The Power Of Prayer

While serving in the Army Security Agency from 1963 to 1966, but In Turkey for an 18 month tour, some of the relaxation activities on our Post Det 27, located 20 miles south west of Ankara, was the Service Club, NCO Club to imbibe and play Bingo, the library, and the Gym.  

On one occasion on a Sunday I joined a group from the barracks to play basketball at the gym.  I’m not a good basketball player but agreed to join in the fun.  But the fun turned sour when I jumped for the basket and landed badly spraining my ankle.  

I had to loosen my shoe, and limp to the movie theater.  While watching Marlon Brando in the 1963 hit Mutiny On The Bounty, my ankle swelled. 

While limping back to the barracks I feared the worse:  tomorrow Monday was the beginning of PT (Physical Training).  I dreaded having to fall out of formation with an injury.  What a dilemma!  

My remedy was prayer.  I prayed for my foot and ankle while lying in my bunk, pulling the blanket from my left foot because of the pressure.  I fell asleep praying.

Upon awakening in the morning, 6AM wakeup for PT, my ankle was completely healed. 

I was amazed.  I jumped up and down for feeling.  There was no swelling, no pain, and my foot was back to normal!  

Creepy Cults And High Priests

What is the nature of a man who considers himself a Christian and High Priest of his family, relegating his wife to subordinate status? What kind of church does this man subscribe to? What drives a person to seek a life’s position other than equal, and more importantly, what is his message?

This man is not part of the main stream churches, although President Jimmy Carter left the Southern Baptist Church because of their failing to promote women as pastors of the church. Moreover, Jimmy Carter said that the leaders of the SBC choose to interpret the bible phrases that subjugate women rather than exalt women.

This defining oneself as High Priest is clearly a case of self-adulation! Where does one get support for his Priest Hood? The main-stream Christian churches do not support this sacrilege. He would have to search for a cult religion, where they twist the interpretation of scripture to meet their selfish ways.

A “Purity Ball” is an example of a cult. It is a sacrilege where the father swears an oath as High Priest of the family before god to protect his daughter’s virginity. Likewise, the daughter swears an oath to be faithful to her father and remain “Pure”.

The “Purity Ball” is sick, creepy, and a sacrilege thus violating Matthew 5:34 “But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God's throne;” and James 5:12 “But above all, my brethren, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath; but your yes is to be yes, and your no, no, so that you may not fall under judgment.” The idea of “Purity” should be discussed in the privacy of the home and not put on public display with a cult ritual!

The New Testament clearly teaches that all believers regardless of gender, are joint heirs with Christ, and wives are not junior partners in the marriage. Men are not the High Priest and women are not subordinate. Galatians 3:28 “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

The High Priest uses the Bible as a tool to further his gain and justify his behavior using twisted scripture to get his way. He thinks that he holds the keys and locks out those who do not agree with him, and joins groups that think like him. Salvation is the tool that gives him the power to divide and shut out family members who do not worship his twisted scripture.  And we know where the Jews stand with his outspoken beliefs. 

The creepy cults focus on the “me” society rather than the “we” society. Therein lies a major conflict with the Bible: Matthew 25:45 “Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”

The basis for their entire thinking revolves around 1st John 5:5 "only those who believe in Jesus are saved."

The High Priest believes that if you are rich, it must be because God loves you. If you are poor, it is of your own sinful doing. The High Priest singles out one or two needy people to help thus fulfilling Matthew 25 and not costing him too much money or effort, but still justifying his “me” society.

There are many back-yard, barn yard churches with their self-ordained ministers and cult church followers that the High Priest can seek out. The High Priest seeks out the cult church where he can join to influence and be an active part of the ministry, solidifying his High Priest knowledgeable status.

The High Priest’s thinking would not be complete without home schooling, which completes full circle the living in a closed world where he holds the keys. After all, the earth is 6,000 years old, dinosaurs were on Noah’s Ark, and homosexuals are going to hell!

The religious intolerance of this group is repulsive, including their social behavior and lack of humanitarianism, and qualifies as a Cesspool.

 I believe in Dr. Kimball’s phrase from his course “Comparative Religion” regarding the similarities of the 5 basic religions, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, the “human capacity for self transcendence” transcends all religions. This religious creepy cult group is excluded!

Going Green

Today was wash day. We washed our clothes in “soap nuts”, a berry shell that naturally contains a cleaning agent that works like detergent called saponin, hung the clothes on our backyard clothes line, sun shinning with a soft breeze. Using soap nuts, a family of four can wash clothes for about  $30 per year.  GOING GREEN 

We recharge our e-bikes with the solar panels - normaly takes about 2 hours 

using the Jackery 1000 watt battery - plugging into the bike batteries allowing their  battery controllers to except the charge without worry.

With my Solar Panel hook-up, it takes about 7 hours to fully charge a 1000 watt battery

in full sun, receiving a charge of about 140 watts.  I made the legs for the solar panels with PVC pipes. 

We took Lucky, our little Jack Russell, for a walk in the park, then went for a 7 mile bike ride. When we got home I cut the lawn with our battery lawn mower, recharged the batteries with our solar panel, used hot water for our dirty dishes in the sink with our new Tankless Water heater, hung our clothes on the backyard clothes line after washing the clothes with Soap Nuts.

Our dish washer broke. Rather than repair, we wash our dishes by hand and use it as drying rack. We save the rinse water and use it on our plants (sudsy water repels bugs on roses). An important note: one cycle of your dishwasher is equivalent power of 20 hrs of TV.

Here’s a Thought:

Going Green starts with your changing lifestyle.

• Ride bicycles with basket for small errands
• Wash clothes with Soap Nuts - 
• Hang clothes on backyard clothes line

• Cut grass with battery lawn mower
• Solar panels to recharge batteries 
• Rain Barrels 100 gal 
• Backyard garden
• Recycle
• Compost
• Vegetarian 

A change of diet to vegetarian would reduce carbon emissions greatly.  Feeding animals consume great amounts of resources.

Livestock farming adds significantly to greenhouse gas emissions through methane from digestions and nitrous oxide from manure.  These emissions are less toxic than carbon dioxide but impact climate change.  Also lifestock farming impact the climate through deforestation for pastureland.

“Thousands – millions and billions – of animals are killed for food. That is very sad. We human beings can live without meat, especially in our modern world. We have a great variety of vegetables and other supplementary foods, so we have the capacity and the responsibility to save billions of lives.”  Buddhist Quote

Vegans Live Longer. The exception but still a good rule for strong bodies, Roman Gladiators had vegetarian diet from analysis of bones from a cemetery where they were buried. 

Climate change.

Truckers calling The Thom Hartmann Program stating years ago traveling across country, would have to stop often to clean windshield of Bugs. Today, no Bugs

A remarkable Nutritionist following on Bluesky, Dr. Kristie Leong MD said "The planet doesn't need saving - we do.  Protecting nature means protecting ourselves and all the beautiful plants and animals."

Just an added delight in Going Green and a further thought about preserving our Climate.  Another mystery of our Universe is butterflies, pollinators along with watching out for Nature's Bees.

My wife Bobbi grows butterflies, from picking itsy bitsy caterpillares on the dill from our backyard garden, placing them in a cage, feeding them dill / parsley / carrot tops until they're big enough to form chrysalis.  Then in about 7 to 10 days a butterfly emerges, a miracle.

Adding to this mystery is the time when the chrysalis stops evolving in the Fall, waits through winter to emerge in the Spring.  We had 14 chrysalis last Fall ( right around the Fall Equinox) when they went dormant, and placed the dormant cage in our garage over the winter.

We brought the cage into our Study the last week in April, and released our first born butterfly Swallowtail 5/2/25 at 5:15 PM.  Wow! An exillerating celebration of Spring has Sprung!

Yesterday May 14, Bobbi released number 8, 9, 10 butterfly, Swallowtail from last Fall's 14 Chrysalis stored in a cage in our garage over the winter.  Wow!

Reminded:

“The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life.” - Tagore

Conspiratorial Capitalism

The text book definition of Profit is the measurement of efficiencies between competitive companies. Since we no longer enforce the Sherman Anti Trust Act via Ronald Reagan, profit has morphed into a destructive force entity with Crony Capitalism  thrust upon us today coupled with the monopoly factor.  

We see, for example, the increase in prices for life saving medicine increasing 600% to 3,000% for no other reason but that Big Pharma can.  We have replaced text book Capitalism with  Conspiratorial Capitalism, or Crony Capitalism - a systematic, corrupt system bought and paid for by legislators and corporate lobbyists.

Conspiratorial Capitalism is the collusion among legislators, right-wing judges, and corporate mass media.  The Federal Government lowers the tax rate for the wealthy, stops enforcing the Sherman Anti-Trust Legislation, anti-labor and essentially gives corporations and Wall Street free will.  

The powerful right-wing network that hijacks state politics and government through the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) continue their nefarious agenda of wealth redistribution upwards to the Rich. 

Composing legislation, calling for a conference of all state legislators to attend, then handing out previously composed legislation for the legislative attendees to take back to their state legislation to vote upon is what ALEC is about. And, with a majority of Republicans in many state legislatures, the vote is “Aye.”

We now have a Corporate Press free from regulation thru the FCC relaxing the Fairness Doctrine, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and the FCC revoking Net Neutrality.  Today’s News is mainly infotainment!

There is nothing in the Corporate News about the decline of the middle class, which the last 35 years has left America destroyed while the right-wing agenda of closing factories in the United States to the tune of 50,000 factories and moving American jobs to China continues. 

Capitalism in a competitive world Profit was a measure of efficiencies, comparative advantage. Remove competition and Profit morphed into Greed, a cancer rooted in Reaganomics, deadly in its effects and it has metastasized.

Our cities throughout the Rust Belt, the name given to our devastated industrial heartland, resemble the bombed ruined cities of WWII Germany.  Detroit, for example, had a population of over 2 million residents in its heyday and was listed as the richest city in America due mainly to its industrial base revolving around the manufacturing of automobiles.  

Today’s population of Detroit is under 700,000 with the difference in resident’s abandoned houses resembling what time did in lieu of bombs.

A rewarding model for business is government subsidies. This business model sets the condition whereby companies pay their workers below substance wages, then their employees apply for food stamps and medicaid in order to live.  All subsidized by the American taxpayer.

Republicans in the U.S. Senate continue  blocking legislation to restore the American manufacturing industry. We do not enforce our tariffs that all other countries use to protect their manufacturing base!

Republican Senator McConnell, Senate Majority Leader, continues to object to Legislation from the House of Representatives dealing with all sorts of remedies, from Russian  interference in our voting, voter security, monopolies, and more. 

Ronald Reagan’s infamous 9 words: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”  And, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”  

From this foreboding idea that government is incompetent sprang the buzz word “privatize”.  Let’s privatize everything! 

Perhaps the enemy is only an idea, albeit a bad idea.  The solution would be to educate the American public through the Mass Media.  

But the Mass Media is owned by 5 multi national corporations!  Therein lies the problem.

Discovering My Grandfather's Daily Devotional

I’m discovering an insight to my grandfather who died in 1962 at the age of 82.

I recently received his book “Johann Friedrich Starck’s Morgen und Abendandachten”, translated means Morning and Evening Prayer, a 1901 copy of a 18th century theologian’s writing.  Reviewing my grandfather Georg (without “e” pronounced GAY-org) Reiter’s daily devotional book, it is fragile, very worn and obviously much used.  To connect with a particular day’s prayer is to wonder how many times has this person read this particular prayer on this particular day over a lifetime.  And, the wonder is also a warm feeling and thought that this person was a good and righteous person.

 I’m seeing a pattern with each day’s prayer ending with psalms, hymns, carols, and ballads.  Here is the Evening - Prayer (Abend) for 21 February.  I used an internet on-line translator as I wrote from the original German text these sentences, trying to interpret the old Gothic letters, used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 to well into the 17th century, if the letter was a U or A. 

Some words do not exactly fit the logic in this translated prayer, because words in all languages become outdated and not easily translated.  This text is probably translated in the 19th century from the 18th century, which would further outdate todays translation.  

So, here is my translation from page 105 and at the bottom is from Pslam 51:

Evening Prayer for 21 February

Return to me, saith the Lord Almighty, so I will teach you, saith the Lord Almighty   Zech. 1.3

Almighty and gracious God! As night falls, I see all my trust and confidence in you and your merciful side.  I ask you humbly, Lord, to forgive me all my sins and transgressions out of grace. Like a sheep strayed from the herd heading for his shepherd. So I too want to turn to you, faithful Jesus, and hold myself to you, so that I will never leave you again.  Without this inner conversion no one has ever found grace before your eyes. A David, a Peter, a Paul have become completely changed people through your spirit power, so give me such a new meaning, O my merciful.  In grace you will abdicate all uncleanness and all damages from me. Let your holy angels encamp around me so that I may enjoy a good night's sleep under their care.  Ah, Lord, come to me when I pray, and hear me; Comfort me when I am depressed, save me when the floods cross over me. Comfort me when I'm sick and lonely.  Will you, sir, attribute sin, who will prevail? Let my soul, when leaving that mortal coffin, open the entrance into your heaven, where I will be eternally united with you. Amen.

I want from my wrongdoing

to convert me to the Lord;

You want help and advice for yourself

for that, O God, bring

and your spirit's power,

that creates new hearts in us,

grant me with mercy.

The Nature of Communication

Ancient scholars deduced that language is symbolic, metaphorical to reason and understanding for the individuals’ thought process. Symbolism language is powerful.

Hieroglyphics were the early form of writing, communication used in Ancient Egypt and the Anatolian Hittites dating back to the Bronze Age 12 century BCE, a combination of logographic symbols. Much like the Emoji of today.

But the timeline of most of History shows that most people were illiterate, could not read or write even up through the Middle Ages. They depended on Oral Tradition, a form of human communication wherein knowledge, art, ideas and culture was received, preserved, and transmitted orally from one generation to another.  The transmission was through speech or song including folktales, ballads, chants, or prose and poetry.

Part of Human Existence, is Oral Tradition before written language. One can hypothesize religion was founded upon explaining the unexplainable, giving reasons to fractured happenings before scientific knowledge gave birth. Homer’s Odyssey reveals Human Nature.  ‘Achilles' heel myth for example.

Greek Mythology, when Achilles was an infant, it was foretold he would perish at a young age. Preventing his death, his mother Thetis took Achilles to the River Styx which folklore supposed to offer powers of invulnerability. She dipped his body into the river water but, because she held him by his heel, it was not touched by the water of the river.

One can see, for example, the Pictures displayed as Art throughout the walls and ceilings of Hagia Sophia, built 360 CE, telling the story of Christianity, a method of Oral Tradition.

In 1454 Gutenberg took the task of the laboring Scribes and put the mass media in motion. The printing press innovation put the written word to the masses, inspired the ‘read’.

Over centuries, Scribes upon Scribes, upon more Scribes rewriting lead to distortions in meaning. Imagine ancient script with no spaces/punctuation.

Charlemagne, 8th century, gave us Carolingian ‘miniscule’, Upper Lower cases, spaces between words, punctuation, and even Cursive Writing. 

Consider the importance of these  innovations, since the Ancient Scribes had this to deal with: allofthesechangesmadeitmucheasiertoreadtheyeliminatedthesourcesofmanyscribalerrors

Add to the Insanity with the Bible having many contradictions because of the Scribes’ distortions over centuries. Maybe one Scribe had a ‘Bad Day’ with his wife and relegated her to “Sit Down & Be Quiet” 1 Timothy 2:12: “I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet.”

“I learned a very important lesson that night. People believe whatever they read. Something magical happens once it’s put down on paper. They figure no one would have gone through the trouble if it wasn’t the truth.  Responsibility was my new watchman.” Eugene Morris Jerome - Niel Simon’s Biloxi Blues

“Nature of Reality in the conscious mind is thru Stories.”- Deepak Chopra

Corporate Media controls the Stories. Therein Lies the Problem.

One could hypothesize, that ‘Social Media’ is the New “Ancient Oral Tradition”

since Journalism is DOA and Corporate Media is Infotainment.

One must realize Corporate Media Mainstream Media is owned by 5 corporations and is not only the filter, but the interpreter of HAPPENINGS.  An Unchallenged Lie perpetuates same. 

The Word “News” connotes Journalism, and one would expect a standard like a placard outside an office “Lawyer” or “CPA”.  Corp Media MSM replaced Journalism with ‘INFOTAINMENT’.

A savior of our communicated thoughts revolves around Lucius Seneca 4 BCE - 65 CE, Roman Philosopher, Stoicism: “You can’t control the situation, but you can control your reaction to it.”  

A Wider Window To Life

 We’re all born to this world with individual wonderment of the same universe. And, sharing gives life to that wonderment. Human nature is revealed on the face of an innocent child where love comes first, shown with a smile. Life is an individual journey.

“The Nature of Reality in the Conscious Mind is thru Stories.“ said Deepak Chopra.

What better excitement of your finding the beautiful flower, smelling it’s unique aroma, adding to the joy by telling a friend who delights in your story?

A fundamental question of Life’s Journey, when and where is the line drawn on the depth of Parenthood?  I find it difficult to share life with adult children who are distant. The sharing of life’s wonderment goes beyond a calendar, or sharing food recipes.

As parents we went through the stage in life and had the ‘Baby Thing’.  Our children grew up, but as adults they decided to be distant. That’s their choice.  We did the ‘Baby Thing’ by raising our children with love and a bundle of care.

The gateway to happiness is held in the hands of Humanity with the Key of Love. Let Love keep us at the top of this tapestry of humanity.

I find wonderment in life with the love of animals.  Watching the little creatures keeps life simple. Sniff, look, feel, hear, taste, all reminded about what’s important, and gives us a wider window to life.  

What motivates us? Remember, life is an individual journey. Some grow up with a competitive effort to conquer the same universe that they were born to, and cleave to greed.  

Reminded that greed is the seed for all kinds of Evil.  Greed reaches its limit when the fate of Humanity is held in the clutch of a few or submissive to one.

“The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life.” - Tagore

 A reflection from a spoken Native American, which harmonizes with this theme of wonderment, saying their religion is not Faith Based but real. You can feel it, taste it, breathing the air, drinking clean water, seeing the sun, feeling and smelling  the earth, living plants and animals in harmony - living, loving, sharing.

“One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.” - James Baldwin 

“We are all tourists, God is our travel agent who already made our itineraries, bookings and destinations...Trust him and enjoy LIFE.  Life is just a journey! Live today!”- Charles Chaplin

We sit in awe of the wonderment of the miracles of Nature.

My wife Bobbi grows butterflies, from picking itsy bitsy caterpillars on dill from the backyard garden, placing them in a cage, feeding them dill / parsley until they’re big enough to form chrysalis. Then 7 to 10 days when they emerge as butterflies is a miracle.  

Further mystery is the time when the chrysalis stops evolving at Fall Equinox, waits through winter to then emerge in the Spring as Butterflies.   It’s Life’s Wonderment.