribal phenomenon.  I mean a truly tight-spirited and respectful one.  I saw a photo on Samuel Martin's website of him christening one of his baby daughters.  Sam's free ebook Thy Rod And Thy Staff, They Comfort Me is what informed me of King James' errors translating Solomon's proverbs.

          For me, God didn’t ‘big move’ in my life until I was twenty.  And, the old Israelite custom of only accepting members into the military at age twenty seems to be similar.  It was like God said, ‘Dear dude, the dropoff into blackness on that coral atoll is where the action is; go there’.  Joan of Arc certainly followed her conscience into battle and certainly outclasses Bonaparte in napoleonic retrospect, I'd say.

          As I think of the new birth, the prerequisite for human entrance into God’s eternal kingdom per Jesus’ clear words to Sneaky-Poo Nicodemus–he snuck over to Jesus’ camp at night for fear of his fellow Sanhedrin, and Jesus used a megaphone and blew Nic’s cover anyway–we are given a distinct analogy of the experience. 

          It’s a state-of-the-art clothing of both female and male bodies in individual armor.  From head to toe, the Christian is to be dressed in the full wardrobe, helmet, breastplate, loin shell, treaded sandals like football or baseball cleats, the sword of a Roman soldier.  Babies don’t wear that.  Women and men do.  We are in a spiritual war wearing figurative armor.

          I agree that children can be part of the army, and Mel Tari has Timorese-Indonesian stories of this.  Neither do I begrudge anyone, any youngster, for waiting until age twenty.  But even for dunderhead me, it was a maximum.  And hey, if a sixteen-year-old,  can fly a plane around the planet then strap on your headset, pardner.  That was Mack Rutherford following in the footsteps of his older sister Zara, both following the rest of the aviating Rutherford family.

           And really, like I said with me, you’ll know it when God moves big in your given life, if you’ve noticed previous small moves by him.  Him.  Is God an it?  He's certainly 'what it's all about'.  And I know, being born again is 'the' matter of life and death. But, it's on God's timing, of course, as we don't 'wait' to be born.

         I am thinking of one example, seemingly very small, but real.  I had stepped down a driveway or alley, night time, off a main street in Bangkok to piss against a little coconut  tree.  It was city dark and the stars were visible.  There by the fronds of the tree was the big dipper, and I spoke to God in my mind, ‘That’s your constellation, isn’t it, God’. 

           That constellation's seven stars matched what I had read in God's book about the number seven.  Now I know the seven stars represent God as heavenly father, generically.  And, the two stars on the right side of the dipper point over to the stationary north star as Jesus Christ.  Who is "the same yesterday, today, and forever."  It reminds of God quoted as speaking publicly one time, “This is my beloved (child/son); hear him”.

           One evening here in PA I was out behind what my child called the pine noodle tree.  A meteor shower was scheduled, but I hadn't seen any.  So I entertained myself looking at the Father God's seven stars pointing at Jesus' unchanging Pole Star or North Star.  I had to be patient with that too until my Daddy God put one right by it so very intimately.

           Near where I live now in Virginia as I'm re-editing this essay a year later are a pair of houses that are remarkable.  I'd only driven by them, across the road from each other, when I used to live over there on the other side of them twenty years ago at Montebello (north of town, Zachary Taylor's birthplace of the same name south of town).  Recently I was talking with a fellow by the family name of Gilmore.

           I asked Mr. Gilmore if he's local and he answered "Yes, my family had the Gilmore property" (a preserved heritage-site slave cabin across from James Madison's Montpelier heritage site).  Besides the view from inside the woods of the front yard and looking up the driveway to Madison's house from which he constitutionalized life for these united states of North America, the harmonious contrast of the two dwellings is interesting to see from sea to sea.

          Of women warriors, did you read the report of Pizarro's subordinate?  His orders were to drop down east off the Andes and find where the Amazon begins.  Which of course is all over the place down there.  He was supposed to climb back thru the snow-capped mountains and report on it.  He stayed with the fresh fruit, but got in trouble for it.

           The Amazon network was just as much work as the Andes.  Plus, some of the people locally tried to kill him and his group.  One observation he made was of women who fought more significantly than their men.  Skylar, here, repeat state champion javelin thrower (seconded by little sister, Taylor) was also football free-safety and cornerback.

            Being wrong is my song; 'wanna' learn it?  Some of you may yet be working through the wrench/diaper discovery that we've been horrendously mistaken about spanking children.  Yo-Yo here is happily past that and working as a male on the adult version.  The magnitude of the situation definitely requires ye' old focus on the helping hand of God in Jesus Christ, even "the Spirit of Christ", the famous Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost, same thing.

          Part  E 

          Individual, non-cookie cutter people is what God wants.  Look at Jesus’s friends, formerly called disciples–and they needed it, discipline–they were essentially useless until born-again by the Holy Spirit like electric power to energize a battery bunny.  Should we encourage our children to play with toy swords and warriors? 

           Is there a cut-off point, safely, where the spiritual can be transitioned into?  I say be spiritual from the start, even to teach policing as a unique vocation.  Meaning guns, as was responsibly done by all citizens in past U.S. generations, less the ridiculously ammunitioned military weapons of today.  It's supposed to be hunting not cheating.

          As Harry Houdini perfectly practiced from early childhood his escape skills, so we ought to apply God's ten commandments.  For example, it would enhance our lives to apply The Almighty's second injunction.  About graven images of created entities, I am enthralled to think of the benefit of heeding it, if it hasn't been deleted from The Text.   

           It follows logically that hitting children leads to shooting children.  "Come out from among them and be ye separate", says The Lord.  You can't wrongly separate others if you're busy correctly separating yourself, from the world of man, of befuddled cuddling with strangers.  "For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ".

           I remind per the YouTube audio recording of deleted cell phone data of a purported satanist, every supernaturally and spiritually digital action gets permanently recorded.  I for one want my diligent accomplishments acknowledged eventually by the great one with whom we all have to do.  In the meantime, I use God's faithfulness, not any of my own to do that; middlemen beware.

          That’s quite a dual option in Thailand, either war or peace for two years for their young men.  Would that their monks find out what’s really going on in the spiritual ether.  Really, military or monastery, to realize “The battle is The Lord’s” because it’s too big for us would change everyone’s ‘modus operandi’.

         I know I grew up thinking sticks were battle weapons.  Certainly, the perspective of peace as priority and maintained by a police force is helpful, by God.  I read once that police families socialize tightly, because everybody, even extended family is nervous around them.  Is that like being the salt of the Earth or the light of the world?  ‘Exciting but lonely?  God bless police, nice ones; and, most are. 

          Police have a hard job to do with the likes of us, maybe too hard sometimes.  After a public accusation of police brutality, I looked on YouTube to get educated about it.  I saw over ten videos with accusatory titles, but each one was hypocritical.  All I saw in every single video were the most amazingly courteous and patient professional people I've ever seen, more than the furniture movers I had the honor to work with once.

         I didn't tell a bad story about myself.  You may be wondering why I dealt with blacking out so handily in the diving pool.  I had learned about the phenomenon a couple of years earlier.  A close friend of Alan and Peter and myself was Alan's next-door neighbor, Jay.  Jay was an only child and lived in the original farmhouse around which on three sides the suburban houses were put in.  

          The house was along the highway and hillcrest, along River Road.  Jay's dad made her a fabulous playhouse, long with lots of room for toys and space to play with them.  One time we guys went in there when Jay wasn't home and violently threw Jay's toys around.  I remember throwing Jay's toy piano a long way.  I can still hear it ringing wrongly as I tell you this.

           It was indeed wrong and must have been a sad shock to Jay when she went in there next.  Well, I think God punished me for it, and probably indirectly my parents for their negligence.  What happened was, Jay had a birthday party that summer in their big backyard.  They were country people and brought in ponies for riding.  An honest mistake that Jay's parents made was to rent or buy a playing apparatus the likes of which I'd never seen before or ever did after.  

          It was too dangerous and probably taken off the market.  It was a metal teeter totter that revolved on a tripod.  A third child would revolve it by standing in the center and pushing in circles as they riskily had to skip over the tripod legs while doing so.  A big boy friend of all of ours in the neighborhood was the pusher for a girl and myself.  And maybe it was a quadripod.

          She was Teresa who lived in the house by the entrance to the Catholic church-school where she was not a student.  Our pusher was Philip with whom I went to public school kindergarten.  Philip was big and very strong and somewhat slow of mind; Alan told me recently that Philip has died.  

           And once Philip got the hang of skipping over the quadripod legs, he got Teresa and me going at maximum speed.  You could hear the disturbed wind in your ears as we revolved, for we were going very fast.  Both Teresa and I went into legitimate panic mode and screamed at Philip to stop. 

           Philip continued turning us as fast as possible and laughing delightedly as he did it.  I saw Teresa at her end of the teeter pole starting to become unable to hold on to her handles.  When Teresa of a sudden lost her grip and back-flipped away, I went down within the range of the totter.  

           I stayed alert and mistakenly looked up to find a way out of range and got hit straight on.  It knocked out one of my brand-new front teeth so fully there was no root left.  And neither was the tooth found.  By the way, this apparatus was not the standard and safe backyard toy we all saw a lot of in the later sixties.  

          That would have movable secondary poles between the feet and hands of both participants.  Which allowed for total control of speed, including revolving on a level plane, even while getting up to speed.  Before I lifted my head up you could still hear the pole and seats whipping the wind audibly. 

           I hope nobody else experienced this, children at that age still with soft skulls.  I also did badly over at a construction site that same year.  On a Saturday we guys were standing around the empty site and made a common focus of the possible connection between a pile of new bricks and a newly-installed living room window.  

          We speculated on the excitement of making the connection for a few minutes.  I felt bored with further theorizing and picked up a brick and did it.  You know, until telling you this story of badness, I never had made the connection between that thrown brick and my throwing arm a few years later.  Jesus innocently spilled his blood for my guilt, and my parents'.   Again about symptomatic instead of cause prevention, children have it the worst.

          Hey reader, as I re-edit, I'm looking for the place in the text, not indexed, where I say that Adventist Christians don't think, 'many' of them, that Jesus is the incarnated God.  I've been reading around as research and I stand corrected.  Their idea is simply to equate Michael with pre-incarnate appearances of Jesus. 

           Examples are claiming the dead body of Moses from Satan, and as one of the three angels passing by Abraham's tent on the way to judge the sodomy town, and as the fourth, mystery guy surviving the "seven times hotter" flames at the bullying hand of King Nebuchadnezzar.

           Note, a place of eternal punishment or "hell" is indeed rejected by some or all or many Adventists.  Today's case in point is that the cruelty of slow torture with no rescue in sight of a sentient organism either non-human or human is a case of tit for tat.  Period. 

           See my text farther on here for further elaboration on a place of eternal torment.  As the slogan says, 'God don't make junk' and treasures his treasure, especially "in that day when I take up my jewels" (, saith The Lord).  God's children are his jewels in Jesus, both spontaneous or positively combustive.  Heaven or Bust !

         And I just noticed that the 'adventist' description, excuse me I mean the 'seventh day' description is from a development in history of understanding the manipulation of God's bible book in this regard, for political reasons, socio-political reasons. Meaning, some Adventists became aware of the lost treasure of God's seventh day of rest and contemplation and fellowship, a spiritual deep-sea treasure.

           Part  F    

          Whether we know about Jesus or not, the system still applies.  It's nice to know directly about Jesus to allow God's justice and mercy to directly help our lives.  We are responsible for The Teacher's class material regardless of contact-reception mode.  By the way, Alan told me Jay became a side-saddle horse riding champion.  Alan also told me Jay's dad was elected to be the county's sheriff chief.

         If we could see the real warriors fighting in the heavenlies, we’d be perspected a bit.  Bad ruffians on a Christian mission field were ready to chop up a missionary family one night but observed a reason to think twice about it.  Inside, Dad perceived how serious the situation was, that death was guaranteed if they stayed inside the house.  He prayerfully said, ‘I think we should leave the house’.  The band of murderous thugs parted ways, maybe like the Red Sea/Gulf of Aqaba.  Later, Dad asked one of the sobered up guys what happened.

        The guy said, ‘You were goners, chop-suey on the stove.  But, when you and your family walked out of the house, immediately big guys appeared, armed big guys, walking with you!’  My final thought, said on the basis of talking in the open here about what really is going on in life and death, is the application of the why and wherefore of action. 

           The winning factor, God backing it up, is the child of God’s immovable love of the truth.  I mean grace and truth as embodied in Jesus, grace God's undeserved kindness to us, truth God's inspired written bible, also the mental communion we have with our conscience, literally God's mind with ours.

          I mean truth as displayed in God’s precious and gorgeous realm of nature, of babies and butterflies.  This is where love is stronger than death, where the deciding factor of whether gold will purify to the point of clarification is the application of the golden rule, one to another, purifying it.  For, we are the impure gold in question, everybody, thugs ‘n drugs, we’re all made in the image of God initially and then each of us messes up, needing God's redemption in Christ Jesus.

          We all have, unless mentally handicapped, which is not craziness, the capacity to realize that I need, we need to start over, not just a new leaf, but uprooting the whole tree.  The second great commandment is exactly the golden rule, not the golden calf, or the yellow brick road, but the persuasion of love.   Love persuades.  Hate, and fear, coerce, others, ourselves.

         The unbridled love God talks about is like what Jesus said about the water that would flow out of our bellies, living water out of our God-blessed bowels of mercy.  'By Jesus, I used to be a hippie, but now I’m a happy'.

          Don’t complain about darning a run in your sock, just do it although it’s not a matter of ‘just do it,’ rather do it right, ‘right Mary Cain?   ‘Atta girl!

          Let Mary’s deprived chance at Olympic metal be everyone’s analogy, of training for the gold of God’s heaven, in Jesus Christ, by the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.  We want a child to be ideally in awe of their pa ‘n their ma, as unto the Ancient of Days.  But, we do not want a child to grow up miserably in a process where they might say, ‘Aww, Dad, Mom, you failed me’.  God will still be in position to heal that scenario, but let’s scrape a few more barnacles off the bottom of the boat.  

          Part  G

          So, today, I wrote extensive notes as ideas, then condensed it into, what else, one-liners.  A few are two-liners.  I’ll type ‘em out and edit what we got.  

          Worldly religious venues hand out programs and entertain for a fee.  Does your church?  Shouldn’t a church-assembling have an unexpected venue and be for free?  They do in God’s bible story.  Does Jesus cry “All ye, All ye, come in for a fee?”  Christianity is voluntary.  And note, preachers are pointers; 'question is, who are they pointing to.

          King Herod preached a ‘great’ secular ‘sermon’ one day, then fell down visibly eaten by worms.  I understand that was a miraculous and novel case of maggots eating proud flesh.  You do know the little gummies eat only junk, like on the Grinch's teeth.   They do, too; I saw them, my great coat packed to the gunwales with Chinese take out, no MSG, no 'hidden messages'.

           “Study the Word to be approved of God”; that’s it, ‘no busybody looking over your shoulder, to take some of God’s glory away from him.   God is our counselors, instructors and teachers; we should look over their shoulders from the rear.  A preacher should lay God’s Word before us as if she or he was a servant to a king.  No, not us; we’re not the king; I mean serving our fellow man “as unto The Lord”.

          This is also how God Biblically describes the mindset of a married woman.  She is to work it out with her man “as unto The Lord”.  This is assuming the guy is imitating Jesus exactly as he can.  And, if it ain’t enough, the option is there to separate.  This option is for both, to then wait it out one way or the other until by God’s hand death do us part.  This is for both the integrity of any children as well as ourselves.  If you like wolves, you’ll like marriage.  The narrow way is the only way through the valley of the shadow of death.

          To young or old, new or not, if you haven’t tried it, memorize some of God’s psalmic poetry, plus some of Jesus' words in bloody red if you happen to have that kind of bible-book. Really, just go left and right at your Holy Spirit-led leisure and enjoy what appeals to you. Put it in the pocket of your heart like a child’s treasure.  It will help you talk with Almighty God.  And get a grasp of the whole thing for contextual perspective.

           I first started memorizing when I was a night-watchman.  One of the psalms in a pocket-size bible-book I was reading mentioned a night-watchman talking meditatively with God as he watched and walked around.  The same one mentions containing oneself on a solo bed, thinking of someone else besides ourself, namely God.

          That 'nightwatchman psalm' is number sixty-three.  My eventual to date string of pocket treasures to recite for fun and direct fellowship with God are #'s 90, 116, 117, 138, 62, 139, 63, 50, 23, and 42.  That first one is known as the song of Moses.  Really it's a prayer by Moses, that speaks for each of us, hopefully.  Moses' prayer says a lot about him of course, also.

          Of charismatic activity, I tried that for about a year as a young Christian.  At the end of a session of soulical expression, I would find I hadn’t grown a millimeter.  Like a child wanting to mature so that he’ll stop messing up so much, it’s peace I wanted.  It’s that peace of mind we hear about, real mental composure.  “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee”.  That includes what God thinks, not only man.

           Nonsensical tongue talking and hyper hippy hopping is faithless folly.  'Faith cometh by the hearing of the (real) word of God".  The tongue talking at Pentecost was a real miracle of language learning enabling the early christian brethren to jump start the sharing of Gods good news in Jesus worldwide.  A study of the history of the English bible shows the apostle Simon Zelotes pioneering the good news in Britain relative months after Pentecost. 

           In France, the apostle Philip sent Joseph of Arimathea to Britain also, according to John Foxe in his book of early martyrs.  The new testament gospels and letters were immediately transcribed directly into the Gothic and Anglo-Saxon languages.  Then the Old English and Middle English languages were used to articulate the Word of God. 

           Records of these writings are well recorded in history as well as the same happening in Celtic Europe, Scandinavia, Russia, Ethiopia, India, Persia, and points in between and adjacent.  If you haven't heard it, then someone repressed what your ancestors heard.  Heard was and is God's invitation to worship him alone, and not the dumb idols of our disinterested and self-centered imagination.

          Of peace, with the Frederick furniture crew one day we delivered to a brick rambler along the Monocacy, like the Juniata here.  What a beautiful place, a full yard gently sloping to the river all around and easy to mow.  We got the piece in there, they did, me tidbit-helping their skilled patience. 

           As we were walking out of the living room saying goodbye to the standing woman, I noticed her man sitting on the couch staring straight ahead.  I asked if he’s alright and she said he had a stroke.  I said I’m sorry and she said “I’m not”.  I asked why and she said, “Because he’s been screaming at me at the top of his lungs for 34-years and I rather like the quiet”.

          Part  H

          Criticism is practical, skepticism a waste of time.

          Don’t be like a tornado torn between do and don’t.

          A pulpit should be a place beyond fiction.

         I’ve heard trees fall and I much prefer to hear them stand.

          Sadism and masochism begin in the bathroom, on the scale and in the mirror, and should end there.

         We should be kind to the blind as God is to every one of us bats.  Last night I read the bible story of Jesus mixing a paste for a man’s lifelong dark eyes.  When I read the word spat, my spouse in the next room said the word spit at the same instant.  She was wanting our child to hurry up and finish brushing his teeth.  I hope God’s shown his power like that with you many times.  Remember, God knows we spoil easily, but he especially encourages us periodically. 

          To happily and securely note here as I finish editing/proofreading,  the exact-same type of thing occurred last evening, two in a row.  Yes, my spouse was routining our child toward bedtime and when she said one particular word, I was reading the very-same word on the screen, here.  And, I mean not a split-second behind or ahead.  To me, that is my only daddy ‘n mommy God saying, ‘I know you’re at your wits end, and I will be with you to the end’.  

          The above spit + spat were the first such coincidence that has not been the exact word, having happened many times before elsewhere in the house and bake shop.  Night number two of the same was the exact word, as usual, and with, as always no time difference, exactly simultaneously.  And, I forget what the word was, my brain so full of words during this process of editing-proofreading.  I am pleased to also mention the next night, a third in-a-row saw similar. 

           I was reading the line of Del’s Theomatics as God’s mathematics and my spouse stressed the word math, at the moment I read the first syllable of that full word , to our child about his homework.  I typed an explanation of this elsewhere in this essay, maybe on this page, and will delete it as a double, if I find it.  ‘Excuse the inefficiency and imperfection of editing on my part.

          Four times it’s happened by God’s reassuring hand, in one week.  Just now, and having been away for two days from this writing project, yesterday, last night in my bed, I thought of the above liner about bathroom brilliance.  Here today, I had just tacked it in up there, and was looking back for correct spelling.  And, my spouse in the next room stressed the word mirror in saying something to our child.  God sees us in intimacy.

           It was precisely when I re-read the word I had just typed.  And, you, my dear reader, are providentially part of this experience of it.  Oh, and I didn’t know where in this ‘The Ending’ section I mention these coincidences happening.  After the fact of typing in that latest one-liner, I started scrolling to find my exclamatory explanation of their divine occurrences, and here they are, just following.  God really makes things easy for us, us complicating things.  

          Note, it’s April 19th, going on four months and the final proofreading, metadata prepared for publishing—excuse my spelling errors, logic voids, grammar, etc.-–anyway, last evening, proofreading, my spouse said the word ‘while’ to our child in the room next-door, while I read the very word on my chromebook screen doing this editing. 

           That's five times in one week, hearing my spouse in the next room say a word I'm typing or reading.  ‘Sublime ain’t the word for all this life God shares with us.  I don’t know about you, but if I would kill anything, it would be death.  And, Jesus sensibly did it without violence, rather with peace and abundance, super-abundance of life, supernatural overpowering of death by independent life.

          You know, what's been the main topic of thinking for me, and I shared it with my family, when in town, two days go, I met a woman whose new-born great-grand-daughter had to have her entire digestive system removed.  The girl is now in third-grade, accompanied by a nurse.  At night, an intravenous system nourishes her metabolism. 

           I thought to mention this related to the above phenomenon of our spirit creator and sustainer being mentally oriented.  My question is, Where is our mind located, along with emotions through hormones and flesh?  Our intestines, we know, are tied in closely with our brain.  Let us be happy to be alive, grateful and respectful, and to have guts in the way of courage.

         So, what, is it hell or heaven that’s going on around here?

         If you like wolves, you’ll like marriage--they marry for life, probably with better foresight then we have.

         If you have a pig on your stomach or monkey on your back, ask the inventor of pigs and monkeys to help you.

         Internet technology is physical and only a platonic allegory to heavenly reality.

         That old statue of a naked wise guy sitting with an elbow on a knee and his chin on a fist looks like he’s sitting on the toilet, and constipated.  Through Moses, God told us to be wary of graven images.  Islam is correct to shun such mental dissuasions.  A Mennonite family I visited had a corner cabinet chock full of tourist souvenir figurines. 

           I shared the observation from global experience that many people of so-called  pagan and non-Christian cultures would say, "Wow, you have a lot of gods!"  Who's the pagan, for Jesus said "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" ?  And aren't such little souvenirs nicknamed 'our little treasures'?  You know, when anyone travels to a foreign country, it is wise to study up on what is insulting to people of that culture.  One man's graven image is another man's figurine and never the twain shall meet.  Heaven is very much a foreign country, so shouldn't we study up on its customs beforehand?

           Family friends had a stuffed full-size tiger in their basement.  You walk down the steps unsuspectingly, turn, and it's along the wall, right there.  Read Jim Corbett's story of meeting the Queen of Shivers or whatever her earned name was.  'Going on three-hundred human kills, Jim said she had a smile on her face when they both met very awkwardly.

           Jim Corbett also perceptively titled a chapter in one of his hunting story books, The law of the jungle.  In it Jim mentions what he observed in a clearing within his view from a tree stand one quiet morning.  Jim also included a story of a local family's two very small children who together wandered into the woods and got lost.  They were found in the morning alive to the surprise of many.  Discover God's jungle law for yourself.  In fact Jim's introductory story of his first meeting with a tiger as a ten-year-old there in India is right in line with this.

         Jesus’ bible is a bubble for the tired little princesses and princes of this world.

         God wrote that war and conflicts are caused by greedy lust.

         People who cash in on people’s guilty consciences will have hell to pay.

         A note to share on hell that I thought of this morning, a third proof I could give you is–if I didn’t say it already; I’m really straining the sails and mast(s) and rigging in this essay project–and don't you fall overboard--that, God biblically writes about some people being punished with many whip strokes, while others will receive fewer.

         Do you own a type of chair called a busy-boy and never use it?

         Ken Cascio’s Wicked Shepherds website is useful for learning.

         The print size of God’s contract with us is big.

          Fantasy never quite makes it to fun, even at sea.

          Lust might insist it’s love, but it’s not.

          The question is not which comes first, wisdom or smarts, but which comes last.

          Role reversal can never be soul reversal.

          Pray for me, don’t prey on me.

          Spear pressure as police force is reasonable when properly executed, but peer pressure never has a useful point to make.

           In Christian cozy-couple college, she is a student of our-tistry and his-story, he a student of mirror-image technology, united face-to-face in the phases of life.

           It bears repeating, contentment and chocolate don’t always fit into a small tent.  Friends told me the story of their first night of friendship as newlyweds, camping.  All food was safely left in the car, except a bar.  And a third soul wanted some of it, a Davey Crockett bar’ and put a paw right through the tent wall to politely receive a share, and give a scare, shoo’d off a bear.

          In 10th-grade J.V. football, Tony had powered it forty yards to the two-yard line.  It was given to me to put it through, but I couldn't.  An opening in the igloo pile-up above me saw the referee trying to see success or failure on my part.  I would fail by yelling out, ‘I’m over, Ref!’  He lifted his arms in the touchdown sign.  But, my arms would ever hang by my side.

         Imagine we’re at the disco and I ask you, ‘Hey, can you do the kundalini?  At Portsmouth, an alumnus gave a full demonstration on the science lecture hall table.  In the question-and-answer period afterwards, everyone was in shocked silence except the young monk Anselm.  He was sweet and respectful, yet firm and clearly not impressed.  Anselm died soon after from cancer or something.  Mom told me that divinely pushy Sara Blakey died of a brain tumor soon after she stopped me from bleeding to death. 

          Part  I

          An important story in this essay is the lack of surprise of someone who never heard of Jesus.  But, in their life, they loved the spirit of love that they saw so beauteously all around them, despite God’s correct curse on man’s selfish evil.  And, when they wake up from the sleep or blink of death, there they see the personification of the love they honored and treasured in the life they lived. 

           But, knowing about Jesus, even knowing the great God of old in Jesus is the best gossipy news any of us could ever hear.  And, Jesus didn't say to gos-sip his living water, but to drink deeply of his well of salvation.  To know someone is to love them.  God knows us; and he invites us in Jesus to know him, "redeeming all men (that's you) unto himself".

          Thus, gospel preaching and bible reading is an opportunity to learn about the lover of our souls ahead of time.  And, repentance is the first expression of love and the basis of any person’s appreciation.  “He (or she) who has been forgiven much, loves much”.  Forgiveness is God’s subsequent reciprocation to our repentance to him.  What this does is free us to do what we really want, which is to love him and one another in simplicity.

        I stepped into a megachurch I’d been invited to and a young man was telling about his mission-visit to Calcutta.  He said he watched a woman die on the sidewalk.  And, he lamented that she is now in hell because he couldn’t tell her not to go or whatever.  It was all I could do to refrain from going down the amphitheater-like seating arrangement and give the guy some of his own advice.

          This morning, I woke up thinking of the woman I heard interviewed on YouTube.  The dear is a professional seamstress working at a western company shirt factory in Calcutta.  Her lament was that she could only afford a house that had no bathroom, a toilet room.  Sweetie had to walk a quarter-mile to the neighborhood latrine.  The polite and patient woman didn’t mention the obvious.  That, she probably has to wait in line once she gets there.  I told this to my son, off school today.

          I don’t play cards, not the race card, not the gender card, not the religion card.  ‘Deal, and let the cards lie.

          “The marriage bed is undefiled” until it’s undefined.

          Don’t let a social pressure-cooker’s vent hole get plugged.

          God wants pliable people, not stiff steeples.

          While only Jesus lived and died with no regret, he invites us to start over and do the same.

          Heaven is a place prepared, and hell is a place prepared, and I eat powdered mustard.

          Only God is on time; everybody else is under it.

          There's no stupid question, unless we ask it over and over again, like we do.

          To think everything good is a gift is the greatest lift.

          To repeat, the customer is always right, maybe not correct, but always right.

          God is the guide; his working name is Jesus.

          Assert yourself, Ma'am!

           Chance waits for everyone.

          Jesus’ followers are his flowers, and "God knows those who are his”.  On my way to visit Niagara Falls but first Toronto, in the bus station snack bar, full at lunch time, I blurted out, ‘Can anyone here give me information about the city of Toronto?’  A man on a stool swiveled, showing one arm in a sling, ‘Seeing as I was once Director of Information for the City of Toronto, yes, I could probably help you’.  

          We spent four days together, George Erwin Fleury, my dad’s age, a medaled wounded captain in the Canadian army, fourteen generations of Fleury’s behind him, all florists. He visited the home village during the war, and knew the Latin names of every plant I pointed at, not a florist, but an amateur expert. Every man in the Odd Fellows’ Home owed George money.  He had ‘em cornered and marketed to the individual, in the name of Jesus Christ.

           At a restaurant, I displayed arrogance and disrespect to someone we were talking with in the booth across from us.  After they left, George fumed at me in disgust.  When we got back to The Home for him, he asked me if I would be so inclined as to wash his feet.  I said 'yes' and we went up a side flight of stairs to a utility sink.  George's feet were neglected in his crippled old age.  Typically, I didn't even get the point of it as I put a fresh pair of socks on him.

          Part  J

          Our daily grind of grain bread reminds to mind God's own grind of bloody sweat for us.  

          Still thinking of meat-eating, I did once successfully make Indonesian soybean tempeh.  It was delectable, the one time I made it correctly.  I used the wet-clothes drying closet attached to the chimney in the farmhouse kitchen.  Of meat, after the flood, God mentioned to Noah that animals were now fare game. 

           The uniform and protective atmospheric vapor canopy had been lifted.  God also said the animals would run, which meant raptors before the flood came at you.  And, Jesus correctly said that it's not what goes into our mouth that defiles us, but the words that come out or our fingers write. 

          A note and story about cannibalism, besides the earlier spiritual one from Jesus, I read of a European explorer or visitor to old Africa.  He was in the east-central part, generally, and decided to hike to the west-central part of Africa, to the Atlantic Ocean.  They skirted the thick woods for most of it by using the savannah lands.  They got way out west there, and then dipped south into the forest. 

           His crew was very nervous, about cannibalism, and some deserted.  He made it in and out of there, even striking up a friendship with a tribal chief.  After getting a language system established between them, including sign language, the two guys were sitting on a bench or log, talking.  The European inquired again, as numerous times before about cannibalism.  His African contemporary put him off again, denying a cannibalism habit. 

          At a subjective moment in their conversation, the African said to the European in passing, and maybe it was partly signed, “The best part is what you’re sitting on”.  That is a comparatively benign aspect of traditional habitual cannibalism, worse being deeper things of Satan in trance and religious decadence, deep decadence.  I did hear the Maori started it up when their diet ran out of sufficient fat. 

           I suppose a trance is standard.  The island of Guadalupe was cannibalistic, observed Christopher, and the Chinese before him.  Children ran to him and held on to his legs for safety.  He took them over to Puerto Rico or maybe Domingo after disbanding things on big G.

           You know, they were on an island.  Jesus gets us all, or can get us all back to Ararat and Eden, and on to his father’s promised land.  Recall or read his conversation with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s old well, also the ‘Alive’ story of the Uruguayan soccer team, written by Piers Paul Read.

                  If children are only to be seen, wherefore God’s Word “from the mouth of babes”?

          Unresolved fear and unsolved hatred ties the laces of our spirits’ shoes together.

          God calls us to be born again, not bored again and again.

          What we do now we’ll do forever, this best and tiny destiny of ours.

          Pillow fights always take the down escalator.

          Christians look in on each other, not down on each other.

          Everyone likes to win, and ‘love never fails’.

          You may call it unity, but you might not find me in it.

           “(We) know not what spirit (we) are of”, until by God’s grace we do.

            We weren’t here before, and we won’t be after, so let’s stop thinking we’re the immovable cohesion of the cosmos.

            As a little guy trying to fall asleep one Kama-Sutra Christmas Eve, I positioned my legs and arms in such a way that if I died in my sleep those who might find me in the morning would think of what a noble child I was.

           If we would only ignore our proud genetics for a moment, we could better see our hidden agendas.

          The choice is ours as a neutral heaven watches us: we can wisely go for glory later, or foolishly glow for gory now.

           For sports fans, consider what I think about, ‘Competition is at best a petition with self, success merely an increment of doing better.’

           It is simplistic to think that by looking at similarities differences will take care of themselves.

          A stranger told me I’m a chance branch that can make a treehouse like an orangutan, run like a deer, swim like a fish, dive like an eagle, farm, catch a plane, talk with my creator, and needlessly invent camouflage; 'Eden, not evolution.

           All God's winners are former sinners.

           The truth may not be legal but it is divine and follows God's policy of winner takes all.

           Are you cooking the books of a seared conscience?

           A lost man loses his temper while a found man finds it.

           A lost man thinks not for himself only of himself.

           “Gird up the loins of your mind” or informally ‘Flex the butt of your brain’.

           Like astute business-people, let Christians consider the features and benefits of their shared offering.

          Tears of Godly appreciation water the flowers of a nation.

          Jesus keeps his authority to himself, and let no one tell you differently.

          If we can’t be satisfied here, we won’t be satisfied anywhere.

          If Jesus said he’s the door, then we definitely shouldn’t slam it.

          If it feels good to give and we don’t, then we’re stupid bad.

          Like a Japanese assembly line, anyone has the God-given right to push the ‘Stop, something’s wrong’ button.

          I appreciate you saying ‘Patience pays’, and know I look forward to sitting in heavenly places in Christ Jesus with you.

          Before God had to place a cursed parameter for Eve and Adam’s wrong willfulness, love birds did not eat cuddle bugs, they only played together.

          Part  K

         Awareness of our common origin and extended family derivation through Adam and Eve, and Noah and his, clarifies our global perspective of one another.  Again, check Nick Ligouri’s excellent compilation of stories from ancient global cultures, of Noah’s flood and after that, the dispersion of peoples from Babylon worldwide.

          God biblically says , “To him (respectively and generically) who considers his way (before me) will I show the salvation of God”, giving us access to the real amusement park, the real picnic, the real honeymoon, the real rich children’s life of leisure, the real reality of adventure and worth.  But, he means he wants our attention, pretty much all of it.  He wrote a book of explanation, of who he is and who we are, The Holy Bible.

          And, he gave us common sense enough to make sense of it.  He also came himself to demonstrate, just as he was kindly in the habit of doing in Eden with Eve and Adam.  Note, a new precedent of gender equality is realistically exemplified when Paul addresses Prisca (his nickname for Priscilla) and Aquila, a couple, in one of his letters to a group, in that order.  

         Plus, this gender equality is also anticipated in the old testament by Jeremiah.  He pens God’s thought by saying, “Behold, a woman compasses a man”.  This means God is inviting Israel, even the Israel of God, as a woman as we know, to seek after him instead of always him after her.

         By the way, Jeremiah’s words there have nothing to do with the birth of Jesus contextually, as some think.  An ironic factor does exist where Joseph looks the other way at Mary’s apparent unloyalty.  An angel clarifies for Joseph the bigger situation than he’s seeing.  The Hebrew in the passage by Isaiah actually is “young woman”, not some virgin maiden, necessarily.  

         However, she coincidentally is a virgin as gleaned from eyewitness accounts.  What is a most important fact to know is that she was miraculously inseminated by God himself.  For, the Text of God says she will name him ‘God with us’.  And, that young woman conceived by God.  Which, again, the John Holdemans do not believe, Church of God in Christ, Mennonite.

          Before I met Ralph W. Emerson in the San Jose bus station, I had taken the scenic route along the oceanside.  I hadn’t slept for twenty-four hours since Tokyo the day before.  Coming in to land at Sea-Tac, an enormous cloud bank offshore announced an imminent end to some sunny summer weather for the mainland.  The fog set in that evening before the bus was even out to the coast.  I was in a front seat for foggy viewing of sheep jumping over a fence.

          I awoke when a new passenger sat next to me where I was by the window.  We chit-chatted and I told her I wanted to view the scenic coastline.  I soon fell asleep again until my seatmate elbowed me awake.  We were in foggy view of the full ocean now, and I fell asleep again.  The dear mother of five daughters and five sons, all in the timber business, continued to alert me frequently.

          I really am glad she did share her enthusiasm with me.  Because, I was tired enough to miss the entire scenic view.  Mama disembarked in the big woods in Northern California, a daughter and son-in-law waiting solo in the fog outside a closed little building.  She was so beautiful, such a personification of the great and vivacious land she lived in.

          After Ralph and she and I parted ways in Los Angeles, I went to the Canyon.  But, I was hitch-hiking where the Greyhound or Trailways didn’t go.  And not paying to camp for the night, I had to clear out of the Park by nightfall.  While taking in the view of a ditch formed in three weeks by flood water, or a broken flood lake (my guess may be better than yours), I stood next to a group of young people.  I overheard them asking a park ranger bizarre, illogical questions, with New York City accents.

          As I departed across the parking lot, I went by a charter bus with New York plates.  Those youngsters had come straight out of an urban environment.  Aren’t we all strangers to this amazing planet and cosmos!  I hitched a ride in the back of a First People's pick-up at sunset across the Painted Desert.  I tripped up through Utah and bussed across through Colorado, then south to New Mexico.

          I wanted to hike up in the ‘Blood of Christ’ mountains near Taos.  A gal gave me my final ride up in there.  She worked winters at the ski area.  She mentioned that her boss was recently killed by local roughs.  She let me off where a dirt road wound into the high hills.  A bait and tackle shop was right there and I went in to verify.  I was told the dirt road led to a walking trail that followed a series of seven alpine lakes.

          The fellow my age there also asked me a question, if I had a tent.  I said I owned one, but I left it back in a locker at the bus station in Santa Fe.  He then said I might want to go and fetch it.  I ignored his helpful input and started up the dirt road through a town. 

           Of First Peoples, it was a windy road with houses on both sides.  Dogs barked hard at me and the residents on their porches only looked.  I made it to the top lake, a few feet below the treeline.  A pup tent was at the far end of it, no other people encountered on the hike but the RV vehicles back at the road head.

          Each lake was at a different elevation, and I was skirting back down by lake number five when thunderstorm season resumed.  The water filled up on the forest floor like a bathtub, and the waning daylight was quickly gone.  I snapped tree branches off to try and make a huddling platform above it.  It was not possible, nor was a frantic descent to the RV-parking guaranteed. 

           I made my wet way back to the top lake, the flashlight not invented yet in my dim mind, and knocked on the door of the tent.  It was owned by two young ‘third peoples’ who hike up the eastern face, they said.  They let me in.  It rained all night, successive waves of heavy downpours.  Ignorance is not bliss; it’s dangerous.

         On a happier note, the first year on the farm during the winter, I was down to the bottom of one of the hay piles in the barn.  The retired farmer had laid poles across there for aeration.  I yanked up a first-level bale of hay, and there was a big mama rat lying on her side in a nest between two poles.  She was comfortably nursing her young, two of them, and all three looked up at me in astonishment. 

           They then took off running together in the same direction, the mama rat and two kittens.  Yes, two baby cats, kittens were latched on and sucking contentedly when I surprised them all.  That was the only rat I saw in twelve years on the farm there.  I kept pet cats in the barn, although I’m not sure if the retired farmer did.  He died the night of the earthquake, his sweetie-pie recently gone before.

          A mutt dog somebody dumped off as a puppy eventually got pregnant by my collie dog.  I made a tight den of hay bales in the mow for Brownie.  Thirty-below weather flowed in for a visit and I knew this was going to be nip and tuck.  But done correctly, it was a fine birthing place for a bitch.  I stuck my hand in there now and then and it was steadily warm.  Brownie kept her frost covered face in the air hole where I watered and fed her.  Her face blocked the hole, which she could control with her own instincts. 

         I got each puppy to a farm, my favorite to a family in the plateau country behind the ridge.  It was an old German community, maybe old Hessians from the war, old German-style barns, rare in Quebec.  He mentioned he was seeding a field early that summer and a wolf came out and attacked him on the tractor.  He stood up on the tractor's engine and she couldn’t quite reach him.  He went back for his hunting rifle in case she came out again, certainly with pups nearby.  He had to put her down, when she did come out again.  

          The man who sold me Jim Dandy said he was over at their local general store.  The owner brought him to the back to look at some material.  They walked through a storage room where his pet dog was reclining with a litter of pups.  They were past her, with their eyes off of her, and she just missed my friend's neck. 

           The general store owner put his guest safely out of the room.  And, the man put that particular bitch out of commission with his hunting carbine.  Wolves and wolf dogs are especially protective of their pups like that, a common pet in the region.  I cut wood with a man who had one of the latter.

          A census taker told me Papineau County, only an hour’s driving from Ottawa, had the fewest people in 'la belle provence' speaking English as their first language.  Personally, that helped me to make a new social life for myself.  Although I was born again by God’s spirit, it was a traumatic and tender time for me.  I compare it to the physically perilous time after my messy birth in the P.I.  But, a will to live and doing so in a nice place is a good combination.

          Part  L

          Original apostolic Christian assemblies were mixed groups of natural diversity.

          Jesus divinely warned that some of our enemies would be members of our family households.  Of course, no one should personify a reason for another’s ambivalence.

          A narcissist drives a steam-roller while texting his alter-ego.

           A loose cannon on a ship always caused terrible wreckage, regardless if it was stuffed with husband, wife, or child.

          If something will do me ‘a world of good’, then I ought to give Heaven a try.

          What did she say in Gone With The Wind, ‘tomorrow’s another day’?  Let’s live like there ain’t one.  God’s love knows no bounds, except for books.  Books need to be bound, so let’s get this one done.  God's "book of life" is bound with the love of "his everlasting arms".

             You know, what's called 'human interest stories' always necessarily involve spiritual and eternal ramifications.  I think God in Christ Jesus gives the perfect balance of that.  Note, about Ancient Egypt, do take a look at some Ron Wyatt videos, including the one I heard last night with; I think it was Mary Nell Wyatt narrating, excellently.  

          The big news is the discovery and opening up of the records in stone and statue of both Moses, the Egyptian Tutmoses, and Joseph, the very famous and for long enigmatic,  Imhotep.  

          The latter who evidently built not only the famous Step Pyramid, but also devised the dual-lever-fulcrum machine used for future pyramids.  Included on the property grounds of the Step Pyramid are eleven massive, really enormous grain bins.  They aren't regular Egyptian grain storage facilities, but special ones with ingenious feeder chutes from a series of adjacent bins.   

           I read elsewhere also, the biblical big famine in the Middle East might coincide with a weather problem which apparently affected the whole planet.  What caused it is not fully understood, very possibly an above average-sized meteorite strike or close fly-by.  

          Another possibility of the cause of an earth-wide drought at that time is a repercussion to an apparent meteorite that polarically knocked off half the surface-shell of Mars. News like this is fascinating, especially when the archaeological discovery is well researched.  The above is admittedly amateur, but not without merit.

          There are two flows that can be flaws, electricity and water; one can blow me all up, and the other can blow me all down.  And reading again here what apostle John told us how the Word of God became flesh, I re-think my supposed improvement of what Walt said.  Because it helps me to perceive the fabulous phenomenon of God's incarnation by paraphrasing the inspired line as " the Word became electric, and dwelt among us". 

           It is the idea of electrons orbiting and co-valence and what have you in perfect symmetry and wondrous beauty that intrigues me and appeals to my imagination.  I can grasp it better, even lay hold of it in my mind.  I'd like to time travel but I don't want to do it alone, yet a harmony of co-valent electricity must be effected by the instigator of such love.

           Yo-Yo here just for the first time read Walt Whitman's poem, after writing the above.  While his description is ample and vociferous, Walt mistakes past eons for a few millennia.  And Walt melds the soul with the body which is a trite mistake, being different and significant.  Worst, Walt leaves Almighty God out of the picture and scenario.  God is no subject of allusion unless he is an illusion.  Neither is the crest of a massive mountain nor the nipples of a nursing momma.

          A mistake we all want to or ought to avoid is willfully neglecting to see impossible contradiction in believing the inscribed hearsay of evolutionary billions of death and mayhem before death and mayhem started in Eden.  If the flood was, then Eden was, and "never the latter explanation with the former explanation of cosmic life systems will meet", unless one wants to ingest hydrogenated spirituality or some trancefaturation.  

           And "these things are (indeed) spiritually discerned', again depending on "what spirit (we) are of", of the two, we beasts who would call fire down from heaven upon people who look at us unacceptably or don't look acceptable to us.

           And I for one want to meet my maker, an encounter of accepted invitation.  God efficiently inspired Solomon to concisely and humbly delineate this wonder in his mentions of things too wonderful to be described with words.  That is what is 'sacred', the realm of Original Love inviting the unloving to join in its joy in unified harmony.

           God in Jesus gives us rest from the labors of our hearts' mental struggles to make sense of cosmic things.  Like a child begins with glimpses of adult reality, so adults must humbly acquiesce to the most mathematical and logically probable explanation.   Which is the 'wa-wa' of the flood of Noah and his woman, sons, and daughters-in-law. 

           This is not a cessation or nullification of procedural thought.  Rather it is a sensitive and perceiving regulation of attempts to thoughtfully understand.  This is the essence of humility, and the only restful place for our body and our soul and our spirit individually covalent.

          The long-deceased and partially out-dated author and surgeon Jethro Kloss in his health book Back To Eden interestingly suggested that we try to maintain a certain alkaline reserve in our bodies.  Maybe in Eden we were ordained by God to nourish the body with such a successful variety of fruitful nutrients.  I think that is what energized my son starting from a toddler to commandeer me vanquished and prone in wrestling.

          An elderly PA veteran told me a war motto, Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.  And this was abbreviated for me by a younger veteran, Slow is fast.  I would add, Keep your butt flexed, to optimize the dexterity connection between belly, and fingers, toes, and nose, knees bent a bit, toes pointed when standing, walking, or running, not when sitting or crouching.  References for that are at the end of my booklet.  ‘Head up, shoulders back’, especially playing hockey with the local fellows.

          Jesus also calls us to die for our enemies, not just our friends.

          Love is constructive.

          To copy and paste is profound, God forbidding 'junk in, junk out' as data entry.

          Honesty is divine satisfaction developed in obedient persistence.

          I crossed a visible path once with a wanted-poster person.  I saw his solo picture in my mom’s apartment building laundry room.  He was back out of prison but suspected to be back at his chosen digression of apartment-building infiltration.  I checked his height and weight along with his countenance.  Mom had gone somewhere, and I was headed home by the subway up the street, my vehicle parked up the end of the line. 

          Walking up to the station, I countered a lot of people coming back from work.  And there he was mixed right in with them and I stupidly met his gaze and certainly for a time too long.  He would duck in somewhere, maybe the woods up behind the buildings.  I called the police in a tire store, before cell phones, right nearby and rode around with a young officer. 

          The next week visiting Mom again I re-checked the man’s description, thinking I may have been off by ten pounds or an inch or two.  It didn’t matter, because I noticed his nickname, Fingers.  As I looked back at him after passing on the sidewalk, his large hands flicked his long fingers.  May I suggest you not look twice if this happens to you.  Trust your judgment because no harm is done by a spot check on anyone.  But that won’t happen if we give it away, like Fingers always does.

          Part  M

          In Indonesia, Pete and I had double-winged glider airplanes that stopped flying with double amounts of Scotch tape.  Less of the wider Irish packing tape we have now may have given us some more time.  Then, I got blessed with a single-wing glider toy plane with a propeller that was powered by a big rubber band running the length of the fuselage. 

          An impediment was restricted take-off space because the suburban back street roads had more potholes than pavement.  But I managed an off-angled runway to then turn the plane back to the field by cocking its wing just so.  Then, I got tired of it upending upon landing in the field grass.  I had the wing cocking figured well enough to get me 300 degrees from my starting point, back behind me up to the edge of the road.

          But I wanted a road landing, and knew I could cock the wing a little more to turn the plane around that far.  The challenge was gauging where the plane would land according to the road potholes.  I backed up on foot on the road a ways and chose the least potholed route.  

          Then it only remained to cock the wing; ‘made it on the first try.  Those potholes were deep and steep and would surely put me out of commission.  It rolled to a stop in front of a biggie.  Thank God.  I didn’t know how to thank God audibly, only in the form of dance.  I was all over the place, in the field.

          That field was a good stone’s throw, for a boy, between house-streets widthwise.  I don’t know why it was there, maybe for future concentration of the dwellings.  But it was just right for flying kites.  The tropical dry season came with wind.  I had been wondering what the colorful coffee cans for sale were through the school bus window.   They had kite string rolled on them.

          The colors were beautiful, royal purple, fruit-fly green, sun yellow.  Then I noticed boys down the street in the field flying kites.  Women had set up kiosks to sell the colorful string and little five-cent kites.  They were a foot square and remarkably maneuverable.  And they better would, because it was cut kites, to name it now like that for the first time.

          The string was waxed then run through powdered glass.  This is why a big group of little boys were having so much fun gobbling up the bigger boys’ kites that got sent to the ground. 

          (It just occurred to me, my school child is reading Laura Hillenbrand’s, Unbroken, a coincidence of real proportions.  Actually, I think it's too much of a book on war, too early for youngsters, too much tragedy at one time.   Youngsters are perceiving established norms, remember.  And remember, dear reader, God's plan of hornets before Moses' continuation from the Egyptian man he illegally slew.)

          I got into the fray and within seconds, my kite was floating to the ground.  I probably had more money than most of these guys and I had to dish out another nickel. The women in the kiosks were smiling; they were in business.  

          The idea was to watch the strings, not the kites.  You’d go cross-eyed looking straight at the kites.  There was about twenty boys my age there, and more than that of little gobblers at the ready.  It was rather a beautiful interchange really, but something was out of the ordinary, I noticed after a while.  

          A slightly older boy with a white kite, possibly home-made, for the kiosk kites were all pastels, was staying in the air constantly.  And he was aiming for me, I soon realized.  His skill was deft and experienced at cut kites and he was better at it than the rest.

        And, he stayed right in the middle like the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Much of the play involved avoiding him, except this tree would come after you.  Well, I guess the one in Eden did too.  But I got the hang of making my string less vulnerable to anybody.  A major thing to do was relax your string when an opponent contacted it.  (Did my string just get cut by using the word 'thing'?)

          You couldn’t do this for long, for then you’d get tangled and while trying to regroup yourself with extra tension, someone would be expecting you to.  But, white kite had his own weakness, his white kite.  It was easy to see him moving in closer.  And, I finally got to him.  His kite wobbled to the ground for the little boys to gobble.  We exchanged keen, lengthy glances, after I got cut down again by someone else.  Bloody fingers and palms from the glassed string were reasons to relegate this activity to history.

          I had the chance to fly a massive double-box decorative kite up in the Punjak hills on a weekend.  I went up with a buddy and his family, the big kite just fitting in the back of the station-wagon with us.  But, we ignorantly flew it in a tea plantation and it got ripped up.  Punjak weekends were fun, even in a sad family, well, as can be–I’m  sighing hard, here–but my favorite part was Howdy Pardner.

          Part  N

          He was an American who for reasons unknown to me was living up there in the highlands.  When driving up to Punjak on occasional Friday early-evenings with my family, Howdy would be positioned at a card table facing the direction we were coming from.  There was a bridge and a beautiful big stream flowing under it.  Howdy Pardner would be right after this at his table playing cards with Indonesian friends.

          Howdy would see us coming, American cars, like our Ford station-wagon (my buddy that I said took me up with his family had imported their brand-new Buick 1965 Vista Vue wagon with surrounding sky windows and a mom who could cook out of this world, including Martian grilled-cheese sandwiches, and also sang beautiful Irish songs with us before bedtime).  

          Howdy would stand up and be waiting for us, his table right by the road.  This guy was tall and big, a handsome black beard and easily six-and-a-half feet of height.  ‘Easy to see, too and we’d be ready, half-hanging out the car windows, locked, I hope.  We quickly learned to match Howdy’s greeting, although we had to resist screaming it not halfway across the bridge yet.  

          We’d wait long enough, because it was like an audible high-five between an ex-pat and children, both who missed the U.S.A. and grilled-cheese sandwiches.  So, with Dad not letting up any speed, and Howdy’s first-ever greeting in my ears still there because it was so surprising, especially the second one with our car windows rolled down having learned of Howdys existence from the first time we heard him holler.  And, could he ever holler!

          After that, it was windows down, boys half out, Howdy standing up and big right arm a’waving and you tell me and we’ll both know why it meant so much to everyone.  God love ’m.  Truly, in the presence of the one true God is "fullness of joy".

          We got behind the President’s motorcade once, his palace in Bogor before Howdy.  Our black vehicle matched his and his motorcycles, so it was a quick first half of the trip to Punjak that time.  Dad was game for it and fell in right behind the cycles.  I suppose in other circumstances we could have been shot at for trying it.

          A little story that meant a lot to me was a metallic toy boat another child at the pool must have found in the marketplace there in Jakarta.  We used it in the oval-shaped children’s wading pool, usually empty.  You’d never find the likes here because it was too hot to handle.  It was about eight inches long with a little built-up superstructure and open space in the back.  It was steam-powered.  You didn’t have to handle it after it was hot, either.

          What you’d have to do to get it going was get the stub of a candle, light it and slide it forward inside the structure.  And, drip some wax onto the floor in there and place the candle stub onto it so it sets tightly.  Lay the boat gently down in the water and bide your time a little bit.  Now, to explain the power function, two pipes have–excuse me, a single pipe with two protruding exhausts–has been soldered into the base of the chamber along the walls.

          I forgot to add earlier, before the candle, and the boat will be laid in the water before that, before the candle gets lit or placed, you place the boat upon the water surface and press down a bit with the bow or front of the boat lower.  One end of the pipe will bubble mostly as water goes in to fill it up and let all air out.

          The candle plus the ideal size of the boat causes convection in the pipe.  The hot water will choose one exit or the other and keep flowing that way.  Cold water will be heated by the very hot boat itself.  And, the process will continue until the candle wears out.  The hot boat would go somewhere between fast and slow.  The oval pool was conducive to forward motion as the boat would never jam anywhere.

          That was a fun toy, a finger-melter if you touched it too fast, eager with another candle.  My spouse’s great-grandfather built a steam-car in the farm workshop.  They were practical people, also inventing a coal-drilling machine that was the industry-standard tool for years.  Our McCarthy family has an embarrassing story.  A friend said, ‘C’mon, McCarthy, lay off those old steamers you’re working on and come join us over with Oldsmobile', to no avail.

          Part  O

          The McCarthy’s would get busy with cars anyhow, turning their largest livery stable in the state of Minnesota into a car-fix-it place.  Their vacations were bumpy road races to Duluth and back to Minneapolis or however it was.  My spouse's great-grandfather had a picture taken of him and his family in the car he made.  He cast the metal, turned the wood, inside-out, a home-made car;  ‘Springs County, Penna, Amish people, Amish-Mennonite.

        In Indonesia, there was a big, white Moslem or Muslim mosque / church-building, like the Taj Mahal in India in style, smaller, but a big place.  I’m sure it was the biggest mosque in Jakarta.  And one day, they had a barbecue of barbecues, a day of sacrificing goats.  They had two piles of skinned goats--I mis-typed that 'sinned' at first; and these were sacrificial animals--as high as expert throwers could throw them.  I only watched the butchering from our side of the busy two-lane road going into the town of Kebayoran.

          We lived in a first house before our permanent one was ready.  It was on the big white mosque side of the two-lane, with a similar field directly in front of it.  A friendly Muslim-Indonesian family–many Indonesians are the more ancient Hindu–was across the field.  One time when I was hanging out over there, watching them prepare their meals or wash their clothes, the young men of the family and their buddies wrestled me to the ground to inspect my penis.  They wanted to see if I was kosher or mosher or something.  I didn’t appreciate their coercion, but I understand why.

          An elderly man saved my life at the far corner of the field one day, over where I once watched a man have a full-mal seizure in a driveway, someone putting a spoon on his tongue.  I was kicking around as usual out in the field.  Blessedly, I was near a little building where they sell stuff.  

          Of a sudden, the man came out of nowhere and picked me up and hefted me over to the building and under the overhang right up close to the counter.  He stayed there shielding me with his body.  Then, a storm of dust with the sound of pounding hooves went right by us outside the building.  It was moving counter-clockwise in the form of a water-buffalo.

          It must have smelled me and my foreign scent, the silly ‘koo’.  It was a close call, water-buffaloes similar in temperament to cape-buffaloes.  

          The Netherlands Dutch were colonists in Indonesia for a long time.  Did you know, the English had so-called dibs on Indonesia before the Netherlands did?  Manhattan Island of the original New York City was the exchange.   

           In Indonesia, a family returning Stateside gave me their little green parrot.  It lived on my right shoulder, only wanted to cuddle, and would hop off to poop.  I never thought to name it.  This reminds of God's name he told Moses, indicating divine existence and transcendence, so delighted I was to have the dream pet of a perfectly trained parrot.  

          Also in Indonesia, I got a hold of one of those paddle balls.  It looks like a ping-pong paddle and has a rubber ball attached with a long sturdy strip of elastic.  On a quiet day alone in the house, between my mom’s side of my parents’ bed and the closet where she stored her candy and clothes, after trial and error, I popped that ball three feet out from me two-hundred eighty-four times.

          One time kicking around at the end of the driveway in Indonesia, I watched the common sight of a poor man picking around in our rubbish heap by the road.  I was kicking around out there again about three weeks later.  A man on a bicycle full of pin-wheels for sale came slowly riding by.  It was him, the man of Edenic imagination.

             There was always a goat tethered here and there in Jakarta, in those fields, or on someone’s strip of road frontage.  The water-buffalo must have been a New York one, sight unseen to me before that.  Thanks to God and his kind man who rescued.  That was the house Mr.Gemerkin told us his stories in, if you recall them.  Ay, it’s a small world and a very big God, so big that he can be small, he who alone can save us from our fears and our furies.

          Part  P 

           A personal anecdote explaining against any mistaken idea of toughing it out against the devil, in Maryland, Pete’s friend, John was visiting from home in Pittsburgh.  We had been walking somewhere in our suburbs at night and we crossed through the empty grocery-mall parking lot.  Someone was in our path, several people, guys and their gals, leaning against their cars.  They had cans of beer in their hands.

          John, center on the basketball team, he who ran out of the woods and threw a stick-spear at me one Saturday when I was fishing on the dam of the school pond–wet that way, broken the other way, I had to hope the spear missed me by heavenly inches, which it did–John quietly said, ‘We’ll go around this’.  Those guys might have shown off to their gals, one of the guys John’s height.  

        About uprooting trees, before age fifteen and unprotected exposure to drugs, God blessed me with a view of his own original power that mankind can only imitate.  I was fourteen and spending a summer’s week with Colin at Montebello.  Colin and I were born together the same week in Manila City, his parents U.S. business, mine government.  Heat lightning lit up the sky soon after sunset.  It was Hurricane Camille setting in, to terribly stall in Nelson County to the southwest.

         The heat lightning did not stop, continuing for hours and hours until Colin and I were too tired to watch anymore and went to bed.  It wasn’t colorful as the Chinese fireworks I saw in Indonesia that evening when we returned from swimming in the Sunda Strait.*  But, the power behind the heat lightning made the other seem like child’s play.

         The next day, Colin’s gramma, Mam, took us over to the mountains to swim in a forest stream.  It was a full torrent from rainwater that finally fell the night before.  Driving over there, we went through a big floodplain farm field.  Two enormous white-oak trees had been completely uprooted and deposited at the other end of the field.  Tornado.

         A realization I made only recently in my life was to make the connection between what is commonly called floodplain and the great flood.  I patiently and respectfully waited and watched for occasional heavy weather as evolution, to change the landscape hydrologically.  No way.  The floodplains we’re all seeing around us in our lifetimes was made by very much bigger water than that.  

         Still on God’s natural wonders, a Portsmouth friend, Bill, and one of my dearly beloved craziness counselors, dead in a car wreck soon after high school, treated me to a visit to the state of Maine.  It was 1972, and we went along with his friends from home in Mystic, Connecticut.  We camped on an open field overlooking a lake.  The sun set, and then came back up again.  It was the northern lights, a fabulous display of every color in the rainbow. 

          A few weeks later in Florida talking with an elderly man, he asked me what I’ve been up to in my life.  I mentioned Maine and the lights and he said, “That’s interesting, my brother back in Denmark sent me a postcard and said the aurora three weeks ago was the best in a hundred years”.  Bill was one of a handful of people who lovingly said, "Michael/Mike, get less crazy".

          Part  Q

          Making love is privilege, not performance.

          Smelling a rose I got poked in my nose for only God knows what's good for my toes, for it's toes before nose determines first goes.

          We are to "walk by faith, not by sight" nor might, to make any sense of God's right.

         Jesus also pooped, in fact doing so limitless light-years before any of us did.  On the Quebec farm, I transferred the old outhouse around to the back of the barn to face a full view of God's mountain in three parts.  I don't think God minded that I kept the door open.  I'd rather see that mountain than the Andromeda galaxy.

          I was watching the first mommy cat and her kitties I had ever seen, and was curious to discover that early poop is consumed, harmless and pure.  I named one of her kittens Curious.

         We are unequivocally not on borrowed time; it was bought for us by Jesus Christ.

         Doesn’t revelry reveal.

         Not to be coincidental with stories and one-liners about body functions, but check this.  Between ships in Naples, Italy we took a day trip to the Island of Capri out in the bay there.  If you know about the story of apostle Paul’s recounting of a rough passage on the Mediterranean, then this will make more sense to you.  

        Capri is a nice island, apparently including an amazing blue grotto, a volcanic sea cave.  But it was kind of anticlimactic after the boat trip over.  The water was rough, Mediterranean rough and Pete and I were having the time of our life.  The Lloyd Triestino ship from Singapore had gotten our sea legs well under us.  But, that was just a preparation for this.

         Capri Island is out there a ways, so a tourist boat has dining facilities.  Mind you, this is 1960, so the boat is a boat, not a modern ferry.  But, the dining room is big, with multiple-family sized tables.  Two or three or four families could sit at them, depending on their size.  No rock-and-roll music was piped in anywhere, either.  It would have been very out of place, for this was the Bay of Naples.

          And conveniently we weren’t eating.  Big platters of sumptuous Italian fare were served to the families that were dining.  I didn’t see them served, because Peter and I were circulating elsewhere on the big boat.  We did see later their chemical form in a changed condition.  Some got in and some never made it off the individual plates.

          I’ll step out of the way of your imagination.  The boat got to rocking from side-to-side so drastically that only the bolted-down tables didn’t start moving.  Any bolted-down food started moving, with chairs, tablecloths and cutlery.  Pete and I heard the screaming before we saw the streaming materiale.  The women and children were nowhere to be seen, safely ensconced in side rooms.

          The men and older boys were utilizing big, brass handrails, one on each side of the room.  The chairs, tablecloths, and cutlery were sliding from one side to the other.  It all slid quickly and smelly for you know what reason.  The guys would hop both feet off the floor when the mass or mash crashed against their wall.

          Pete and I were outside and looking in, holding on to the door jams.  We had the biggest smiles on our faces in happy Italy that day.  We would look from the interior scene back to one another’s faces.  Our smiles increased, or at least were maintained in amazement.  And, it went on for a long, long time.  Those fellows hanging on to the wall  rails were tired and miserable.

          Newbery Award honors recipient, Mary Well wrote an historical fiction about Capri.  I highly recommend her accurately fictional, Red Sails To Capri.  Written for Young Adult readers, the time frame of the story is the year 1826 for a specific reason I won’t spoil for you.  I hope I didn’t render your next gastronomic experience negative.

         The Tovar family didn’t eat since breakfast and for good reason.  Our supper, daily was a homemade preparation by the visible owner and her daughter of a pensione’ apartment.  It was to become what it’s doing to me right now.  Tears are flowing in my eyes by the recollection of her hospitality.  But, let’s air out here and start from scratch.

         Her pensione’ was three floors up in a four-story building of three sides.  It opened onto a communal courtyard where intimacy was increased by individual balconies.  The woman got her fruits and veggies from a man in a horse-drawn cart.  The colors were bright as those I saw of the same quality later in Ayutthaya, Thailand.

          Neither definitely nor indefinitely, woman would lower her shopping basket on a rope.  I can still hear her saying ‘Yes’ to this and ‘No’ to that article of the mobile merchant.  Ahh, and what she did with what she did with what she did.  Roman aromas and Neapolitan scents came from her kitchen and welcomed us home from Capri or Vesuvius day trips.

          Part  R

          An earlier visit to Italy, from The Philippines has a favorite story of our family.  Dad hyped the Roman ruins ahead of time.  Once arrived in person and given a solid look-see, little Pete got Dad’s attention and said, ‘Daddy, the Roman ruins are not so very broken’.  I heard recently the coliseum in Rome is broken from builders borrowing its stonework.

          Dad also liked to tell of words I blurted out to counter something he had said that I disagreed with.  The subject was us boys playing alone in the wilds of the Potomac River basin on summer days.  Dad would drop Pete and me and our mutual best-buddy Alan off on his way to work.  Alan’s dad would pick us up at four sharp where Dad dropped us off.

         The existing danger of our choice of fun heard public misgivings from Alan’s dad.  And, while we were on Timex at the meeting place with him without fail, there was risk involved.  Plus, there was another factor involved which I reminded Dad of.  When I overheard Dad scoffing to Mom about Alan’s dad’s worries, I caught Dad’s attention with, ‘But Dad, he’s the only one they’ve got’.  Alan was their only child.  Of Maryland forest, I read that the woods of central Maryland, U.S.A. have Earth's largest variety of hardwood species in one place.  And the Potomac was at its historically most polluted those years.

          Dad was the only one 'we've got’ and we almost lost him in Egypt.  While we slowly inched up the Suez Canal between Sri Lanka / India and Italy, the older ones got off to ride camels.  The camels went okay, but a side-trip into Cairo City didn’t.  Out in a plaza with a big roundabout, Dad almost got run over.  He describes it as the weirdest thing.

          One of the cars in the traffic veered out and came straight for him.  Dad was apart from the others and ahead of them.  He may have been jaywalking; we don’t know.  The car was at top speed and so close that Dad could see the individual face of the driver.  He even saw the driver’s eyes, which were wide open.  It had come way apart from the traffic in the big, open plaza.

          This car was going to hit him, hard, very easily fatally.  Dad said it all happened so fast that there was no getting out of it.  The front of the speeding car was now only feet away from Dad.  At which time he resigned himself to the care of the God and Father of the Lord, Jesus Christ.  Dad’s next conscious and possibly visual moment was no car, no impact, no sound of screeching wheels if it may have veered off.   Our attitude may determine our altitude, but gratitude determines our attitude.

          This morning on the trampoline reciting God’s poetry, I mentally sidetracked and thought about zoo inmates.  Zoo animals are so desirous, at least instinctually of freedom.  It is a fact I noticed at the Bangkok Zoo, the lonesome individuals will meet your gaze once, then not again.  An aside, the Colombo Zoo in Sri Lanka, I think it was, had no visitor’s railings.  I especially mean for the large cats, right up to the cages, 1960, no seat belts.

          May I fit something in here?--as if I haven't already--but it's a story Solomon recounted in his writings in God's Bible-Book.  As chief justice of Israel and Judah, he would get the most serious legal cases--state and 'church' were combined in old testament times--well, have a better storyteller than me tell it to you.  If you don't know already about the baby and two women, or, read it for yourself.  We are the baby. 

          Solomon also wonderfully wrote for God's advice to us, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.  Do not be wise in your own eyes, but fear the Lord and shun evil.  If you do this, it will be health to your body and nourishment to your bones". 

          Part  S

          And do know God had it written, “All creation is groaning for the coming of the sons (that’s generic, including daughters) of God”.  That says so much about the curse and spiritual death that Jesus alone of all humans in history experienced separation from God for.  Remember, regardless of attitude or altitude, we humans are daily and nightly blessed with the relative presence of God, his love, light, and life. 

           When we leave God out of our lives then we leave one another out.

           Our attitudes in our single lives then determine our eventual eternal altitude, including whether the plane makes it off and stays off the ground.  And meat-eating is editorial, not predatorial, but definitely part of the situation’s misery.  The poor animals and all are innocent victim bystanders of our ravenous and rapacious race. 

           My only child’s breech birth is a real analogy for me of the good breath of God spiritually giving us a second chance or opportunity to live.  My baby wanted my breath.  Do we want God’s breath?  To remind, Jesus / Yeshua breathed upon his disciples at the last supper.  And he now called them his friends, as God / YHWH biblically described his relationship with Abraham and more. 

           And sure as Jesus is “the first born of all creation” (permanent, through all time, 6,000-years of it, spiritual birth, Jesus’ dad the great and holy spirit), he gives to all access to his real father as our father, “whosoever will”, whoever wants it, whoever wants him.  As the Son of Man, Jesus said to his friends the day before his murder, "I go to my God and your God, to my father and your father."  

          A Joseph and Mary Christmas to you.  You may note also in my booklet, I mention that someone, Jon Cahn, finally got around to researching just when Jesus was born.  And, of course, there we could add the word ‘really’ born.  Half-a-dozen factual and historical and biblical and categorical proof texts and sources show it clearly.  That, Baby Jesus was born at the same time of year he died so whoever wants to could live again.  Read or hear Jonathan’s words himself on it, on Jim Bakker's interview show.         

          Norman Rockwell’s painting of a farm girl holding up her prom dress in the mirror–I had earlier thought it was for her wedding–is exceptional, as always for Norman Rockwell.  Rockwell has masterfully painted what is in view of this young woman’s body.  The farm girl’s right forearm musculature evidences young years of hard grueling labor. 

          Included in Norman’s virtuosic accuracy of both physiological and psychological reality is his dexterous rendition of the beauty’s rear-bottom.   As a man, but also as a fellow man of mankind, I do notice especially her butt.  Her butt is properly flexed as part of her habitual proper use of her body.  My aforementioned posture tips on the last page of We Spanked God, any crass coincidence not intended, are correctly applied in Norman Rockwell’s painting of the young farm woman. 

          She is of course in her physical prime.  No extra fat has accumulated yet.  Her back is swayed a bit in normal contemplation, feminine contemplation.  And regardless of aging inevitabilities and the obvious physical factors of muscle and fat, the human bottom is a place of dignity.  

          With the cows, say putting them out to pre-winter night pasture in the dark, and I mean across a field to a second field I wanted them in, I could frustratedly smash their upper thighs with my boot bottom and they never kicked me dead ever.  We loved each other and they maintained their sense of humor with a grab of grass in their mouths as we crossed the field.  No flashlights were ever used by me in Quebec those farm years.  Now I have a visor light on my hip ready to go.

          But there is something that hates beauty, beauty as a reflection of the heart of God.  I see it as a concerted spiritual-mental effort to detract from and diminish from God’s beauty, even exalt our imagined own.  ‘Eternity at our fingertips in our children we hit–fools’; are we anything else but, when we do?  Bullies may rule for a while, but they will never rule and reign with Jesus unless they stop now.  “Today is the day of salvation”.

          The kaching kings and means queens of this world, lest they repent now and restore what they’ve stolen, will never stop paying for their disrespect of God’s honesty and the innocence of unsuspecting people.

           Part  T

           A love pat is affection; a spank is affront.

           Christian church is gathering with at least one other in the spiritual presence of Jesus.

           Hey fellow, if she can out run you, and out smart you, and out survive you, then shut up and say 'Whoa' man.  And do you know what God said to anybody listening after he created Adam?...’Now, watch this!’

           The Amazon women reported by a conquistador were not Amazonian per se, only better warriors than their men, who shoot arrows at helicopters.

           Why is the inquiry only about the way to a man's heart?

           Diversity distinguishes while adversity extinguishes.

           We should take things sinceriously, not just seriously.

            Sin only seems like we're winning.

            If no news is good news, then we should be careful what we say yes to.

           Taking a bad apple out of the barrel is just as right as eating a good one.

           I’d rather church with Lurch.

           Jesus wants me to take him at face value in you.

           Two songs sing about the utmost virtue and vice, R-e-s-p-e-c-t and D-i-v-o-r-c-e.

           Early birds get to catch summer’s first worms because they endured winter’s final bitterness.

           If God can do this beauty on the road, then imagine what he does at home.

           Easy Rider said ‘You got here a nice spread’ so why on earth would we want it dead?

           No ''complacent cow of Bashan" ever walked backwards up the stairway to Heaven.

           Be still not shrill and know there’s a God by saying yes to him.

           Perfectly, leadership is not lead-him-ship, "God–Christ–Man–Woman", physically in marriage, spiritually in church, perfectly.

          Research or recall the man’s story behind his poem God Works In Mysterious Ways His Wonders To Perform.

          Someone truly said we all decide to either live once and die twice or die once and live twice.

          God’s virtue to us is aptitudes, our vice to ourselves mishap-titudes.

          The devil can fool the pants off both women and men and only Jesus can cover their ass.

          The problem with taking vengeance on one another instead of leaving such to God is he will then have some left over and use it on us.

          There used to be an expression, ‘You’ve been watching too much television’, although we older children wouldn’t have thought of wearing diapers while doing so.

           In the nineties, waiting outside an athletic director's office for a conversation that never took place once the receptionist passed on my ridiculous idea of selling vitamins to high-school students, I did profit, if we can call it that, from overhearing four students as two couples near me having a spontaneous conversation with each other.  Really, only one spoke, a girl for her chum and her, to the two boys.  She asked out loud, "Why do we have to have sex with you just to be friends?"  The boys only smiled maliciously macho smiles.  God's mercy may be forever but our allotted time to use it is not.

           'It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God", or my biggest brother, Gregory.  I did once in a legitimate retaliatory wrestling match which I nearly didn't walk away from.  But this story was public, me and Pete and Dreya over at the playground of the apartments after Malaya.

           A bully boy and his accomplice walked out of nowhere and pushed Andrea to the ground.  This was criminal, needed to be stopped, and I knew I couldn't do it.  So I ran for home, found Greg, and told him.  Understand, this is our only sister, our Wendy or Snow White.  Greg tore out of the house, perpendiculared  on the sidewalk and ran to help.  If that is how Greg 'the brick' Tovar ran a football, which I never got a chance to see,  I for one am cheering. 

            I followed up there to the swing sets to see the face of the bully boy muddy from dust and tears.  'Reminds of the neighbor girl and Etam.  Well, we live and we learn if we want to.  God knows our hearts, wisely doling out opportunity from his treasure chest of circumstance.

           Part  U

           My next-door neighbor, with a ragged scar on her left knee to show for it, as a small child was one day told by her father to run through and out the back of the little apple orchard behind the house.  The man was in the process of setting a fence to separate the orchard from a field.  The posts were in and the lowest line of barbed wire.  When she flipped over it, her dad stood where he was watching and roared with laughter. 

           Her mom came out and got her.  My friend grew up to marry a man like her father, who ruined her right shoulder, only way later to find her beloved ‘Skippy’.  Jesus' disciples, in their pre-friend stage, were one day judgmentally pointing fingers about some people who got killed in the accidental collapse of a building. 

           Jesus soberly replied, “Unless you yourselves repent, you will all likewise perish”, meaning forever.  God wrote that he wants it "to go well for us on the Earth”.  He wrote it into our consciences, in his ten rules or guidelines written on stone at Sinai in Arabia, and exemplified in the life of the incarnated carpenter of Nazareth, Israel.

           God’s personal paradigm is dual and complementary gender.  Look at it closely for a sec.  It shows both his potential and resting energy.  The phenomenon of children proves it.  As dual levers (see Ron Wyatt Archaeology) were used to place pyramid stones, so God builds us.  The dual gender phenomenon on Earth is the essence of the divine dynamic.  To misuse it has much more lasting negative consequences than mishandling atoms.

           And, you may remember as a poignant example, non-human, Nell and Pit, the heavy-draft pulling horses.  They were the only and ever non-orthodox competitive pulling style anyone had ever seen.  And as said, they were unbeatable for eight years.  I didn’t frequent after my first year or two in Quebec.  But I’d ask around who won this year, expecting to hear about so-and-so from somewhere else in Quebec or even Ontario.  The answer: Pit ‘n Nell, the mixed team that looked mixed up while they were pulling better than the others. 

           Just as we ask ‘What is food?’ or ‘What is work?’, so we ought to ask ‘What is gender?’  With the formative family phenomenon of childhood into adulthood followed by old age, we have the makings of an unforgettable and eternal picnic.  Correction, real life is a peaceful picnic, including presently the necessary conscious obligation to see no one not only is not left out, but that they be included as village family.  Social sanctification begins at the core of the nuclear family, only in Christ Jesus, bride and bridegroom chillin' with their chillun'.  God's 'cool' is chillun.

          Part  V

           It’s Presidents’ Day today here in the United States of America.  I read two books earlier this past year about George Washington.  He was almost assassinated, you know, in New York City early in the revolutionary war.  He was wise to it by that time, his secret service well developed, but only avoided it by a few hours of rescheduling.  England had its very established secret service, of course.

           While George of Virginia scrambled to keep up with the personal predations against him by George of England, his establishment of a secret service of spying friends was to protect him.   It is sadly ironic that our country’s secret spy network evidently got into the same sad game of assassination.  The United States did not want Communist China to establish itself in Indonesia much more than a fireworks vendor.  But, a lot of Indonesians had had enough of Western intrusion, Portuguese, English, Dutch, and ‘us’, as well as the social manipulation of the foreign communist parties, especially Sino.

           I wonder if I didn't feel the vibes on Bali, when my buddy's mom rented bicycles for us boys.  We started well before noon, and his mom didn't find us until nightfall in a rented taxi.  We had biked way deep into the countryside behind Denpasar.  What I mean by weird vibrations was the absence of people circulating normally.  Maybe it was just country quiet compared to the big city of Jakarta.

           However, when we returned home to Java, all we American children and the women were sent back to the States.  The Indonesian people themselves took socio-political matters into their own hands.  Against the communists, who for years had sweet talked land reform and social justice.  Which digressed into an institutional power trip leaving the people like a jilted lover.   

           The volcanic brown streets my buddy and I rode on within weeks would be drenched in human blood.  It was the grass roots violence of Rwanda with the political division of France in 1790.  It was a Civil War with no Mason-Dixon line, well defined of individual and family acceptance of, again, the socialist siren calls.  it was too quiet riding those bikes.

           His mom also rented us a ride on a fisherman's little sailboat.   At first it was boring to our ignorance of sailing.  We tacked awkwardly down the shoreline, we boys frowning away as we ducked the swinging tackle.  But when we turned around for the drive up the coast again, the fisherman was smiling at our smiling. 

           I remember watching Chung prepare a chicken for dinner.  He was laying it down on the block and looked up at me and instructed me to pay close attention.  Chung chopped the chicken's neck and let it run.  The  chicken ran like my toy airplane had flown, down to the end of the servants' quarters.  It then turned towards that edifice and, as if it could see what it was doing, ran back to us and fell almost at our feet.

           By the way, an interesting book if you want to read it is the Bounty Trilogy.  I read it twice after my four first adult "firstfruits" readings of Walter Lord’s book.  Captain Bligh accomplished one of the most impressive ventures in maritime history, over 1,800 miles in a ship’s dinghy to Indonesia.  They didn’t have lifeboats back then, and didn’t plan on mutinies like Fletcher Christian’s. 

           I later read that the last mutineer living on Pitcairn’s Island dug out the bible in the old chest instead of brewing another keg of liquor.  A very bad story is what happened recently on Pitcairn’s.  ‘Systematic rape of any female the bullies wanted, including the little girls.  New Zealand finally got wind of it.

          Dad was thick into it in Indonesia, the U.S.A. and Mainland China vying for the attention and approval of the people of Indonesia.  For example, the evening that we returned from swimming in the Sunda Strait* was a scheduled event for the country.  It was an all-night fireworks display, enormous, with a biggest traffic jam imaginable.  It was a nice show, but we were out of beverage and very thirsty.  But you know, it was all fireworks, no bomb sounds, so 'bully' for that.  i wonder if China has changed on that, to digress and incorporate bomb sounds in their current firework displays.

          About presidents and the U.S. presidency in general, I heard a memorable anecdote  of a statement by President Harry Truman.  Mister Harry had earned the job and was just getting started.  A friend from home asked to speak with him in his office, the children’s wading pool-shaped one.  The man reminded President Harry about an agreement they had made in the way of some deal that would benefit him if Mr.Truman got elected.

          President Truman kindly but firmly informed his old friend that it's not going to happen.  That, the paradigm or pattern of business-as-usual they were formerly familiar with had unexpectedly changed.  The friend was a bit dismayed, but the president said something to the effect of the job being more different than he realized it would be.  The determining ethic was situational, and the other man had to leave absolutely empty-handed.

          Like the culture shock of larger employment or occupational proportions, we often don’t have the foresight we think we do.  A new president or congresswoman or senator or judge must need be closing her mouth and opening his ears when starting a big-time job like that.  When I saw how Governor Bill Clinton tapped Matt on the shoulder to help him on his campaign, I thought, ‘expert project manager'.  

          However, President Bill, like Noah after the flood, rather succumbed to the pressure.  I’m sure every president that we’ve had has days or weeks they’d like to reverse and make disappear.  Speaking of disappearing I should too, not without mentioning President Don Trump's laudable effort to stop cussing in public.  

           Note, I also recently read Associate Justice Clarence Thomas's autobiography; and, I recommend it.  I read one of Dick Nixon's too as a matter of possible fiction, or fact.  He sure impresses me for having given Billy a ride home to Cabin John that time.   Waiting interminably for rides hitch-hiking as a teenager taught me that try as I might, I couldn't judge the world.

          Part  W

          Oh, by the way, this morning I told myself to mention, if you don’t know, where in God’s bible some Christians get excited about a big, partial disappearance of people off the Earth.  It may be something Jesus had written looking forward in time.  He said two will be somewhere or other, and God will lift one of them off the stage. 

           I say so what, it’s God’s business.  Really, being egotistically preoccupied with such might eliminate oneself from consideration as a candidate.   Yet also, he does say to the Philadelphia church in the revelation that he'll provide an escape for them, so they don't have to wash the dishes when it's clearly not their turn or some such.  (editor's note--I've doubled this in the text; I'll try and fix it.)

          I  pray God bless the U.S.A. for the reasons I’ve suggested.  Do know that God can be Biblically quoted as clarifying the idea of praying.  He had it written, “(It’s) The prayer of a righteous man (that) availeth much before The Lord".  My step-mom, Pam, gave us all parchment copies of 'the Ojibwe prayer' one Christmas.  Take note here of Jesus' comment as observation of the two guys praying-in-temple that day.  The Ojibwe man prayed God would protect him from his worst enemy, himself.

        I have two more thoughts, one including a serious story my mom once told me, to help explain it.  Oh and I notice in my notes there’s a third, also very much a biggie.  Which applies to a possible addendum to this essay.  Which took a full week of effort to write.   

         I may as well tell you that third one right now.  That, I was a day into editing and proofreading the text of this essay.  And plop goes the easel of this laboriously graphic writing project.  For, my spouse drops the official divorce papers in front of me which she indirectly alerted me to recently and which didn't surprise me for personal reasons. 

         And the following bible story will explain it, even if I don’t include the paper as an addendum, maybe for a legal reason I’m unaware of at the moment.  The paper is an explanation to my sister and brothers and close friends of what my spouse has been doing behind this home's closed doors.  I saw it play out over twenty years.

         To say, my spouse’s aberrant action, and I say it is, as God also says he hates it, can partially be read about in a famous bible story.  It’s about the mindset of Rachel, Jacob’s little-sister-wife besides Leah.  Leah was nicely normal, just not so visually scintillating as Rachel.

         And if you know or don’t, learning it here, it was Rachel who providentially showed up at the water-well when Jake had arrived from a far part of the country.  Where he had been born, after his grandparents moved there from the original area where Leah and Rachel, his cousins lived.  When Rachel came to the well with her dad Laban’s sheep, to Jacob it was like the future New Jerusalem come down out of heaven.  Jake had traveled there to look for a woman to espouse from his own extended and spiritual family. 

         It’s a long but realistically useful story and I recommend it even as a first place to ever open a bible in your life.  Father-in-law Laban tricked Jacob on his drunken wedding party aftermath, with Leah instead of Rachel.  Of course, Leah apparently was glad to participate in the ruse.  Which detracts from our original assessment of her.  And imperfection of personality continues with Rachel.  

         When after years of pactfully working like a sheepdog to also finally marry the movie-starlet-idol of his naive imagination, Jacob finds out that her only interest in or value of him is to father a child for herself–she’d get two, Joseph and Benjamin.  Rachel had a tunnel-vision focus on mothering to a fault.  My spouse does also, taken too far now.   

         Jacob perceived her fault when Rachel blurted out to him one day after a couple of  years of no children yet, “Give me children or I shall die.”  Jacob replied normally, “What, am I in the place of God?”  And, Rachel would indeed die young, not without honor and respect.  About parenting,  I’ve personally learned to say ‘Father, not bother; mother, don’t smother’.

         And a ‘by the way’, Leah had a very engaging and interactive personality and attitude.  Leah did long and always lament that Jacob didn’t love her.  I think we could observe about Jake-the-double-guy that he was visually oriented to a fault.  Certainly, we all and each have to stand back from ourselves and “Let God be true and every man a liar”.

          Part  X

          Mom told me a miserable story of some Catholic parish-church-group members of hers.  Four young adult girlfriends went together from home in Maryland to Indiana for a retreat.  Sunday after mass and before lunch just the four of them hopped over to the lake for a swim.  It was a disaster, so hang in here please, as before.  One of the gals decided to just walk on the woods trail around the little lake.  She would hear it all, frustratingly out of range to help.

         One of the remaining three women got into the water first.  I don’t know exactly, but she got in trouble mistaking water for air.  I suppose, and number two swam to help her.  One put the grip on number two and both went down.  The third girlfriend went right there, dove down and either couldn’t help or evaded the now widespread death grip phenomenon.

         Let's pause.  An important point also from my notes, once or twice in our lives, even now and then, we should consider the theoretical impossibility of being on our own.  Because, biblical evidence says we are being protected presently.  In our lives individually, God’s vicarious incarnation in Jesus perennially empowers his holy angels to help us.

         Angels are trained lifesavers slipping in behind and beneath us to evade our panicky grips.  They also push us away from themselves if necessary when we willfully are wayward with the same death grip.  Imagine if we were left on our own with death and its personifications of malevolence.  This is actually what Jesus experienced uniquely in his voluntary standing in for us.  And Jesus willfully refused assistance from angels while he was saving us.

         Jesus is unique in that, by having done what no one has ever done.  Jesus experienced the separation from God that is hell.  It apparently had to be done, and this by a divinely fathered child of Eve.  This is why, in the years before Jesus, the Lamb of God, the inventor and sustainer of happy skipping lambs required their inconceivable substitutionary sacrifice..

         And about sugar or honey or natural syrups, I agree with God’s biblical statement.  That “Too much honey is not good for the health”.  (He also had written "Too much book-learning is not good for the health.")  For sure, a little sweetening hits the spot.   A final idea, on another page of this essay I said I can be strict with myself.  There is a parallel here to life coaches.

         The ideal there would be for a coach to understand your very mind and thinking.  And advice comes from them and not the other way.  Make sure they have the eternal perspective of Jesus Christ.  Whom we obey, especially when whatever it is of ourselves that we’re obeying is wrong.  “There is a way that seemeth right to a man but the end thereof is the way of death”.  

         God is merciful, abundantly so, ever new each morning.  And such is evident in the joy expressed by animals and our main subject here, children.  God is big, so big he is also small and available to our minds and spirits and bodies.  ‘Small world, big God’, 'shut up and show up', relatively speaking.  Unless we be born anew by God's holy spirit to become little children all over again, he biblically says we'll never enter his holy home.

           I was walking along a sidewalk, and watched a juvenile squirrel paralleling me.  Of a sudden, it jumped high up in the air and did a spinning 360.  It then landed to resume its walk as if nothing had ever happened.  In the sugarbush, a squirrel jumped out of a tree above and in front of me.  It flew down and then up again to another tree, a flying squirrel I'd only heard about.

           'Character counts, but does it add up?'  How much is God's character, according to what you know?  And, shouldn't our reaction be to say, 'Far out, man!' ?  I've asked some preteens if they're ready to become adults.  And, I've then asked them if they have their pilot's license.  Because it's going to be that difficult; and don't forget the ancient advice of people who've 'been there, done that' before us.

           I mean about gender convictions, the time proven advice to wait until after the big autonomic change into pubescent maturity before proactively addressing  one's identity.  I know my son was spewing senseless derogation of me being generationally outdated, as in being 'old-fashioned'.    It's one thing to be on a deserted island, another to be on an ice flow.   The reverse is not true of "...and names can never hurt me!"  

            If I recommmend to Alex or anyone else a movie as much as the book it's based on is William Golding's Lord Of The Flies, the initial black-and-white British version.  I also recommend my cousin Kevin's starring role in Invasion Of The Body Snatchers.  The film was so important that Hollywood business invested in a later sequel, as with 'Of The Flies.         

           Part  Y

         Before we go separately, I would be remiss not to mention or confirm my plan of having this wespankedgod.org website essay printed.  At least I think I’d be remiss, at my cerebral limit typing out these stories (and you reading them).  Also to mention, I was too quick with my application to the U.S. Copyright Office.

         And then I ran out of money applying twice to the Copyright Office with a switched title that didn’t get acknowledged, a technical glitch on my part. The original title was the first biblical truism/one-liner I thought of in 2005.  The subject of 'bear' essentials aptly preempted it as a title ('Eat the fat.  Chew the gristle.  'Bear in the bushes.  'Better whistle.  We spanked God').        

         I’m thinking of the child I heard being torn into.  Let’s watch our children in every good way.  They’re certainly watching us, waiting for us to truly prioritize them or at least include them equally according to need.  No one literally needs to be mean, but being nice fulfills a real functional requirement.  We were made by God to love as part and parcel of his life and light.  It is after all the 'soft' part of the baseball bat, swung by strong and firm hands.

           And remember, 'A love pat (on the bottom) is affection; a spank is affront'.)  I have heard preachers' sermon titles or quotations unbiblically and illogically declare the butt as a God-designed place of supposedly loving affliction.  When we were children in face of bullying opposition, we would articulate, "Aww, you think you're so big!"...and ignorant.  I say a baby's butt is his or her softest skin and deserving of commensurate acknowledgement.

          Thinking here of why we have facial muscles that can frown, I saw none of such the day my baby ran through his hard-drive one day.   He was comfortably on his back and placed off to the side.  I could have missed it because I never saw him do it again.  What he did was while laying up a bit in his bassinet contentedly looking up and around was to  practice his potential facial expressions. 

           Curious surprise, humorous investigation, it was easily a dozen distinct facial looks that he did.  And, they were each the positive and beautiful reflection of his loving creator's personality.   Sinceriously, 'If you believe in evolution, then honestly bow down and worship it and name it Nothing'.  'Fun filled is not necessarily fulfilled'.

          Finally again about posture as in the booklet, in town yesterday and walking on a sidewalk, I conversed alongside a woman named Linda.  Linda is aged 92, one of twenty-one, and this chicken was clickin’.  She appreciated me teaching her ‘Toes before nose’.  And crossing an intersection arm-in-arm, together we developed ‘Heels before wheels’.     

           Part  Z

           FYI, seeing that ‘Z’ up there and thinking about death, and is it some kind of soul-sleep, the answer from the developed part of God’s bible-book, the new covenant in Jesus Christ part, is ‘no’.  Lots of clear events of people conscious after death negate and nullify temporal examples of written anecdotes of so-called ‘cutting off’ or death-sleeping.     

          The question is universal, and the answer is Christian.  The old covenant people are all over the place with this subject.  By all over, I mean holding ideas from every global culture.  We have to leverage this subject on the fulcrum of Jesus and his student-friends.  Two stories of his are examples, one, the story he told—true or not, he told it-–of sweet Lazarus and the sour rich man.  And two, when he died, Jesus spiritually visited dead people somewhere, and talked with them or talked to them.  

           Also, on the mount of transfiguration that day with James, John, and goofy Peter present, Elijah and Moses showed up to chat with their boss, certainly encouraging him for what lay ahead, the completion of his suffering for the sins of humanity.  And in the old part of the bible’s history, we do see Saul illegally using a witch to contact dead Samuel.  It sounds like it was indeed Samuel, who castigated Saul for doing so.

           Apostle Paul is also very clear saying “away from the body and home with The Lord”.  Paul also at one point comments that to depart and be with Christ Jesus is advantageous, “To live is Christ, to die is gain”, although that’s a vague statement contextually.  A big point is, besides being body, we’re also soul and spirit, recombined in the resurrection.  And, death is not partial, only for those with God's approval to live after, in him, because he is life.  His name is Jesus.  

           Again, numerous old covenant text passages expediently say "cut off''.  They only say that to keep a move on with the conversation.   "The grave" in Hebrew may mean hell sometimes.  Look at the surrounding context, like the horizon when flying or using the instruments.  I was watching the sun set up in a tree by our house in the D.C. suburbs.  A plane dropped into position over the Potomac River to more safely head to the airport.

            Of a sudden, another jet tried dropping into the same position.  It veered off in a wild-looking and desperate maneuver.  I think the word civilization is telling us something important, just from the sound of the word, like civil aviation.

           Still about death, apostle John in The Revelation mentioned supernaturally seeing martyred saints as general Christians killed for living by faith that God had fruitfully given them from his Spirit asking The Almighty to take vengeance on the committed jerks back on Earth who had killed them.  I figure the latter were people that were given over in their hearts to doing evil.  God doesn't want us to simply keep him in mind; he wants us to have his mind, even having "the mind of Christ".

           And if in his inspired book God says 'died' not 'passed away', then I'll also say it.  It's a devilish way of diminishing the seriousness of death, only overcome by Jesus Christ.  I do have a joking way of saying 'passed out permanently', but that would be stooping low.  Again "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints".  Let's die for life and peace, not for any kind of strife, or better said, 'Let's die for life not strife.'

           And about abortion, I am aware of Dr. Nathanson's discovery of the silent screams, what I thought until looking it up again now was called the silent cries.  Let's help one another, which doesn't include chopping one another up.

           MT  Jesus emptied himself.  And it reminds of the mountain climber who accidentally slipped away, on the rope, but out from an overhang almost to the top of the Eiger mountain.  The other three climbers could not, for the life of them, pull him back to the rock face.  The climber also did all he could to get himself back to vertical solid ground.

           In fact, he literally did use his last energy to wrangle his way back, but no go.  So, he used his last breath to respectfully explain to his friends that he "can do no more".  By saying that, this climber respected the system of ongoing communication climbers always have.  The climber’s last words were his last action, and he slumped dead.