PAID FOR

How often do we neglect to stand up for the "why we believe", "The price in human terms paid for our personal salvation" , how small our own sacrifices in comparison and how minute and minimal our own AGAPE is in comparison to that of the Father who gave His only Son to cleanse our natures.

 This is a copy of an e-mail I received.  Well worth the time of reading and thinking about. 

TRUE APPRECIATION OF HIS SUFFERING.     (The cost of eternal forgiveness paid for each of us.)     
                        

At the age of 33, Jesus was condemned to the death penalty.

At the time crucifixion was the "worst" death. Only the worst criminals  were condemned to be crucified. Yet it was even more dreadful for Jesus,

for unlike other criminals condemned to death by crucifixion, Jesus was nailed to the cross by His hands and feet, rather than tied...

Each nail Was 6 to 8 inches long.  The nails Were driven into His wrist. Not into His palms as is commonly portrayed.  There's a tendon in the wrist that Extends to the shoulder and the Roman guards knew that when the nails were being hammered into the wrist, that the tendon would tear and break, forcing Jesus to use His back muscles to support himself in order for Him to breathe.

Both of His feet were nailed together. Thus He was forced to support Himself on the single nail that impaled His feet to the cross. Jesus could not support himself with His legs for long because of the pain, so He was forced to alternate between arching His back and using his legs just to continue to breathe. Imagine the struggle, the pain, the suffering, and the courage.

Jesus endured this reality for over 3 hours.    Yes, Over 3 hours! Can you imagine this kind of suffering?  A few minutes before He died, Jesus stopped bleeding. He was simply pouring water from his wounds.

From common images we see wounds to His hands and feet and even the spear wound to His side. We often forget  the many wounds made to his body.  A hammer driving large nails through the wrists, the feet overlapped and a nail hammered through the arches of his feet.

The Roman guard piercing His side with a spear. Before the nails and the spear, Jesus was whipped and beaten. The whipping was so severe that it tore the flesh from His body. The beating was horrific.  A crown of thorns (two to three inch thorns) cut deeply into His scalp. Most

Men would not, could not, have survived these tortures.  He had three nails hammered into His body;  a crown of thorns forced onto His head and, beyond that, a Roman soldier who stabbed a spear into His chest just to verify His death.

All of this not to mention the humiliation as He passed through the streets carrying His own instrument of death, His Cross  (the cross beam was almost 30 kg of weight.   He endured this humiliation for almost 2 kilometers, while the crowd spat in His face and they threw stones which had to cause more pain and wounds.   Jesus was naked, all his clothing was removed to further humiliate Him in front of everybody.

PLEASE DON'T IGNORE THIS.

Jesus endured this experience that you may have free access to God.  So that your sins can be "washed" away”.    

*ALL* *OF THEM, WITH NO EXCEPTION!*   JESUS CHRIST DIED...FOR YOU!

He died for each of us as individuals, His cost was great, and our cost is merely to accept that forgiveness as our own with the acknowledgement of our own sinful acts.  A small price to pay for the gift of Love and Grace sent directly to you and me from God our Father.

It is easy to e-mail jokes or silly photos, but when it comes to God, we often feel ashamed or afraid to forward a message about Him to others.

We are worried of what they may think.   

Accept the reality, the truth, that

JESUS IS THE ONLY SALVATION FOR THE WORLD.

God has special plans for *YOU*!

Share this with all your friends...

May God bless you!  Always remember HE ALREADY HAS.

(Matthew 10:32 & 33):* "Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge

before My Father in heaven; but whosoever denies Me before others, I also will deny before My Father in heaven".

JUST ONE THING AT A TIME......FRUSTRATING

 I think one of my frustrations in life has been the recurring theme that there is only one of me to do all the things I want to do or get done.  Regardless of all this talk about multi-tasking one can only focus totally on, and perform just one task at any given moment.  I find myself in that predicament once again.

It has been months since doing any writing, and even longer for my music. The painting and photography that I envisioned having time for when we moved to Las Vegas has received little more than the thought. 

My focus these last few months has been on trying to get my design income regenerating itself and in this process all else has taken a seat at the rear of the bus.  All my creative energies have gone into trying to create some kind of cash flow to handle the day to day cost of survival and some kind of nest egg to take care of the disposal of my body when the soul is called at my my judgment date.  

The strength of my faith seems to be taking a hit from the dark side.  Trusting, in the providence of the Lord God above, seems to be weakening as I feel the pressure of limited existence. 

There are many things in life that one might wish he had done or achieved but it is much more frustrating to realize you may not have time to do all the things that need to get done.  Thus the recurring theme resounds.  I wish there were more of me.  Multiples of myself to do all those things the way I want them done.  In my time frame of course.  This is not the only time in my life that I have had that wish.  The last time I can recall it being this intense was during the home building period of my life. It was different even then.  That time it was to get things done right, to find someone to carry out those visions of homes to satisfy my clients.  This time the need for more of me is to satisfy creativity, legacy, and the care of my family.  A higher cause, as equally frustrating if not more so.

TWO DOGS IN THE FIGHT good dog bad dog part one

There is an old saying, “inside every man there are two dogs fighting for control, one the nasty mean and the other is man’s best friend”.  I don’t know if that’s true of everyone but for me that is most certainly a truth. 

When I first started this writing project it was to give my progeny a chance to see my trip through the years.  Not just the trip I want people to see or the one that I showed.  I wanted to help them recognize that the mistakes and failures that they might make do not make them unique in that respect.  I am sure that, as usual, the end result is not going to be the lofty ideal of shining a light on the bad dog but I will do my best.  Just remember as you are waging your own battles of inner thought and decision making between good and evil, “you are not crazy”.  The trick is to realize this inner conflict and that the dog you feed is the one that will dominate.

If we are lucky we are born into a family that promotes good dog tendencies. Most parents will do everything possible to teach us all the good dog tricks, traits that they allow others to see in their own lives.  The fact is that most of us will show only those things we want others to see or to think about us while hiding the darkest parts.  We learn at a young age to hide those things that are not acceptable to those we want love us. We also hide the truth from those who are capable of inflicting the pain needed to make us feed the good dog.  Unfortunately most of us require some same measure of outside influence to change our choice of feeding the bad dog.  Hopefully it will be a measure less than that which changed the writer, St. Paul who was struck blind by the Christ his bad dog persecuted.  

Like Paul, it was in my later walk as a Christian, I found myself still wanting in my quest to feed only the good dog.  Paul lamented (paraphrased), “why do I still do that which I hate”, I find myself asking the same question.  I can no longer say that all of us think, or feed our dogs the same amounts of food.

 

The process of choosing which dog survives is similar but the choice of which dog we feed is our own choice.

I will attempt to be as candid as possible about my inner struggles with these two dogs.  My omissions are due to lack of memory and to the fear of letting me being remembered for bite marks left by my bad dog. Suffice it to say that as much as I wish to emulate Christ in my life my bad dog is still there requiring me to choose between the good and evil sides of my being.  If it were not for this conflict Christians would greatly lack in humility.  It is in humility that one realizes that without the grace, the Blood of The Lamb, none of us would have the hope of eternal salvation.

As with Paul I was struck down from my life as I had come to know it.  Circumstance relieved me of my possessions, my business, and most hurtful of all, my family.  Driven to my knees I was open for Christ to come into my life and the opportunity of choice arrived in the form of a business associate.  This writing is not about the taming of my bad dog with the help of the Holy Spirit.  This subject is about the process of my choices and which dog was the Alpha.  

One would think that the infusion of Christ into a person would chase the bad dog out completely, but I have found that not to be the case.  A few weeks ago I was brought to a realization that my road to Christ likeness had passed very few of the crossroads that could prevent a human from being truly Christ-like.  The car that crossed in front, nearly clipping my car, brought forth a stream of profanity propelled by my anger.  As I continued my drive there was time to realize that what I had chosen to be the Alpha dog was not the one to unleash.  I have been going through a inkling of awareness of myself talk.  That awareness has made me appreciate the struggle that if exaggerated would be similar to that of schizophrenia.  I became aware of self-talk that was far from Christian ideals.  I found that I frequently but silently made inner remarks about people, circumstances, news through the eyes of my bad dog.  He is still in there waiting to be fed, waiting for a chance to be dominant in my life. I might add the word “again”.

Don’t allow your bad dog any chance of survival, be aware of your inner conversations, and don’t feed him. 

Wanting the good dog to be the dominant Alpha is not enough.  Prayer feeds the good dog. 

TO BE CONTINUED

EASTER THOUGHTS 2013

It seems so easy, after so many years to think one knows all there is to know about Easter. It is s easy to know what and how to contemplate the blessing bestowed on us by the Father.  I awoke this morning hours before I needed to, unable to return to sleep, rappelling back down through my own history.  The theme of thought was primarily one of all the times in life that I had chances and cause to forgive others for trespasses against me and of all the times my actions begged for the forgiveness of others.  We Christians generally look at Easter and the Resurrection simply as a pathway to salvation through grace.  God is hardly one to do anything without the presence of a life lesson or direction on how best to live our lives.  Enclosed within the envelope of His Gift are lessons to be learned by His example.

God loves us regardless of our failures, our inadequacies and our outright lack of respect.  He showed us that in our inability to comply with the covenants between Him and His chosen peoples, mankind would never make it into Heaven. The transformation of law and edict into the pure example of His love in the act of forgiveness also involves our honesty in admitting our failure and the humbleness required to ask for forgiveness.  The ability to accept the Gift is another requirement.  This requires that we leave pride at the foot of Christ’s cross. We need to accept His forgiveness.  God has shown us through example how we are to relate to our neighbors, not the emotion of love but love as an action.  How difficult it would be for any of us to sacrifice our own child for the life of another person, especially if it involved the horrendous tortures as endured in the death of our Lord Jesus Christ.

It is through love of our neighbor, strangers, friends and family that we need to grasp the ability to forgive.  We are unable to live our lives in such a way that we need not ask for our own forgiveness. We require that petition.  We truly need to use the lessons of Easter. We all require forgiveness and we are all asked to forgive others.  God has shown us the extent to which pure love will go for the action of love and the act of forgiveness. 

If you need forgiveness ask. Give it before being asked.  As the Father gave us example, be an example to others.

a DONKEY'S TALE

This is a re do of a posting on facebook.  It made me think and this is my take on it. Arbee

One day a farmers’ donkey fell down into a well.  The animal cried piteously for hours until he alerted the farmer to his plight.  The farmer studied the situation and decided that it would be pretty expensive excavate the well and get the animal out of the deep hole it was captured in.  The farmer called together a committee of the neighboring cities smartest politicians and together they decided that the donkey was just too old to spend money on, and that the best solution was to bury the problem and the donkey together so that no one else would know a problem ever existed.

Because the wise people of the committee had suggested this action the farmer agreed to give up his mule, even though it had been faithful and productive, and he had to hire a bunch of laborers who were hanging around the feed store, to help him bury the donkey and fill in the well.  As the laborers continued to shovel dirt the donkey quit crying for help.  Eventually curiosity got the best of the farmer and he looked into the well and was amazed at what he saw.

There was the donkey as calm as he could be, shaking off the dirt that was being thrown in an effort to bury him.  The faster they tried to bury him the quicker he would shake the dirt off, and the farmer noticed that the faster they shoveled the faster the donkey seemed to be closer to getting out of the fix he was in and pretty soon the donkey was able to step out of the well on his own.

Now there are a couple of different morals to this story with more than a few thoughts to ponder.  Here are a few to think about:

1.     Every once in a while we will find ourselves in a hole and usually we get there because we didn’t pay attention to where we were going.

2.     If we are in a bad situation it doesn’t hurt to let those who care know that we could use some help

3.     Everyone gets dirt piled on them in life and it can be used as something that will bury us or as something that will put us in a better position. 

4.     If politicians decide how to solve a problem the odds are they never realize the hidden effects of that decision.  Sometimes they get lucky sometimes they don’t.

5.     Don’t give up on yourself.

6.    Don’t trust the government to solve your problems

THANKSGIVING 2012

Thanksgiving, for me, has evolved over the years and it seems that it’s not the same as my life travels through the different phases of life.  Memory recall is something I have in poor quantity but it seems that food and smells seem to increase the aptitude.  I remember during grade school Thanksgiving was not so much about eating as it was about drawing turkeys, learning about the Indians taking care of the pilgrims and showing my new acquired knowledge to my parents.  Then there was the era of high school, away from home and old grade school friends.  My thanks being measured in how soon and for how long I could be back home for the holiday.  At that time in my life the meaning of Thanksgiving was measured more in what was to come than what had occurred during the previous year.

It is the high school period Thanksgivings that I am able to recall (not vividly) but at least not from hearsay memories alone.  I can remember the bus rides home to Portland and onto Arlington unless the holiday celebration was at Grandma’s house in Portland.  I remember the most thanks in my mind at that time was the reprieve from what seemed like an incarceration and an exile from the familiar.  I wasn’t as much that I was thankful as it was just happy for the break.  I do remember it as being a time of family gathering, a time for extended family to spend time together.  Thanksgiving and most other holiday gatherings were spent at my Aunt Louise and Uncle Johnny’s place.  Their house was the only one that could take care of the numbers.   Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa’s child producing years, I had no shortage of uncles and aunts to relate stories of the past, and no shortage of cousins to spend time with.  I wasn’t nearly as thankful then as I am now recalling those times.  Like most things in life we tend to overlook the sweetness at the time and fail to give it full value.  I’m not really sure that is a universal fact of life, but at least it speaks to my own.

The main thing I am gleaning out of this token bit of recall is that Thanksgiving has had a lot of different meanings for me.  I’m not sure of the exact timing of when I started to understand the meaning of sincere thanks and its’ relationship to the holiday.  I am sure today that understanding of things comes in two general ways, an “ah-ha” moment or a metamorphosis from child to adult.  Mine was apparently the latter.  It seems to me that thanksgiving requires the loss of narcissistic tendencies and the emergence of compassion and awareness of conditions.  This year, the year 2012, has seen a lot of things occur both personally, for family and friends, and for our country. Not everything has been gentle and sweet, but all are cause for Thanksgiving and this is my thanksgiving statement and prayer for this year.

I am thankful for: For a wife who loves me and shows it daily through kindness, caring, friendship and laughter; Family and friends that have held me in their minds and hearts regardless of my warts and differences of opinion; My (our) God who has faithfully covered me, through all the trials and tribulations, in ways not even known; The growing understanding that good is hiding in everything that happens in life if we are patient and prayerful;  The roof over my head, the clothes on my back, the food that feeds my body, the forces of the Holy Spirit that feeds my soul.  Thank you Lord.

a CHILD OF THE 1940's

I am a child of the 1940s' and growing up I was taught the importance of:

God,

Honesty,

Integrity,

Responsibility

The results of cause and effect.  

I eventually came to believe that: 

Competition creates achievement,

Success is a product of smart thinking and hard work.

Innovation and creativity are products of individual freedom.

We all have the right to believe and practice our religion or not.

Each person is unique in talent, ability and in contribution to society. 

In the freedom to express myself, and the right of my neighbor to do the same.

A country and society divided against itself will eventually crumble and fall into weakness.

Common sense is the best aid in decision making, it most plans are destined to fail. 

True education promotes digging through piles of drivel and deceit in order to discover truth

Indoctrination promotes actions based upon unsustainable falsehoods and a lust for power. 

That it makes more sense to believe in God, eternity, grace and forgiveness than in the nothingness of atheism because of possible result. 

PROCRASTINATION, FEAR, and WORRY

Procrastination can be helpful.

Being a procrastinator has its advantages, and in case of this project, it gave me time to think. This little endeavor of explaining a simple child’s game could be used in more than one way. I could just explain the game as played during my childhood but the phrase “he’s lost his marbles” kept haunting me. How many useful (more or less) bits of information have been lost over the centuries in passing teachings from life experience and parents onto our progeny. If we were to look at these things as something to collect and pass on rather than just using and discarding, we might save our family some time and trouble.  Looking back on one’s life is so much more accurate than trying to force our tomorrows and the reason is simple, we can see the cause in relationship to the effects.  I have been a procrastinator for quite a bit of my life and the main reason is probably fear.  However, don’t take that as just one fear, because there is generally more than one that can put us into a state of inaction.  The subject in this segment is not cause but putting procrastination to good use and keeping it under control.

Procrastination is useful if you really have no idea of how to handle a situation or problem, and in those instances you put off acting until you can get good counsel on how to correctly take care of the solution.  The thing here is to act on asking and not being afraid to ask for help.

   Fear and Worry major components of procrastination, and it has reactions that are basic to our being animal or human nature, fight, flight or freeze. The most commonly recognized is that of fight or flight and those two are the most acceptable. The one that causes procrastination is the instinctive protection mechanism of freezing all motion to become hidden in plain sight.  

 Procrastination is also used as a way of dealing with things we consider to be dangerous to our life patterns, so we worry and fret about all the things we are simply just imagining.  Looking back on life again it’s very evident that most of the things we spend worrying about never come to pass in the end.  If we use our procrastination as a tool for sorting out what is a real concern, versus imaginary demons, it becomes a positive means of dealing with  

 Worry is probably the biggest waste of time, and cause of mental problems of the human condition.  The idea that if you don’t worry you don’t care what happens is a ruse.  The secret is not to worry about a situation but to find an answer for dealing with it and then do it.  Worry saps your mental and emotional power, until there is no thought except the worry.

Good bye to Whitney Houstan

Today marked the end of a tragedy, the final passing of one of Gods true gifts to humanity.  A voice that was born and nurtured in the choir of a church in New Jersey, a spirit that touched all that heard her voice or saw her smile.  Whitney may have stopped breathing a few short days ago, but she was killed years earlier by one of the great lies of our time.  Like Eve, tempted by satan, Whitney was stolen from humanity by a lie, and her joy in life was replaced by that lie. I disagree with the statement regarding why flags fly at half-mast.  It should not be reserved only for those in military or in government.  Whitney touched the lives of millions of people worldwide as an example on both ends of the continuum, good and bad.  She had an ability to touch the human soul, through her voice we were able to imagine the heights to which the human spirit could climb and through her addiction we saw how fragile the human condition truly is.  Whitney will be greatly missed but in our lifetime one of Gods brightest lights shown itself so briefly.  In her both God and Satan made themselves visible.

Keep trying to get on track,

my own meandering holds me back

Confusion reigns and wastes my time

So many projects racing through my mind

Words, notes, ideas for songs litter the stack

While I let distractions cause creativity to lack

Looking back at time at all I've seen pass

It seems mental agility cannot excel

With your head placed firmly

Up your Donkey

Just relaxing in the tub is a favorite contemplation method for me, and today was no exception. Thoughts about exercise, it's benefits, and my lack of, made me think, if I only would create a habit of exercising all would be well. That led to other musings about habits, obsessions, and addictions, needless to say, the habit of not exercising prevailed.

Life is a field that needs tending

Life is a field
It seems that Sundays always bring short bursts of insight. It wasn’t always the case but insights are more frequent as one confronts physical mortality through aging. My own insights seem to be prompted by the catalyst of someone else’s ponderings. In my case it is frequently the homily at mass or something heard via television. Yesterday the prompter was a homily about the creeping insidiousness of little missteps. In the New Testament Jesus warns us about the relationships of anger, hatred and murder; sexual imagination to adultery and coveting. The progression is undeniable. We all have the human proclivity to mull and grow small thoughts into consuming thought patterns and eventually into some form of action. This is quite similar to another simple teaching that tells us the power of faith as small as a mustard seed. Wrong thought, as small as a mustard seed, can become giant in our lives.
Life is like a field a farmer leases. We are given the freedom to plant and nourish whatever we wish. Eventually we will see the results of whatever seeds we have decided to give the most care and nourishment too. Each seed of thought produces its own particular fruit and it makes sense to be diligent in our choices. The New Testament gives us so many teachings of Christ which warn us of the pitfalls and advise us of best direction. His parables intertwine giving us a guide for creating crops that nourish our lives and our souls.
When I was growing up in Eastern Oregon the farmland we made our living on was very fragile. There was very little water, used up soil and we had to fight to create a living in this part of the country. We learned how to increase the nutrients in the soil, how to conserve moisture and how to stagger the use of the land giving time to build its strength. We took care in protecting the seed that we planted into this unwilling land by treating it to prevent sickness of the crop it was to produce. The most ardent of all labors that went into prize of a decent crop was that of eliminating the weeds. Christ also gave us the parable of the farmer whose fields were reduced to worthless value by thorns and weeds. Our field of life is the same. If we allow ourselves to be assaulted by seeds of thought which are harmful in our lives we stand to lose.
Throughout the Old and New Testaments we have been given a training manual for creating a fruitful life, all we have to do is pay attention. The Ten Commandments give us a basic straight forward directive regarding things that are vital to life as a society and as an individual. There has yet to be a better set of guide posts put in front of us. The temptations to circumvent or to ignore these commandments are stepping stones to disaster. We can see this in our own lives, in our neighbors and in our countries. From my own view I see the Old Testament as a book of warnings and examples of just how important it is to stay away from certain tendencies of the human condition. In the beginning Genesis starts with warnings about disobedience, the dangers of our inquisitive nature, anger and jealousy as seeds culminating in the act of murder. Most of the Old Testament is involved with showing us what happens when we shove aside the directions supplied to us in order to satisfy our basest noxious thoughts and actions. The New Testament takes an entirely different approach in using the example of Christ’s life, teachings and actions to show us a more positive approach to nourish our lives. Christ’s teachings give us direction on things to do, more so than the things to avoid.
Looking back on my own field of life it’s pretty evident which thoughts I nourished to create action and culminated in results that could have been predicted. Hindsight is always so much more prudent than prediction.

When I woke up this morning my head was filled up and roaring down the road. It’s spring 2010 and I’m staring at things personally I would have never thought possible when I was in my 20’s. I’m seeing things coming to fruition, in my society and country, which I have feared. Seeing them as probabilities since my 40’s and did nothing but grumble and complain (two very ugly marbles). In keeping with my analogy of marbles, there are a multitude of marbles involved, in both my personal bag and that of my country, that have brought myself and country to their respective situations. The marbles involved in both are: Love, Ethics, Morality, Honesty, Commitment, Trust and most of all Prayer. There may be some more but if I think of them I’ll add them to the mix as we go.
Much as our bodies are made up of cells and the health of our body is determined by the health of the individual cells as they combine together. The health of a society is made up and determined by the health, actions and perceptions of the people in the society as a group. If the marbles of Love, Ethics, Morality, Honesty, Commitment, Trust are not polished and cared for bad things can happen. Most generally these marbles become cracked, tarnished and chipped away because we continue to go through time on a series of slippery slopes, thinking “just this once won’t hurt or matter in the overall theme of things”. Wrrrrooooong! Just as the body can become increasingly ill through lack of proper nourishment, ingestion of wrong foods and putting it in position to accept illness from other people, our society or Nation can react and become ill for the same reasons. Fortunately, or not depending on what you believe, when we don’t know how to fix our circumstance we can use the bigger marble (PRAYER) to Hope things can be repaired. The more Faith and Intensity of the faith, the more likely you are to attain results and answers.
Personally: It’s much easier for me to look back in the face of time to see what happened to my marbles and why things are, and to some extent the what and why of today. With the passage of time, to help clarify the importance of decisions made and the ripple effect of acting out those decisions, we can learn. If it’s too late in the game to really affect our own circumstance we can perhaps help someone else. If I have a huge regret in this life it is not doing something about all the other things I wish I had done differently.
To find one’s self in the last few years of life without the means to care for the physical needs of myself and my wife is a devastating situation to say the least. Lacking the health of body I would like to have, in order to put up the good fight to fix things, is equally frustrating. Believe me when I say, even if I were someone who did not believe in God, I would be praying.
There have been so many junctions, in my seven decades; I might have taken different turns for better results. The beauty of retrospect is that we can only surmise what the outcome may have been. That view is only helpful if a similar situation occurs again in our life. The fact is that when we make a choice to act, it is the best we can do at that particular time. If we knew better we would do better. Most of our decisions are based on what we really believe to be true not on what we think might be true. Occasionally we act on false thinking, hoping for results that will work out.
We can’t and don’t always act on fact as we know it, sometimes when we act on what we think maybe possible, great things can happen. If mankind didn’t have the ability to use his imagination there are a lot of good things the world would never have known. That is a fact that keeps adding to our pile of mistakes as well as our heap of rewards. I believe God made us in his image and to this day we as human beings try to create new things. I believe that God must be a curious God, even though I was taught that He was omniscient. I believe that, at times, when He looks upon mankind he has to say,”Self what was I thinking”. The fact that He gave man a free will can be viewed as a blessing or as a curse, but that’s how he made us. Free will was a gift allowing us all the ability to be surprised by the outcome of our choices.
My results have been very mixed throughout my life. Retrospectively, I have found that the worst were caused by selfishness and a desire for immediate gratification, two more damaging marble wreckers. These two wreckers have led to circumstance that have cursed and blessed at the same time. These traits are very difficult to overcome if they are not acknowledged and one should use them as a filter in making decisions. The blessings from them are quite accidental and occasional while the curse of them is general and without fail will occur in some form or another. The curse of these bad guys, in my life, took the forms of hurting people I love or loved, the loss of relationships with friends and family, the loss of self respect and the respect of others. They have caused me to lie, cheat, and steal in one form or another and to move away from being who I wanted to be as a person. These traits are erosive to one’s life course and should be watched for with absolute diligence. Vice’s very seldom are solitary in one’s life. We make the mistake of thinking a little mis-deed won’t hurt anything or anyone, but they do and almost always lead to forcing one bad choice after another in terms of good ethics and standards. The correction of these situations are most generally going to cause you a lot of pain, and that is inevitable when you finally see the folly of your actions. In my life I have lost contact and relationship with family, children primarily, whom I still love but don’t have the energy to reach out to. I am, I guess relying on the hope that the truths kept hidden will be shown to all in the afterlife, another one of those belief structure deals base in faith and hope.

We learn from our Heroes

We all have heroes in our lives, some good some not so good. I was lucky growing up, our extended family gave me all sorts of opportunities to put me in awe of my uncles and cousins. All of my uncles became part of my life after the old age of five. The war had used them during the first few years of my life. Dad was part of a seven sibling family, himself four brothers and two sisters. Dad was the second of the seven. Lou was the oldest of the brothers and I really never got to know him until later in life, but that's part of another turning point in my life.

Action creates Reaction in a ripple effect. In that respect when we choose to act to solve a problem we have to be aware of consequences of the ripple. If it causes an effect we find undesirable, we need to look for a different Action for our solution.