The Tale Of Two Thomas’s

I said in a previous post I was going off into a story vain. This is the story about two guys named Thomas. The first is Thomas the apostle a disciple of Jesus, and the second is Thomas Jefferson.  

Little is known of the first one and volumes have been written on the second. I wish I could have known more about the first one for there is scant information only slight scriptural references by the gospels of John and Mathew and traditional passages by others that may or may not be credible.  I would have liked to know both and walked beside them. However, only through the living years of the first one but he was killed by a king’s soldiers in India around 72 AD and the second died peacefully in his bed and the exact same day as his Christian rival and in later years one of his best friends, John Adams. 

The first died a horrible death by spear (not dissimilar than Jesus) preaching the gospel to pagan gentiles). The second wrote a document calling for Americans to be free of tyranny and as well as a participant in that struggle to be set free.

The first escaped Roman tyranny to set others free as he was to live the Gospel and taught that life is only temporary but will be everlasting with belief in his Lord Jesus Christ. The second at great risk to himself chose freedom and preached freedom across the land.

The first traveled to far off India to set people free with the gospel. The second was a planter, architect, musician and artist. The first was a builder and merchant.

The second was a slave owner to build his wealth and provision and probably based on his character treated his slaves like a prized piece of property not over working them and mistreat and take good care of. The first given the culture of the time used slaves as well.
The second had a favorite saying (probably fueled by the age of enlighten of which he grew up in) to “question everything even the very existence of God”. The first questioned after losing his wonderful friend Jesus and healer and teacher, thought that was the end of him and the great mission was lost.

The second, only later in life, “reasoned” there must be a resurrection and that if we could not be with our loved ones and our creator after death that life would essence be useless and pointless. He while thinking that Jesus was a wise man and a martyr that he died just like we do and was resurrected just like we do and was skeptical of secondhand accounts of Jesus). To illustrate read a disciple of The Jefferson Bible that he wrote, using only the firsthand sayings of Jesus and no miracles. He was probably led down this path of the resurrected Jesus by his staunch Christian companion John Adams.

The first was most remembered as “doubting Thomas” because he couldn’t believe that his best friend could serve such a gruesome death making the whole mission pointless. Jesus had to show him the wounds and have him touch them to believe.  He had done this very same thing to 10 other unbelievers, 10 disciples.  Poor ole Thomas got kind of got a bad rap in the Gospels.  He was ridiculed for having not believed that Jesus died and was risen and wanted proof. The other 10 guys (minus Judas) were in the room weeping because their best friend and so-called Messiah was just executed for the very thing, they were on a mission to proclaim. Don’t you think that they had a “give up hope” time until Jesus walked through (I mean REALLY WALKED THROUGH) the door and appeared to them and gave them hope and blessing? 

Was Thomas so full of grief that he just wanted to be by himself and grieve quietly the scripture only tells us that he wasn’t there and was told after the fact and Jesus appeared to him later. Don’t you think he was a bit surprised and couldn’t believe that his dearest friend was actually standing before his very eyes. Well, he showed up just like the others, but he just wanted to be sure after all the trauma he and others went through. THEN he was reassured by Jesus he was the Messiah and went on to spread the Gospel too far away others and suffered the fate Jesus suffered along with the fate like the other disciples.  We don’t hear much about many of the other disciples either because scripture doesn’t tell us much, but we should not forget or pass over all those courageous ground zero brothers (and sisters) who took up Jesus’s cross and took the gospel around the world. Changing the world, no matter how much man’s corruption has tried to destroy it even within the church itself.

On a more earthly bent the second wrote the Declaration of Independence and parts of the Constitution and must have thought my God men can be free of the tyranny of the crown and even worship freely and honor our creator. 

The first left behind his exclusive Jewish orthodoxy to preach the gospel.  The second insisted on the doctrine of freedom to worship as you wish, and he championed the persecuted Jews but didn’t subscribe to the mainstream teachings of Judaism of the time.

While these Thomas’s are very different and separated by some 1700 years, to me they have striking similarities.  The apostle Thomas was for the most part left out of the New Testament. Perhaps one of the greatest untold story not in the bible. Perhaps his account was left on the cutting floor of Nicaea and is blurred by so many unreliable Gnostic accounts. But there is credible accounts from Indian and other historical accounts that give credibility to his ministry. After that incident the seeing is believing moment he was perhaps as great of an apostle there travelling 3000 miles to preach the Gospel in the perhaps home of the Maharaja themselves. There are Christian communities that exist in India today that claim their origins back to Thomas’s mission to the country. There are churches and cathedrals in India that are named after him and traditions claiming that he is buried under one of them or even his remains were transported to Italy. All that can be researched, but who cares.  He really lived as a disciple of Jesus but sadly forgotten compared to my old friend the Apostle Paul. Maybe because Paul, Luke and Mathew were better writers and journalers. Maybe that Thomas is my un-discovered hero fellow builder like me but I all I’ve got to leave behind is this pitiful blog which is more than ole Thomas had.   Maybe I’ll see you up in heaven some day with Thomas Jefferson and Jesus sipping some wine with Jesus saying “well guys. I’ve been trying to tell you guys about this place and who I am, so relax and rest from your earthly but godly toil, my dad’s up there and IS in control.

Till Next time.

Rick

Irrelevant? Abandoned?

All,

Finally, at last you get a short post from me in this Easter season. For those who are believers or not in the Jesus Messiah thing, this one might ring home. Many of us depressants feel alone and abandoned. I feel that way not so much by general friends but my inner circle. It’s not that they don’t care, and one of the last standing is my devoted and steadfast wife who takes care of my physical needs, edits this drivel called my blog, and gives me the comfort of true loyal companionship. I/we (meaning maybe my fellow depressants) practice self-isolation because we feel irrelevant. Not belonging or thinking like most.

In my case, without being egotistical, but that same irrelevance and sometimes thinking deeper than most and losing so many in my thoughts.  I have this insatiable habit of text praying for others I don’t go down the list and check boxes, I just wake up or sometimes during twilight times and suddenly pray from my heart for certain individuals originating from my heart with no structured reason or method just an urge.  What’s amazing to me is on several occasions those that I text respond at how my timing was just what was needed at that time to be lifted no matter how strong their faith is.

At Last!  I’ve found a snippet of relevance in a broken world.  SOMEONE NOTICED!  Our Pastor preached from the Gospel according to Mathew on Palm Sunday, the hours before He surrendered to face His fate. Without exception his disciples went to sleep and really abandoned him when his human side needed them the most.  His friends couldn’t be bothered to stay awake, because they were weary from the ministry journey and abandoned Him when he needed THEM (not the other way around).  Then the early in the morning or late that same night he was subjected the most grueling and horrific death. By HIMSELF and his Father let Him go through it to show the world the ultimate act of love.  This is historical fact in the crucifixion and basic facts leading up to it. HE was abandoned really abandoned and he accepted the fate. No one, at least in these days, have a sense of betrayal like he did. 

For all of you who don’t believe that he is the Messiah, ponder this. Have you ever had a worse day than this? Just in earthly terms my fellow depressants if you think that you are going through trials, take comfort in knowing at the very least in the ultimate end you are relevant in a snippet that is your life. I still think I’m irrelevant but return to this story and take heart and that his act brings relief in knowing the gospel story as a Christian and that snippet of relevance when I take time to text that little message. God be with all reach inside and muster up hope. I’m in a mustering time myself and still cling to be relevant. God be with your vacillating spirit.

There’s Someone in the Fire

For all I’m writing this more along the lines of my title.  I struggle with keeping my sanity, as well as trying to be relevant and creative and battling my ability to survive in this broken world.  With all its demands that keep me from perishing and for that matter caring about it. My next post is going to be more of a story I like to call “The Tale of Two Thomas’.”

My depression is largely due mostly to feeling irrelevant. When once I was on the thick of things, doing lots of stuff being creative and giving and being a provider for my family, my business affairs, my music, my charitable aims, and projects.  I am a builder, not a spectator. I am a musician, not a passive participant. I am an absorber of knowledge not a self-proclaimed know it all.  Although when I finally get something right, I crave to pass on my triumphs and follies to save someone from the same.  So that they will listen and may learn and thus not fall into the failure holes that I have descended into.

I cherish those moments when I can see those epiphany moments when I really nailed it and could enjoy the moment with many others or just one. I enjoy trying to share the Gospel and can/could even preach it owing to my somewhat gifted speaking ability. I prefer to demonstrate no matter how rough around the edges it is because it makes it more genuine even when I screw up.  But besides adding to my stroke I have some trouble with my speech getting it out of my head and through my mouth. That makes me even more depressed.

I write mostly for myself because as I hope, my fellow mentally ill comrades in depression, it is therapyfor my troubled mind.I’ve had my bouts with overpowering and real and intimate battles with evil and Jesus pushes it away. I confided this to my priest friend as I battle between the chemical cures for my anti-seizure meds and the spiritual ones.  He gave my enlightenment an ah! Ha! moment.  He said that Jesus is coming when you cry out but if your biological body is weak it allows Satan to exploit that. Weakness and the meds and chemicals have their place if used as God’s healing tool. My seizure meds were adjusted, and the attacks subsided and when they come, I simply say to Jesus “I got this I don’t want you cure what is now more like a common cold than the horrific events that I go through.” So, I thought “Is this this something in my head and just more medication was needed and was I foolish or what. After some thought I determined no I need faith and biological healing.

Probably someone going through cancer treatments will tell you the same thing. It goes inextricably together.  If you’ve ever been to Oral Roberts University and what used to be its medical center there is a huge praying hands sculpture in the front of the entrance. The real meaning is one hand is for the physician doing the surgery and the other for praying and healing symbolizing the whole process of man and the power of God working in sync to perform miracles. This facility went bankrupt years ago not because of its mission of healing and God’s power. But because of man’s sinful nature of mismanaging funds, the breed of the lawyers that sues when things go wrong, through man made folly and leaning on their on their own understanding.  They forgot one of those precious hands.  Just like the old saying “physician heal thyself”.

I’m here to tell you that neither patient nor physician can heal themselves. It takes at least two maybe five. You and your talented physician, and three other guys, The Father The son and the Holy Spirit. They all work together like a close-knit team, yet they are individual entities unto themselves   It’s called the trinity for all you Christians.  I have a hard time wrapping my head around the theological deal on that.  I guess if I were a Jew or something else the concept of God might be a bit simpler, but I have felt the three distinct facets of the Trinity.

Without getting into the theological weeds, I know that for me Jesus is where I relate. After all he was biological like me, he was born, he lived, ate, laughed, cried and ultimately died a horrible death. Then all of a sudden, he beat the system of life and death and showed us how it’s done. We just have to read the history and then believe that if we’re not on the Pontius Pilot side of the deal (and there is redemption, even for that slug) we can catch up with him in a better place than we could ever imagine ,  and God wants it that way, or sure as hell we’d be building that tower of babel or waiting for Elon Musk to invent something to take us there.

So, what do we do now? We’re depressed and we’re living in the land of stupid. No one to talk to we’re all racists, communists, capitalists, religious hypocrites, sinners, saints (well maybe not so many of those) or everywhere in between or beyond.  Well, what I do, especially when there’s nothing else that works, I just get off by myself pull up a rocking chair sit outside, look up at the heavens and pose the million-dollar question, Why? Followed up with, How? And ask the creator what do you want me to do? Because I don’t have a clue. I used to know but I don’t anymore and nobody else sure as hell knows in the land of stupid of which I am a senior citizen only entering the land of wisdom when I stop long enough to look up at the stars.

I hear a lot of crickets but at least I’m alone with somebody who understands me.  And just knowing that brings me a little peace. Not much but sufficient for enough me and that will have to do. I don’t want to be a part of the broken world; because after all these years a slow learner like me can’t fix it, no matter how smart I think I am. I don’t give up on me and those I love. I’ll just wait…. but hurry it up God.

Respectfully yours from the land of stupid your faithful and flawed servant.

Me and Two of my “buddies” Solomon and Paul

This will be brief (like I hadn’t said that before and ended up writing a short story). As of late, my depression has been winning out, and my inspiration has been buried by it.  But today, I find myself running a comparison of two of my favorite Bible heroes and me.

Something to note here, I am only a microscopic version of them, but I find them interesting, and I can relate—my 1st from the Old Testament Solomon. He was the youngest son and chosen.  I was the youngest and chosen to lead our family.  He prayed for discernment between right and wrong and, in his life, had trouble with both. I likewise with temptations of being hard in business and too many women in my life. Although I avoided casual and concubine sex with several wives and loving only about 200 out of 1000,  I had virtually no casual sex and loved and married three of them with a child from each. God tried to warn Solomon of too many women, especially from Egypt.  He just didn’t listen. And on a much smaller scale, did the same thing.

 He was a builder. I was a builder. He ran roughshod over people and did what it took to get the project of God’s temple done to specs.  I built cool stuff and was just as demanding of my workforce. He shrewdly took advantage of his business connections, sometimes to the point of screwing them.  And I drove a hard bargain and sometimes took advantage of my leverage. He paid a fair wage to his own kind. I discarded non-performers like chaff. He led from the front. I led from the front.  He had wisdom I had some, on occasion and folly and leaning on my own understanding and made serious business blunders. He loved God. I loved and pitied Jesus like he was one of us but couldn’t wrap my head around the Trinity thing.  That being like the Old Testament that Jesus had to teach us 100’s of years later.

He loved his family and knew the importance of his ancestral role and family honor.  His dad was a hard ass but was compassionate and a man after God’s own heart. My dad was much more subtle and private about it but knew God and related to Him and was a complicated man and conflicted man  My dad worked hard and built a prosperous business the hard way.  David, Solomon’s father, slew many people, took all their stuff in the name of GOD, and gave it to Solomon,  so he could pay cash and get a good deal on the materials and labor to build the temple ( I’m using a bit of liberty here filling in some scriptural silence.)  I drive hard bargains with cash when I can, and my dad left my mom and me a fair amount of cash when he died. I built several churches; He built the ultimate one.

No one knows what happened to him; it was recorded in the Annals of Solomon but got lost and never found. I’ve found a lot of my history that records my finer moments and my follies and believe that my annals will be lost somewhere as well.  But I will just fade away like General Macarthur once said, “I’m in neither category of great men by a void in space from here to the nearest star in our galaxy.”  Maybe the two huge concrete crosses I built will prompt someone to ask questions about who built these. I hope those don’t go the way of the temple being destroyed, be it modern-day Babylonians or Antifa.

So that’s why this guy is my Old Testament hero. He was very flawed but an amazing man who loved God.   I’m not worthy of even mentioning his name and mine in the same sentence.

My other hero comes from the New Testament, the Apostle Paul.  He was educated in the school of the Pharisees and did pretty well and was destined to be one and learned great knowledge of the religious and secular kind. I went to UF, and l learned business accounting and passed the CPA exam.  He did side jobs as a tentmaker, a skill he learned along the way. I play sax on the side to earn my way through college and drove dump trucks and a sand dredge for my dad.

Later in life, after tormenting Christians with his pharasitic knowledge and power, he had an epiphany on the way to Damascus and was blinded by the light. I saw Jesus while lie crying on the floor, fearing I wasn’t going to make payroll, and my second wife and I were on the skids. I was blinded by welders burn ( temporary blindness when not adequately protected by welding visor) from patching up my aging fleet of dump trucks.

He persecuted Christians.  I persecuted people around me, hurling my anger at them like the stoning of Paul’s day. Paul turned around his life and began preaching the Gospel.  I found a little church in Fort Drum, Florida, and revisited the Bible and let Jesus, the Father, and the Holy Spirit take over my life even if it was, in my case, a little, where Paul was all in.

Paul wrote amazing words of the Gospel and passed down the words for us, and when he was older and nearly blind, he had a scribe edit and write down his words. Since my stroke, it is hard for me to follow the curser because of my blindness in my left eye to write, so my scribe is my devoted wife who also types, edits, and posts my blog, which is drivel compared to the books of Paul.

He had a plaguing problem with a thorn in his foot that he often prayed for God to remove (may have been gout).  I have gout, and fortunately for me, a medication that keeps it under control, but my thorn is seizures that I have to fight off with medications and even rebuking that evil in the name of Jesus to make the evil that accompanies them.  Jesus and I fight this battle at least once a week, and the power of His rebuke is the power that saves me and completes the void where the meds calm me physically while Satan attacks both mind and body.

Paul was either imprisoned or in the form of house arrest for doing the right thing and preaching the Gospel. I spent an afternoon in jail for making payroll instead of paying sales tax to the state of Florida, which I bounced a check on. I am now under virtual house arrest in paradise in my homestead and write this insignificant blog with a little gospel thrown in haphazardly.

Paul was a saint. I’m way short of that bar.  Paul said he was the worst sinner and killed Christians early on. Except for killing anyone, I’m right up there with him. I even was a murderer one time when I was young and afraid, and my 1st wife and I killed this poor little boy that lived in her womb within months after Roe versus Wade made it legal.

Now my life begins anew. I these past and future years, with my friend Paul’s words and my buddy Solomon’s wisdom, the journey has been and still is a bumpy ride.  As for me, Jesus and Paul, I’ll catch up.

Memories and a Man Room

I decided to create an economical addition to my garage and turn it into a memory and “man room” that I might retreat to from everyone, including my wife and my seventeen-year-old son (the last of my children still living at home) and from my loving but at times pain in the ass 90-year-old in-laws who have taken over my old recording studio/man room; that is currently being converted into an apartment for them to live with us. It’s really a GOOD RELATIONSHIP. They will live with us to safely live out their remaining years, help share our living expenses, and save my 93-year-old father-in-law from terrorizing all the other drivers on the 150-mile drive from Boca Raton to family gatherings. Which, by the way, he sometimes has to take a 20-minute nap about halfway through the drive.

I got sidetracked, as you, my readers, cannot help but notice. I was cleaning up all things worthy of saving versus taking to the burn pit outback.  Giving my son entertainment by creating a huge blaze that probably pisses off the neighbors a few hundred feet away as the smoke traverses their air space (as a farm kid, we regularly burned baling twine, so screw um). The same bunch that bitches every 4Th of July when we used to fire my black powder cannon every hour (damned socialist communists).

Once again, I strolled off the path of complete thoughts and structured paragraphs (my playful response to my readers is similar to my neighbors who don’t appreciate my backyard bonfires). I found old pictures of old bands I was in, family pictures, and a mountain of plaques from my Jaycee days (which for decoration, I created an “I love me” wall and hung all the pictures. I moved in all my old band stuff, enabling me to be locked into a room with 98db of pure musical ecstasy and no one around to tell me to “turn that damn stuff down!” As I rummaged through, I found an old LP that I mounted on my record player (yes, I still have one of those). It was a live recording of my old high school symphonic band recorded at a district band contest in 1970.  We were a 3-year-old high school band at the time and a new music department. Our mascot was “the Commodores,” and our band uniforms were marine navy blue with white cross belts and all. Before we were dismissed to form up for marching, we had to “pass inspection,” and we were given demerits for improperly polished brass buttons and strict decorum, including standing at attention during the 15-to-20-minute rigorous inspection by senior band officers. The band was about 80 in size, and we were directed by a salty ex-navy band director who was a real hard-ass making us play scales for what seemed like hours in a practice room as punishment for not having our part up to performance quality.

One of our pieces chosen by him for the contest was Tchaikovsky’s Finale of the 9th Symphony (this is how it was listed and spelled on the album its really the 4th Symphony) , an extremely hard but exciting piece. All the other older high schools in the band contest laughed and thought Lil’ ole Eau Gallie High School couldn’t cut that piece. When it was our turn, after many of the powerhouse bands performed, we came to perform with 80 scared 16-18 year kids, looking sharp in their Navy Blue uniforms, thinking we might get laughed out of the gymnasium (which had surprisingly excellent acoustics).  The old crusty Navy band conductor lifted his baton, and off we went playing our ass off, playing way over our head every tempo, every staccato, every dynamic change was executed well enough to make old Tchaikovsky’s eyebrows rise (or at least these kids thought so) and evidently so did everyone else there did too. As we reached the up-tempo powerful end of the piece from where I was sitting, I looked up at the old navy maestro; he was sweating, and then I saw it. Tears were streaming down his face.  We finished the piece to a standing ovation from all our peers.  I looked back at the tough old navy man as he quickly extracted his jacket hanky (they wore those kinds of jackets in those days) and as discreetly as he could wipe the tears from his eyes as he motioned for the band to summarily stand and bow. He quickly resumed his grizzled demeanor and just smiled at us. 

Eau Gallie High School Band -performing @ District Band Contest – 1970 – Tchaikovsky’s Finale of the 4th Symphony- delay of 16 seconds before music starts

Have any of you ever had moments like that? Well, I’ve only had one like that, and it is engrained in my mind forever, and as I write this, I find myself crying the tears of that old navy man even though it is 50 years later.

Moving on through the old pictures, I found one of the University of Florida Jazz band in which I was playing lead alto sax at the time in concert in Ploiesti,  Rumania, but not even that surpassed that moment with my high school band.  Okay, I’m done crying now, till next time.

Continue reading “Memories and a Man Room” →

Tales from a recovering patient of the love doctor code for Jesus – Valentines to family and friends

As usual I screwed up the only thing I could give you for Valentine’s Day a love letter from me and it got lost in my attempts to email it to you this seems to be the only thing I can barely do on this day and every day I love you with what is left in me. Love, Me . 

Email –

I don’t have anything these days but my feeble love that I give to you. How after all these years I still kept it alive is a mystery but what is noted just how real it is and how much it is.  Through all the times good and rough you have been there for me. I surly don’t deserve it yet you carry on. I love you with all my pitiful heart can put forth. You still have my whole self.  Beyond the loyalty and care you give me is an unrelenting bond that it long last…. lasts. I love you now and always for everything you are. God truly formed our union out of the world to something much more. How than I love you more than that? It will always be so Love, Me

Son while these are tumultuous and yes, lonely times and love is confusion and the light of it seems ever so dim. It never leaves us once it has entered us no matter how much pain there is so understand on this day, the love I have for you son can and will not diminish nor leave me for you. We should keep love alive no matter how much it hurts or when that hurt comes to those closest to us. No matter the loneliness, and I know you feel it, God knows your pain and perhaps He’s the only one who can take the hurt and keeps on loving us anyway.  Maybe we can both be like Him with those we love and triumph over hurt and pain with forgiveness and reconciliation. Or just keep on and keep loving. Love you son as only a dad can. 

May this day kindle the sometimes flicker of love deep inside and you may know that it comes from places you don’t know or understand love never leaves nor can be extinguished by the worst of times love dad

Precious daughter on this day of love, may your heart always overcome hurt and pain and know that once experienced it cannot be taken away by circumstances and that love is for you from Jesus. As well as this old and tired dad I love you with all a have.  Dad

May you and Jackie enjoy the company of true love. The journey has led you both down some tumultuous paths and now you are together. What a wonderful gift.  Enjoy that bond today.  

Big sis through all the twists and turns of people we’ve known and loved through the years love never ends even when the flame is dim, nor never forgotten. How can I forget the love I have always had for my sis surely there is loneliness on this day for you but be assured that God love is there for you but none greater than my love for you. Be safe today and know that short of God’s love there is none greater than mine Lil brother.

You dear child have so much love and kindness that it can’t be measured in this world and only understood by the Heavenly Father.  But for those of us who have journeyed with you, have been blessed with it.  Be safe and know that you are loved from people and sources far from you.
 

I always pray this prayer for you dear heart for it has been elusive for so long maybe this will be good council from an old man who has had his heart broken many a time. It’s always worth the risk for when you finally look back the love can’t be extinguished no matter how long it is in the rear-view mirror it still endures. After three marriages I know this and now after many tries at finding it finally settled down for 22 years. But today I will send a text to all of the previous ones to let them know that love endures forever no matter the circumstances or the choices we made love is always worth the risk of heartache and the reward of success is worth it always. I wish you the best just remember, as I have not always remembered, that relationship is a three-way union you, him and God. Should it be God’s will and peace l long sought be yours.

Today I express what is and will be in my heart no matter the hurt and pain.  Love endures forever and those 18 years for me cannot be extinguished by time and bad choices at least on my part.  Every day the pilot light of our love never extinguished. No matter where we are life’s journey, we will always have this part to share. I kind of go into this on my blog which I’m writing these days with so much unwanted time I have since the stroke. If you are interested, it is talesfromdepressionanddealingwithit.blog. Covers a lot of years and reflections. Be safe you and your mom and all.


Dear heart on this day know that you are loved by people you have touched even in the smallest ways they mostly don’t express it but an aging old man, that be me, gets it.  For it always springs up in unexpected places and many times comes from unexpected friendships. Thanks for being mine. 

Valentine’s Day isn’t just for guys and gals it’s about love and nowhere can be found a more profound love than what is my heart for my precious son I love you. Dad

Just another thought from grumpy old dad. I know that your first love ended in a broken heart I know because I’ve been there many times, I knew from the very first day that the way you all played together that you had fallen in love then things change as you grow up and anger and confusion and dysfunctional things happen. I’ve been there several times a gave up a few times it’s all part of life I finally found mom and true love based on friendship and sharing the tough times.  Do not be ashamed or in the name of protecting your pride or toughness be disheartened or ready to give up on love. She was a troubled kid similar to girls I loved and married two of them. God lifted me up out broken heartedness until he put me and mom together the risk of a broken heart is always well worth the effort love is always available to us. It doesn’t always come with who we may think and feeling love is part of the deal until God gets in the middle and shows you what is really supposed to be. Don’t give up on it and give thanks to those you share or shared it with you. While people and times change but love shared endures forever. Risk the broken heart and let it lead.  True love is s three-way deal, You a women and Jesus. As long as you remember that it will last even longer than mom and my relationship no matter how much we get aggravated with other. You were put in our life for a special reason that God only knows but His love is contagious and here we are the 3 of us, oh and Jesus too.

I remember my first adult love at about your age she broke my heart because no matter how much I tried I couldn’t make it work. God figures this out when we let Him. Sometimes love just waits and circles around, you never know. Women are a mystery to us guys but also something we can’t live without even for a short time but don’t give up on them and let God protect your heart. We may think it will be broken forever, but it will pass, and real love will spring up again and you will be truly blessed. Just give it time and never give up or feel foolish. I love you son.

After God’s amazing creation of the universe if He didn’t think that we were worth loving no matter how much we feel unlovable, the earth would be just another rock hurling through space devoid of love or life itself.  He put us here for this purpose.  He is Love, and we’re not just another spec of space dust moving at high-speed trying to escape the Son (spelling intended).

Why I Write

I’ve been MIA for about three months. I haven’t had the creative juices flowing through my veins and bringing them to my brain.  Having said that and my slight inspiration to write something and keep in touch with my followers, I write. At the risk of sounding like I’m sending out summer reruns of my past posts, I invite you to re-read or perhaps read for the first time my section called “Ten ideas on how to recover economically from the virus pandemic” and the later ones of finding God and so on.   This post is strangely prophetic to what is or should be happening now (and I’m no prophet).

Many have said I should change the title of my blog to increase readers, for in a nutshell, at first blush, well, it’s “depressing.” Maybe they are right. My intention was to open my heart and mind to self-perform therapy on myself and, just as importantly, get into the heart of what I am going through.   After writing this blog, I have discovered many who battle and struggle with similar quandaries of faith coping with the innermost, relating to their inner self to the beautiful but fallen world we exist in. 

My quest was never to make a living out of this being used by some entity to sell a product or diminish a pure albeit feeble attempt at literary honesty. As many of you know, I performed, wrote, and mixed sound for music. I’ve performed in classical recitals, jazz bands, symphonic bands, club bands (where it was difficult to discern who was enjoying your music soundtrack or just to fade into intoxication slowly or to get up the courage to ask someone to dance and more expectations of the carnal type. I’ve played High school proms, Frat parties, and endless corporate parties and conventions.  The definition of a musician – someone who loads up $20,000 of equipment and instruments drives 50 miles to play for $50-$100 for 4 hours load it all up and drive back and unload it at 3 in the morning and then repeat it the next night and more often than not go to a day job and repeat the whole thing all over again.  The day job fed you and paid the bills and maybe buy some more music stuff and gadgets.  We love music, and the interaction with the audience gives them a little lift, and maybe they might get what was on your heart through your music or not; in many ways, this is why I write this blog.

As I said before, I write for self-therapy, open my inner self and heart as honestly as I can, maybe give my “audience” something, I freely give whether or not it is useful or insightful or maybe at least entertaining and thought-provoking. What you will always get from me is unreserved truth (at least as I see it) and compassion for the reader.  We all are traveling pretty much the same road, maybe some different stops along the way, detours, and occasionally a soul healing stroll down a country lane on a brisk sunny Sunday afternoon.

I’ve re-read this blog lately, and right about now, I’ve not heeded some of my own axioms.  My faith is smaller than a mustard seed (Matthew 17:20), like dicing it with one of my pill splitters from my endless regimen of meds and the tiny pieces selecting only one to hold the entire inventory of my faith. 

I guess that is the case even with the most faithful at times. At least my priest friend postulates on his many and so much appreciated spiritual house calls.  Well, that’s all I can core dump on this subject with no actionable solutions. Still, I will be saying these screwed up times with violence, hate, and vitriol destroying our nation. Normally, dear friendships are also being ignited by an evil that hijacks lofty and just causes that otherwise could have been worked through with God in the center of the conflict. Love of humanity by children of God and just plain old respect of differing opinions with the common goal of something better and at its best achieved not by your own understanding but discernment guided by our loving but testing Creator. Look to God rather than man.

Till next time.

Is Jesus Real?

This question is often asked out of frustration, cynicism, or faith challenges.  As a Christian, I have been through educational “church” bible studies and read numerous books and material and Archaeological treatises on the historical Jesus.

Contrary to popular belief, some are not aware Christ is not his last name. He was known by name as Jesus of Nazareth, as was the custom of his time to name people using the name they were from. However, Christ is what makes him set apart from all of us on earth as the Messiah of the Old Testament and revealed in the New Testament.   It is here where believers acknowledge that he was the Son of God, the Holy Spirit, and God incarnate in human flesh.  Now again, I’m not a Theologian, and I’m barely schooled in the machinations of Christianity. For those of you who are about to click from this post as thinking I’m about to proselytize you into being a Christian, you may find there’s a bit more here. In my opinion, there is as much myth as there is fact-based faith. I am an analytical thinking person.

What I accept as faith comes from an innermost trust in what comes from my heart and as King David was described as a man after His (God’s) own heart. Whatever I learn and experience is governed by this simple truth. In my earlier posts, you may recall that the wisdom from an old rabbi friend told me about the definition of truth is “fidelity to the original.” So I am skeptical and vigorously question(and many times accept) the teachings and accounts of Christianity.  The secular world and so-called scientists are seldom questioned or subjected to the scrutiny needed or the examination of who was and is Jesus.  In today’s world, we accept science as gospel and turn it into a religion unto itself. Man’s true science exploring the amazing things in our world is in our nature. As believers, a part of God’s creation of free will in us not to be as the smug skeptics among us call us “knuckle-dragging mental Neanderthals.”  Excepting some one’s concrete assertion that 1 million,10 million or 5 billion years ago is at best a theory mainly because there was no one around to corroborate those theories. 

Yes, we can make assumptions and calculations based on many theories and extrapolations of the here and now. We really don’t know much about the huge universe we consciously live in, even if we are a spec in the continuum of history or time itself.  Well, I just proved that I’m not much of a scientist either. So, I’m coming around to my experience with Jesus. 

I explained to my Neurologist that I have been having some experiences where I get a tremendous overpowering sense of a struggle with evil accompanied by a bad taste in my mouth and a bad smell.  I’ve of late been prone to having seizures, and all said a collective “Ah Ha, we have the answer! It’s a pre-seizure aura, and it’s in your mind.” They increased the anti-seizure meds, and they have seemed to go away. I told them that the only way the experiences I described subsided is that I said, “in the name of Jesus, Satan Leave Me!” The episodes would, with rare exceptions, immediately subside whether I had a seizure or not.  The Neurologist gave me a “sure whatever ” look, so I went home.  This happened about half-dozen times since then, and If I preemptively pray mostly, they don’t happen. The attacks happen in various instances while I lay sleeping, sitting on the porch, or even once while I was on my mower mowing the grass or outside doing some pruning. These are terrifying beyond my description, and I’m a hardass. Little frightens me since I became an adult (I use that term loosely since others, including my wife, thinks I’m more juvenile than my years). After getting the rope-a-dope from the docs saying we don’t know what’s causing this except a veiled, “it must be all in your head,” I had a thought.  I contacted a retired Episcopal priest and dear friend of mine and asked him to come by and chat out on my back deck.  I’ve known him as an intellectual and spiritual man that I respect for a no-nonsense Christian. In our small talk, describing my reason for calling him, I relayed my experiences.  He listened as he knew just exactly what was going on. He said that this comes from unrepented sin or, in my case (since I pretty much cleaned up the wreckage from at least the top ten) an attack that is very real of evil and demons that wish to envelop you into their realm of reality, which is just as real. They wanted me for my good steadfastness, he said, and saw an opening in my physical health to find my vulnerable state to take me down.  He had the creds because he fought these similar battles when he was a teenager on up to his seminary days. He said the rebuking in the name of Jesus was exactly what he did to fight back. Once in our church (which is an Evangelical church but pretty tame in the supernatural things), I’ve seen him just stand up and say God put it upon his heart to speak to the pastor’s sermon in about a paragraph that complimented the words of the pastor and was uncannily profound.  Sort of like speaking in tongues or healing services in the pentecostal churches. While these are real experiences, there is also fraud and opportunism associated with these spiritual moments because humanity will capitalize on anything.  So I fought back, invoking the name of Jesus with more forcefulness as if we were side by side brothers in arms fighting for my soul.  I say, “Sweet Jesus, stay with me; I’m afraid.”  They say that there are no atheists in foxholes, well these are those moments because I have never been tested like this. My friend prayed over me and anointed me with oil (I’m not one who accepts this seemingly ritualistic thing, but that day it felt comforting).

HE IS REAL. And so is Satan. I know it not because I read about it or saw a movie or studied scripture or listened to some charismatic preacher, but I’ve experienced it.  And know that without the powerful friend and loving son of God and the power he has is made available in a loving way too little insignificant me. I also know that skeptics and questioners may not be worse than hands in the air churchgoers who want a tantalizing “religious experience” singing Hallelujah and leaving the church with a temporary “high”  Church certainly can be genuine but more than not is populated with a large segment of agnostics and posers.  I convict myself as occasionally slipping into that form of hypocrisy but rarely in a time of weakness. I return to my Jewish friend’s statement about truth that I mentioned earlier. My tolerance for BS is low, so when I tell you these things, they are the real deal.  My sinfulness is far greater than the Apostle Paul, who thought of himself as the greatest sinner of all.  This is an ongoing battle I fight as my priest friend told me it would be. I will persevere with God’s powerful personality, Jesus.  I coined a short sentence that kind of sums it all up for me, and I try my best to live by it (and this is only a couple of years old for me)  “The road of conviction leads to God’s grace and is paved with repentance and washed clean of GUILT by the blood of Jesus.” Live life with no regrets.  There is a God. He created us and all of creation with a meticulous exactness that all the best scientists will only be able to explore so far. We are linear and finite. Our days come and go, our projects are great and small, but God transcends all dimensions, time, and space. Scientists don’t need to theorize beyond scratching the thin surface of the knowable in this world and let faith bridge the purposely unknowable gap. You don’t have to “know” it to understand truth.

It just is like God started with nothing and made everything. If you subscribe to the “Big Bang” theory, well ponder this “who lit the fuse” and started this perfectly ordered universe into motion. Call it what you want Dark Matter, Light-matter, what really matters is a creator who put it all together and is perfectly capable and wants you to prevail over the dark matter. We have to have faith and join with him by choice. He wants it that way. Therein lies the love part between creation and the loving creator. When it hits the fan, He’s bigger and more powerful than that boogeyman that attacks us. He transcends death and the suffering as horrible as it can be, especially from man against man. He makes it temporary in favor of a created place where suffering is no more, and the only thing in our way is that pesky old Satan, who again is just as real as Jesus, but we’ve got the power and the glory forever. Amen.

What makes me tick?

I’m posting this for all of you who want to know “what makes me tick,” so to speak.  I’m built to produce, create wealth and use it, invest it, or give it away to create things of good and lasting value and make the most of life.  I am a spring where blessing through God can flow. Just don’t put a pump on it and force out than naturally flows.  I think beyond today and years into the future. While we are here on this earth for a very short period of time, if I can discern what God wants me to do and not lean on my own understanding, then my creativity, hard work, my mind, and the resources I’ve been blessed with, I hope to make a difference in the world for the better.

That doesn’t make me a “do-gooder” but someone who believes we should all get a chance at success.  I have very little patience for those who demand my hard-fought gains for some philanthropic cause that is the desire of others to throw at some bottomless pit that has no planned benefit to seed more good. Plus, since my labors created it, I would like to be asked, not bullied or guilt-tripped, to give those hard-fought gains. Let me and God make that decision.  Just because my labors created honestly earned wealth doesn’t mean it’s automatically allocated to remember “the needy” just because someone has less. There may be a reason for that, including the possibility that the drive to EARN it was not there for the NEEDY person or cause. Or the cause or circumstances demand that someone step up. 

The fact of the matter is as Jesus himself said, “there will always be poor among you” we will always have more need than supply in this fallen world.  We are all created equal in God’s eyes but not guaranteed outcomes of our actions.  Whether or not you don’t have all the mentality to split atoms or physical differences, each of us, barring any manmade tyranny, have under God equal chances to live life to the fullest and be welcomed into heaven someday as good and faithful servants and find treasures there that we cannot comprehend.

Making money is inherently a Godly thing. It’s a product by which we measure our labors’ value and allows us to trade and conduct commerce. It’s just a thing that only fools’ worship in place of God.  Remember, He owns everything; we are stewards of it all. (1 Chronicles 29:10-18).  Like the parable of the servants granted their masters money to invest and grow, we can either hoard it, spend it foolishly or be wise, discerning, work hard, grow it, and not consume it beyond a point where it becomes your God. (Matthew 25:14-30). 

Communism sounds like a Christian way of life. Work hard and give back to each according to their need, just like the early disciples did, right? NOT. They were working on a huge project called The Church, and they needed working capital and long-term investment and a sustainable wage to see it through. Money, or its equivalent, was used (borrowed from God through the labors of man) to finance the spreading of the Gospel. But through prayer and hard work, not guilt-tripping the sources of that capital, and the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit did it all. Even the Apostle Paul (who was a tentmaker by trade) moonlighted his trade to pay his way to finance his travels and ministry. And when he got churches going, he asked for help, and they gave him in effect compensation for services rendered. No one forced Paul to do anything he didn’t want to do. He was in love with the Gospel and OF HIS OWN FREE WILL, relying upon God’s given wisdom.  Paul chose this for himself; not any man chose for him or goaded him into that mission.

For I am a Christian (follower of Jesus), God has given me certain gifts and limited talents.  Whatever missteps or limitations I have, working hard and with discernment has been my creed.  This, in large part, came from how I was raised. I was raised on a dairy farm. It was hard and honest work. My dad, in addition to being a hard worker, was innovative. He bought the first New Holland hay bailer in southern Wisconsin with money gleaned out of the farm.  He would leave the farm after milking the cows, hop on his tractor with bailer in tow and bail all night on other farms and get home just in time to milk in the morning (and, of course, in between times bail our hay. He would go to Illinois in the wintertime with our old International Cabover flatbed hauling load after a load of bailing twine that he bought cheap out of season and stored it on the top floor of the hog house to be used in his all-nighter bailing operation.


We had a welder on the farm, and all us kids learned how to weld (except me because only 8-9 years old at that time). I was raking hay with a tractor and mechanical rake to make rows of hay ahead of the bailer and haul wagon loads of hay to the barns. We’d make contraptions out of metal we’d fabricate out of anything we could find and weld chutes and parts for the machines. If it broke, weld it. We devised a green feed wagon that was filled with fresh alfalfa or fresh chopped corn that would be pulled to the cow pasture; gravity would feed the cows with no power, unattended until empty. We built an automatic feed lot feeder that, using an Archimedes screw, that would pull the corn silage out of the silo to carry the feed out to a long trough for the cows and pigs to feed at, all with the push of an electric switch. As a family of five, we made a little 160-acre farm produce enough to feed us, a surplus to sell and generously tithe to our church, and give away surplus to some of the other farmers who were a little short.  My dad would quietly go out at night and bale hay in the next farm over while he was having a hard time.  He would work in the farmer’s backfield, and the next morning, drive down the road by the field and see the amazement on the farmer’s face looking at a field full of bailed hay ready to be put in the barn and drive on by and smile to himself.  He enjoyed making a good deed turn into a prank by the way he didn’t charge the farmer.

Hard work innovation and free enterprise was the engine of our success. My dad wasn’t a “pray in public” kind of guy, but I know he had his way of relating. Mom was more open with her spirituality and kept the farm running on time, feeding us all and taking care of us kids. Dad, in general, while a fun-loving dad, hardly ever handed out compliments. You were expected to do your job anything beyond that was accepted without fanfare, and anything short of that was met with rebuke. Through all of that, he was a remarkable man who had a keen sense of timing, whether its business or when to plant and harvest. I loved and respected my dad, and my mom was the nurturer.  Their love for each other is rarely seen today. We finally moved to Florida, where my dad got into the sand business (selling sand in Florida? But my dad did it).

I lost my dad to a heart attack when he was 56, and I was 26 and thrust into our little company’s helm.  My brother, sister, and mom built the company 10-fold. We inherited our dad’s dedication to hard work and innovation, building the company into the only Florida Department of Transportation certified industrial sand mine on Florida’s east coast. The sand deposit was marginal for quality, but we built our high-powered dredge that pushed sand ½ to the sand classifying plant. We built an innovative device called an attrition mill, which uses counter-rotation neoprene propellers to scrub the sand before entering an Archimedes screw with an electric load monitor to regulate another Archimedes screw that added a coarse additive to bring the product into spec.  To test it, we rigged it up to an old Mack dump-truck transmission and rear end to get a right angle drive that drove with an 8-71 Detroit diesel later converted to a 200hpelectric motor once we saw it was going to work. We could use the transmission to shift gears to set the speed right to match material and slurry input.  Now that I have glazed over most of my female readers’ eyes, this section is more toward guy stuff lol.

We also piloted the trial testing of a new invention called the CH sizer that revolutionized how sand is sized (sizing something as small as a grain of sand is essential for concrete road and building construction). We built our radial stacking “cyclone” (which uses the same principle behind a tornado only using water) to capture the very fine sand eliminating the use of large and environmentally unfriendly settling ponds. We’d use this for filler material to make asphalt.  

So why did I drag your reading mind through all this?  Because this is mostly who I am—an extremely flawed but innovative production-driven guy.  I’m a sort of farmer, sort of a musician, and a pretty damn good accountant (old school).  While I have other sides to me, as you’ll see if you allow yourself to be tormented by my prose, but this is what makes me tick in my life’s work. By the way, who is John Galt? If you know the answer to that, then you know this side of me.

What is Love ? – Part 2

I am continuing my topic from last week.   What is love?  Even our beloved pets (for me its Bear dog) have love and give it and receive it.

Again, one thing I know is that love lasts forever. One of the most extraordinary loves of my life started in high school with a girl that became my soul mate. We petted and passionately kissed but were never intimate, just talked and explored thoughts of “what If and why is this” and confided our deepest thoughts, never really thought about marriage, and didn’t even “go steady” as it was called back then.

She moved away, kept in touch, and occasionally when I would go up to upstate New York to visit my daughter, I would stop by and see her and spend maybe a day. The last time she was battling some health problems. She confided in me that her heart was broken when I was married to my first wife. I never knew that until that moment.  After all those years, a divorce on her end and two on my end that she wanted us to be more. In my opinion, though, I’ll never know for sure, but God either wasn’t listened to or had other plans. We both turned to God through Jesus as life went on, we would occasionally write and chat (with incredible faith an understanding, and trust from my current wife of 22 years).  Then years ago, I lost touch with her. We both had a habit of no matter where we were, be it alone or together, we would gaze up at full moons and somehow or another feel the special closeness that was unique to us like kindred spirits. After losing track of her a few years back, I felt a loss; maybe she decided to move on, or maybe she passed away and didn’t say goodbye.

 As things go, I was recently a part of a Facebook page on my old high school and history of Melbourne and connected with two cousins of my soulmate, and they let me know she passed away a few years ago when I lost contact. I thanked them for letting me grieve and have closure to a remarkable stretch in my life’s journey.   Love lasts into eternity.

My first love, however, was in the 5th grade. Her name was Miko, and she was an adopted Japanese girl by Military parents stationed there after the war. We were bound by love, true love as in the innocence and honesty of children. To illustrate, we would walk from school on Friday afternoons me to my sister’s house (my mom would go grocery shopping on Friday, and I would meet her at my sister’s house near the elementary school.) We would hold hands, juggling our books in the other hand. After elementary school, One Friday in November, tragedy struck as we were all instructed to gather in our homeroom to watch a tearful Walter Cronkite say that President Kennedy had been shot. I walked her home while she sobbed, and I was at her side when she needed a true friend who could be strong and by her side.  Miko moved away because her dad was transferred to the Florida panhandle. We wrote to each other for a couple of years, and as time went on and we grew up and apart. 

Fast forward to 1990. I’m the president of the Florida Jaycees, and I was speaking at a membership drive meeting at the Panama City Jaycees. I noticed a striking, attractive Asian lady in the audience, making occasional eye contact with me. On a break, she walked over to me and said, “Do you remember me?; you would know me as Miko. I’ve been a Jaycee for a while and have been inactive for a few years with marriage and kids demanding my time. I saw a newsletter and saw your name, and I had to come to the meeting.”  I was floored, we hugged, and memories flooded back of a simpler time. We said that we would keep in touch, we never did, but love is eternal, without physical proximity.  

Mitzi, I met at a band camp at UF when I was a rising junior in high school.  She lived in St Augustine and I in Melbourne. We became close, and as per my custom, I was a pretty good kisser.  We were a
long-distance couple writing and commuting. We really had fun being together, and yes, love settled in again between two young souls. We even went to each other’s proms all on the same weekend, hers on Friday night and mine on Saturday. This arrangement went on for about a year, and after graduation, we became “promised” to each other (a kind of 1st step toward engagement).  One night as heavy petting turns into more, we lost our virginity. Not a glamorous moment, but memorable just the same. But that changed everything; what was once innocent became different. Secrets that were meant to be discovered after marriage were known too soon, and we lost the moment.  The kind of love we had for each other had changed from exiting innocence to something else.  She went off to college, and I met my first wife, and we drifted apart and just gracefully said goodbye.   To this day, I don’t know whatever became of her, but once again, love visited and was shared, and then like a small pretty flower, we just let it slip out of our hands and on to the grass to wither and die only to spring up again with someone new.

Now, after you have tediously waded through my rather mundane love life, I model myself as a tiny archetypal version of King Solomon, son of King David.  The similarities are that he had a successful dad who was “A man after God’s Own Heart” who won victories and accumulated wealth to pass on to be managed by his son to build a great temple. The son Solomon was a builder and person of great wisdom, and the greatest of this wisdom was to ask God for the discernment between right and wrong.

He did a great job on the temple building, being a shrewd businessman and a leader.  He also had large concubines of women and around 200 wives. He wrote many wise things and the rather racy Song of Songs, also known as the Song of Solomon, which details intimacy that makes many blush. Even though he is in the lineage of Jesus, at times, he was a little less than a saint.  Like me, God was laying out the righteous path (lay off all the women, deal justly with your workforce, don’t rip off your father’s friend Hiram, don’t tax everyone to death, build my temple to the exact specifications I have given you) he did all the stuff in parentheses above and then some. He did great and wonderful things and is utterly flawed, but he is my hero of the Old Testament because I can relate.   However, all his stuff makes my stuff look pretty small, especially the women stuff; I couldn’t even handle a few, let alone a few hundred.  On a much, much, much, smaller scale, I’m that guy as a character. The one thing that touches this topic is that Solomon had many women around him, but he loved only a 100 or so.  Well, I had only maybe five and I married 3 of them and finally settled on one. I loved these all, and a few more I dated, so I’m not exactly a lover of biblical proportions.  

What is Love?  God is Love.