Guest Post by Diogenes’ Dung
Demons and Angels, whatever labels we give them, are part of Earth’s curriculum. This world is a school balanced between daylight and darkness, good and evil, birth and death and our limitless choices between the two.
Demons are compelled to pull us down into the spiritual paralysis of ingrown hatred. Angels lift us to a place where the weight of our grievances evaporates with the knowledge that our destiny is a heavenly home.
There have been too few moments of grace in my heart these last few years as my grievances against our society have multiplied beyond counting. It seems increasingly foolish to hope that our society – particularly its governing structures, will be ever be safe, supportive or sustainable. That requires caring and kindness with a historical eye on the future from those we choose to govern us. Today our government is controlled by unelected psychopaths who intend to cull us like diseased livestock.
As that becomes increasingly apparent, a goodhearted stranger with a welcoming smile for all will become a fairy tale. A government that meticulously plans complete control of everyone creates a climate of fear and isolation everywhere. Every face becomes a mug shot. But this story isn’t about dysfunctional schisms kicking hope’s tail between its legs. It’s about Hope’s happily wagging tail at the future.
I know Angels are waiting to serve anyone who is ready for their help. They share their warm, light-infusing touch when least expected and most needed. I have met angels before, several times that I know of and more that I suspect were passed because I was in too big of a hurry. I rarely speak to anyone of my encounters. They are my pearls.
There were hallmarks that signaled their passing, usually noticed moments after we parted. The significance of the encounters were the only unique aspects, each offering something beneficial, but entirely inexplicable.
My angels were always unexpected, nondescript individuals blending anonymously into their surroundings. We would share the simplest of exchanges, usually involving charity or help with a small problem. They always touched my hand, infusing me with gentle warmth while their twinkling eyes radiated goodhearted mirth. Today’s visit arrived with all the hallmarks, each unnoticed until it was over and I walked into a moment of grace.
Yesterday I went to the self-serve car wash and didn’t notice until a 4 AM trip to the bathroom this morning that my wedding band was missing. I knew the pressure wand had stripped it off my finger. It wasn’t valuable, just a sliver of silver, but it meant the world to me. I was devastated.
We found our disparate but character-appropriate wedding bands sitting side by side in a pawn shop in Pismo Beach. It was just hours before we were Zoom married on our oceanfront balcony, serenaded by a pelican sanctuary. The rings are irreplaceable. I had to retrieve my ring from the drain in the car wash bay. Pronto, no matter what it took.
I had crowbars, a colander, slotted ladles and work gloves in a five-gallon bucket ready to return to the car wash when Liz awoke and inquired WTF I was planning to do with her fine kitchen utensils. When I explained my predicament, I could see her resignation as any hope of its recovery vanished from her eyes while she waved her consent to excavate and sluice a noxious, slimy four-foot deep sump with her cooking tools. She later told me she allowed it only because I had her over a ring barrel.
I arrived at the car wash, an isolated victim-creating corner on Portland’s MLK Blvd just south of Rosa Parks Way, at 7:30 am, ready to go to work. I was alone in a neighborhood notorious for automatic weapon fire that the police never hear. It was cool, in the 60’s, so the HK 45C in my left armpit and two clips in the right didn’t print under my Carhartt vest as I slowly walked a closing circle from the perimeter of the empty, dry wash bay to the sump and reversed course, expanding the circle back out to the perimeter. Nothing. Then an up and down walk, then left to right. Four separate, slow searches and nothing but clean concrete. It had to be in the sump pit.
It took my largest crowbar to pry the broken grill off the sump in the middle of the wash bay and I somehow let half of it slip, disappearing into the greenish-yellow goop, almost out of reach. I needed a lucky snag and all my strength to yank it out, covered in coffee-colored slime. It was too deep to reach the bottom with a scoop without going hand to shoulder deep in the muck and that wasn’t an option. So I began bailing. I had to lower the water at least two feet to get to the bottom only wet to my elbow.
Back and forth to the edge of the bay, half a bucket each trip, pulling it up with one arm to keep my strapped torso out of the wet pit. After about twenty trips out of the bay to sling the disgusting sump contents towards MLK Blvd I had a steady stream of VOC-laden decomposition crossing the sidewalk into its gutters. Pedestrians had cars swerving as they held their noses and stepped into the street to avoid it.
About then I noticed that an old car had parked in front of me by the second row of wash bays. Its doors were open, displaying collections common to the homeless. A New Delhi-looking older man in faded cloths was sorting through them. He appeared harmless, so I paid little attention. My head was on a swivel looking behind me at the low-riding Caddie with blackout windows parked by a vacuum cleaner with nobody visible and no vacuuming on the agenda.
Slowly, the Indian-looking fellow approached me with tiny mound of dull dimes and pennies in his outstretched palm and asked in unaccented English, “Do you have a quarter, just one quarter?”
He didn’t look like a clean car was in his budget this year but it didn’t matter – I never carry change in my pockets. I was curt, too busy and burdened to care about a quarter for anyone… “No – I don’t have any change at all.” He turned away with a sideways look at me. A small smile that flickered chagrin, like I was missing a great opportunity. It feather-tickled my brain stem to respons again.
“Wait! Sir! I forgot I’m driving my wife’s car – I think maybe she has some change in the console.” He grin got wider and he looked at me like I was Gulliver squeezing through a keyhole. I returned from the car with a quarter and his small, cupped hand of tarnished dimes and pennies extended, closing and turning his hand down to place them in my palm, opening his hand slowly slowly to leave them there with a brief contact of warmth and “Thank you!” as he turned back toward his car.
I put the coins in my pocket without inspection and turned back to my task without another thought for him, facing the most disgusting part of the job. Scooping thick, yak-inducing slime and sluicing it through a colander. I surveyed the impenetrable pit of sloughed car slag below me and looked up at the superfund trail of pollution I had trickled out of the wash bay to hurl downstream and there it was, my wedding band. Right next to the path I had been walking back and forth for a half hour. In the first and last last place I searched – easily seen from ten feet away. When I picked it up fromthe cold concrete, it was clean and warm. I looked over toward my unusual visitor but the old man and his car had dissapeared without a sound.
An hour after returning home and cleaning up, I almost sprinted to the cloths hamper to retrieve the magical dimes and pennies from my jeans. They were essential, magical pocket-warmers for my next high-stakes game of Texas Hold’em. When I pulled my hand from my jeans pocket and opened it, I held five shiny dimes.
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The older we get, the more obvious the truths of this world become. Thank you for sharing.
To live a happy life, do something you enjoy, try to marry a person
you LIKE and likes you back, and try every day to be grateful no matter the tribulations.
This time here is a gift if you treat it as one and not throw it away.
Good writing style; great topic.
I’ve had a few of my own brief interactions w angels. Too many to list or recall from memory.
But sometimes, something current will trigger a memory of such from the distant past.
Then comes the knowing smile, in recognition of the magical moment.
Another thought is, it seems like those encounters happen more often when we are humbled by our own stressful times of challenging situations to endure.
– Something clicks, and it’s like The Paraclete, sent to guide us, taps us on the shoulder of our distracted brain, to make us refocus on the angel in our midst.
And of course, the best close encounters are when we can BE that angel to someone who desperately needs one.
At a low point once, in my 30’s, I was in dire financial straits, thinking things couldn’t get much worse. When on the road in a borrowed car, as my primary vehicle had just been in its death throes, I came up on a car on the roadside with a much younger couple. They looked stressed out, when I stopped & asked what was wrong.
Their exhaust system collapsed and at mid vehicle, fallen down, facing forward toward the engine, preventing forward mobility.
At the time my trade involved wiring, and I had spare wire, & tools in my borrowed car in the trunk.
I ended up taking a length of 14 gauge machine tool wire, and crawling under their buggy on my back, used the wire to hoist up the fallen exhaust pipe, with the cat and muffler weight behind it, to a spot around some part of the frame or undercarriage.
It took all of 20 minutes to Jerry rig it up and although still very loud, the exhaust pipeline was no longer preventing forward movement.
They offered me money for the repair, but I wouldn’t take it.
“You have to buy a new exhaust system, and need the cash just as badly as me. Go, drive home, and be safe.”
Relieved, they were grateful for the impromptu courtesy.
And, truthfully, that’s what it’s all about. Recognizing a legitimate person in distress, and using our gifts and willingness to serve others less fortunate than ourselves.
Servitude, memories and gratitude.
Be someone’s angel when you can.
Then, don’t let your left hand know what your right has done.
That is, no need to showcase it, except perhaps to be an example to others.
Our Father sees it, and that is good enough.
winner winner
This is the essence of Christianity.
Love thy neighbor as you love thyself.
Talk about a radical idea.
Doesn’t mean you have to like the neighbors ways. There is also the do unto others as you would have them do unto you thing.
Just a thought: we don’t just help others, we are actually training ourselves to see the beauty of caring for them as part of us. When we are hurtful to others, the sin is not just in what we do to them, but by the fact we are hardening our heart and making it harder by the day to be what we are intended to be.
Every decision we make takes us further down one road or the other. Choose wisely.
Its a balancing act, imo. There are times when there needs to be a hardening and a time for caring. Its knowing which to apply and in what measure, that is the long learning process. Ask for wisdom.
I don’t know who the reprobate who down voted this engaging share…is but he/she/it is a sad little asshat…who must suck on lemons for a breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Last year or year before i’m driving home from work late afternoon, popped into supermarket and as i’m driving out see a really old fellow struggling to change a flat tyre on his old beat up car.
I pulled up beside him and offered help which he gratefully accepted, the jack with his little Peugeot was rubbish so i used the much more sturdy scissor jack in the boot of my Subaru.
He was so grateful almost had me watering up, turned our he’s a retired truck driver, i’m a still working trucker.
Thinking about it more, bearing in mind i’m 68 so was probably 66 at the time, back when we were young men i wouldn’t have got a look in swapping that wheel around, some decent young bloke would have been there doing his good deed for the day…i swear we’re in a bad way when young men have forgotten who and what they are or are they simply not raised right now.
Had our dads heard about us passing an old chap like that without helping we’d have known all about it.
I once “adopted” an older neighbor; he called himself “a dumb Swede” (name was Johnson). At the time he was a widower and a few years later went on oxygen. Never complained one bit. He had his concentrator and a hundred foot hose that let him roam inside and even outside as he pleased. For runs to the grocery he had one of those portable oxygen bottles that the medical supply companies gets filthy rich off of. As I spent more time with him I learned various things of his life as an aging member of The Greatest Generation Ever. As a kid he and a buddy joined the Army in the later part of WWII with the objective of getting off the Wisconsin farm and attached to the Army Air Corps; he succeeded but his buddy did not. He was posted in the Aleutians, providing some of the token support should the Japs decide to invade. He later became part of the occupying forces in Japan, though his job did not entail much effort.
After the war he tried LA, fell in love and got married. Needing a job, he relied on some of the technical training he received while in the service, so was able to land a tech job easily enough. His wife was a hospital nurse and pretty soon they started a family. Fast forwarding, they moved out of LA and eventually into our neighborhood.
As his health declined I always made sure to shovel his driveway early in the morning, just in case the ambulance needed to take him off to the hospital-didn’t want the EMTs slipping on the sloping driveway with him in a stretcher. Sometimes on really hot summer days I’d go over and take hold of the lawn mower handle and tell him to go inside and get some iced tea and I’d join him later on the back porch where it was shady. During one really hot spell his daughter bought one of the last window units at Walmart and I installed it-he had no end of fun fooling around with the remote control, setting the thermostat as he pleased and varying the fan speed to his liking about every 5 minutes.
It was a Wednesday when his daughter called late in the afternoon telling that they took him to the hospital; by Saturday he was gone. Lung disease can be a real bitch. They chose an old picture from his LA days for his obit-he looked just like one of those movie stars of that era.
I always found time to be of help because it was the right thing to do and because he sometimes had bad days and could use a hand and a little cheering up (he, always the optimist, responded to kindness pretty much like a dog does). Even back then I wondered if the young ones would be there when we need a little help sometime in the future. I’d like to think things are still that way, but sometimes have my doubts.
I absolutely despise bums.
But in art school a very demented and neglected
black man took up residence on my stoop in the Manhattan winter.
He was no bum, he was an incoherent psychotic. My roommate and I
called him the “Ragman” because he kept from freezing by stuffing
his clothes with rags. I adopted this wretched abandoned human and brought him food and hot coffee every time he was on my stoop. I lived above the Kiev Restaurant on 2nd Ave. and 7th St. (There’s a song about The Kiev called “detachable penis”) Anyway,
I think about Ragman often to this day, and wonder what happened to him when I moved.
I’m sure it was awful. He affected my life in a way I didn’t realize at the time.
Love your neighbor. Lol, I don’t care for those that steal firearms or those “good dealers” that give a firearms thief something , gold, fiat dollars whatever in exchange for stolen property. I do love my neighbors and see no issue distancing oneself from thriving neighbors. A neighbor does not have to be within shouting distance either. They could plumb on the opposite side of the planet.
thieving one of course. I’m glad they thrive. Just please don’t be an Eric Holder. People that mess with stolen firearms are among some of the lowest excuses for human beings, IMO.
I don’t know who the reprobate who down voted this engaging share…is but he/she/it is a sad little asshat…who must suck on lemons for a breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
How many “kids” know how to change a tire?
It’s rare. I made sure both my son and daughter did as soon as they got drivers licenses. Did the same in high school for my girlfriend (married her 45 yrs ago) and even taught her how to change the oil in her car just for the knowledge.
much more sturdy scissor jack in the boot of my Subaru.
They are functional jacks! At least in the “category”. I know I was thankful and impressed in a time of need.
Scissor jacks are designed to raise the car just enough to remove the flat tire and install the spare. If you try to lift the vehicle the maximum distance the scissor will go chances are the jack will de damaged after 4 or 5 such lifts. Don’t ask how I know.
Not an issue with the Subaru scissor, at least the time I used it. I guess Japs are good at engineering. Best scissor I’ve ever used matched perfectly to an Outback. Level surface of course.
I try each day(by NOT ignoring opportunities) to commit two acts of random kindness every day.
Love this, Suds.
Agnostic most of my life.
An uncle of mine (by marriage) has a daughter from a previous marriage that has Down’s Syndrome . She lives in a full time care facility. About 4 years ago my uncle passed and I was given the task of letting her know her father had died because everyone else was too upset. I called the facility, she got on the phone and before I said anything, she told me her “Papa” came to see her and told her he was going to be with God and that he loved her. There was no way she could have known he was dead. I don’t know how to explain that, but I do know I believe in something, I’m not sure what it is, but I believe.
A great 4 part series on the existence of the soul . ..the most interesting for me was the last one about afterlife.
The Parable of the Twins
In a mother’s womb were two babies. As theweeks passed, and the twins developed, their awareness grew and they laughed for joy, “Isn’t it great that we were conceived? Isn’t it great to be alive?”
The first baby asked the other: “Do you believe in life after delivery?”
The second baby replied, “Why, of course. There has to be something after delivery. Maybe we are here to prepare ourselves for what we will be later.”
“Nonsense,” said the first. “There is no life after delivery. What would that life be?”
“I don’t know, but there will be more light than here. Maybe we will walk with our legs and eat from our mouths.”
The doubting baby laughed. “This is absurd! Walking is impossible. And eat with our mouths? Ridiculous. The umbilical cord supplies nutrition. Life after delivery is to be excluded. The umbilical cord is too short.”
The second baby held his ground. “I think there is something and maybe it’s different than it is here.”
The first baby replied, “No one has ever come back from there. Delivery is the end of life, and in the after-delivery it is nothing but darkness and anxiety and it takes us nowhere.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said the twin, “but certainly we will see mother and she will take care of us.”
“Mother?” The first baby guffawed. “You believe in mother? Where is she now?”
The second baby calmly and patiently tried to explain. “She is all around us. It is in her that we live. Without her, there would not be this world.”
“Ha. I don’t see her, so it’s only logical that she doesn’t exist.”
To which the other replied, “Sometimes when you’re in silence you can hear her, you can perceive her. I believe there is a reality after delivery and we are here to prepare ourselves for that reality when it comes….”
As the weeks stretched into months the twins noticed how much each was changing.
“What do you think all this change means?”asked the first baby.
“It means that our stay in this world is drawing to an end,”said the second.
“But I don’t want to go,”said the first “I want to stay here always.”
“We have no choice,”said the second, “but maybe there is life after birth!”
“But how can it be?”responded the one. “We will shed our life cord, and how is life possible without it? Besides, we have seen evidence that others were here before us and none of them have returned to tell us that there is life after birth.”
And so, the one fell into deep despair saying, “If conception ends with birth, what is the purpose of life in the womb? It is meaningless! Maybe there is no mother at all.”
“But there has to be,”protested the second baby. “How else did we get here? How do we remain alive?”
“Have you ever seen our mother?”said the one. “Maybe she lives in our minds. Maybe we made her up because the idea made us feel good.”
Thus, while one raved and despaired, the other resigned himself to birth. He placed his trust in the mother.
Hours passed into days and days fell into weeks, and it came time. And both knew that their…birth was at hand. And both feared what they did not know.
And as the one was the first to be conceived, so he was the first to be born. The other followed after. And they cried as they were born out into the light. They coughed up fluid, and they gasped the dry air; and when they were sure that they had been born, they opened up their eyes and they found themselves cradled in the warm love of the mother. They lay open-mouthed, awestruck at the beauty of the mother whom they had never seen before.”
I’d love to know who the single miserable wretch is that gets off downvoting these posts. Someone on the possession spectrum. Absolutely. Enjoy yourself, fool.
Yeah!
What kind of moron doesn’t believe everything exactly as I do at this moment?
Naw…just a lemon sucker Maybe.
Yep…I don’t know who the reprobate who down voted this engaging share…is but he/she/it is a sad little asshat…who must suck on lemons for a breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
We also have stories like that in my family. It’s one of God’s blessings to let people know Soul is eternal.
It’s true, no matter what the naysayers and shallow thinkers spout. The universe is magical, in a good way. The Law operates in ways we call miraculous, but only because we are not able to plumb the incomprehensible depth of its reach.
These moments happen only to those who can appreciate them, cherish them, learn from them, and share when appropriate to uplift others.
Thanks for helping me start my day on a high note!
That was an angel; there is no doubt. God bless you and that angel. And your wife.
I believe your angel knew you would not miss the theological moment, the intimacy.
Not to moan but you called out the pistol and the vest but you forgot to specify your shoulder rig!
How’d I miss that? The Holster Store, St Cloud, Fla. Thumb break; black leather. I had to make more holes and trim the straps. It doesn’t come in pint size.
There’s always internal churning, currents stirred in depths that have been still for years, when a soul already living in Heaven bring us a moment of complete, utter surprise; something magical.
Having a tangible reminder is a new twist. I’ll have a bracelet made of those dimes. A daily reminder of one of the sweetest moments in a rascal’s life and my rudder as I ride these currents toward the company of angels by acting as they would. Mostly, maybe; we’ll see.
My wife challenged that assertion immediately, her eyes saddening in dismay that I could ever say such a thing about a sacred moment when my ever mischievous mind erupted with, “I’ll create a new identity to comment on TBP and the first comment from New Delhi Daddy will be “Fiffy!”
Thank you, Admin. What a beautiful story to wake up to and set the tone of the day.
I’ve had so many “visits” in the past year I’m keeping a log. Here’s a fun one that was shared with others and captured on video —
Two months ago I chartered a boat off the Anacapa Islands in Ventura County to spread my husband’s ashes. We had had a ridiculously cloudy, wet year thus far and were expecting a gloomy, sad journey with choppy water. Some whales had been seen in the area the previous week but no other sea life. Captain Dan was on the pessimistic side.
As we left the channel and entered the ocean proper, the seas calmed to glass and the clouds melted to reveal a bright blue sky, the first blue sky in weeks.
And then the dolphins came. Dozens and dozens. We were surrounded, front, back, and both sides. And they stayed and played and played. They accompanied the boat for a good hour and a half, all the way out to the four mile mark, they were there as I spread my love’s ashes, and stayed most of the way back. The six of us on board were filled with joy, peace, and wonder. Everyone who sees the videos feels the joy.
Captain Dan said in his 30 years of skippering he has never experienced such a thing. He kept saying, “It’s your husband! They’re here for him!” They were here for him, for me, and for all of us. There is such beauty, wonder and magic in the world if we keep our eyes and hearts open.
I think I’ll stay out of my corner today.
Thank you for the words, D.D.
You wrote:
And, as true as that statement may be, your story serves as a fine example of us not being diseased livestock.
Victor D. Hanson has another SUPERB review of the corruption and crimes of the Biden’s.
“Americans have impeached or nearly impeached presidents before for abuse of power, lying under oath, or supposedly using government to pursue their own personal agendas or harass their enemies. But never has a president been so clearly compromised by bribery from shady foreign government-related grandees in expectation of favorable treatment.”
Nice writing, DD. I’m glad you submitted it. The comments so far are good, too. I can’t think of a time I had an encounter with an angel, although I probably have and just don’t know it.
Most aren’t aware that angels walk among mortals. If one watches for them, they will be.
They have gentle humility and that doesn’t come easy for me, MC. Or didn’t. Today feels different, an internal typhoon has passed. I’m not straining into a howling wind blowing me off balance. An inconspicuous moment turned magical has calmed me in ways daily doings cannot.
I am grateful.
Amen !
“Only the foolish think that suffering is evil. A sensible man knows that suffering is not evil but only the manifestation of evil and healing from evil. Only sin in a man is a real evil, and there is no evil outside sin. Everything else that men generally call evil is not, but is a bitter medicine to heal from evil. The sicker the man, the more bitter the medicine that the doctor prescribes for him. At times, even, it seems to a sick man that the medicine is worse and more bitter than the sickness itself! And so it seems at times to the sinner: the suffering is harder and more bitter than the sin committed. But this is only an illusion – a very strong self-delusion. There is no suffering in the world that could be anywhere near as hard and destructive as sin is. All the suffering borne by men and nations is none other than the abundant healing that eternal Mercy offers to men and nations to save them from eternal death. Every sin, however small, would inevitably bring death if Mercy were not to allow suffering in order to sober men up from the inebriation of sin; for the healing that comes through suffering is brought about by the gracefilled power of the Holy and Life-giving Spirit.”
+ St. Nikolai Velimirovich, “23. The Third Sunday After Easter: The Gospel on the Miracle at Bethesda John 5:1-16,” Homilies Volume 1: Commentary on the Gospel Readings for Great Feasts and Sundays Throughout the Year
Outside of Michael Heiser , my favorite Utube spiritual guide…worth a listen.
Growing pains
Pain and suffering is often referred to as the cave of fire. This is referred to as Spiritual Purification, as he mentioned. It is necessary so we may be worthy to be in his presence.
What’s with the absurd religious costume?
Did jesus instruct his followers to create a paid clergy class complete with an approved clergy apparel?
Was that clear scriptural guidance for creating for the paid clergy class in Paul’s First or Second Letter to the Bankers in Rome?
First time listen. With all due respect, Heiser says many truths. For instance, Crucifixion is not a disaster. That’s what it’s all about.
Personally I read God’s word , or it is read to me, what it says , no prosperity message (kudos Heiser) , and in this way God speaks to me. Many times God’s word makes me feel guilty of sin and struggle as a Christian.
The vid is too much meditational for me in the sense that when I read God’s word I don’t need chirping birds in the background. Distractions take away from the reading of scripture IMO.
I gave it a shot.
First Amendment
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
“…when I read God’s word I don’t need chirping birds in the background. Distractions take away from the reading of scripture IMO.”
Who put all these obnoxious birds and disgusting trees everywhere‽
Morning flash,
We have common ground in Jesus Christ and I’m praying none of us will be held accountable for what we don’t understand.
“13 Who was before a blasphemer, and a persecuter, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.”
1 Timothy 1:13
Let me guess…two gospels/rapturetard and everyone who is not a judeo-protestant fag like yourself is headed straight to hell ?
I’ll try to listen to your Heiser. I’m not into peeps with funny looking hats though. Reminds me too much of Catholicism , the “symbolism”.
On the subject of two gospels, JESUS & ISRAEL One Covenant or Two? by David E. Holwerda
He’s not my “Heiser “, but God’s and funny looking hats are a tradition of the early church and worth preserving along with Christian dogma that Protestantism so fondly corrupts.
Man’s tradition. I’ll check him out and ask around.
Although inspired by God, ” Man” wrote, preserved and promoted Christianity and funny hats were involved often involved…smh.
“Whatever”. I’ll tune in and get back with you.
Which bible verses layout the paid clergy class with it’s own fashions for Christians?
Such a trash talking gangster oh my.
You guys don’t think you need the 10 commandments because a disciple told you so, Jesus himself said you will be in heaven without the commandments (Matthew 5:19) though if you read the verse you’ll see he frowned on the behavior.
Is the disciple greater than his master?
“16 Verily, verily, I say unto you, the servant is not greater than his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him. ”
-Jesus (John 13:16)
“17 Think not that I come to destroy the law,…”
-Jesus (Matthew 5:17,18)
That’s just the way I personally see it and why I try to keep the 10 commandments, which are impossible to keep, which is the whole point I THINK, to help you recognize how wretched you are and how much you need Jesus.
Anyway, good luck to all, including and maybe especially me.
Some think only their sect/denomination is going to heaven, I’m not that guy.
Just my personal opinion, you don’t have to DO ANYTHING, you don’t have to feel anything, just believe.
Beautiful…I too have experienced inexplicable but wonderful events that made a huge difference in my. life…
.
Worth a listen.
DD- The devil has thrown so much at me in the last 5 years, I just keep on going and pray for the best. Very nice story and glad you found the ring. 🙂
It is all one can do at times – keep going while limits are continuously tested. We need those tests; they define us. But when troubles and turmoil last for years, even decades, moments of grace seem as unlikely as a grassy meadow in the middle of Niagara Falls. You’ll find yours.
I didn’t pray for the gift I received but I will pray to feel its impact always.
My family is Mick/Wop Catholic…I’m a Bible believing Born Again Christian – no denomination for me – walked down my own Road to Damascus…literately – cuz that is what it takes for someone as lost, bitter, and angry as I was.
My Mother’s nick name in the family was Saint Theresa…and it was well deserved.
The last six years of my Mom’s life she lived with my sister after my Dad went Home (conversion to Christ close to his death bed) and it was real…we all rejoiced! It gave me a great peace and he appeared to me in a wonderful dream the night he died smiling at me without saying a word…I woke up laughing.
The night before he died he told my sister two men were coming for him. She asked what men (he could barely talk) and he pointed at a statue of an angel my sister had in that bedroom.
My Brother in Law (great guy) was a lifelong non-believer…and wanted nothing to do with God (raised by an atheist Mom). He and my Father were on the same page for many years until my Father’s conversion.
My Mom had two large round statues in her bedroom since married in 1948 (wedding present)…one of Jesus and one of Mary.
Well the one of Mary had the sun hitting it for a short time daily for decades and over the decades it became very faded. The blue of her robe became almost white.
My Mom went home in the same bed, in the same room (in my sister’s home) as my Dad did 10 years later.
The two large round statures of Jesus and the faded Mary were in her bedroom.
About two weeks after my Mom went home my sister (whose grief was monumental – inconsolable) called me up (I live 6 states away) screaming in excitement, crying, and blurting out she was just in the bedroom with the two statues and the faded statue of Mary was completely restored…the faded blue was bright…Mary’s robe was blue again not a faded white!
My Brother In Law was stunned and confirmed it happened sometime over night.
My Sister’s grief was immediately lifted and she took it as a sign from God Mom was doing just fine.
Two years later in the same bed, in the same room, my sister went home with us all around…to be honest she embraced the end of the begining and went home super quick.
My Brother In Law now never misses church…and has been transformed in ways I can’t begin describe.
Ur Mick/Wop? Makes perfect sense.
Oh yea Doug…Irish Coal miner Father…Old Country type Mom (but born here – raised by people ‘W’ith ‘O’ut ‘P’assports…WOPS…who lived together in a 4 block scene in a PA. town out of the Godfather movie.
Wop Grandfather shot and killed over a territory dispute…after he burned down another family’s bar, gambling whore house that was competing with his. Then his family (a branch was big time and came out of Philly) killed the two brothers who killed him.
Then everyone went back to business.
Raised in two completely different worlds/cultures…loved them both.
On the Wop side I was 4 before I realized my Italian name (Stupidoe) from the men playing bocce ball in the alley wasn’t really a term of endearment for my Irish half…but they were all super respectful to my Mom’s side…as it was my Nanas’s Philly family…who had killed the two brothers (in their homes) for killing her husband…even though he started it.
I have all the newspaper articles of all three killings on micro fish…and the rest of the story from my Dad.
tl;dr
MaybeSomeday you too too will have your life changed and enriched by a Morman housewife!
Time magazine interviewed her. She appeared on national television with Jack Paar and Art Linkletter. And both the President of the United States and the Queen of Denmark personally requested her services.
Almost from the day she opened the first Reading Dynamics Institute in Washington in 1959, Evelyn Wood’s name became virtually synonymous with speed reading.
How fast could an Evelyn Wood graduate read? One of her students appeared on television’s “I’ve Got a Secret” carrying a large book. The book was “Gone With the Wind,” and the girl’s secret was that she could read the 689-page novel in less than an hour.
In Washington political circles in the early ‘60s, it was fashionable to take Wood’s speed reading course, and members of the House of Representatives and Senate, including Sens. Abraham Ribicoff, William Proxmire, Herman E. Talmadge and Birch Bayh, were among those to sign up.
By the time President Kennedy, himself a rapid reader, invited Wood to the White House to teach speed reading to his staff in 1962, the middle-aged former Utah schoolteacher was already well on her way to being a household name.
But through it all, Evelyn Wood remained a teacher at heart whose teaching precept was that “knowledge is power” and that being able to read rapidly paved the way. “If you could read two or three thousand books a year, what would you know?” she asked rhetorically in a 1961 interview.
At age 77–although slowed down by a stroke and a decade retired from education–Wood’s goal remains the same: “to get everyone to learn to read.”
“I worked on a lot of ways of making the reading process easier to do, so that everybody could enjoy it,” said Wood, adding that she always believed that most people do not like to read. “Everyone I talked to felt it wasn’t very exciting. One of the reasons people don’t read is because the process is so slow. If a person could read faster, they could stay interested.”
A grandmotherly woman with short, curly gray hair and pale blue eyes, Wood was seated in her wheelchair in an office at the Huntington Beach headquarters of American Learning Corp. The company, a subsidiary of Encyclopedia Britannica, bought Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics in May for use in its nationwide Reading Game centers.
Although Wood, a resident of Salt Lake City, had not owned the business since 1966, she continued working for the Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics national staff, training teachers and doing publicity around the world, until suffering a stroke in 1976.
Wood and her husband of 57 years, Doug, were vacationing in Southern California last week and they decided to stop in to meet executives of the company that will carry on the Evelyn Wood tradition.
“We think it is a very good fit with our own traditional remedial reading programs, and we perceive a real need for improving reading skills, comprehension, retention and speed at the junior high school and into the adult level,” said Richard Ballot, president of American Learning Corp.
Ballot said the company will continue to call the speed-reading program Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics.
“It has a strong recognition on the part of the public, and as such it would be appropriate to retain the name,” said Ballot, who remembers hearing the name as a schoolboy in the New York area in the early ‘60s. “It was promoted quite extensively and, to the uninitiated, at that point as a youngster in school, it was almost synonymous with reading skills.”
As for meeting the woman behind the name, Ballot said, “it was really an enchanting experience to meet with the person who was responsible for developing the method that has helped many, many people over the years.”
Soft-spoken, her voice occasionally not much louder than a hoarse whisper as a result of her stroke, Wood recalled the early days leading up to her “overnight” success. When her memory failed her–or when apparent modesty intervened–Wood’s 83-year-old husband and their daughter, Carol Evans of Tucson, Ariz., helped fill in the gaps.
Although occasionally offering only the briefest of answers to questions or deferring questions to her daughter to answer, Wood displayed occasional flashes of a pixieish sense of humor. When asked how long she has lived in Salt Lake City, she smiled and said, “Quite a while–about a hundred years.” Asked if her daughter was their only child, Wood responded, “The only and brightest.”
Sentiment also briefly got the best of Wood when recalling her own mother, who had taught her to read at age 5. “My mother was . . . very sure that anybody could read,” she said, her voice quavering.
“I just can’t remember when I couldn’t read,” she continued. “It was fun to just see a book and be able to read it.”
Wood went on to major in speech at the University of Utah, where she met student body president M. Douglas Wood, a business major. They were married a few days after graduation in 1929, she going on to a teaching career and he going into business.
It was while she was a graduate student at the University of Utah in the 1940s that Wood discovered that one of her professors had the ability to read about 6,000 words a minute.
“He would turn the pages very quickly, running his hand down the page, and she was so fascinated by it she stuck with him to find out more,” Evans explained. “What she did was look at people who could read fast and watch what they did in common.”
In the early 1950s, Wood taught her first reading class while working as a high school counselor for girls. She has master’s degrees in speech and drama, and counseling. “As a counselor,” Evans said, “she believed the kids who acted out (did so because they) weren’t making it in the classroom. Many of them couldn’t read. In most cases, when the kids learned how to read they quit acting out.”
Evans noted that the school district tested her mother’s reading program, and in one year Wood’s students averaged 4.4 years of progress in reading skills. About this time Wood wrote “Reading Skills,” her first textbook.
“She was also teaching a class in speed reading at the university (of Utah),” Evans explained. “Kids would bring sleeping bags the night before because only the people who were first in line could get in the course.”
“It was a lot of fun,” Wood said, “because everybody was excited about it and everybody wanted to do it. And all of them couldn’t believe it and they’d say, ‘It can’t be done. You can’t read any faster than 350 words a minute.’ And I said that’s certainly a shame because I knew it could be done. And they said, ‘Fine, show us.’ And I did hundreds of demonstrations of people. . . . So it was fun to do something that can’t be done.”
Wood’s speed-reading system basically requires the reader to read down the page, not from left to right; to read groups of words, not a word at a time, and to avoid involuntary rereading of material.
“One of the things that I think is important is that she identified different modes that people have for connecting with the brain,” Evans said. “Some people are very visual, and these people she could teach very fast. People who are more auditory, she would have them chew gum and do things to have them block the auditory saying of the words or sub-vocalizing the words (while reading), so that she could help them to be more visual.
“She was one of the first ones, I think, to identify that some people can go directly from the eye to the brain and bypass saying words vocally or in their heads.”
So popular were Wood’s speed-reading classes that in 1959, at the urging of friends living in Washington, the Woods left Utah and moved to Washington to open the first Eveyln Wood Reading Dynamics Institute.
Although she taught President Kennedy’s White House staff, she did not, as some assume, teach Kennedy to speed read.
“Jack Kennedy was a naturally fast reader. He’d read nine newspapers before breakfast every morning,” Doug Wood said.
A speed-reading White House staff was still considered newsworthy when members of President Nixon’s staff, including the President’s personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, and Press Secretary Ron Ziegler, took the Evelyn Wood reading course in 1970. At the time, Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics operated more than 150 institutes in the United States and abroad.
Seven years later, President Carter and members of the First Family also took the course, with Time magazine duly reporting that “the President now zips along at a rapid 1,200 words a minute.”
By then, however, the business’s namesake was retired, having suffered a massive stroke that left her unable to walk, talk–or read.
“It affected every part of me. I couldn’t lift a finger,” Wood said. “For a little while I didn’t think I wanted to live.”
But, she said, “pretty soon I started thinking, what are the alternatives? I decided to get my legs out there and make them walk. So I said, ‘Go’ to them and they said, ‘No.’ I spent a lot of time weeping and a lot of time just sitting in the wheelchair watching television.”
She slowly regained her speech and after two years of physical therapy she could walk again. Although she still uses a wheelchair to travel, she said she walks about a mile a day.
Wood is also back to reading everyday. Ask her how fast she reads, however, and Evelyn Wood remains mum.
“You see, the point with reading fast,” Evans explained, “is that all material isn’t worthy of the same speed. And if you can read fast you have the adaptability of being able to read at whatever speed the material calls for, and she never would quote a specific speed for herself because it would vary, depending on what she reads.”
“When she’d pick up a novel, or easy reading,” Doug Wood added, “she could get up to 10-15,000 (words per minute) without any trouble. With textbook reading, that’s something else.”
But speed isn’t everything, he said.
“Most competitors who felt they could teach (speed reading), didn’t have the art of comprehension,” observed Doug Wood, who served as the company’s president. “That’s the secret–comprehending what you’ve read, and if you can’t remember what you’ve read, you’ve wasted your time.”
When the Woods sold Reading Dynamics in 1966, the company had grown so fast that Wood complained that there was not time to properly train all the instructors being hired.
By that time, Doug Wood also had grown tired of the hectic pace and was eager to return to Salt Lake City.
Because the company was faced with financial difficulties at the time of the sale, Evans said, “my folks didn’t make anything on it. They got a small salary for my mother.”
But the business end of Reading Dynamics never really interested her mother, Evans said.
“She was not a business person at all,” she said. “She very idealistically wanted every person who didn’t know how to read to have the opportunity to learn. She personally taught classes in Watts after the riots.”
As for the fame that came her mother’s way, Evans said, “she liked it in that it promoted reading, and reading was what was important to her.”
It’s still important to her. And Evelyn Wood is not ready to call it quits.
“I intend to be actively engaged again, and I want to write another book on further processes of reading,” she said. “This is one of the things I was hoping with this new outfit (American Learning Corp.), to be able to continue myself doing important things in helping with the reading process.”
(Sorry MayBe…somethings just won’t fit on a bumper sticker buddy).
And no wonder, since Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. 2 cor 14
Be cautious
This is a hard thing for both secularists and churchians to understand COMPLETELY. Why do I say that?
Most folks have had experiences simply too amazing to understand and we easily dismiss them as such…..but there’s a whole lot more…..a WHOLE lot more.
If you dig deeper – https://crushlimbraw.blogspot.com/2022/09/the-gap-in-understanding-world-affairs.html?m=0 – it opens up the WHOLE WORLD!
This was my experience….About 21 years ago.. my mother took me and my brother to visit St. Anthonys Greek orthodox monastery in Florence Arizona . It was the first of many(Around 18 now i think) that was established here in the USA by a little monk that had come from Mount Athos, Monasteries of Greece. The monastery allowed visitors to stay, we stayed for like 3 days, it was in middle of desert, the property was surrounded by 6-8 foot wall, with entry gates in front and back of property, outside front gate, about 50-75 yrds there was a big hill you could climb and see the whole desert, on top of it the had a massive white cross, i would say around 20-30 feet. at the time it was literally dirt and rocks and that massive cross on top of that hill,(last i saw they built beautiful church on, cross is still there). On the second day, a friend that had moved down there picked me up and took me around for the day, he dropped me off that night and this is when shit got crazy….FYI no drugs, alcohol, or history of hallucinations, daydreaming, night dreaming etc etc..
I am about to enter monastery gates, when my girlfriend calls me, she was my college girlfriend, very toxic relationship, in it for all the wrong reasons, she starts telling me her mom got us tickets to go to miami for the next weekend, at that point i wanted to break up with her because knew no future together but kept getting drawn back for that ass, as shes yapping away on phone I am sitting outside monastery gates smoking cigarette staring at the massive white cross on the hill thinking about all the fun im going to be having next weekend…only to be distracted by this gnarly insane sounding howling coming from the the outside walls on back of the property, it sounded like a bunch of wolves/coyotes/dogs fighting and growling, the noises were coming from the left and from the right of the property and were all moving around toward the front where i was,and its getting louder and louder and you can hear them coming closer and closer, butyoung horny me,unfazed, still on phone , puffing cigg away, staring at the the massive cross in front of me on the hill, and out of nowhere i see this fire flame pop up at the base of one of the sides of the cross, the fire gets bigger and bigger and starts spinning like a tornado all the way up to the top sideof the cross , at that point im kind of in shock, disbelief, everything goes silent, and im staring thinking wtf ,all of a sudden now it starts from the other side of the cross, massive flame starts spinning up like a tornado, still in disbelief im just looking at it saying to myself wtf am i looking at,as i say to myself this cant be real, boom, as if someone blasted the volume, i hear everything now,, and that wild insane growling/fighting creatures sounded like they were just around the corners feet away, i llook up, another bigger flame is going up, the howling feels like feet away, at that point im shitting in my pants, hang up phone and jet it back to my room.
Took my brother up that hill the next morning to see if any signs of fire, nothing, just dirt and rocks…
i have never before or after experienced anything like that, its what i saw,..was it a sign? idk,i knew the gf was toxic, didnt realize she was that bad
sorry its so long ,,,
That’s the holy spirit giving you a warning via the waking dream. Very incredible. God did it just for you.
Despite the comment about the drugs, sounds to me someone slipped acid in your Mountain Dew. happened to me one time but it was organic mescaline in scrambled eggs. A group of peeps got together for a chartered bus ride out of Arlington , Texas headed for Willie Nelson’s 4th of July Picnic in Liberty Hill , Texas , 1974. Breakfast that morning , scrambled eggs, bacon and toast, yum, at one of the peeps homes before departing. Nothing like you experienced but when it was time to go home, around midnight, I was boarding a chartered bus out of Houston with a girl I’d met instead of the one I came on. A friend saw me and directed me to the correct bus but I’m thinking I would have survived in Houston a couple of days with that cutie. Plus I had a high school friend that lived in Houston. Not to be.
Beautiful story. Here is Ed Dowd interview by Mike Adams.
https://www.brighteon.com/ce5c9586-3e87-4bbc-bad6-70b20ab8b61b
Hebrews 13:2 Context
1Let brotherly love continue. 2Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. 3Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body. 4Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge. 5Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.
Outstanding…….
When you come to the fork in the road, take it. Our lives are a series of choices ,opportunities and events. How did you meet your spouse? How did you survive the dreadful car accident, without a scratch? How do you meet people that give you their all without expecting anything in return? Wow, I can’t explain it!
Which fork, left or right?
Right or wrong?
This mapped doesn’t show a forked up road.
Always go forward regardless.
I’m reminded of John Bunyan’s novel The Pilgrim’s Progress. Ever since I read it with my grandson every night for several months, I can often make connections with how my life, with all its twists and turns, is illustrated in Christian’s journey to the Celestial City.
That was a great story, well told.
Thank you for sharing that.
I was a surfie lad when I was a kid in high school. Everyday after school we would hit the beach and catch waves if they were on offer.
I had a family dog that I would take to the beach every afternoon.
Most afternoons the locals would bring their dogs to Errols beach.
Most dogs didn’t get along so we separated them naturally along the beach. One day and only this day an old bloke came to the beach he obviously wasn’t local. Anyway all of a sudden every dog on the beach ran towards him about 15 dogs. The dogs didn’t fight they just sat there looking up at the old man waiting for direction. I called my dog back but he wouldn’t come same as every other local. This bloke held every dog in the lap of his command for about 30min then he walked off. Before he left the beach I asked him how do you do it? He simply replied I am not from here. I
https://redstate.com/streiff/2023/08/30/finland-prosecutes-member-of-parliament-for-hate-speech-after-she-quotes-the-bibleagain-n2163239
So nice.
The old definition.
Very-very good stuff DD. I also like your writing style very much.
In the past few months I have resolved, and also convinced my wife, that we need to be those angels for someone. While obviously not real angels we both are striving to make another person’s day better just by being a decent human being to them when the world is determined to shit upon them. An act so simple as opening a door or talking to a less fortunate soul in a tone that recognizes they have worth could be the spark that lifts them to a higher purpose.
I am glad I checked TBP and read your essay before going to bed. You and your friend helped frame my day properly before my head hits the pillow in a few minutes.
I’m trying to understand how Bigfoot and leprechauns fit into the spiritual reality of this high thinking. The gift of fiat money I get. It’s like kissing the soul of a jackboot my lips are unworthy to loosen over and over.
lol..
Obviously you read, bruh …I just think its the comprehension part you have trouble with.
Irrational Atheist
by Vox Day
On one side of the argument is a collection of godless academics with doctorates from the finest universities in England, France, and the United States. On the other is Irrational Atheist author Vox Day, armed with nothing more than historical and statistical facts. Presenting a compelling argument (but not for the side one might expect), Day strips away the pseudo-scientific pretentions of New Atheism with his intelligent application of logic, history, military science, political economy, and well-documented research. The arguments of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Michel Onfray are all methodically exposed and discredited as Day provides extensive evidence proving, among other things, that:
More than 93 percent of all the wars in human history had no relation to religion
The Spanish Inquisition had no jurisdiction over professing Jews, Muslims, or atheists, and executed fewer people on an annual basis than the state of Texas
Atheists are 3.84 times more likely to be imprisoned than Christians
“Red” state crime is primarily in “blue” counties
Sexually abused girls are 55 times more likely to commit suicide than girls raised Catholic
In the twentieth century, atheistic regimes killed three times more people in peacetime than those killed in all the wars and individual crimes combined. The Irrational Atheist provides the rational thinker with empirical proof that atheism’s claims against religion are unfounded in logic, fact, and science.
https://archive.org/details/irrational-atheist
Do We Need God to be Good?: An Anthropologist Considers the Evidence Paperback – January 29, 2016
by C. R. Hallpike
To know how to live do we need God and religion, or, does religion only produce wars, hatred, intolerance and unhappiness? Does giving up God mean giving up morality, or, can we finally live a peaceful and fulfilling life as atheists by following science and reason instead? The anthropologist Christopher Hallpike has spent a lifetime’s research on the morality and religion of different cultures around the world, and shows that trying to base a moral life on atheism and science actually has some very nasty surprises in store for us.
My Angels are pretty much constantly trying to remind me that they are ‘here’ for me and I pretty much consistently slip right back into my very human fears, doubt and anxieties which drives me crazy. Probably drives them crazy too, dealing with someone so ‘brick headed’, so I pray they don’t abandon me but let me keep trying to be better:)
If there is something I truly ‘need’ (not want, but need) it will appear. Sometimes it’s as simple as looking at an empty store shelf for an item on my list and feeling all disappointed until I look again and there is ONE of the exact thing I was looking for sitting right there for me. At least I’ve graduated to immediately thanking the Angels since they do it so often I can’t just chalk it up to circumstance.
Lots of other amazing instances but these little ‘reminders’ are very cool to behold…….
and then there are the missed opportunities that help refine our sense to be able to get it through our slow brains that a chance is being offered to us: twice in the past few weeks i found myself having for some reason gone down to town (we live about a 35 min drive away from town, in a village on a mountain) and on both occasions, while rushing from one errand to another in the blazing sun, and dodging the endless overcongestion of the srea with summer tourists (who in july/aug outnumber us locals by a big margin), and grumbling about them all, on the one occasions some obviously tourists slowed down to ask me directions to one thing or another, and i acted like i didnt understand them (they were obviously italians, they spoke in broken english, and i know english just fine but here we are in greece so it’s not obvious that i’d know english) while under my breath telling them off and saying go back where you came from.. only a while later to say to myself, shit, that was a missed opportunity there.. anyway.. the second time a couple weeks later, was even more obvious – i’m at a battery place waiting to talk with the owner about something and i’m out in the little parking strib by the road.. a couple on a moped going by slows down to ask me, this time in our own language, where the office of the power company is… and i was just a bit too impatient, a bit too tired of foriegners or outsiders always wanting something for nothing, and i again played dumb and acted like i couldnt hear them or didnt know what they were talking about.. they continued on and this time i didnt need five minutes to think about it even as the short interaction was ending and they were speeding up to leave i was starting to say hey hang on a sec , realizing my mistake – but again, oppotunity missed, they were gone. i stayed out by the road thinking if they drive past a second time ill wave them down to tell ’em. since then ive tried to keep my eyes more open to recognize such a chance again in time to actually act on it.
it’s situational awareness of a slightly different sort. i think a lot of us need some practice, i sure do.
Every lab rat has a breaking point.
You are correct. It is a ‘situational awareness’ of a slightly different sort. One that recognizes self-imposed limitations.
One is blinded to many things by impatience and the ennui that pushes us past an opportunity to serve because it isn’t on today’s checklist.
I am very much the task-driven sort, impatient with any distraction that alters my tunnel vision when focused on a goal. I was 100% driven the instant that I paused to reconsider his request for a quarter; a pivotal moment. It didn’t just change my day, it changed my world.
Like you, I’ve missed many an opportunity to open my heart to what is always available. It was my past reflections on missed opportunities that brought me yesterday’s cornucopia of gratitude, so your internal antennae are pointed right at the angel channel. Stay tuned.
I’ve been following this thread since it first posted, just to get some interesting takes in comments on the topic at hand. By and large, it’s been a positive share of common ground experiences.
Only recently, as of 6pm EST, on Thursday, 8/31/23, some weak, miserable fuck has waded through 95% of the comments with a downvote.
Here’s a karma wish you go dead broke, lose your house, and any other possessions, because you’ve obviously lost the capacity for any semblance of respect for yourself and everyone else.
Then again, maybe you already are a wretch of a worthless sack of shit who somehow still has access to the internet, and places where you like to spread the spawn of evil’s rejections of what is good.
I’ve got my suspicions of potential perps, but will keep those speculations private.
Weak excuse of a human being you are. Disgusting. Suck on that awhile.
I noticed that too. Like Mr Nervous Twice had showed up to swat honey bees. Even GDP, who only spoke of teaching his children and girlfriend/wife how to change a tire got a (-). There was a bit of scrolling before I noticed comments that had no (+) weren’t being targeted. I fixed that by giving everyone a (+). And it’s a lab rat experiment.
I wondered about the lack of (-) even before the lip-thumber showed up. The open sharing of personal, inexplicable moments uplifting an online community seems like hot bait for shit-slinging trolls and party-pooping bots.
Staying at the Star Meadows Ranger Station in NW , MT were many entries in a diary for patrons plus any number of magazine articles about any number of subjects including the account of the Forest Ranger whose head was chopped off. That cabin/camp is mystical in itself, it’s history. Anyway, according to the diary the headless Ranger was quite unsettled the fact someone killed him with an ax. Chopped his head right off. Unsettled and folks still be giving accounts of seeing him.
THANK YOU… You have done all of us stranded here in Purgatory… a GREAT service..
Semper Fi
I’ve heard this thing several times in the last 20 years. It’s like a black panther.
Suffering is our cross to bear.
YOU CAN’T PRACTICE HONEST CHARITY WITH FAKE MONEY. REAL SILVER COINS ARE LAWFUL MONEY. FAKE MONEY FROM MURDERING PIG PENTAGON TRAITORS CANNOT BE USED TO PRACTICE HONEST CHARITY BECAUSE IT WON’T MAKE YOU LUCKY. REAL SILVER COINS CAN BE USED TO PRACTICE HONSEST CHARITY TO CULTIVATE YOUR LUCK. ONLY THE LUCKY GET TO BE BRAVE BECAUSE ONLY THE LUCKY CAN TAKE RISKS. NO PUBLIC INSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT OR NON-COMMERCIAL CORPORATION IS LAWFULLY AUTHORIZED TO TRAFFIC IN FAKE MONEY BROKEN PROMISES OF PAYMENT FROM FAKE BANKS. HONEST GOVERNMENT MUST BE PAID FO WITH LAWFUL SILVER MONEY. ALL POLICE MUST BE ABOLISHED AND REPLACED WITH LAWFUL COUNTY SHERIFFS PAID WITH LAWFUL SILVER MONEY. YOU CAN’T HAVE HONEST GOVERNMENT UNLESS YOU PAY FOR IT WITH HONEST MONEY. GET LITTLE SHINY SILVER COINS AND TIP THE WAITRESS.