#actively exploding as we speak this is phenomenal

[ballena-asesina]

happy [checks watch] 2am. HHWAhjaaHAA I GOT THE PERMISSION TO POST THIS. TOTALLY NORMAL. i'd caption this way better if i had the strength to but like seeing this makes me go Splat on the floor. HHAAAKJANJAABBBNS HEY GUYS. A COMMISSION EVER KILL YOU DEAD?

beautiful coltchlo ever by the one and only seavers artist ever @artsy-moonwalker !!! if i had the words you know. they'd be here. i think me actively experiencing emotions beyond my articulation does that justice though and i an repetitively blown away the more i look at this. wow. im coughing up a lung here I LOVE THIS. FALLS TO MY KNEES

[artofthemindblog]

Emotion and Energy

An excerpt from Incomplete Nature by Terrence W. Deacon

Emergent dynamics: A theory developed in this book which explains how homeodynamic (e.g., thermodynamic) processes can give rise to morphodynamic (e.g., self-organizing) processes, which can give rise to teleodynamic (e.g., living and mental) processes. Intended to legitimize scientific uses of ententional (intentional, purposeful, normative) concepts by demonstrating the way that processes at a higher level in this hierarchy emerge from, and are grounded in, simpler physical processes, but exhibit reversals of the otherwise ubiquitous tendencies of these lower-level processes Emotion and Energy

  An emergent dynamic account of the relationship between neurological function and mental experience differs from all other approaches by virtue of its necessary requirement for specifying a homeodynamic and morphodynamic basis for its teleodynamic (intentional) character. This means that every mental process will inevitably reflect the contributions of these necessary lower-level dynamics. In other words, certain ubiquitous aspects of mental experience should inevitably exhibit organizational features that derive from, and assume certain dynamical properties characteristic of, thermodynamic and morphodynamic processes. To state this more concretely: experience should have clear equilibrium-tending, dissipative, and self-organizing characteristics, besides those that are intentional. These are inseparable dynamical features that literally constitute experience. What do these dynamical features correspond to in our phenomenal experience?

Broadly speaking, this dynamical infrastructure is “emotion” in the most general sense of that word. It is what constitutes the “what it feels like” of subjective experience. Emotion—in the broad sense that I am using it here—is not merely confined to such highly excited states as fear, rage, sexual arousal, love, craving, and so forth. It is present in every experience, even if often highly attenuated, because it is the expression of the necessary dynamic infrastructure of all mental activity. It is the tension that separates self from non-self; the way things are and the way they could be; the very embodiment of the intrinsic incompleteness of subjective experience that constitutes its perpetual becoming. It is a tension that inevitably arises as the incessant shifting course of mental teleodynamics encounters the resistance of the body to respond, and the insistence of bodily needs and drives to derail thought, as well as the resistance of the world to conform to expectation. As a result, it is the mark that distinguishes subjective self from other, and is at the same time the spontaneous tendency to minimize this disequilibrium and difference. In simple terms, it is the mental tension that is created because of the presence of a kind of inertia and momentum associated with the process of generating and modifying mental representations. The term e-motion is in this respect curiously appropriate to the “dynamical feel” of mental experience.

This almost Newtonian nature of emotion is reflected in the way that the metaphors of folk psychology have described this aspect of human subjectivity over the course of history in many different societies. Thus English speakers are “moved” to tears, “driven” to behave in ways we regret, “swept up” by the mood of the crowd, angered to the point that we feel ready to “explode,” “under pressure” to perform, “blocked” by our inability to remember, and so forth. And we often let our “pent-up” frustrations “leak out” into our casual conversations, despite our best efforts to “contain” them. Both the motive and resistive aspects of experience are thus commonly expressed in energetic terms.

In the Yogic traditions of India and Tibet, the term kundalini refers to a source of living and spiritual motive force. It is figuratively “coiled” in the base of the spine, like a serpent poised to strike or a spring compressed and ready to expand. In this process, it animates body and spirit. The subjective experience of bodily states has also often been attributed to physical or ephemeral forms of fluid dynamics. In ancient Chinese medicine, this fluid is chi; in the Ayurvedic medicine of India, there were three fluids, the doshas; and in Greek, Roman, and later Islamic medicine, there were four humors (blood, phlegm, light and dark bile) responsible for one’s state of mental and physical health. In all of these traditions, the balance, pressures, and free movement of these fluids were critical to the animation of the body, and their proper balance was presumed to be important to good health and “good humor.” The humor theory of Hippocrates, for example, led to a variety of medical practices designed to rebalance the humors that were disturbed by disease or disruptive mental experience. Thus bloodletting was deemed an important way to adjust relative levels of these humors to treat disease.

This fluid dynamical conception of mental and physical animation was naturally reinforced by the ubiquitous correlation of a pounding heart (a pump) with intense emotion, stress, and intense exertion. Both René Descartes and Erasmus Darwin (to mention only two among many) argued that the nervous system likewise animates the body by virtue of differentially pumping fluid into various muscles and organs through microscopic tubes (presumably the nerves). When, in the 1780s, Luigi Galvani discovered that a severed frog leg could be induced to twitch in response to contact by electricity, he considered this energy to be an “animal electricity.” And the vitalist notion of a special ineffable fluid of life, or élan vital, persisted even into the twentieth century.

This way of conceiving of the emotions did not disappear with the replacement of vitalism and with the rise of anatomical and physiological knowledge in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. It was famously reincarnated in Freudian psychology as the theory of libido. Though Freud was careful not to identify it with an actual fluid of the body, or even a yet-to-be-discovered material substrate, libido was described in terms that implied that it was something like the nervous energy associated with sexuality. Thus a repressed memory might block the “flow” of libido and cause its flow to be displaced, accumulated, and released to animate inappropriate behaviors. Freud’s usage of this hydrodynamic metaphor became interpreted more concretely in the Freudian-inspired theories of Wilhelm Reich, who argued that there was literally a special form of energy, which he called “orgone” energy, that constituted the libido. Although such notions have long been abandoned and discredited with the rise of the neurosciences, there is still a sense in which the pharmacological treatments for mental illness are sometimes conceived of on the analogy of a balance of fluids: that is, neurotransmitter “levels.” Thus different forms of mental illness are sometimes described in terms of the relative levels of dopamine, norepinephrine, or serotonin that can be manipulated by drugs that alter their production or interfere with their effects.

This folk psychology of emotion was challenged in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of prominent theorists, responsible for ushering in the information age. Among them was Gregory Bateson, who argued that the use of these energetic analogies and metaphors in psychology made a critical error in treating information processes as energetic processes. He argued that the appropriate way to conceive of mental processes was in informational and cybernetic terms. Brains are not pumps, and although axons are indeed tubular, and molecules such as neurotransmitters are actively conveyed along their length, they do not contribute to a hydrodynamic process. Nervous signals are propagated ionic potentials, mediated by molecular signals linking cells across tiny synaptic gaps. On the model of a cybernetic control system, he argued that the differences conveyed by neurological signals are organized so that they regulate the release of “collateral energy,” generated by metabolism. It is this independently available energy that is responsible for animating the body. Nervous control of this was thus more accurately modeled cybernetically. This collateral metabolic energy is analogous to the energy generated in a furnace, whose level of energy release is regulated by the much weaker changes in energy of the electrical signals propagated around the control circuit of a thermostat. According to Bateson, the mental world is not constituted by energy and matter, but rather by information. And as was also pioneered by the architects of the cybernetic theory whom Bateson drew his insights from, such as Wiener and Ashby, and biologists such as Warren McCulloch and Mayr, information was conceived of in purely logical terms: in other words, Shannon information. Implicit in this view—which gave rise to the computational perspective in the decades that followed—the folk wisdom expressed in energetic metaphors was deemed to be misleading.

By more precisely articulating the ways that thermodynamic, morphodynamic, and teleodynamic processes emerge from, and depend on, one another, however, we have seen that it is this overly simple energy/information dichotomy that is misleading. Information cannot so easily be disentangled from its basis in the capacity to reflect the effects of work (and thus the exchange of energy), and neither can it be simply reduced to it. Energy and information are asymmetrically and hierarchically interdependent dynamical concepts, which are linked by virtue of an intervening level of morphodynamic processes. And by virtue of this dynamical ascent, the capacity to be about something not present also emerges; not as mere signal difference, but as something extrinsic and absent yet potentially relevant to the existence of the teleodynamic (interpretive) processes thereby produced.

It is indeed the case that mental experience cannot be identified with the ebb and flow of some vital fluid, nor can it be identified directly with the buildup and release of energy. But as we’ve now also discovered by critically deconstructing the computer analogy, it cannot be identified with the signal patterns conveyed from neuron to neuron, either. These signals are generated and analyzed with respect to the teleodynamics of neuronal cell maintenance. They are interpreted with respect to cellular-level sentience. Each neuron is bombarded with signals that constitute its Umwelt. They perturb its metabolic state and force it to adapt in order to reestablish its stable teleodynamic “resting” activity. But, as was noted in the previous chapter, the structure of these neuronal signals does not constitute mental information, any more than the collisions between gas molecules constitute the attractor logic of the second law of thermodynamics.

As we will explore more fully below, mental information is constituted at a higher population dynamic level of signal regularity. As opposed to neuronal information (which can superficially be analyzed in computational terms), mental information is embodied by distributed dynamical attractors. These higher-order, more global dynamical regularities are constituted by the incessantly recirculating and restimulating neural signals within vast networks of interconnected neurons. The attractors form as these recirculating signals damp some and amplify other intrinsic constraints implicit in the current network geometry. Looking for mental information in individual neuronal firing patterns is looking at the wrong level of scale and at the wrong kind of physical manifestation. As in other statistical dynamical regularities, there are a vast number of microstates (i.e., network activity patterns) that can constitute the same global attractor, and a vast number of trajectories of microstate-to-microstate changes that will tend to converge to a common attractor. But it is the final quasi-regular network-level dynamic, like a melody played by a million-instrument orchestra, that is the medium of mental information. Although the contribution of each neuronal response is important, it is more with respect to how this contributes a local micro bias to the larger dynamic. To repeat again, it is no more a determinate of mental content than the collision between two atoms in a gas determines the tendency of the gas to develop toward equilibrium (though the fact that neurons are teleodynamic components rather than simply mechanical components makes this analogy far too simple).

This shift in level makes it less clear that we can simply dismiss these folk psychology force-motion analogies. If the medium of mental representation is not mere signal difference, but instead is the large-scale global attractor dynamic produced by an extended interconnected population of neurons, then there may also be global-level homeodynamic properties to be taken into account as well. As we have seen in earlier chapters, these global dynamical regularities will exhibit many features that are also characteristic of force-motion dynamics.

[domjaehyun]

breathe in, breathe out, relax, breathe in, breathe out, relax.. yes, I'm doing breathe exercise bc you fcked the air out of my fcking lungs miss jewel (crying to the pain but what's new). idk, idk how to tell you another way that you're just an incredible human being and im so happy to know you. that's just crazy how over heels you can make me over a fictional story of a man.. an attractive man bC THE DAMN THREE PICS OF HYUCK LITERALLY LURED ME IN TO START READING EVEN THO I WASNT READY. like, I wasn't given the chance to take a breathe of air u know 😮‍💨 I think you got the memo of the majority of your domjaehyun fam, WE LOVE THE WAY YOU WRITE HYUCK'S CHARACTER and u just combined all of our weaknesses into his character .. today.. you delivered a masterpiece 🤜🏻🤛🏻 good job, you really did ♡ thank you thank you and thank you for this, I hope you know that you're have the power to lighten the days and nights of many of us ♡ and we appreciate you so much for that hehe. *cough* anywAY ladies let's get back to our favorite story, hyuck is so hot ????? also, was a chill reading, it was recovering bc of the little change of the background (minus the walk to the convenience store who added some spicy stuff for the story development hehe, I'm mad at that lily girl hm but I don't blame her. yn's attitude during this scene was funny to read lol but hyuck's response to it.. damn.. if only had eyes for her I'm so jealoUS). speaking if this scene.. THE SCENE BEFORE ? the way you build the tension between them, hyuck trapping her against the wall of a building.. giving in into the kiss but being interrupted by something else, it only build more and more the tension and i was waiting for the moment where it would explode 😶‍🌫️ it was like a countdown, it was so hot omg. I liked the side characters as well, it was a good distraction from the tension between our two hotties!! i literaly loved the way you wrote hyuck, like.. the way he wasnt having any filter toward yn and how he literally spoke about the truth ? it was so unexpected and it got me crazy 🥲 and the way he touched her.. oh god I need to calm the fck down before I start doing a mess of myself lol. there is too much things to say omg 😭😭 I'm so active at night itd funny bc it's always during this time that I send you feedback hehe but anyway who care ! the sexe scene?? like.. in front of my salad like that ? they didn't even check if there was ppl lmaoo exhibitionist much ? or they don't even care and couldn't resist anymore.. damn that sounds hot.. mutual pinning is so hot when it's writing right, and this my friend, you did it with a perfect score ♡ also, I'm jumping from scene to scene I'm sorry but the sight of hyuck smoking is hot, but only for the mind pic tho, bc it's bad for the health and I don't like the smell of weed, but again, who care hyuck is so smexy right ✨️🗿 ALSO THEY HAVENT EXPLICITLY SHARED THEIR MUTUAL CRUSH RIGHT ? (or else I'm really blinded by my live for hyuck) I would have loved a final ending with this, but I think the whole story speak for itself when it comes with mutual attraction with feelings involved ❤️‍🔥 again, you keep surprising me with how phenomenal your writing is, you're doing so much for your audience, I love you 👉🏻👈🏻

okay i’m gonna. do smth new and make sure i address every part of this by like. quoting it in a way? HEAR ME OUT YOU’LL SEE OKAY UNDER THE CUT :D

okay my responses are in the indented block quotes :D

breathe in, breathe out, relax, breathe in, breathe out, relax.. yes, I'm doing breathe exercise bc you fcked the air out of my fcking lungs miss jewel (crying to the pain but what's new).

IM SORRY FHFDGDFGS I DIDNT MEAN TO CAUSE BREATHING PROBLEMS!!!!! that was not my intention BUT IM HAPPY YOU LIKED IT :D

idk, idk how to tell you another way that you're just an incredible human being and im so happy to know you.

OMG??? this is so sweet wtf thank you so much 😭😭😭

that's just crazy how over heels you can make me over a fictional story of a man.. an attractive man bC THE DAMN THREE PICS OF HYUCK LITERALLY LURED ME IN TO START READING EVEN THO I WASNT READY.

DFHJGSJKLF I’M SORRY your message abt not being ready made me cackle earlier 😭 it took me so long to find pictures i like and i kept finding pictures that spurred OTHER fic ideas it was so painful :(((

like, I wasn't given the chance to take a breathe of air u know 😮‍💨 I think you got the memo of the majority of your domjaehyun fam, WE LOVE THE WAY YOU WRITE HYUCK'S CHARACTER and u just combined all of our weaknesses into his character .. today.. you delivered a masterpiece 🤜🏻🤛🏻 good job, you really did ♡ thank you thank you and thank you for this, I hope you know that you're have the power to lighten the days and nights of many of us ♡ and we appreciate you so much for that hehe.

:’) THANK YOU he’s so fun to write i love him i do i do :’) thank you omg a “masterpiece” PLS ive been worried abt this fic im like . no one is gonna like it …………….. very nervous…….. so this means a lot thank you omg :’) and all these kind words im MELTING PLS THANK YOU 😭

*cough* anywAY ladies let's get back to our favorite story, hyuck is so hot ????? also, was a chill reading, it was recovering bc of the little change of the background (minus the walk to the convenience store who added some spicy stuff for the story development hehe, I'm mad at that lily girl hm but I don't blame her. yn's attitude during this scene was funny to read lol but hyuck's response to it.. damn.. if only had eyes for her I'm so jealoUS).

HE IS SO HOT YOU’RE RIGHT !!!!! and yeahhhhh late night adventures are fun and good opportunities to get close to people :D and OKAY YES I WANTED TO MAKE THAT KINDA CLEAR………….. we do not hate lily we do not blame her she just fell victim to his charms even if he didnt know he was doing anything !!!! we are a lil aggravated that she wanted him but we, like you said, cant blame her 💖 #welovewomen #respectwomen aND OKAY NO BC I REALLY LIKE WRITING WHIPPED MALE CHARACTERS IT’S MY LIFEBLOOD AT THIS POINT…….

speaking if this scene.. THE SCENE BEFORE ? the way you build the tension between them, hyuck trapping her against the wall of a building.. giving in into the kiss but being interrupted by something else, it only build more and more the tension and i was waiting for the moment where it would explode 😶‍🌫️ it was like a countdown, it was so hot omg.

HEHEHEHE i enjoy teasing it’s so fun omg it’s probably like my favorite part of writing 😵‍💫 I LIKE THE EXPLOSION MOMENT I LOVE THAT SHIT!!!!!!!! THANK YOU :D

I liked the side characters as well, it was a good distraction from the tension between our two hotties!!

omg i wanted to give jaemin and jeno more screen time tbh but i was really trying to avoid this being as long as it ended up being 😭 i had a whole deleted scene in my mind but it’s gone now </3 so sorry to nomin

i literaly loved the way you wrote hyuck, like.. the way he wasnt having any filter toward yn and how he literally spoke about the truth ? it was so unexpected and it got me crazy 🥲 and the way he touched her.. oh god I need to calm the fck down before I start doing a mess of myself lol. there is too much things to say omg 😭😭

eeeee i love direct men that’s so hot to me and i just think . he’d be upfront about liking you like . he might flirt in convoluted ways but overall if he likes you i firmly think You Would Know 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫 and YEAH THE TOUCHING. …… *dies* this was self-indulgent of me will be real. will be very real. yes. i like touching 😭

I'm so active at night itd funny bc it's always during this time that I send you feedback hehe but anyway who care !

it is okay i am active whenever i feel like it so no hour is too late !!!! :D

the sexe scene?? like.. in front of my salad like that ? they didn't even check if there was ppl lmaoo exhibitionist much ? or they don't even care and couldn't resist anymore.. damn that sounds hot..

LOOK SJFJSJJDSJDJS they were temporarily not of sound mind and body cut them some slack </3 the horny took over </3 BUT if it’s any consolation i imagined haechan parked like. in a relatively quiet area like there aren’t even many houses so the chances of someone coming out were low !!!

mutual pinning is so hot when it's writing right, and this my friend, you did it with a perfect score ♡

EEE THANK YOU i’m obsessed w mutual pining it’s so cute and fun 🥴🥴🥴

also, I'm jumping from scene to scene I'm sorry but the sight of hyuck smoking is hot, but only for the mind pic tho, bc it's bad for the health and I don't like the smell of weed, but again, who care hyuck is so smexy right ✨️🗿

that is totally okay weed isn’t for everyone!! he’s rly so . so fine like i just think Hyuck Sexy—

ALSO THEY HAVENT EXPLICITLY SHARED THEIR MUTUAL CRUSH RIGHT ? (or else I'm really blinded by my live for hyuck)

YEAH YOURE RIGHT THEY DIDNT SAY OUTWARDLY “i like you” at any point for real but they get at the point in other ways !! like when haechan says he likes her too much to be mean to her yknow?

I would have loved a final ending with this, but I think the whole story speak for itself when it comes with mutual attraction with feelings involved

🥺🥺🥺 thank you omg and yeah i kinda hoped? ppl would react like that? bc i wanted it kiiiinda open ended? possibly bc another song inspired another part to this fic but idk . idk 🧍🏽‍♀️ idk!!!! but it’s safe to assume they’re like . basically together at this point BUT they’re still kinda toying with each other!!

❤️‍🔥 again, you keep surprising me with how phenomenal your writing is, you're doing so much for your audience, I love you 👉🏻👈🏻

THANK YOU SO MUCH I LOVE YOU TOO 😭😭😭 IM SO HAPPY YOU LIKED IT GENUINELY!!

[kathrynmaslow]

Love Lies (7/15)

Summary: Ever since Emma was 13, she knew she had the ability to destroy people if she wanted to, and some days, she really wanted to. After being forced to go to Greenwood Academy following a traumatizing event in her childhood that brought to the surface her ability to manipulate fire, she never thought she would be free of the place. So for nearly 10 years, she lived a solitary existence with the exception of her best friends, but that was all about to change.

Killian Jones had just been sentenced to attend the university campus at Greenwood Academy after an accident at sea caused him to be dishonorably discharged from Her Majesty’s royal Navy and lose his hand. He doesn’t know what to think about these newfound powers and what they spell for the rest of his now not-so-normal life. But a chance encounter one day has the ability to change all of that.

A story about love and redemption between two people that shows, if you have the right person beside you, you can find a light in the darkness. Rating: M Content Warnings: Mentions of Violence/Death, Brief mention of Childhood Abuse/Sexual Assault, Mild Sexual Content

Chapter Notes: Chapter 7!!!! This has to be one of my favorite chapters that I have ever written for any of my stories, and I am so excited for you all to finally read it! Thanks as always to @daveyjacobsthepotterhead for being a phenomenal beta and @princesse-swan for being an awesome artist. Check out her chapter art for Killian out on tumblr! (I was wrong in saying it was posted last week, it was actually this week, sorry!)

I also have to thank atruthuniversally for commenting on every chapter! It makes my day reading your comments every week.

Enjoy!

Read on FF

Catch up on Tumblr: One  Two  Three  Four  Five  Six

Art by @princesse-swan here and here

Chapter 7

Emma was nervously waiting in her room for Killian to arrive to pick her up before they headed over to the circus on campus.

She told him that he didn’t have to come and pick her up, that it wasn’t a real date and all that jazz, but Killian insisted.

“It’s all about impressions, right?” He asked.

But because of that, now she was completely over-thinking everything. It was supposed to be a bit cooler out this evening, so she was wearing a long sleeved henley with a comfortable pair of jeans and her favorite beanie. But now she was worried that what she was wearing was entirely too casual for the evening.

A knock on the door broke her out of her thoughts.

“I can hear you overthinking in there Swan, open the door.” Killian said.

A smile spread across her face and she laughed a bit as she pulled the door open.

“How exactly did you know that?” Emma asked, “You couldn’t even see my face.”

Killian smiled at her. Emma was relieved to see that he was dressed as casually as she was, in a pair of blue jeans with a leather jacket covering what she assumed to be a long sleeved shirt. The chain for his dog tags was peeking out from the collar of his shirt.

“I don’t necessarily have to see your face to know what you are thinking Emma. I just know you well enough to know that you would be nervous about this,” Killian said, extending his hand out to take hers.

She turned back to grab her ID badge and dorm keys, tucking them into the back pocket of her jeans before reaching out and taking his hand.

She paused outside of her door to make sure she heard the locking mechanism slide into place before they made their way across campus to the main square between the upper and lower campuses.

Apparently they had opened both campuses up to allow them access to the circus tonight.

The Circus came to campus at least twice a year, but Emma had never once gone. She never had any reason to.

Until now it seemed.

“Did David or Mary Margaret say anything to you about where to meet them here Love?” Killian asked her.

She and Mary Margaret had made up during the days between their fight and tonight, but Emma still considered things a bit frosty between them. She hadn’t entirely forgiven her for the comments that she made about high risk students looking a certain type.

“David said they were going to be arriving a bit later in the evening, he had a group project that needed to be finished tonight prior to coming. Ruby said her and Victor would be here, but didn’t specify when they would be here.” Emma said, trying to remember the conversation she had had with them two days prior.

“Well then, looks like we will have a bit of time just to enjoy ourselves for a bit before getting hounded by the dogs.” Killian wagged his eyebrows at her, causing Emma to throw her head back and laugh.

Killian smiled at her and lead her down to the entrance of the circus tents that were sprawled out along the square. A security officer asked to see their ID badges, and gave them both a wristband that showed that they were upper campus students.

According to security, there were some tents that the younger students weren’t allowed to access and they had to have a wristband to denote the difference between the two groups of students.

Killian looked at Emma after that description, shrugging his shoulders in a ‘whatever’ type gesture.

He took her hand back in his as they began walking down the main aisle of tents, seeing all of the food and drink vendors lining the stalls off to their right, while all of the games and activities were scattered long to their left.

Lighting up the far corner of the grounds was a large ferris wheel, its blinking lights shining in random patterns along it’s spokes.

The Grand Stands in the Main tent took up about half of the square, looming up over the rest of the festival like some kind of red and white ghost.

“Hungry, Love?” Killian asked her, gesturing with his chin towards one of the food vendor's tents.

“Sure.” She said, following his lead.

He bought them both corn dogs, despite Emma’s protests, and settled them down at one of the standing tables while Emma hunted down a beer for both of them.

Emma noted the woman at the stand checked her wrist band when she ordered the beers, so that was what security was likely talking about when they mentioned the younger students not being allowed to have at the tents.

“I don’t think that I have had the pleasure of having a corn dog before now, Swan.” Killian said, setting down his food and gratefully taking the beer from her when she came back over to where he was waiting.

“There are probably a lot of ‘American’ delicacies that you haven’t had the pleasure of having before now either. Have you heard of a thing called deep fried butter?” Emma said, laughing at the look of disgust that crossed his face.

“I will probably just stick with the corn dog for now then if that’s the case.”

“We are at a circus Killian, their specialty is deep fried anything. Deep fried ice cream, butter, bacon, twinkies-”

“What in the devil is a twinkie?” Killian asked.

Emma laughed at the expression on his face. “Don’t say it like it is some kind of dirty word.” Emma had to pause to try and contain the laughter that was threatening to explode out of her. “It is a dessert pastry.”

“You Americans and your deep fried monstrosities.” Killian said, finishing off his corn dog and taking another swig of his beer.

Emma finished off her food as well and took to walking on Killian’s left side, looping her arm through his so he could use his hand to hold his beer.

They walked beside a bunch of high schoolers trying their luck at the games before heading back towards the main tent to see a lot of the performers.

Killian and Emma’s eyes widened when they walked into the tent. While it housed the main stage area where a group of trapeze artists were performing, there were also a bunch of other performers entertaining the students in random circles around the tent floor.

He pulled her to a stop in front of a performer who was currently breathing a small stream of fire over a younger students marshmallow.

“Can you do that Swan,” Killian asked, pointing at the gentleman, “Breath fire like that?”

“Yeah, I can actually,” Emma said, watching the performer with a pang of jealousy. While she didn’t hope to be a circus performer, she was jealous of the fact that he was free to use his gift as he saw fit, without anyone trying to keep his powers under lock and key like hers were.

“Ohh, David look, A fire-breather, how cool is that?”

Killian and Emma both turned to see Mary Margaret pulling David along towards the performer, Ruby and Victor following close behind.

Emma’s brows tightened at the insinuation and she felt Killian’s wrist move to wrap around her shoulders, rubbing them in a comforting manner.

David recognized them first. “Killian, Emma! There you are!”

“Emma! So good to see you here.” Mary Margaret pulled her into a hug as soon as she reached the couple. “Killian, you know David and Ruby. And this is Victor, Ruby’s boyfriend.”

Killian raised his beer in greeting.

Emma turned back to see the fire-breather looking at her.

“You a fire wielder?” He asked her. She shook her head mutely. “Light up the night little lady.”

The performer winked at her before spinning into his next trick, making a shower of little flames bloom up from his hands and spraying out like fireworks.

The younger kids watching cheered, looking in awe at the act.

“You alright Love?” Killian asked her, wrapping his arm tighter around her shoulders.

“Yeah, I will be.” She gave him a small smile the she hoped was reassuring. He smiled back at her and gave her a quick kiss to her forehead.

“I see you guys have already found the alcohol, did you already eat?” David asked them.

“Yeah, we got here about an hour ago, where did you come in?” Killian asked.

“We got in over by the ferris wheel, why?” David asked, having to speak up to be heard over the crowd cheering in the main stands.

“Because the food vendors are on the other side of the grounds mate.” Killian said, “Emma and I can show you.”

Killian turned to lead the way towards food, wrapping his arm around her. Ruby came up along side of her as David fell into conversation with Killian.

“Nothing going on between the two of you, huh?” She said.

“Ruby…” Emma started, really not wanting to get into it with her friend right now.

“Don’t worry, I won’t. But I just wanted to say that I haven’t seen you this happy in all the time that I have known you, so am I glad for whatever this is. Okay?” She said, giving Emma an encouraging smile.

“Thanks Ruby. He does make me happy.” She responded. Emma made an attempt at changing the topic, “Is Victor going to try winning any of those prizes for you?”

“While Victor might be an excellent scholar and all, I don’t think he would be amused by the games they have set up here. They aren’t meant for anyone to easily win, and he would spend more of his time complaining about the game than actually winning.” Ruby explained, “What about Killian? He express any interest in winning you any prizes tonight?”

Emma looked back up towards Killian, watching him and David laughing over a joke as they continued to walk through the grounds. “He hadn’t mentioned anything of the sort to me yet. But knowing him, I wouldn’t put it past him.”

They did eventually find a way to all of the games tents after finding food for the rest of their friends and getting fresh beers again for everyone.

David tried to cheat out one of the strong man games, winning on his first attempt at playing, but the game runner looked at him with a questioning eye after he did it for the second attempt.

It was when Killian snorted under his breath that the gentleman told him he had to switch which game he was playing to one of the ones meant for someone with his kind of strength.

Emma and Mary Margaret lost it then, laughing at their friend’s misfortune and having to retry his wins on the second game. David didn’t do as bad as Emma thought he would have considering the circumstances.

They continued making their way around through all the games tents, swapping stories and drinking amongst friends. Killian even won her a small purple bear at one of the games. It was the most fun that Emma had had in as long as she could remember.

After her fourth beer, she was feeling a pleasant buzz. She and Killian were hanging around the main tent still, watching as a group of acrobats swung from silk ribbons hung from the ceiling. Mary Margaret and David had already left for the evening, stating they had an early morning ahead of them. Ruby didn’t let them off the hook that easily, yelling a few crude comments after them, much to everyone’s enjoyment.

Ruby and Victor had also left for the evening, taking the chance for some time alone before Victor’s roommate returned to their dorm for the night, while also avoiding whatever David and Mary Margaret were surely getting up to in her room.

Emma wasn’t necessarily ready to head back to her room for the night, but she didn’t want to hang around the circus anymore.

Something Elsa and her had done a few years back on one of their school breaks popped into her head, and she turned to look at Killian.

“Hey, did you want to go somewhere else?” Emma asked, placing her hand on his arm to get his attention.

Killian turned towards her and gave her a smile, “Sure, what did you have in mind love?”

“There is this game that a friend of mine used to play whenever we had the chance, where we sneak into the tunnels under the grounds and try and avoid the guards, wanna play?” She asked.

The smile on his face turned absolutely sinful. “That sounds like an interesting game. Lead on Swan.”

A broad smile broke out across her face as they made their way out of the stands, both of them laughing and giggling as they both stumbled a bit getting down the stairs. Emma wasn’t drunk, far from it, but she was buzzing on both the alcohol and Killian’s presence.

Emma took his hand as she lead them across the campus towards one of the closest entrances to the tunnels that she could remember.

As she and Killian ducked behind a bush to avoid the detection by one of the security guards nearby, he shrugged out of his leather jacket.

“What are you doing?” She whispered at him.

“Covering your shirt up Love, the light color would give us away in an instant.” He explained, throwing the jacket over her shoulders.

Emma made quick work of pushing her arms through the sleeves and moving to tuck most of her hair under her beanie. It was always Elsa’s white blonde hair and love for blue shirts that usually got them caught by the guards.

As soon as the guard was past them, she tapped the leg nearest to her, signalling him to follow her towards the grate in the ground.

When she looked down, they could see light shining from the main tunnel towards the offshoot that lead towards this entrance. Perfect.

She wrapped her hands around one side of the grate and pulled, the heavy metal shifting enough that she could pull it further off to the side for her and Killian to climb through.

“You first, I have to move this back into place before we keep going, otherwise they are going to send a ton of people in after us.

“You sound like you have done this a lot.” Killian whispered back to her has he began making his way down into the tunnels.

“Almost every week when Elsa was here.” She replied as she began following him down, sliding the grate back into place.

“This Elsa lass sounded like quite the hoot.” Killian said as she landed next to him.

Emma took his hand and began leading him down towards the main tunnel area.

“Okay, there are multiple little passages and nooks which aren’t lit to hide in down these tunnels, so we just need to make sure that we avoid the guards for as long as possible.” Emma explained, tugging on his hand to draw him out further.

They began aimlessly wandering around the tunnels, just exploring and having fun. They had seen a few guards make passes down different shoots of the tunnels without coming very close to them yet.

They were whispering quietly to each other when they heard the footsteps approaching.

“Shit, hide.” Emma said, pulling Killian with her into the nearest side tunnel, tucking into an alcove before the guards came past.

He pressed his body against her, tucking her tightly into the alcove to make sure they both were out of sight. She felt his chest brushing against hers every time he breathed, the chain for his dog tags bumping into her collarbone.

He hadn’t started out the year wearing them, considering he told her that he had been discharged from the Navy, but he mentioned to her he had taken to wearing them on occasion to remind himself where he had come from.

Emma wrapped her hand around the tags to silence the noise they were making as they moved against one another. Killian unconsciously took another step closer to her in response to the action, eliminating any non-existent space between them.

She was completely aware of all the places his body touched hers, connected from thighs to chest. His hand was pressed against the wall next to her head while his wrist was resting against her back underneath his jacket. The footsteps sounded closer, and he shifted slightly, pulling her closer to him while tucking one of his legs between hers to tuck himself in closer to the wall.

Emma hadn’t thought through the size of the space when she pulled him into it, only thinking that they needed to get out of view of the guards. And Killian was a larger person than Elsa ever was, so a space that might have fit her and her friend wasn’t exactly as conducive to Killian’s larger frame.

“Did you see anything?” They heard one of the guards ask. Emma saw the beam of the flashlight shine down the tunnel over Killian’s shoulder.

“No I didn’t, you are just seeing things Jennings.” Another guard responded.

“Must be, too many nights working. Riggans is increasing the patrols all of a sudden…” He said, voice trailing off as he continued down the tunnel away from them.

Emma looked at Killian, smiling up at him in relief.

“That was close.” He whispered down to her, a broad smile spreading across his face as well.

Neither one of them made any move to exit their little alcove, or put any space between their bodies.

Killian’s eyebrows furrowed as he continued to look down at her. “...Emma,” He said in an almost warning tone as her hips shifted against his.

Emma pulled down on his tags, using her other hand to wrap around the back of his head and bring his lips down to hers.

Her eyes shut as he continued to press his lips against hers, and she felt as his hand moved from the wall to tangle in her hair, pushing her beanie off her head in the process.

Killian pulled back from her for a moment, and she opened her eye to look at him.

His pupils, already wide from the dark of the tunnel, had swallowed up the sky blue of his eyes. He licked his lips, seeming to make up his mind about something before leaning back into her, kissing her with more force, his tongue sweeping into her mouth, silencing her gasp of surprise.

His body pressed into hers fully again, her back hitting the wall behind her as he continued to ravish her mouth. Emma kissed him back with just as much fervor, enjoying the feel of his mouth, his body against hers.

She moved her hands, releasing his tags and running her hands down his back, her hands eventually landing on his hips. She pulled him forward, wanting to feel more of him.

“You are going to be the death of me, Swan.” Killian groaned, pulling away from her mouth.

Emma made a small sound of protest before he moved his lips to kiss along her jaw and neck. His hand and wrist moved down her body as well, the wrist settling on her lower back and his hand splayed between her shoulder blades.

She placed her fingers through the belt loops on his jeans, pulling his hips sharply into her’s, feeling his arousal pressing into her hip bone. He bit down on her collarbone in response, sucking a mark on the spot. Emma moaned, she felt like she was on fire. One of her hands pushed under his shirt, splaying out on his back.

Killian hissed and pulled back from her a bit breathless. His hand moved to pull hers out from under the back of his shirt.

“What’s wrong? What did I do?” She asked, pulling her other hand away.

“You are burning up Love.” Killian said.

Emma huffed in response. She didn’t know why her powers reacted like that, increasing her temperature without her even thinking about it.

“Probably for the best anyway Emma, wouldn’t want a guard to walk over to find me ravishing you in the tunnels.” Killian said with a smirk.

“Let’s head somewhere a bit more private than,” Emma said, moving past him slightly to look out into the tunnel. No one was in their little side tunnel, so she pulled him behind her towards the grate where they entered, both of them giggling like teenagers and trying to shush one another at the same time.

They made it out of the tunnels without getting caught and chased each other across campus back towards the dorms. They made it back to Killian’s building first.

“Did you want to come up Love?” He asked, still holding onto her hand.

Emma hesitated. She didn’t know what she wanted all of a sudden. She had enjoyed herself in the tunnels with him, she really did, but she didn’t know if she wanted it to go any further than that just yet.

Killian seemed to read it all on her face. “We don’t have to do anything Emma. I even have a spare bed made up for a guest if she would like.” He said jokingly, remembering Emma’s first visit to his dorm.

Emma laughed. “Lead on then, Sailor.” She said, gesturing towards his building. She moved easily over to his other side so he could keep his hand free while they navigated to doors in his building.

Emma smiled up at him as he unlocked the door to his suite, wrapping her arms tightly around him as they made their way in for the night.

[ilovelocust]

The Price Of Flowers - Chap 3

Note: Well nice thing about going back to edit. All these chapters are getting larger and read better than when I first wrote them. Only downside is this editing is taking way longer than I expected it to. I’m going to keep the once a day update schedule, but I don’t know how much spare time I’m going to get to write newer chapters after I run out of buffer.

Under a cut now, because I didn’t realize how long this post was when I posted it. Let me know if the cut is causing issues where you can’t read the entire thing on mobile, and I will remove it.

<< First < Prev.

Chapter Three - What Goes Unsaid

Hunk is extremely grateful for Keith taking his place. Thanking him more than once over the phone before telling him when Lance will be by. It’s a little weird honestly. Hunk must have felt extremely bad about having dropped his plans with Lance to be so pleased.

Lance picks Keith up driving Hunk’s car, most likely another apology for ditching last minute. It hadn’t been strictly necessary. Keith could have taken them on his motorcycle, but the car did have the advantage of being much more GPS navigation friendly.

That being said, if they’d taken his bike, he’d actually know where they were going, “Seriously, I’m already in the car, it’s not like I can get out of this now. You can tell me,” Keith says, on round five of trying to convince Lance to spill the beans. Not that there is much hope of this time ending any differently than the last four rounds. Lance is by far the most stubborn member of their group. When he gets excited by something there is no talking him out of it.

“Nope, nope, nope, that would ruin the surprise,” Lance says with far too much excitement. Keith snorts, “Don’t worry you’re going to have fun, I promise. You can trust me.” Lance says grinning ear to ear, and are his eyebrows? How does somebody even move their eyebrows like that?

Keith crosses his arms, “Last time I trusted you, you picked that awful movie for us to watch,” He’s teasing, but also the melodrama really had been horrible. If they hadn’t been in a proper theater, he’s pretty sure the whole group of them would have been riffing the thing the whole way through. Probably would have improved the quality of the plot if they had.

“Hey!” Lance gasps, “I will have you know, that was a classic romance.” Lance takes a hand off the wheel to poke Keith for emphasis, “It’s not my fault your too uncultured to appreciate it.”

“It was a Disney wannabe at best,” Keith says, grinning. There is no way Lance is convincing him that that mess was a classic.

“Hmphh,” Lance turns up his nose, offended. Before Lance can come up with some biting response, he spots something in the distance and beams once again, “Hah!” Lance crows, “You’re going to eat your words. We’re here and this is going to be awesome.”

Lance pulls off into a dusty gravel parking lot, and Keith gets his first look at what he’s going to be spending the rest of his day doing.

A cheap metal building sits on the edge of some enclosed fields with what looks to be faux buildings, ramps, and various other interesting structure erected in the middle of them. Off in the distance is a forested area with a cheap wooden fort hidden behind some trees. Keith doesn’t even need to read the sign to know where he is now. Lance is right, this is going to be a blast. He hasn’t been paintballing in forever.

-

The final member of the enemy team rounds the corner, and Keith puts a yellow splash of paint across his mask before he even realizes who he has stumbled into. That’s game, and a good victory to end the day on.

“Wow,” Lance says from behind him. He looks nearly as surprised as the man who’d been shot does. Today had revealed that Lance had phenomenal aim at a distance, but up close he couldn’t match Keith’s finely honed, if a bit rusty, reaction times, “You’re really good at this,” Lance blurts out, almost like he hadn’t meant to say anything at all.

“Thanks,” Keith says, shoulder his paint gun and  beginning the trudge back to the entrance, “I used to play in high school,” He and Shiro had spent many an exciting summer afternoon running around fields just like this one, “You’re not half bad yourself.”

Lance had needed some help in the beginning. Figuring out how to breathe behind the mask without fogging up his glass and other newbie problems, but by the third game he’d been fully in the swing of things. They’d made a pretty good team. Certainly winning more games than they lost, and leaving Keith with only a minimal amount of bruises for Shiro to kiss better tonight.

That being said, Lance could really use getting more exercise. He’d gotten winded so easily today, any running at all and he was panting for breath, but then, maybe that had just been his allergies. He’d had some pretty impressive coughing fits between bouts. Keith would have thought he was coming down with something if Lance hadn’t told him otherwise.

There is small line forming in front of the equipment stall, as they cross the border for the playing field. Lance tugs off his mask, and he’s smiling, high on their win. Keith follows his lead, and he knows he’s smiling too. He’s glad he came, this had been a lot of fun. Much more so than watching a couple more episodes on Netflix would have been.

“You know,” Lance says, sounding almost sly, as they step in to wait their turn to return equipment, “We should come back here again sometime.”

That sounds like an excellent idea. Maybe next time he could bring Shiro with them. He’d have a ball getting a chance to play again, and with him and Keith on the same team, they really would dominate the entire field, “Sure, maybe next weekend?” Both he and Shiro should be free then. It didn’t seem possible, but Lance’s face lit up even more, “Shiro can come, and we’ll have a three man team.”

The light went out. Lance’s face falls, “Oh,” Lance says quietly.

Huh, what’s with that response. Did Lance and Shiro somehow have a falling out without him noticing? “Is that okay with you?” Keith asks, maybe it’s something else bothering him?

“No it’s fine, just,” Lance rubs the back of his neck, “Are you sure Shiro would want to do something like this?”

What an odd question, “Oh course he would,” Keith says, one of the worst things for Shiro while he was healing was how it limited his activity, “He loves this sort of thing.” Their mutual love of things like this was a big part of their bonding when they first met.

Lance’s expression doesn’t pick up with Keith’s assurance. They reach the front of the line, and the conversation is quickly dropped as they exchange equipment for driver’s licenses.

Lance doesn’t pick it back up until they are walking back to Hunk’s car, “The thing is,” Lance says suddenly, “There are so many guns, and you’re being shot at and…” Lance pauses obviously searching for the right words. Keith uses the time to remember what they were talking about in the first place.

Lance starts again hesitantly, “I don’t know. After the whole thing with the war, sometimes Shiro has…problems. Like do you remember what happened at the 4th,” Keith does. Everyone had gotten together for the fourth of July to celebrate. Everything had been fine, but then Lance and Hunk had set off a rope of those little red firecrackers. The big displays and tiny light shows hadn’t bothered Shiro, but those little ones, those little ones had sounded a bit too much like gunfire. Keith had taken Shiro home early after that, and eventually he’d convinced Shiro that he really hadn’t minded. Shiro’s mental heal is far more important to him than some pretty lights he’s seen dozens of times before, “Sometimes he’s not okay with things that used to be fine.” Lance finishes lamely.

Keith bites back his first instinct to defensively snap at Lance. His little speech might not have been worded eloquently, but Lance’s concern for Shiro’s possible triggers is coming from a good place. Keith is not someone who gets to judge others for sticking their foot in their mouths, “Thank you for worrying about him,” Keith starts, thank then explain. Just like Shiro would, “But at the same time, you don’t need to worry,” Keith forces a reassuring smile, “Shiro will let me know if this will be too much for him to handle, and if he misjudges, we’ll just grab dinner early or head home instead,” Not that that is likely to happen. They’ve played laser tag since Shiro came back with little to no issues. Just because something has the possibility of being a trigger, doesn’t mean that it will be.

“Oh…Okay then,” Lance looks morose for a few seconds longer, then brightens up with a smile, “Well it’s not like it matters either way,” He waves his hands around as if to wave the whole matter away, “I’m busy next weekend, so we couldn’t meet up then anyways.” Lance unlocks the doors and gets in.

Keith crawls into the passenger side, “We’ll have to pick another date then.” He says. Though, he may still come back here with Shiro on his own next weekend. The nostalgia alone would be worth it.

“Yep,” Lance says, popping his p. He looks straight ahead and cranks up the music.

-

They don’t really speak as Lance drives him home. It’s a nice change to the constant chatter than normally accompanies Lance. A little silence to decompress in is a blessed relief after an outing, even if it is a bit of unusual behavior for his driver…Well that’s a thought to get stuck on. This was pretty weird for the typically loud mouthed Lance. There were times he thought the boy might explode if he had to be quiet for too long. Had he said something wrong? Or was Lance still worrying over Shiro? Should he even ask?

They are friends sure, but they aren’t the type of close friends who share deep dark secrets. He’s fairly certain he’s never even shared what happened to his dad with Lance. If there positions were reversed, he’d likely hate it if Lance tried to pry into why he was in a mood. Sometimes people did want to bare their souls everyone in a nearby vicinity. Best to keep his questions to himself. Besides, his apartment was just up ahead. There wouldn’t really be time for that type of conversation anyways.

Lance pulls up to the curb and turns the music down, “Hey Keith,” Lance says.

Keith’s already out of his seatbelt and halfway out the door. He has to duck back down to respond, “Yeah?”

“I had a lot of fun today, did you?” Lance asks, and there is something pinched about his expression. Some subtext Keith knows he’s missing, but knowing doesn’t help him decipher it.

“I did,” Keith says, and then tacks on, “Thanks for inviting me.”

Lance nods, then sucks in a deep breath. Holding it like he’s working himself up to something, but he loses his nerve. Lance blows out the breath and slumps. Keith quirks his head, but doesn’t comment on it, “I’m going to head inside now,” Keith says.

Lance straightens up immediately, “Wait!” Lance says, Keith pauses, “I’ve got two tickets for a thing tomorrow. Will you come with me?”

A thing? Why would he be inviting Keith again? Isn’t this normally the sort of thing he does with Hunk? Oh…Oh, no wonder Lance is morose. His best friend is too busy for him. Well now he just feels bad for him. Pity is rarely appreciated, so Keith keeps it out of his eyes.

“Sure, text me the details. If it’s after my classes, I’ll go.” Keith says. He waves as he steps away from the car.  waving as he steps out. Hopefully that will cheer Lance up.

It does the trick, Lance springs back to his normal form at Keith’s words, “Alright! I’ll see you tomorrow then,” Lance waves back at him. There you go. Good deed of the week accomplished. He can go to sleep knowing he’s brightened up a friend’s day.

Keith walks into his apartment with a clear conscience.

Next >

[giftofshewbread]

Unheralded Prophecy in View

Unheralded Prophecy in View

We’ve been over it before in this column (RaptureReady.com ‘Nearing Midnight’ 1/1/18) . However, things are shaping so rapidly it again needs our attention. Prophecy watchmen on the wall should pay close attention.

The seminaries consistently ignore this prophetic indicator altogether. Or they steadfastly say it is to be applied to Jews alive during the Tribulation. It is not for the Church.

I say–and have done so for years–that the prophecy is specifically for our time–that is, the Age of Grace.  I’m referring to Jesus’ foretelling of the time of His next intervention into the affairs of mankind. He described those days being like the days of Noah and the days of Lot.

‘m convinced the prophecy involved is so important for us to consider as this new year begins that we will include it here it in its entirety.

In the Matthew Olivet Discourse account, the Lord says that no one can know the day or hour of His coming. He next informs of what this time will be like and what to look for in being watchmen.

But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left.

Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. (Matthew 24:36-42)

Jesus further expands in the Luke account:

And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed. (Luke 17:26-30)

We have looked numerous times at these words of Christ. We have noted that the time of which He spoke in prophesying these matters could not be the time of His Second Advent. The world will be almost totally destroyed when Armageddon is raging. perhaps as much as three-fourths of the earth’s population will have died as a result of God’s wrath and Satan’s evil through the Antichrist’s reign. it will not be business as usual.

This prophecy about Christ’s “revealing” indicates plainly that it will be a time of buying, selling, marrying, planting–all of the activities that indicate business as usual. I maintain that because Christ doesn’t emphasize things that are mundane; he was talking here about a time when business was much better than usual.

As long as five years ago, we expressed in this Nearing Midnight column our belief that it would be a time of economic boom, not bust, that would mark when the Rapture of the Church would occur. It would be the think not time because the world, economically speaking, would be doing quite well.

Of course, not all the world is doing well at present, economically or in any other way. This has always been the case. The poor will always be with us, the Lord, Himself, told us.

However, for the part of the world where economies have the capability to thrive, the world, Jesus said in this prophecy, will be doing quite well at the time He is next “revealed.”

Almost every economic indicator is moving upward in America at this moment. This nation is the economic engine for the rest of the world. The better the U.S. does, economically speaking, the better the other nations who have the capability to thrive will do.

I’m dumbfounded at the fact that the true, Bible-teaching seminaries of America see this prophecy as being only for the Jews of the Tribulation. It seems to be a blindness they suffer.

However, I do know why the tremendous economic potential that has burst onto the scene is unheralded by the mainstream news media. They hate Donald Trump, plain and simple.

Now, I’m not so foolish as to think that the economic upswing is one built on sound economic principles. We are in a tremendous financial bubble that continues to grow by the hour. At some point it is going to burst. It simply defies the fiscal laws for it to continue without imploding.

However, it will not come to that point of implosion, I’m of the belief, until the Lord Says so. He is allowing it to move exactly toward the prophetic point the Lord Jesus foretold in the above scriptural accounts.

As I’ve expressed many times, this president is God’s chosen man for this hour, a builder, an entrepreneur extraordinaire. But, the mainstream news prevaricators refuse to report the tremendous economic growth the nation is experiencing. To do so would move in the opposite direction of trying to bring America down so that the globalists can usurp its wealth and power to construct the world order they wish to establish. They want desperately to destroy this president’s efforts to restore the United States to its former, leading status.

Antichrist’s global platform will be constructed, I believe, when the Rapture occurs and this phenomenal economic bubble explodes and comes down around the ears of an unsuspecting world.

The year 2018 could be the time. Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

–Terry

[metaphoreala]

Psi phenomena are problematic precisely because they involve events in the real world and thus become candidates for a physical explanation, yet at the same time they are critically bound up with certain states of mind. Thus they cross the dividing line between objectivity and subjectivity which normal mental phenomena do not.

–John Beloff

One can study UFO reports and abduction tales for decades and remain more or less convinced these are physical beings from other worlds who must possess something like Arthur Clarke’s advanced technology that is indistinguishable, to us, from magic.

But what kind of magic? Of the ritual…or of the stage?

As Jacques Vallee and John Keel long ago pointed out,[1] retaining an “ET spaceship” framework as a UFO-report investigator requires one to ignore much relevant information from witnesses that enters high strangeness: instances of telepathic messages, psychokinesis, apparitions, and coincidences that verge on synchronicity.

In other words, the sort of “magic” that the materialist epistemology of science currently denies exist.

If you embark on a comparative historical research course into fairy and djinn stories, poltergeist accounts, ceremonial magic, mediumship, NDEs, OBEs, shamanism, and world mythology, the UFO material tends to either assume a wider context of shared meanings or shrink in its unique significance…You might realize you’ve been fixated on one narrow band in a spectrum of very similarly-structured experiences involving “alternate modes of consciousness” that are as old as humanity itself.

After such a study course, at least for me, the belief in technological ETs succumbed to attrition in the face of this historical evidence. In other words, the hardware proponents lost the fight. I became interested in exploring the raw phenomenal experiences (as far as that’s possible) of otherworldly encounters. What prior to that was a side-interest (the occult/folklore in general) to an interest (ufology) has become my central focus. The two are intertwined in astonishing ways.

Curious Timings? In 1848, the Fox family are plagued by a poltergeist in their house in Hydesville, New York. By using handclaps, raps on the wall, or clapping, sisters Margaretta, 15, and Katie, 12, learn to communicate with the “spirit” in a manner that mimics the dot-dash of the telegraph in a primitive way.

After causing a sensation throughout upstate New York, the two children are separated but the rappings follow both girls. The news spreads, and within four years, hundreds of thousands of people worldwide are attempting seances with the same results. Some persons attending séances claim the rappings occur at their own homes upon their return; sometimes a person even merely reading about them or deciding to attend a séance spontaneously causes the activity to arise in their surroundings.[2]

But even before the (in)famous Fox sisters’ experiences, the Shaker communities from New York to Kentucky experience an explosion of interactions with the spirit world. The “Era of Manifestations” that begins in 1837 doesn’t directly involve poltergeist-like rappings, but trance-states (lasting sometimes up to 9 hours) in which Shakers’ founder Mother Ann Lee, “angels,” “ladies in white,” spirits of the dead, and unclassifiable entities visit congregants, mostly young people, in visions. These episodes show all the signs of what would come to be called out-of-body experiences and “astral travel.” Glossolalia, epileptoid fits, spontaneous unconscious preaching, and hallucinated music are exhibited during these attacks; during many trips, “movements” are “learned” then mimicked by bystanders then taught as divine motions that would become incorporated into the Shakers’ ritual dances.[3] Often, the entranced claim to visit rooms in which conferences are held with the passed-on Shaker leaders and congregants, who admonish the experiencer to repent further and reform themselves; in one of these accounts, 14-year old Ann Goff witnesses “indescribable” chairs and a huge book upon a table as the Shaker elders, dressed in white robes with crowns, exhort her to pass on a message to the community to curb their worldly behaviors. Messages from beyond that demand human behavioral change and redemption—so prevalent in “ET entity”-inspired communications regarding our treatment of the earth—have always been a part of trance communications.

By 1841, the affected Shakers’ trances include the spirits of Indigenous peoples, “antediluvian giants,” and ineffable apparitions, and by the next year so many “outsiders” are coming to witness the spectacles that the community leaders cease having open meetings.[4]

Anyway, by 1860 Spiritualism has exploded into a fragmented but huge quasi-religion of many brands that mostly exclude Christianity. Those with genuine talent at mediumship become “psychic superstars” over the next five decades: Andrew Jackson Davis, Stainton Moses, Daniel Dunglas Home, Leonora Piper, Gladys Osborne Leonard, and Eusapia Palladino. While most of the “controls” used by the American mediums are the famous dead like George Washington or Beethoven, others are claimed to be spirit-guides, angels, or even extraterrestrials, who explain the workings of the physical and aetheric universes.

Two years after the Shaker experiences and four years before the events in Hydesville, Andrew Jackson Davis engages spontaneous trance using Mesmeric techniques. Considered “slow” as a child, by 1845 Davis is successfully diagnosing medical problems, just as several of Franz Mesmer’s and his protégé’s subjects were earlier able to do.[5] In a trance vision he signs a document offered by “an old Quaker man,” then Galen and Swedenborg appear and teach him. After having a vision of “Galen’s staff” (which we can surmise was a caduceus) he diagnoses people while magnetized. At 19, he dictates The Divine Revelation.[6] This same type of “edificatory” channeling occurred in many dozens of subjects under Mesmeric trance in France, Belgium, Switzerland, and especially Germany, from 1810-1850.[7] Documented, veridical displays of clairvoyance and telepathy were regularly demonstrated by Mesmerized persons as well.[8]

 But Davis’s trance led to more: his dictated speeches produce a huge 1847 book, The Principles of Nature. At one point he speaks of the inhabitants of the planets in our solar system, singling out Saturn as the home of advanced beings.[9] He also apparently prophesies the coming Spiritualist tsunami of 1848 onward:

Davis paved the way from modern American spiritualism in four ways. He accustomed a wide public to the idea that a clairvoyant somnabule might engage not just in medical diagnosis and traveling clairvoyance, but in the transmission of social, religious, and cosmological teachings; he propounded neo-Swedenborgian doctrines about the future state and the spirit spheres and about the features and inhabitants of the planets; he propagated the view that some new and stirring revelation was about to rock mankind; and he implied that this revelation would involve a bursting of the barriers that separate our world from the spiritual one.(emphasis added)[10]

As Alan Gauld notes, the claims were very similar to those of Emanuel Swedenborg (1758). Swedenborg, Davis, John Newbrough (in OASPHE, 1882), and Helene Smith (1897) were the only well-known mediums who speak at length about physical or spiritual beings from other worlds during the Spiritualist period.

In France, education reformer Hippolyte Ravail becomes fascinated with mediumship, establishes general rules for distinguishing true clairvoyance from impostures, draws up a list of literally a thousand questions, puts them to his best mediums, and publishes a book of the answers in 1857 under the pseudonym Allan Kardec, founding the “religion” that will eventually be called Spiritism.

In 1905, author Sara Weiss publishes the “scientific romance” (as science fiction was then known) Journeys to the Planet Mars, or, Our mission to Ento (Mars): being a record of visits made to Ento (Mars) by Sara Weiss, Psychic, under the guidance of a spirit band, for the purpose of conveying to the Entoans a knowledge of the continuity of life. Despite its genre association with science fiction, Weiss is a medium and claims the book is one of genuine contact. It is a channeled work, complete with phonetic dictionary of Entoan.

By 1890, one would think, with the onslaught of ET-inspired messages that would come 60 years hence, much more would have been said about them by the many mediums or channelers of the Spiritualist period.

Then… Exactly 99 years after the Hydesville events, 1947: UFOs begin to show up in our skies (and backyards and seas). Investigator Meade Layne claims in 1952 that these are interdimensional ships and their “aetherial pilots” can be contacted through trance mediums.[11] From 1948 onwards, dozens of individuals like George Adamski and George van Tassel claim friendship with “Space Brothers,” whose advice to humanity differs little from Kardec’s spirit-channeled philosophies of 1857-1868…Shorn of the incredible Theosophical history lessons he provided, the same applies to Guy and Edna Ballard’s I AM cult, which began in 1930 when Guy encountered “Venusians” in the presence of the “immortal ascended master” Count St. Germain on Mount Shasta, California.

A Paraspiritual Control System?

Culturally, the Spiritualist phenomenon of 1848 may be considered the right cure at the right time. It was the first modern split-off from all religions towards a direct-experience approach to the divine. The spirits of the other side would teach humanity, even if the truths they offered were old wine in new skins.

When Spiritualism broke upon the world, Darwin had yet a decade to publish his evolutionary theory, but the impact of mechanistic science was everywhere felt in America, the UK, and Europe. Machines were inspiring wonder and contempt alike. Helped by the new mass media, beliefs in a clockwork universe needing no creator deity were gaining adherents in the academies and inundating popular consciousness, undermining the religious faith of millions. The geological work of James Hutton and Charles Lyell suggested the earth was much older than the 6,000 years the Bible taught, further eroding Judeo-Christian faith. Electricity became a dominating metaphor for life, for vigor, for magic like mesmerism—and we would harness it for health and longevity.

Then, just at the long tipping point in mass consciousness towards despair over a de-enchanted universe, along came inspiring messages from one’s departed relatives in seances, psychokinetic magic in table tilting and ectoplasm, prophesies and promises. A great emotional need for certainty and meaning in the continuity of spiritual life was filled by the Fox sisters’ fame and the widespread folk adoption of seances.

So, what parallel happened socially and culturally in the decade just before the UFO craze began? Well, as many have pointed out, it might have had something to do with the terror and despair over 20 million deaths in a World War whose final punctuation marks were the bombing of two cities with a superweapon that could turn human beings into dissipated energy in a split-second. By 1947, the US Navy had tested the survivors of those two cities and discovered the lingering damage that the Bomb infected in those exposed to it, and by 1950 the US was engaged in a game of mine’s-bigger-than-yours with the Soviets over these evil weapons.

A part of humanity definitely wanted new saviors—preferably of a non-human, more evolved kind.

This was just what was needed in the popular imagination, especially the fact that the Space Brothers and many of the reported individually-encountered ufonauts preached against nuclear weapons…

But curiously, by the mid-1990s, UFOs were no longer putting on dramatic close encounters of the first, second, and third kind “performances” as they had since 1947. No more reported up-close (-500 feet) sightings of structured craft, no more buzzing cars and stopped engines, no more observedsky-to-ground landings and “explorers” zapping and burning witnesses with beams of light, etc. Night-time bedroom abductions largely seemed to become the method of intervention.

In other words, it seems that enough of the populace had come to believe in extraterrestrials visiting the Earth that since 1995 a hundredth-monkey effect had been taking place and thus the ETs no longer manifested geologist-biologist-like behavior (space-suited beings taking soil samples and zapping witnesses with “flashlights”). Such trappings were of the Space Age 1960s-70s, in line with expectations of ET space explorers…Most interesting is that once the international treaties banning the testing of nuclear weapons were instituted (by the 1990s), the aliens’ message had dropped the explicit nuke warning and they began preaching about the environmental degradation of the earth.

Again, it is a message that meets a popular need and tracks with cultural change.

There was a parallel to this change of manifestation (or even “decline effect”) within the Spiritualist movement. By the 1910-1920s, Spiritualism as a world religious movement had run its course (except in Brazil, where the Kardec Spiritist church is still popular). By the 1930s, reports of the most spectacular physical effects that can occur during séances had declined. It was as if the contacted spirits were no longer compelled to tilt tables and raise ectoplasmic spooks as they did in the 19th century; it was as if a certain number of people believing in them had reached a critical mass—so these supernatural displays were no longer necessary.[12]

Many Mesmerized persons from 1780-1850 produced astonishing, well-documented examples of “traveling clairvoyance” (remote viewing), telepathy, distant healing, and diagnosis. The same decline effect can be said for the population frequency of extraordinary individuals such as Friedrike Hauffe, brothers Adolphe and Alexi Didier, and many of the reported “somnambules” associated with Mesmerism and “phreno-mesmerism.” That is to say, the number of mesmerized individuals prone to demonstrating spectacular feats of psi declined as Spiritualism ascended, then new spirit-virtuosos appeared within a few decades using self-entrancement methods without the Mesmeric trappings.

As Spiritualism became a worldwide craze, the core ideas of Mesmerism passed from the scene by 1850, but hypnotic states continued to be explored by laypersons and the early psychologists. For the next five decades, psi feats seemed to limit themselves to individuals “in the Spirit,” those suffering extreme conversion disorders, “hysteria,” dissociation, or those under hypnotic trance, as evidenced by the research of physicians Jean-Martin Charcot, Charles Richet, psychologist William James, and philologist Frederic Myers. As noted above, the spirit-mediums of the late 19th century needed no “operator” to entrance them; they could spontaneously entrance themselves, perhaps through self-suggestion, to “speak via the denizens of the Other Side.” The most famous extemporaneous acts of remote viewing and telepathy in which the offered information could be verified were thoroughly checked and verified by Society for Psychical Research (SPR) members such as Richard Hodgson and Frank Podmore, the former who started out a hardcore skeptic yet eventually became convinced of the human personality’s survival after death.[13]

From 1884 to the 1920s, the SPR and its American counterpart preserved, annotated, and analyzed much anecdotal and experimental evidence for apparitions, telepathy, bilocation, and psychokinesis. By the 1920s, they had published many volumes of this evidence on mediums and psi phenomena.[14] By the time the Spiritualist craze had apparently met its need and served its purpose—providing just enough evidence of a world beyond the material—Upton Sinclair published a book on telepathy in 1930, Mental Radio. The title says it all: Technology has increasingly become the lens through which we analogize psi phenomenon and prescribes the preferred method of verifying its existence: a machine…In other words, if it doesn’t show up on the scientists’ screen, or needle, or graph, it doesn’t exist.

And thus what we think of as “reality” constricts a little more.

It was also in 1930 that psi effects first came under strict scientific scrutiny in the laboratory experiments of J.B. and Louisa Rhine, eventually followed in the next decades by Charles Honorton, Hans Bender, Helmut Schmidt, Charles Tart, Robert Jahn, Brenda Dunne, Russell Targ, and Hal Puthoff, who indisputably proved the existence of psi. Through tight experiments that probed dice-throwing influence (psychokinesis/PK), random number generator control (PK), autoganzfeld (telepathy), and remote viewing (“traveling clairvoyance”), they demonstrated cumulative average statistical results against chance for these phenomena by factors of hundreds of billions to one—to any reasonable person willing to examine their experiments.[15]

Case studies of extraordinarily talented mediums like D.D. Home or Leonora Piper became very rare. Where they did pop up in the 1920s onward (like “PK-boy” Rudi Schneider or “poltergeist girl” Eleonora Zugun or remote viewer extraordinaire Stefan Ossowiecki), the ratio of skeptical greyfaces ready to declare “bullshit!”  prima facie to the open-minded scientific investigator was probably ten to one, so you tabulate the odds of “standard science” studying anything further in those fights.

But by 1950, say, mediums who communicated with the dead had mostly gone shut up to the cultural attic.[16] Why? Had the spirits on the other side abandoned this world? Mediums still practiced but it took the new, very “physical” flying saucer to re-fit the metaphysical messages of the seance room, and since these were ostensibly independently existing beings, anyone could potentially see and interact with a UFO. At least this is how the main narrative at first seemed.

Ships are meant to float and move upon the waters; they are animated by the living force that animates all things here, and if we wish to move them over the water we have but to focus our thoughts in that direction…Our host handles his craft skillfully, and increasing and diminishing its speed he could create, by the different degree of movement of the water, the most striking alternations of color and a musical sound, the brilliant scintillations of the sea showing how alive it was. It responded to the boat’s every movement as though they were in complete unison—as indeed they were.

-medium Anthony Borgia, Life in the World Unseen, from 1914.[17]

Change “ship” to “craft” and “water” to “atmosphere” or “space” in this declaration and it could read as part of a UFO contactee’s narrative, or even from an alien abduction account.

So what is this all about? Spirits and aliens are the same?

Not exactly, but close. The same, but different.

Jacques Vallee’s conditioning-stimulus “scheduled reinforcement” process hypothesis provides a framework for understanding the changing face of the Otherworldly:[18] we get accustomed to one mask that appears to undermine our general orientation to reality; a numerical tipping point of humans come to believe in the phenomenon; then it changes its form, but ever reminds us of its presence—and symbolizes a further mystery we shall perhaps never explain but are goaded into coming to terms with.

Vallee points out that the UFO experiences (as much as we can be said to know them) cannot be separated from the media filters through which they pass, much like the signal-noise model of information he studied in his career as a computer scientist. Distortion of the actual phenomenon is inevitable for the human mind; these deformations are culturally shaped, and in turn feed back into society and help shape further instances of the phenomenon, whether it is conceived as entirely “physical” or “psychological” in origin. The distortion is always present, and the one definite factor certain to be in play.

The phenomenon itself is not directly observable, but its effects certainly are—specifically on cultural concepts of the “Other/Alien/ET,” by either creating “new” religious beliefs or altering existing ones. Both the phenomenon itself and the resultant forms created by the media feedback fulfil societal needs (and can also thus be manipulated by cult leaders or governmental agents).[19]

Vallee has many times pointed out the self-negating nature of UFO contactee’s claims, the always-ambiguous authenticity of landing traces, or the obvious fact that there has been a vast zoo of differing ET appearances and behaviors that are many times in conflict with one another. Parasychologist John Beloff addressed this very problem of intractability (and perhaps absurdity, as Vallee so often puts it) when analyzing the history of parapsychological research:

One truth about psi phenomena which every parapsychologist learns the hard way is that they are not just elusive, in the sense of being difficult to pin down, they are, or at any rate they seem to be, actively evasive. One well-known contemporary experimentalist (William Braude) has spoken of the “self-obscuring” aspect of psi…By the 1940s mediumistic séances were “old hat” and the new respectable and sanitized parapsychology that J.B. Rhine had introduce at Duke University was all set to take the academic world by storm. But Rhine’s new science soon ran up against the same obstacle that had beset traditional psychical research—the evasiveness of the phenomena. The “new era” which Pawlovsky thought so imminent is still pending. Time and again since then it has looked as if parapsychology was poised to sweep away all the familiar doubts and objections, overcome all prejudice and opposition and take its rightful place in the spectrum of human knowledge but so far this aspiration remains still-born… What is it that makes psi so evasive? One possible answer lies in the fact that, more perhaps than any other psychological phenomenon, psi appears to be extremely sensitive to situational factors. It is more than just a question of the subject being in the right frame of mind. The whole cultural milieu in which the subject operates might influence decisively what is or is not possible for the subject to achieve.[20](emphasis added)

Beloff’s is the tack Vallee has often taken with regard to UFO interactions and their aftermath: the matrix of cultural information (scientific, religious, social, material) plays a determining and invisible part in what is regarded as an anomalous message that transgresses the norms of that matrix. Incorporating the raw message, which to the contactee is entirely subjective or even “spiritual,” into the existing matrix is impossible without diluting/translating it—but this drawback is only possible through the current epistemology (and something we will address in the latter part of this essay). Beloff continues with a metaphor that parallels Vallee’s idea of the control system operating as a thermostat that is “seeking equilibrium” with itself by altering human behavior and conceptions of reality:

Let us, then, think of nature as one vast immune system. Paranormal phenomena, on this metaphor, correspond to infections comparable to the intrusion of viruses or bacilli into a healthy body. A new paranormal phenomenon for which there was no precedent, say table levitation or metal bending, would correspond to a powerful infection of this kind. The immune system of nature would go in to action with the result that such phenomena would thereafter be eliminated. But nature would still be helpless in the face of a new infection, and so a constant search for novelty would become the sine qua non of successful attempts to demonstrate whatever lies outside the normal course of nature or violates the laws of physics. Pursuing this metaphor, we may say that another method that would allow us to get away with the paranormal would be to introduce it in very dilute doses. In that case, the immune system of nature need never be activated just as in our own immune system very minor infections, as occurred with the vaccine, need not elicit any symptoms. This, indeed, seems to be the logic of much in current experimental parapsychology, such as attempts to bias the output of a random event generator. The drawback of that strategy, however, is the difficulty of a rousing any interest in such marginal results among those who are not professional parapsychologists.[21] (emphasis added)

The same of course applies to the subject of the ufologist: how can one gain the interest of “real scientists” to study what amounts to an entirely unpredictable apparitional event?

The Hermetic Take on Guides from the Other Side

As Havan Blomqvist and others have noted,[22] Theosophists always claimed to have knowledge of—or even direct contact with—the Great Mahatmas of the Himalayas and other diversely named yet similar “ascended brotherhoods” (the Yucatan, the Great White Lodge, the Ellora, etc.) that are said to intervene in human affairs at times to guide our evolution. Hermetic scholar Jocelyn Godwin discusses the “hidden hand” of these intelligences at work in the phenomena of Mesmerism, Spiritualism, and Theosophy, who also, by extension, continue to influence our culture through the UFO Space Brother.[23] This myth posits that these beings—or spirits—are said to take whatever form is needed and communicate cosmic truths via both traditional mediums and anomalous experiences (such as UFOs, synchronicities, angelic visitations). One can attempt contact with them through conventional methods such as meditation or entrancement, but as Vallee might argue the mode of contact for the technological West is now one of disruption of our materialist worldview via what appear to be technological marvels that defy physics and almost all known science—UFOs and how they alter our worldviews.

Contact with Other intelligences was once an accepted part of the natural order of social life via shamanistic practices, before various totalistic systems such as cults, religions, science, and social pressures reframed and marginalized those worldviews and techniques. Now contact is mediated through several layers. One cannot call upon aliens (Steven Greer’s claims notwithstanding) in the way séances once called upon the passed-on.

Betty Andreasson-Luca’s depictions of her experiences

By 1995, alien abductions had overwhelmingly become the media focus of the contact experience; abduction-related books outnumbered in both publishing and sale numbers all other aspects of the UFO phenomena.[24] Seeming genetic experiments upon percipients replaced “space exploration hardware” as the dominant narrative of these books.

In many abductions, the person undergoes a bedroom visitation by greys or other beings and is taken through the house walls into a circular room; many times, an ET-like craft is not even seen, but only inferred by means of previous experiences, or the accounts of other experiencers.

The Others’ scientist-like activities tracked with advances in reproductive technology (see essay on alien transhumanism), yet the frequency of this particularly medical manifestation has apparently dwindled in public reports over the past decade.[25] Contact has become entirely a matter of myths that use our technological metaphors of “upgraded DNA” and psychic “downloads” of information—what was once called spiritual evolution and “reading the Akashic record” in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

After studying the history of paranormal events, many investigators have noted that the persons who experience alien abductions unequivocally also experience poltergeist-like elements. In poltergeist events:

–there is usually a single focus person.

–the experiences often follow this individual around from location to location.

–a sense of a conscious, often malicious presence in a room is experienced prior to “main event” (it may produce bangings, flying objects, etc.)

–apparitions may be seen that are generally human-like in form.

–physical marks are left on the body and environment, i.e, presences that pinch, prick, or scratch the individuals. Fingerprints, “claw marks,” and scrape marks are sometimes seen in dust, furniture, clothes, or bed dressings, during the poltergeist attack.

–electrical interference occurs; lights, televisions, or radios will turn themselves on/off, lightbulbs burst, flicker, or strobe.

–levitation of objects (and, rarely, even persons) occurs.

–balls of light, often blue, are seen; blue flashes and “cold breezes” accompany some mediums’ trance states, such as Stella Cranshaw’s, that were accompanied by poltergeist-like physical effects, studied by the SPR in 1923-26.[26]

–hazes, often blue in color, are seen. –objects may disappear (sometimes from locked or hidden places) and reappear in the open or in incongruous places (teleportation). –objects, most often stones, seem to materialize or pass through solid objects such as walls. Often they are found to be warm or hot to the touch.

–“teleported” or “apported” objects (such as stones, cups, plates, etc.) are seen to make all sorts of impossible maneuvers mid-flight as they fall, such as zig-zags, parabolas, leaf-like motions, corkscrewing, hovering in mid-air—much in the manner many UFOs are observed to move in the sky.

–buzzing, crackling, or bell-like sounds may be heard; sometimes incomprehensible speech, groans, or screams.

–rarely, and perhaps circumstantially, animals have been found mutilated in surgically precise manners during poltergeist manifestations, suggesting a tentative connection to the link between UAP activity and animal, especially bovine, mutilations.

These poltergeist-specific phenomena parallel only some of the superficial features of abductions and UFO sightings…Nevertheless, these parallels are clear.

There is usually no “story” to a poltergeist infestation (a contrary view by sociologist Eric Ouellet can be found here).[27] Abductions, on the other hand, involve a distinctive narrative that over time can acquire a deep meaning to both experiencer and their auditor(s) alike.

The important point is that both poltergeists and abductions involve escalations of the paranormal activity. In the poltergeist the intensification occurs in a short period of time, months at the most, while for the abductee it occurs over years, decades, or a lifetime. The latter seems to wane with the experiencer’s age.

Following Alan Gauld’s and A.D. Cornell’s criteria of comparison,[28] hauntings may contain some or even all of the poltergeist elements listed above, but they are location-specific, not person-centered.

Seeing apparitions is rather rare in poltergeist episodes, so there are general boundaries between hauntings and poltergeists. Yet alien abductions also unequivocally contain apparitional/haunting-like elements. In both:

–the entities/apparitions appear either suddenly or gradually “materialize” into sensible form from a “haze” or light; often the percipient feels “their” presence before sensibly interacting with the Others.

 — buzzing, crackling, bell-like, or humming/vibrating sounds may be heard at the outset of an abduction (this has occurred in a small minority of apparition appearances); conversely, a total dampening of sound often precedes or accompanies the apparition/alien.

–a sense of unreality precedes and accompanies the apparition; in abductions or UFO entity sightings, this depersonalization or derealization has been noted in many dozens of cases.

–a change in ambient temperature is very often noted.

–paralysis of the percipient is sometimes experienced in apparitional sightings, especially crisis apparitions wherein the “hallucinated” person has just died or is near death; in abductions, the experiencer almost universally finds themselves paralyzed while in bed.

–apparitions appear fully clothed, and sometimes with accompanying accessories (canes, sticks, bags, even horses, etc.); Otherworldly beings are almost always clothed and carry devices (“boxes,” “guns,” “wands,” etc.).

–apparitions, whether of the living or those near death, may appear imbedded within hallucinatory scenes that are veridical, that is, they are later verified as the actual surroundings of the “sender” at the time of the percipient’s experience; similarly, abduction experiencers report holographic or televisual scenes that float as if being emitted from “disembodied screens,” or are immersive, augmented-reality-like programs. (Sometimes these screens’ appearance precedes the abduction, and in some reports incongruous beings or people, like figures of Jesus or a similar protective deity, have been reported to show up in the midst of an abduction).

–a message is often transmitted from the apparition, aurally or telepathically.

–conversations with apparitions can either be aural or telepathic, but mostly the latter.

–many times, UFOs or apparitions are seen by only a few persons present in a group setting of potential percipients; in UFO sightings (and even abductions), sometimes only the abductee(s) in the group see(s) the UFO (and may subsequently undergo an abduction experience). There are many cases of apparitions that appear to one or two people within a group of more potential percipients.

With their massive study Phantasms of the Living (1886), SPR investigators Edmund Gurney andFrederic Myers came to speculate that apparitions (especially of the crisis-type that occur within 24 hours of the “ghost’s” death) were the result of a telepathic transmission from the “crisis agent” to the friend/acquaintance percipient (and even multiple percipients).

Mathematician and physicist G.N.M Tyrrell further developed a hypothesis that involved the conception of an idea-pattern[29] that is projected from the agent that may affect one or more targeted persons in a “drama.”[30]

Tyrrell’s idea of the apparitional drama is based upon studies of hallucination and a crucial distinction he makes between the sense-data that is perceived by the brain and the physical objects that may cause the sense-data; in his scheme, physical objects may or may not produce sense-data, despite their being within one’s sensory field.

Tyrrell’s conception is meant to be a general philosophical basis for the astonishing examples of hallucination of which the human mind is capable, as Oliver Sacks describes in his book on the subject. For Tyrrell, our subjective experiences are simply the sense-data that appear in the mind, regardless of whether they are physically caused by objects in the outer world or not. On his definition, dreams, hypnagogic imagery, daydreams, and hallucinations are all sub-groupings of possible sense-data. These seemingly disparate states may or may not help the successful management of meeting life’s needs; that focused “center” that primarily assists in self-preservation we call the ego is, for Tyrrell (and Myers) at once more akin to a stream with multiple subconscious ideas and affects active within it at all times.

An apparition for Tyrrell is not physical but a construction of sense-data co-created by sender (agent) and the percipient(s). It may behave in every way like a physical object, interact with the environment, even be touched, but is not physically present. Any interaction between the apparition and its environment that may leave a physical trace Tyrrell tentatively puts down to possible psychokinesis on the part of the percipient.

During events in which the apparition appears solid, elements of the percipient’s environment mustbe hallucinated as well—in this case, it is called a “negative hallucination” and plays a crucial part in the perceived “ghost” (this accounts for how an apparition can block out the space/objects behind it to conform to the percipient’s three-dimensional space).

Tyrrell’s idea was further developed by parapsychologist Celia Green into the concept of a metachoric hallucination,[31] in which the percipient’s mind might generate the whole of one’s surroundings—sense-data that “overwrite” the direct perception of the environment, attitudes, and even actions while perceiving the apparition. This peculiar state can make the sense-data amenable to drastic alteration by a force other than the percipient’s conscious ego. According to Green, it is conceivable the percipient is simply still lying down, still in a chair, or even standing, mildly entranced, while unconsciously producing the entire experience. Essentially, it is as if one suddenly enters a waking dream state…

The force that shapes these alterations, which may be conjectured to also be the force behind UFOs, apparitions, images of the passed-on, otherworldly beings, has not yet been specified—for our present stage of science lacks a developed vocabulary of “topological” concepts to bridge and map the mental, physical, and third space in which such events may be said to occur (which has been given countless names over the centuries, from the realm of Forms to Myers’s “metetherial field” to the Imaginal world).

Apparition experiences may seem random, although 90% of the time the apparition’s identity is not unknown to the witness (and the connection to a crisis for the “sender” has been noted). Poltergeist victims may seem random as well, but psychological explanations have been put forward regarding unconscious and overwhelming psychological stress on the victims, especially for pubescent children and teenagers, as the source of the psychokinetic events in as many as half of the solid cases.

In both cases, for the witnesses/victims, neither willpower nor choice is apparently involved. What, if anything, may be conjectured to connect the two manifestations?

There is a class of person that bridge the two manifestations: the physical medium. Discounting the many hundreds of frauds that have been uncovered by investigators, there remain four compelling individuals whose careers attest to the concept of “controllable PK”: Daniel Dunglas Home (1833-1886), Indridi Indridason (1883-1912), Rudi Schneider (1908-1957), and Nina Kulagina (1926-1990).

Home’s performances were witnessed by thousands of persons, including eminent scientists and heads of state across Europe. He was never caught in fraud and his phenomena never seriously debunked. Indridason unfortunately died at 28 after six years of strenuous and spiritually taxing physical mediumship. His seances were witnessed by a few hundred persons, the core of these being a small investigative society specially set up to study him.[32] Both Home and Indridason produced spectacular light manifestations; poltergeist-like rappings, poundings, flying objects; full and partial bodily materializations of “spirits” who interacted with the present séance sitters; wind gusts in closed rooms, some lasting as long as 20 seconds; physical contact by invisible hands; and, most spectacularly, full bodily levitation (in both cases their bodies rose above six feet into the air before witnesses)…Home and Indridason claimed the “possessing” spirits were wholly responsible for the observed phenomena, using the men’s physical “energies” to produce the psychokinetic displays. Physical and mental exhaustion resulted after these long seances in which they produced a spectrum of the activities.

Schneider was examined and tested by under some of the strictest controls imaginable (total physical restraint in many cases) and still he produced PK effects around him.[33] In several instances, infrared beams were used to detect any attempt at his releasing himself from the restraints and moving objects in the lab. The beams were broken while he was still trussed up and at the same time his control announced the projection of PK energy to move the target object.

At the more extreme ends of pseudoskepticism, debunkers put forth mass hallucination by the witnesses as an explanation, or some kind of “group hypnosis” on the mediums’ part. Such waving away the problem is almost as supernatural an explanation as purported spirit manifestation.

If we grant that people with these talents exist, can exhibit and, to a degree, control psychokinetic manifestations (whether by subconscious energies or “spirits”), what is the likelihood that certain persons exist (and always have existed) who can create, say, lightforms that are actually a type of thought-form? What if these psychic forms can exhibit an independence of their creators?

At the more extreme ends of debunking, mass hallucination by the witnesses was put forth as an explanation, as well as some kind of group hypnosis on the mediums’ part. Such waving away the problem is almost as supernatural an explanation as purported spirit manifestation.

Anne Strieber had been helping her husband Whitley read through the thousands of letters he’d received after the publication of his bestseller Communion in 1987. They found that many people were mentioning encountering “aliens” during Near Death Experiences, or images of their passed-on loved ones during abductions. Anne said, “this is about the dead”—giving her husband a founding revelation as to the meaning of his strange experiences.[34] Eventually Strieber remembered seeing a childhood friend who had passed on during his first recalled abduction experience in 1986, and, although he never has considered himself a medium, has had extended interactions with the passed-on and “ghost-like persons”[35] for 40 years.

From then onward he looked at the Visitors (as he has always called them) as some sort of communication conduit to our evolution—again, what has become a common idea in the experiencer and channeling communities.[36]

In Part 2 of this essay, we will examine how technology has now become an dominant metaphor for the transmission of messages and humanity itself.

—————————-

[1] See Vallee’s Passport to Magonia and other works, and Keel’s Operation Trojan Horse.

[2] For even one of these reports to be taken as the truth, we have to conjecture that a very strong form of mental suggestion was at work at the least. Fair enough. But if multiple good witnesses were present at such a display, what are we to make of the physical manifestations?

[3] This “vocabulary of divine movement” is, strangely enough, echoed in the series The OA, in which the protagonists’ magic motions are learned during near-death experiences.

[4] See The Shaker Experience in America by Stephen J. Stein, Yale University Press, 1992, pgs. 165-200.

[5] Gauld, Alan. A History of Hypnotism, Cambridge University Press, 1995, 41-49, 53-57, 62-64, 79, 103, 107, 143-44, 165, 252-53.

[6] See Brown, Slater. The Heyday of Spiritualism, Pocket Books, 1972, pgs. 84-110.

[7] Gauld, pgs. 141-155.

[8]Ibid, pgs. 85-86, 103, 137-38, 146-9, 151-53, 182, 234-39.  

[9] Saturnine spirits or “gods” figure as the focus of many religions, like the Nommo, teachers of the Dogon of Mali. In their case, the Dogon claimed the Nommo are now in “hibernation” in a vehicle or moon around Saturn but originally came from Sirius.

[10] Gauld, 1995, pg. 191.

[11] UFO researchers who believe that physical ET craft are visiting earth are mostly astronomers, engineers, physicists, etc.—those who adhere to the materialist mindset. They predictably scoffed at Layne’s explanation for the ET interlopers. Most of our religious and physicalist-oriented society ridiculed both camps of ET believers. A hierarchy of the damned (as Charles Fort might have put it) came into being regarding the origin of UFOs, and in the 1950s, the lowest in the food chain was the quasi-Theosophist channeler of ET wisdom.

[12] This has a parallel in general psi studies, called the decline effect, which occurs to individuals who may initially score high against chance in tests, then eventually revert back to the average. The decline in spectacular séance phenomena, at least as recorded by parapsychological associations, seems to be a collective manifestation of this same statistical effect, and plays into Vallee’s idea of an intermittent schedule reinforcement.

[13] Excluding today’s popular spirit channels such as John Edwards (who never submit to SPR-like experimental strictures), where are such persons who, were they test subjects, would by all accounts easily challenge the physicalist paradigm? One could make the case that Edgar Cayce, Stefan Ossowiecki, Uri Gellar, Ted Owens, Ingo Swann, Hella Hamid, Joseph McMoneagle, or the talented SRI remote viewers have been our contemporary equivalents, but none except Cayce (and sometimes Gellar) required a trance. Most achieved their psi-conducive states either consciously, that is willfully, or through self-suggested mild trance. In the 1970s-1990s the US military and intelligence agencies secretly entered the psi research field via the Stanford Research Institute/NASA/CIA remote viewing programs and the DIA’s Project Stargate (of which McMoneagle was the central psychic). This originated partly in reaction to similar Soviet programs at the time—a clandestine “psychic arms race,” as SRI coordinator Russell Targ put it. I’d submit these projects are still ongoing, and thus the most talented individuals have been sought and vacuumed up (perhaps even on a worldwide scale) by these secret programs for the intelligence/military agencies’ exclusive use, probably for significant remuneration as “contractors.”

[14] For anyone inclined with an open mind to read through this voluminous case-study research and analysis, it is pretty clear that the strict materialist model of reality must be bullshit.

[15] Carter, Chris. Science and Psychic Phenomena: The Fall of the House of Skeptics, Inner Traditions, 2012, pgs. 63-65, 70-71, 76-77, 82-104.

[16] Seances were old hat and wouldn’t make good television. Is this transformation to invisibility just an artifact of how radically media changed forms? An “information glut,” although of a slower pace, existed before the internet threw everything at us at once; thousands of magazines competed for attention, mass market paperbacks made home libraries cheaper, and television flooded the living room with visions of what life was supposed to be like. Invisible though were its electromagnetic means, radio and TV mass media were compelled by market forces to focus on the tangibles of the world: war, politics, economics, scandals, social movements, etc.  Combined with the unspoken embargo on promoting religious views, the media offered no outlet to the “alternative altars” of countercultural spirituality that nevertheless existed (and flourished in some places).

[17] Anthony Borgia, Life in the World Unseen, Corgi Books/Transworld Publications, 1970

[18] Vallee, Jacques. Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact, Anomalist Books, 2008, pgs. 271-281; The Invisible College, Anomalist Books, 2014, pgs. 194-206.

[19] See Vallee’s Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults.

[20] Beloff, John. Parapsychology: A Concise History, pgs. 231-32.

[21] Ibid, pg. 233.

[22] https://ufoarchives.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-esoteric-intervention-theory-updated.html

[23] https://ufoarchives.blogspot.com/2016/04/paranormal-phenomena-and-academic.html

[24] The Gods Have Landed, State University of New York Press, 1995, James R. Lewis, ed.; from the essay “Religious Dimensions of the UFO Abductee Experience” by John Witmore, pg. 66.

[25] Although there continue to be self-published abduction memoirs, by the millennium the mainstream publishing industry had moved on. Another reason for this may be that since roughly the year 2000, abduction experiencers have shunned reporting the experiences to scientists or psychologists or therapists and turned instead to the communities of other experiencers on the internet.

[26] See Wilson, Colin. Poltergeist! A Study in Destructive Haunting, Putnam, 1982, pgs. 278-79, and the case of Icelandic mediumIndridi Indridason.

[27] That is, unless some “deceased person” is found to be associated with the site or attached to the focus person, or a crime against the focus person is revealed by subsequent/concurrent therapeutic procedures with the focus. One theory holds that a discharge of repressed psychic energy through therapeutic abreaction often causes the poltergeist activity to cease. But it does cease, unlike those abduction experiencers who report the events continuing for years or even decades.

[28] Gauld, Alan and Cornell, A.D. Poltergeists, White Crow Books, 2018, pgs. 176-180, 188-89, 202-207, 283-84.

[29] Tyrrell, G.N.M. Apparitions, Collier Books, 1963, pgs. 110-114.

[30] Tyrrell, (1963) pgs. 102-127, 131-34.

[31] Green, Celia, and McCreery, Charles, Apparitions, Hamilton Press, 1975; Green and McCreery, Lucid Dreaming, Routledge, 1994; UFOs: The Final Answer? Ufology for the 21St Century, Barclay, David and therese Marie, eds., Blandford Press, 1993, pgs. 130-153.

[32] See Haraldsson, Erlendur and Gissurarsson, Loftur R. Indridi Indridason: The Icelandic Physical Medium, White Crow Books, 2015, for a full account of Indridi’s short but astounding career.

[33] Schneider

[34] Strieber, Whitley and Kripal, Jeffrey J. The Super Natural: A New Vision of the Unexplained, Jeremy P. Tarcher, Penguin, 2016, pgs. 37, 53, 82.

[35] See Strieber’s book The Key, in which, while on a book tour in 1998, he had a late-night visit from an anonymous man who communicated to him revelations, not unlike a spirit-guide or Carl Jung’s daemon Philemon.

[36] We might examine the overlap between poltergeist/hauntings and fairy/djinn encounters (the evidence for which there is plenty), but that would involve a monumental cross-cultural comparison. All we can say is that the maturation of scientific classification systems from the 18th to 20th centuries allowed for distinctions to be made between apparitions, hauntings, fairy/djinn encounters, and the poltergeist. And for the past 70 years we have had UFOs and “alien beings” to add to the unexplained. The folk division between the fairy-daemon and the dead was always indistinct, from antiquity to the beginning of the 20th century. (See the works of Katherine Briggs, Thomas Keightley, Reverend Robert Kirk, and W.Y. Evans-Wentz). Fairies’ status as the “dead awaiting salvation” (one fairy in an encounter tale openly admits such) caused the Protestant elite no small manner of discomfort, because it paralleled the Catholic belief in a purgatorial existence between life and heaven or hell. The middle ground between binarities must be excluded, in religion as well as science. Let’s just say that what always distinguished human ghosts from the Good People was the fairies’ interests in partying and dancing, staying aloof from humans who disrespected them, and kidnapping people to marry or—especially—have sex with them to hybridize a new kind of being, one perhaps closer to full corporeality.

Old Wine in New Skins Part 1: Timed Cultural Interventions & Jacques Vallee’s Paraspiritual Control System Psi phenomena are problematic precisely because they involve events in the real world and thus become…

[discoveringthebible]

The Connecting Church: Ministry

Many people know that I am in a program that trains ministers and clergy for the church. I enrolled in Northwest Nazarene University’s program for a few reasons, but I have been going through once class at a time since the Spring of 2014. Before this current semester, I decided that I wanted to try two classes at a time, even though I work full time and I lead a ministry at the church I attend every Sunday morning. 

The two classes that I am taking right now are Telling the New Testament Story of God and Pastoral Care and Counseling. Even though I am only in week 4 (of 12 weeks), I have learned a lot and have grown a lot and am closer to God than I have felt in years, even though my life is pretty crazy right now. 

I am the Lead Prayer Minister at my church. I oversee a group of people (between 12-15) to create a schedule and work together with the church to have two prayer ministers be available to pray with congregants during the communion part of our gathering. (Our church has communion every Sunday, and I think it’s a wonderful and powerful testimony and reminder when we take time to remember Christ’s sacrifice for us every week.) 

When I was a Children’s Pastor, I didn’t have anyone assist “under” me. (I use “under” because I don’t do this alone. I’ve just accepted to take on the extra responsibilities of organizing others in the group to make sure we have at least 1 (preferably 2 prayer ministers during both Sunday morning gatherings.) I have been doing this since our church relocated to our own space in April. 

One of the things that I have noticed, and not just with my church, but with many churches I have visited or volunteered at, is that it is hard to find people to volunteer, even if they are regular Sunday attendees of a particular service. It’s hard to get people to help make church work. (Church doesn’t just happen. A lot of work goes into making church exist every Sunday, whether there are a few people or thousands.) And there is a lot of work behind the scenes that gets overlooked. 

Maybe now that I am working toward a vocational call into full-time ministry that I am noticing this more, but it seems that most people think they don’t have a job to do in the church (for whatever reason they come up with.) 

I see many people who want to help and volunteer, but something is holding them back. 

Well, today, as part of my reading for my New Testament Class, I had to read a sermon by  David Busic called “The Connecting Church: Ministry.” He preached this sermon at Lenexa Central Church of the Nazarene in Lenexa, Kansas back in 2002. This sermon just hit the mark for some of the things that I have been noticing, and thinking about. His sermon is concise and to the point, much better than how I could have put it, so I’m sharing it with you in hopes of a few things. 

1. That you will take a look at your church life (if you go to church) and to see how you are involved with it. Is there something else that you could be doing to be a bigger part of God’s kingdom? 

2. Is there a gift or strength you have that you notice is lacking somewhere? If you do notice it, maybe you might think more about trying to find a way to use it and bless the church with it. 

3. If you are already in ministry, how have you been looking for volunteers? (I have not been doing a great job of stepping out of my comfort zone to ask people to volunteer. When people are asked specifically to volunteer, they are more likely to think more about it and are more likely (but not always) willing to help. 

-Peace and Blessings

Cody Marie

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THE CONNECTING CHURCH: MINISTRY*

1 PETER 2:4-10

by David Busic

There is a barrier in many churches today. It’s a wall that’s hard to climb over. More than a few have tried to scale it, only to fall flat on their face. It’s not exclusively a Kansas City problem. There seems to be a wall whether you live in New York, San Francisco, or Omaha.

That wall is called the ministry barrier. Here’s how it works: Every single Christian is called by God to be a minister. And yet in most congregations 20% of the people are doing 80% of the ministry. The question is: Why the barrier? Why have so many churches failed to motivate 80% of their people to engage in any kind of significant ministry?

Well, there are a couple of possible reasons: Either in the average church 80% of the people just don’t care about God’s call to ministry in their lives or the majority of people believe that God’s call to ministry is reserved only for a special few.

I don’t think the first reason is true. I believe the vast majority of Christians truly do want to make a difference for God. And yet I also believe that a ministry barrier exists today because of a predominant myth that has permeated the way we do church for well over 1,500 years. When that myth is really examined there is no scriptural validity, and yet its subtle and pervasive grip on the church has caused many people to believe it’s true.

THIS IS THE MYTH: Ministry is for “ministers.” And “ministers,” of course, means only ordained clergy type folks. Clergy are the professionals and laity are the amateurs. How we ever came to that conclusion is a mystery to me.

The ministry of the laity is nothing new. It is as old as the gospel itself. In fact, for the first 300 years of church history, the church had no clergy. It was made up of believers who understood they were to be apostles sent on a mission by the living Christ. And while different believers had different ministries, every Christian was expected to use his or her spiritual gifts for ministry. And as they did, the Church exploded, spreading like wildfire throughout the Roman Empire, literally turning their world upside down.

In time, though, ministry became professionalized. The nonprofessionals, or laity, were relegated to some kind of a second-class status that all but locked them out of recognized ministry. It was a heresy that essentially divided all believers into two classes—the clergy, or the “ministers,” and the laity, or the “nonministers.”

Bruce Larson addressed that issue when he wrote: With the phenomenal growth of that early church, both numerically and in influence, two classes of Christians emerged, leaders and spectators. The spectators were supposed to learn sound doctrine, to pray, sing, listen to sermons, and pay the bills. But when the question is asked, as it often is, “Why doesn’t the church do something about that?” THE CHURCH is synonymous with “the clergy.”

That was exactly the heresy that Martin Luther, a German monk, and the other Reformers of the 16th century fought against. That line of thinking began to lead the church of his day into practicing a theological sacerdotalism.

Now that’s a big word, but it has a simple definition. It basically meant that the clergy of the church, the priests, officially belonged to a special class that was poised between God and the laity, and that God would speak through Scripture to the people as interpreted by the priests, and then the people would speak back to God by confessing to the priests.

Martin Luther came along and said: “Wait a minute! That’s not biblical. The Bible teaches the priesthood of ALL believers.” And therefore a fundamental cry of the Reformation was a return to the biblical plan of the “priesthood of all believers,” which essentially taught that all Christians are potentially equal in both communion with God and ministry FOR God.

That means that the call of God upon a person’s life is not the prerogative of a special class. God does not lay claim to the life work of a few special people and leave the rest of us free to chase the American dream! Protestant churches all agree that every Christian is a minister. We believe that: “It was he [Christ] who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service” (Eph 4:12).

And yet what we believe theoretically in our heads and live practically in our lives are miles apart. In our head we believe what the New Testament says is true. But in our gut, many Christians still feel like the reverend/pastor/preacher is probably closer to God than the average layperson.

If you don’t believe that’s true, think about our conversations. We say the pastor is THE minister, and what he or she does is THE ministry. We say things like: “Have you met THE minister of my church? Hey, have you heard the news? David’s going to seminary to study for . . . THE ministry.”

In fact, if a pastor leaves a church to pursue another vocation we say: “He or she left THE ministry.” That’s why so many church signs read: “First Church of the Nazarene/ Worship 10:45 a.m./MINISTER: John Smith.” Why do we do that? Because many people believe when we say “the minister,” we mean a paid clergy person, and when we say “the ministry,” we’re talking about what the clergy does.

But, my brother and sister, every time we refer to the vocational ordained clergy as THE minister and what they do as THE ministry, we drive one more nail into the coffin of the priesthood of all believers.

1 Peter 2 is devoted to the priesthood of all believers. These are words that tell us about the way a church indwelled by the Spirit of God is to function within the kingdom of God.

Peter says that our lives in Christ are like a house that is being built. But it’s not just any house. The homes that you and I live in are built with inanimate objects like wood and bricks and mortar. But the house God is building is a spiritual house that is alive and active. And Jesus himself is both the cornerstone and capstone of that house.

The cornerstone is the most important stone in a building’s foundation. The capstone is the central stone in an arch, which balances the arch so that it will stand. And so the cornerstone of God’s house is Jesus and the capstone of God’s house is Jesus. Jesus is both the foundation and the pinnacle! He is the beginning and the end of God’s living spiritual house.

And so if Jesus Christ is the cornerstone and the capstone of this living spiritual house, who are the rest of the stones that make up the structure? Where are they coming from? Peter says that we are! We are the stones in God’s house!

When we come to Christ we become living stones placed in the spiritual house that God is building. And the word here for “stones” doesn’t just mean a rock that you might dig up out of a field. It’s talking about a dressed and fitted stone ready to be used in construction. And all of us who are Christians make up the edifice of God’s spiritual house.

You see, in the Old Testament the dwelling place of God’s presence was in the Temple. But in the New Testament everything changes and the dwelling place of God is now within every believer!

The apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian church: “Don’t you realize that all of you together are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God lives in you? God will bring ruin upon anyone who ruins this temple. For God’s temple is holy, and you Christians are that temple” (1 Cor 3:16-17).

Paul was saying that God’s new temple, God’s new dwelling place, is within us! And so when we say things like: “It’s good to be in your house today, Lord,” we’re not being totally biblical because that means we’re still one Testament behind.

We are the temple of God! We are the people of God! You and I are Almighty God’s chosen people. We are His folks!

What a privilege! But what a responsibility! Because the very reason we are being built into a spiritual house is so that we might become a holy priesthood set apart for God’s holy purposes. We are a HOLY priesthood! But we are also a ROYAL priesthood. Which means that we are a priesthood belonging to a King who gives us authority to be His ambassadors in the world.

Now it’s important to stop right here and ask ourselves a question: If we are living stones being built into a spiritual house, for the purpose of becoming God’s holy and royal priesthood, what does it mean to be a priest? I think that’s a pretty important question. If God is calling all of us to be priests, then what does it mean to be one?

In the Old Testament, priests were the mediators between God and people. They were the channels of communication from God and to God for the rest of the community.

They had the designated privilege of serving in the very presence of a holy God, and of “coming near” when no one else would dare. They were the select few who could enter the temple and offer sacrifices on behalf of the people, and only the high priest could go beyond the curtain to enter into the holy of holies, and that just once a year, to make atonement for the sins of the people.

But when Jesus died on the Cross and atoned for our sins, once and for all, access into the presence of God was opened for all people. The veil that once separated the holy from the unholy, the sacred from the secular, has been ripped in half—torn from top to bottom! Because of his sacrifice, Jesus has become our great High Priest, and access to God is no longer for a privileged few, but has now been extended to all who believe.

We are the new priesthood! And what that means is that you and I have been set apart as God’s people to announce the mighty works of God, to declare His glory, and to proclaim the miracle of our redemption through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And that’s the reason the people of God exist!

You have a priestly calling in your daily interaction with people.

You are conduits between God and His world.

You are called to be ambassadors of God’s reconciling love!

You are called to bring their needs and concerns to God in intercessory ways!

And you are called to offer spiritual sacrifices of the gifts and calling that God has give specifically to you!

Why? Because you are a holy, royal priesthood!

But do you know what I am discovering? I am finding that the “priesthood of all believers” and the invitation to ministry is not all that appealing to some folks today. Because it sounds like more work, and most of us already have all the work we can do. It sounds like more responsibility, and most of us are already staggering under loads that are already too heavy.

I remember what Barbara Brown Taylor wrote about the woman who listened to her speech on the ministry of the laity as God’s best hope for the world and said: “I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be that important.”

Barbara said: “I understood what she was saying. Like many of those who sit beside her at church, she hears the invitation to ministry as an invitation to do more—to lead the New Members Class or cook supper for someone who’s just come home from the hospital or teach Vacation Bible School.

Or she hears the invitation of ministry as an invitation to be more—to be more generous, more loving, more religious. No one ever introduced her to the idea that her ministry might involve being just who she already is and doing just what she already does, with one difference: namely, that she understand herself to be God’s person in who she already is and in what she already does.”

I mentioned Martin Luther earlier. When talking about ministry, Luther made a careful distinction between a Christian’s vocation and a Christian’s office.

Offices are what we do for a living—teacher, accountant, homemaker. None of them are particularly more endearing to the heart of God than another. In our offices we exercise the diversity of our gifts, playing our parts in the ongoing life of the world.

Our Christian vocation is different from that. While our offices may be different, as Christians our vocation is the same. We are called to share Christ’s ministry in the world as His holy priesthood. And whether you deliver babies or deliver mail that is a common calling for every believer! Another way to say that is: Whatever our individual offices (plural) are in the world, our mutual vocation(singular) is to serve God through those offices.

That is a vision that takes a lot of strength to see clearly, because what we’re talking about is learning to see in a different way. To believe in your divinely ordained priesthood is to see the extraordinarydimensions of your very ordinary life. It is to see the hand of God at work in the world and to see your very own hands as necessary to that work.

And it doesn’t matter if those hands are putting diapers on babies or washing dishes or changing the oil in a car or balancing a corporate account . . . they are God’s hands claimed by God at the moment He saved you, to accomplish His will on earth.

What a holy calling that is! And many of you take that very seriously. Many of you have said: “Lord, take my life and use it for Your glory. I want to pour myself out for others! We’ll go where Youwant us to go and do what You want us to do, even if it costs us everything . . . even our very lives, if that’s what we’re called to do.”

And when you said those things, you meant every word of it! But maybe what you thought giving your all to God was, as Fred Craddock has said, is like taking a $1,000 bill and laying it on the table: “Here’s my life, Lord. I’m giving it all.”

But the reality for most of us is that He sends us to the bank and has us cash in the $1,000 for quarters. We go through life putting out 25 cents here and 50 cents there.

Listening to the neighbor kid’s troubles instead of saying, “Get lost.”

Teaching a Sunday School class full of energetic third graders.

Going to a committee meeting.

Giving a Dixie-cup of water to a shaky old man in a nursing home.

And we begin to discover that very often our life to Christ isn’t as glorious as we thought. It’s done in all those little acts of love, 25 cents at a time. In some ways it would be easier to go out in a flash of glory—because it’s harder to live the Christian life little by little over the long haul.

That means a serious commitment to your holy priesthood. But what a blessing . . . and what an honor!

There are plenty who decline the honor, finding it either too frightening or too intrusive to be taken seriously, but those willing to accept the challenge find themselves living an extraordinary adventure!

You have a purpose in the world! We are a holy and royal priesthood! But it is not the priesthood of the believer. It is the priesthood of all believers. The house is no individual. We are living stones placed together. Our offices may be different—but our vocation is the same. And we do it together.

*Sermon by David Busic given at Lenexa Central Church of the Nazarene, Lenexa, Kansas, 2002.

[gordonwilliamsweb]

‘So glad to be alive for my kids’

To his kids, Josh Crandall-Morgan is a living jungle gym—a fun-loving dad who loves to get on the ground and play.

A stroke changed that in an instant.

Suddenly, Josh lay in a hospital bed, separated from his wife, Caitlyn, and their four children.

With his left side paralyzed, he began the tough task of regaining strength and control of his leg and arm.

Making his recovery especially challenging: Visitor restrictions in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. His family couldn’t be by his side during much of his stay at the Inpatient Acute Rehabilitation Center at Spectrum Health Blodgett Hospital.

Along the long road back, he clung to his goal—to return to his family—for the strength to keep going.

“They are everything to me,” said Josh, a 30-year-old from Grand Rapids, Michigan. “That is the whole reason I wanted to get out of the hospital—to see my kids.”

High blood pressure and headaches

Josh never expected to suffer a stroke at age 30.

He has always been active. He grew up playing baseball in the Kentwood Baseball League, and still likes to play ball. He works for his dad, Jim Morgan, in his heating and cooling business.

He also has dealt with high blood pressure for most of his life.

In early February, about a week after his daughter Neveah Rae was born, his headaches became severe.

“He said he felt it was about to explode,” his dad, Jim, said. “We sent him to the hospital and they said his blood pressure was way too high.”

While in Spectrum Health Butterworth Hospital, Josh suffered a stroke on the right side of his brain, in the middle cerebral artery, which affected his ability to move the left side of his body, said Shastin Shull, MD, a physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist.

“He was extremely, profoundly affected,” she said.

His dad recalls looking at an MRI scan of his son’s brain.

“Almost the whole right side of his brain was shaded in white,” indicating damage, he said.

When Josh arrived at the Inpatient Rehabilitation Center, he couldn’t sit up without help. With a tracheostomy keeping his airway open, he couldn’t speak.

His family members remained by his side at the hospital every day until March 9. That’s when the state enacted visitor restrictions to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Josh had a hard time comprehending why he was in the hospital—and why he couldn’t see his family.

“At first, I was a little delusional,” he said.

He used a whiteboard to write his thoughts. He scrawled the words: “I need help.”

Sometimes, his messages proved hard to read, but his care team understood his struggles and did all they could to reassure him, said physical therapist Linda Rusiecki.

As the swelling in his throat subsided, Josh received a speaking valve. The one-way valve allowed him to breathe air in through the tracheostomy and exhale through his nose and mouth—which made it possible for him to speak.

“That made a huge difference because he was able to communicate and make his needs known,” Rusiecki said. “He also could better comprehend what was going on.”

He also could talk to his family—and kept in constant contact with phone calls and video chats.

“I got to see my wife and kids—that was amazing,” he said. “I knew if I could talk to them and see them, I was going to be all right.”

The family watched through the video screen as he went through therapy sessions.

“That was a blessing,” Jim said. “We wish we could have been there, but that was the next best thing—to see his progress.”

Working toward independence

Rusiecki described Josh’s steady progress toward mobility.

At first, he worked on keeping his balance while sitting on the edge of a mat table.

He also used a tilt table, which gradually raised him from a lying to a standing position. This helped his body—and blood pressure—adjust to being upright after so many days of lying in a bed.

Once he had the tracheostomy capped, and later removed, Josh developed enough trunk control to stand.

He began to use a Rifton E-Pacer support device as he took his first steps. Josh also received electrical stimulation to his leg muscles from a device called a Bioness L300 Go.

Speech therapy helped him relearn to eat food, after having a tracheostomy and a feeding tube. He started with thickened liquids and progressed in stages, until he was able to eat enough solid foods to have the feeding tube removed.

And occupational therapists helped him work on using his left arm. Although he will need to continue therapy, “he does have motor function in his arm,” Dr. Shull said.

Josh especially liked working on his ability to walk. He drew on the persistence he learned as a pitcher, pushing himself to go farther each day.

“He has a very colorful personality,” Rusiecki said. “He was always joking, always very determined. And he always said thank you.”

By the time he left the hospital in early May—three months after his stroke—he could walk using a four-pronged cane. Returning home, his spirit soared at a welcome sight.

“My kids ran up to me and gave me a hug. They were hugging my legs and stuff,” he said. “It felt amazing.”

“That’s his life right there,” said his wife, Caitlyn. “He is a wonderful dad.

“I am very proud of him. He has been through a lot. But he is strong, very strong. I love that about him.”

Dr. Shull praised Josh for his willingness to work hard and persevere, day after day.

“It’s really phenomenal determination on his part,” she said. “That’s part of what got him through this. Given where he came from and the severity of his stroke, it’s amazing he is able to be out in the community and home with his family right now.”

Forging ahead

Josh hopes to share his experience with others who have high blood pressure, to encourage them to treat the condition seriously.

“I want people to know it’s not a joke. Take your pills and get checkups,” he said. “I didn’t do that at all. But I’m making better choices now.”

With help from his parents and wife, Josh plans to continue rehab at home, improving his ability to walk and regaining the use of the left arm and hand.

“I am determined,” he said. “I will push myself to the limit.”

And he looks forward to playing with his children, Aiden, 10, Joshua, 4, Mikayla, 2, and his newborn baby, Neveah.

“I’m so glad to be alive for my kids,” he said.

‘So glad to be alive for my kids’ published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

[michellelinkous]

‘So glad to be alive for my kids’

To his kids, Josh Crandall-Morgan is a living jungle gym—a fun-loving dad who loves to get on the ground and play.

A stroke changed that in an instant.

Suddenly, Josh lay in a hospital bed, separated from his wife, Caitlyn, and their four children.

With his left side paralyzed, he began the tough task of regaining strength and control of his leg and arm.

Making his recovery especially challenging: Visitor restrictions in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. His family couldn’t be by his side during much of his stay at the Inpatient Acute Rehabilitation Center at Spectrum Health Blodgett Hospital.

Along the long road back, he clung to his goal—to return to his family—for the strength to keep going.

“They are everything to me,” said Josh, a 30-year-old from Grand Rapids, Michigan. “That is the whole reason I wanted to get out of the hospital—to see my kids.”

High blood pressure and headaches

Josh never expected to suffer a stroke at age 30.

He has always been active. He grew up playing baseball in the Kentwood Baseball League, and still likes to play ball. He works for his dad, Jim Morgan, in his heating and cooling business.

He also has dealt with high blood pressure for most of his life.

In early February, about a week after his daughter Neveah Rae was born, his headaches became severe.

“He said he felt it was about to explode,” his dad, Jim, said. “We sent him to the hospital and they said his blood pressure was way too high.”

While in Spectrum Health Butterworth Hospital, Josh suffered a stroke on the right side of his brain, in the middle cerebral artery, which affected his ability to move the left side of his body, said Shastin Shull, MD, a physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist.

“He was extremely, profoundly affected,” she said.

His dad recalls looking at an MRI scan of his son’s brain.

“Almost the whole right side of his brain was shaded in white,” indicating damage, he said.

When Josh arrived at the Inpatient Rehabilitation Center, he couldn’t sit up without help. With a tracheostomy keeping his airway open, he couldn’t speak.

His family members remained by his side at the hospital every day until March 9. That’s when the state enacted visitor restrictions to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Josh had a hard time comprehending why he was in the hospital—and why he couldn’t see his family.

“At first, I was a little delusional,” he said.

He used a whiteboard to write his thoughts. He scrawled the words: “I need help.”

Sometimes, his messages proved hard to read, but his care team understood his struggles and did all they could to reassure him, said physical therapist Linda Rusiecki.

As the swelling in his throat subsided, Josh received a speaking valve. The one-way valve allowed him to breathe air in through the tracheostomy and exhale through his nose and mouth—which made it possible for him to speak.

“That made a huge difference because he was able to communicate and make his needs known,” Rusiecki said. “He also could better comprehend what was going on.”

He also could talk to his family—and kept in constant contact with phone calls and video chats.

“I got to see my wife and kids—that was amazing,” he said. “I knew if I could talk to them and see them, I was going to be all right.”

The family watched through the video screen as he went through therapy sessions.

“That was a blessing,” Jim said. “We wish we could have been there, but that was the next best thing—to see his progress.”

Working toward independence

Rusiecki described Josh’s steady progress toward mobility.

At first, he worked on keeping his balance while sitting on the edge of a mat table.

He also used a tilt table, which gradually raised him from a lying to a standing position. This helped his body—and blood pressure—adjust to being upright after so many days of lying in a bed.

Once he had the tracheostomy capped, and later removed, Josh developed enough trunk control to stand.

He began to use a Rifton E-Pacer support device as he took his first steps. Josh also received electrical stimulation to his leg muscles from a device called a Bioness L300 Go.

Speech therapy helped him relearn to eat food, after having a tracheostomy and a feeding tube. He started with thickened liquids and progressed in stages, until he was able to eat enough solid foods to have the feeding tube removed.

And occupational therapists helped him work on using his left arm. Although he will need to continue therapy, “he does have motor function in his arm,” Dr. Shull said.

Josh especially liked working on his ability to walk. He drew on the persistence he learned as a pitcher, pushing himself to go farther each day.

“He has a very colorful personality,” Rusiecki said. “He was always joking, always very determined. And he always said thank you.”

By the time he left the hospital in early May—three months after his stroke—he could walk using a four-pronged cane. Returning home, his spirit soared at a welcome sight.

“My kids ran up to me and gave me a hug. They were hugging my legs and stuff,” he said. “It felt amazing.”

“That’s his life right there,” said his wife, Caitlyn. “He is a wonderful dad.

“I am very proud of him. He has been through a lot. But he is strong, very strong. I love that about him.”

Dr. Shull praised Josh for his willingness to work hard and persevere, day after day.

“It’s really phenomenal determination on his part,” she said. “That’s part of what got him through this. Given where he came from and the severity of his stroke, it’s amazing he is able to be out in the community and home with his family right now.”

Forging ahead

Josh hopes to share his experience with others who have high blood pressure, to encourage them to treat the condition seriously.

“I want people to know it’s not a joke. Take your pills and get checkups,” he said. “I didn’t do that at all. But I’m making better choices now.”

With help from his parents and wife, Josh plans to continue rehab at home, improving his ability to walk and regaining the use of the left arm and hand.

“I am determined,” he said. “I will push myself to the limit.”

And he looks forward to playing with his children, Aiden, 10, Joshua, 4, Mikayla, 2, and his newborn baby, Neveah.

“I’m so glad to be alive for my kids,” he said.

‘So glad to be alive for my kids’ published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.tumblr.com/

[sagebodisattva]

Intimacy with Uncertainty

What I am going to propose to you right now, is a return to intimacy with uncertainty. Now, that sounds like a bit of an oxymoron, right? For how could anyone become intimate with an ambiguous state that is unpredictable, variable, inconstant, and unreliable? This seems to be a reasonable assumption, no? Well, therein may be the difficulty right there. It reveals how estranged we have become with the basic non-quality of our true non-nature. Seeking to be certain represents a form of escapism, because it reinforces losing touch with what we are and encourages identification with what we are not; which becomes compounded into mental habit, and supported by the general preference for familiarity that human beings have, which becomes the basis for the idea that a state of uncertainty is "bad", which then culminates into the delusional state.

Once the delusional state develops, that is, the belief that reality is an external medium, then this mindset supplements itself and verifies itself to itself, which becomes a self fulfilling prophecy of sorts, where then certainty makes sense, for it helps us with survival. It seems perfectly rational, logical and reasonable to seek certainty, because it assists mankind in his extrinsic quest, making it easier to gather resources, plan events, coordinate activities, and meet the rising demands of people and the world.

Fair enough, but I think we've come to the point where the truth can now be told and known. We don't have to keep feeding into the lie because raw survival has become less of an issue with the development of civilization; and we can use the rationality, logic and common sense towards better functions. Indeed, it would be a misuse of these tools to keep on employing them in archaic applications. Embodying the lie makes what's simple become very painful and arduous. It turns an effortless effort into a great strenuous struggle, which is all predicated on the lie that physicality is a external material state.

Our ancestors can't be blamed, for they had no idea that reality is interconnected with the mind, and that the source of awareness is within, experiencing the reflection of a stream of mental projections of varying densities. Not knowing this, which, for purely instinctual consciousness, is actually impossible, and also quite unnecessary for this type operating system, is understandable, for it didn't even become an option until the advent of self awareness. And with self awareness, it isn't immediately discernible, as this level of consciousness is starting from delusion and has to take gradual steps towards lucidity in order to realize the actual configurations of the reality, which then brings clarity to the aspects of truth and illusion. I think we are now able to take those first steps towards the truth.

The old description of reality isn't sustainable. We are rapidly approaching an impasse. A critical mass, so to speak, which is an apt descriptor in more ways then one. You can keep on evading the truth and perpetuating the lie, but it's only going to lead to more suffering, more bloodshed, more quandary and more death. It doesn't make any sense. It would be like a creature developing wings and not bothering to pursue figuring out how to use them. So many of the issues and difficulties that face mankind remain unsolvable by the refusal to move into enlightenment. And so many of the philosophical questions and scientific inquires will never lead mankind to any answers for so long as we stubbornly cling to a false description. A projected phantasmagorical phantom world only adds up to enough to provide a frame of reference. It's always gonna have holes, missing links and contradictions because we are seeking to tie it all together based on a false premise. That's why obtaining an answer always leads to more questions. That's why, often, our inquiries only lead to a dead end, and this is where we begin reaching, struggling to bridge the gap with our theories and far stretches of inductive reasoning. God? The Big Bang? Crude forces and chemistry? A universe? A world? Evolution? Mankind? These are all attempts to legitimize the phantom world into being an independent self sustaining medium. Realize that all of these explanations will always leave us a bit short because they are taking the investigative approach with a false assumption. And you can never hope to answer the larger questions that will inevitably arise from these erroneous conclusions.

What, you think by saying we are evolutionary creatures, that came into existence on a planet located in a universe that exploded into existence, actually answers anything? Do you know how absurd that is? Or maybe perhaps some supreme deity magically created a universe and gave you an existence? That's even doubly absurd. But what both of these theories share in common is a complete lack of responsibility for reality, which is exactly what we like, don't we? Okay, well, you can't make a case for any of that if you can't substantiate the context, which is always of prime importance, for knowing how to treat information relies heavily on the meta data. You can't even deal with information properly unless it is appreciated within the right framework, and trying to correlate all these things through an externalization mind set will never lead to the truth. To understand reality, it's helpful to know what reality is. Reality is that which is true and unwavering, because the truth is the truth due to it's constancy. Illusion is that which is false and is impermanent because illusion is illusion due to it's ephemeral nature. So, when trying to determine what reality is, following these basic guidelines will greatly help to distinguish truth from illusion. What we usually identify as reality is actually illusion, as all aspects of the material are ephemeral. And what we usually classify as illusion is actually reality, as pure awareness of the ephemeral is always so, and hence that which could be called true. Delusions are therefor associative relationships with transient qualities, aka illusions, that are empty of substantiality, but provide insulation from the raw pure truth; that which we seek to evade because it can't be familiarized or reduced to a mundane feature. This is where identifications with mortality, restriction, locality and consequentialism are established. So the illusion is used as a proxy substitution to serve as a simulacrum of a qualitative state of familiarity that isn't an innate feature of potentiality.

This process is perhaps a prerequisite for the eventually emergence of self awareness, but certainly not meant to become a wallowing ground, for if so, the suffering soon comes to rouse us from our sublunary oubliettes. This is where the doorway towards lucidity can be potentially found. Increasing lucidity reveals more and more illusion until there is finally a breakthrough, which may or may not, come all at once in total illumination, or gradually in a series of culminating waves of escalating realizations. Enlightenment is the stasis between potentiality and illusion, where there is self awareness, whilst there is an awareness of that which is self aware, and the personified ego is revealed as part of the illusion. This is where it becomes abundantly clear that our frame of reference is but a small raft, adrift in vast sea of unrealized possibilities. Following lucidity all the way to it's source will bring us face to no face with nothingness; a non-introduction to pure potentiality, the wellspring of all manifestations. This is your origin. This is your fundamental foundation. This is that, which isn't a this or a that, or even an is. It doesn't look like anything, nor is similar or comparable to any phenomenal reference. It is completely free of all distinctions, eternal, infinite, undefined, and beyond all labels. And this is why you can never become familiar with it, despite it being always ever the case. The uncertainty never wears off, nor does it eventually become certain. But that doesn't mean you can't become intimate with uncertainty. There's no quality to get to know, but a way to get to know a lack of quality. There isn't anything to know that will bring you comfort, but a comfort that can be established with not knowing. If you are gonna let your friendship with a shape shifting agency that takes on all appearances, but has no original shape or appearance, be conditional to this agency not changing, or looking a certain way, or holding a certain appearance, or maintaining a certain shape, then it won't be much of a friendship.

In fact, these type of sine qua non is what usually serves as the seeds of conflict, hatred, separation, aversion and adversity. Or, we can accept the ever changing constant unconditionally, and be okay with it, exactly as it is, the is, of which, isn't an is, or an isn't, and simply recognize this as an expression of source... So you can be certain about uncertainty, just as long as you know, that your certainty about uncertainty, is also uncertain. If you can find comfort in this complete uncertainty, you will have found home.

[ixvyupdates]

Here’s How the #MeToo Movement Is Continuing in Our Schools

In her Cecil B. DeMille Award acceptance speech at the Golden Globes, Oprah Winfrey addressed young girls around the globe by saying, “When that new day finally dawns, it will be because of a lot of magnificent women, and some pretty phenomenal men, fighting hard to make sure that they become the leaders who take us to the time when nobody ever has to say ‘Me Too’ again.” She spoke of a future free of gender inequality and abuse, stating that the time for that kind of behavior is up, and a new day is now “on the horizon.”

“Me too”—two words that, first shared on social media in 2006 by Tarana Burke, have spread virally over the past few months in the form of a hashtag and have been used to expose the all-too-enormous presence of sexual assault and harassment that has affected the lives of countless people in today’s world.

But what about the youth Winfrey was addressing?

“The idea is so foreign to people, that there could be sexual assault and an epidemic of sexual harassment and assault in schools,” said Esther Warkov, executive director of Stop Sexual Assault in Schools (SSAIS), a nonprofit organization she co-founded after her own daughter was raped during a school field trip in 2012.

SSAIS was created to address K-12 students’ rights regarding sexual harassment and assault in schools. “Most people think that schools are a safe place to send their kids,” Warkov said, “when that’s not really true.”

She explained that SSAIS works to provide resources to students, K-12 schools and organizations “so that the right to an equal education is not compromised by sexual harassment, sexual assault and gender discrimination.”

At the beginning of January, the organization also launched the #MeTooK12 campaign to spread awareness about how this issue affects youth. According to Warkov, the hashtag spotlights the widespread sexual harassment that students experience before entering college or the workforce, and underscores the urgency of addressing this problem in early education.

“Obviously we want to pay homage to the creators of #MeToo, and at the same time we want to show that #MeToo is a movement that spreads horizontally,” she said. “By linking the K-12 part of it, it shows that there is really not a separation between K-12 and #MeToo—it’s one massive problem that actually starts in childhood.”

“Students are probably the most vulnerable in this entire problem. Because they’re often unable to speak out for themselves, their complaints are silenced through intimidation and fear—fear of retaliation, fear of punishment, fear of social isolation for reporting—so it’s really important that we have a hashtag that talks about their unique vulnerability.”

This ‘vulnerability’ is backed up by data

Although it is rarely reported by both students and schools—despite the fact that, according to Warkov, schools are required to collect data on this issue—in 2014, the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights reported receiving more sex-discrimination complaints than ever. In 2011, the American Association of University Women (AAUW) found that nearly half of all students surveyed experienced some sort of sexual harassment over the course of the school year, and 87 percent said it had a negative effect on them.

“The prevalence of sexual harassment in grades 7–12 comes as a surprise to many, in part because it is rarely reported,” concluded the AAUW.

“Among students who were sexually harassed, about 9 percent reported the incident to a teacher, guidance counselor or other adult at school (12 percent of girls and 5 percent of boys). Just a quarter (27 percent) of students said they talked about it with parents or family members (including siblings), and only about one quarter (23 percent) spoke with friends.”

“Girls were more likely than boys to talk with parents and other family members (32 percent versus 20 percent) and more likely than boys to talk with friends (29 percent versus 15 percent). Still, half of the students who were sexually harassed in the 2010–11 school year said they did nothing afterward in response to sexual harassment.”

As #MeToo moves into schools, Warkov stresses the age of this issue and how addressing it is long overdue.

“This has been on people’s radar for a long time, but no one [has really done or is] really doing anything about it for the most part,” she said.

She thinks that most kids aren’t educated enough about this subject, and that anything from classes on the subject to posters on the walls or daily announcements about the issue could make a difference.

“I would like to see schools supporting anti-sexual harassment campaigns in school,” she said. “Every year of a student’s education, beginning in kindergarten, there should be age-appropriate education about sexual harassment [and] what constitutes sexual harassment.”

Sophie Colson, a senior at Santa Fe High School, agrees. “I don’t believe that enough teens are educated on this,” she said.

“It’s something that isn’t dealt with effectively enough in sex education, nor in any discourse,” Colson said. “People don’t want to talk about it because it’s uncomfortable, but if we turned a blind eye from every uncomfortable thing, there would be no change.”

SSAIS has put all of its education online, allowing students around the country to access resources that can help with anything from how to get help if they’re being sexually harassed and their school is being unresponsive, to how to start a gender equity club.

“Anyone that wants to learn about their civil rights can do so by accessing all the resources on our website,” Warkov said.

Colson stresses the important role young people play in all of this.

“I think that the youth should be getting more involved in the movement, and should be calling out their friends—male, female, nonbinary—it doesn’t matter who you are, as long as you open your mouth and take action,” she said.

This movement affects everyone. “It’s not just a female problem…students of all genders are sexually harassed, boys are sexually harassed…LGBTQ students are harassed at the highest rate,” said Warkov. “This isn’t just a movement to protect female students—it’s to protect all students.”

Warkov believes that everyone in the school community needs to get involved and emphasizes the importance of following Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits sexual discrimination in federally funded educational settings (including both public and some private schools). This, Warkov said, is something many schools are lacking.

“The responsibility is on the schools to do the right thing, and they’re just not doing it for the most part.”

Santa Fe Public Schools defines sexual harassment as “harassment based on sex or of a sexual nature; gender harassment; and harassment based on pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions.”

The Sexual Harassment Policy contract states, “Harassment occurs when unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature is so severe, persistent, or pervasive that it affects a student’s ability to participate in or benefit from an education program or activity, or an employee’s work environment, or creates an intimidating, threatening or abusive educational or work environment. A hostile environment can be created by a school employee, another student, a parent or even someone visiting the school, such as a student, or employee from another school.”

If an SFPS student feels they are being harassed or discriminated against in the school system on the basis of sex (or anything else such as race, national origin, disability, age, etc.), the district offers several methods to report it (compliant with SFPS’s Board of Education Policy 330), including talking to a district or school employee and filling out a District Complaint Form, which is available on the SFPS website.

It’s Bigger Than The Schools

Warkov stresses that increasing the reporting of this kind of behavior in schools is just one of the changes that will result in changes in society.

“Students have years to [build poor habits] of sexual harassment and even sexual assault in K-12 schools, so if you want to address the problem at the source, you have to stop enabling this kind of behavior,” she said. “The school is a microcosm of the larger world, so as the change is made at school, there’s going to be a beneficial effect on society because you won’t see all of these perpetrators feeling that they can continue this sexual harassment in college and the workplace.”

Isaac Hernandez, another senior at SFHS, agrees that a big part of this issue is entrenched attitudes and that it must be taken seriously.

“I think it’s the culture behind it,” he said. “A lot of people appropriate rape culture a lot of the time, and they make it seem like it’s OK. It’s like a watering down of it…so that adds to it.”

“I think what schools could do is [provide] the resources, or have teachers call out students, or enforce [policies against the use of] those kinds of jokes or…sexual innuendos. Let them know that’s not OK, and that by saying those things they’re contributing to that kind of [culture].”

Now that this issue is being talked about more than ever with recent movements coming after #MeToo, such as Time’s Up—a call for change from women in the entertainment industry to address inequality in the workplace that also took center stage at the Golden Globes—one can’t help but wonder what it means for teens today as they enter a bigger world.

“I hope that our society and our workplace are revolutionized,” said Colson. “I think this movement needs to explode even more. This is really only the beginning of something that we are going to see grow in our lifetime. I would like to believe the punishment for this behavior becomes even harsher, and that there is a deeper understanding about the issue at hand, so much so that everyone everywhere is fighting to stop it.”

“The #MeToo/Time’s Up movement is very empowering to me,” she continued. “It means a lot to be a part of this revolution for women. I think this is the first time we are getting to see women taken seriously about their assault, and the removal of the shame around it for victims.”

And the future?

Warkov hopes that “schools are proactive in being trained in their responsibilities and abiding by the civil rights laws they’re supposed to.”

She advocates for every school to have a trained Title IX coordinator whose job it would be to make sure that Title IX is properly implemented, including proactively addressing sexual harassment and assault before they occur, protecting students who report sexual harassment and sexual assault and making sure that victims’ needs are prioritized over perpetrators’.

Colson hopes to find the source of the problem.

“The difficult thing is, yes, we can call out those who have assaulted, we can fire and ostracize them, which we should, but I think we need to start addressing and exploring the depth and root of the issue,” she said. “There is so much beyond calling out the assault; we must now start to address why.”

Hernandez added, “I hope that we can just respect each other, have a loving community where a person shouldn’t feel like they’re endangered anymore, where we don’t have to have these kinds of talks about sexual harassment because it’s not there—maybe live in a world where we all respect each other, and women have the same opportunities and rights as men.”

“The start of ‘a new day’ can only happen once discourse starts,” added Colson, “and now that it has, now that all of this is being taken seriously, I think that anything is possible.”

An original version of this post appeared on The Demon Tattler as Schools Say, “Me Too”.

Photo by CHRISTINA CORSO, Twenty20-licensed.

Here’s How the #MeToo Movement Is Continuing in Our Schools syndicated from https://sapsnkraguide.wordpress.com

[recentanimenews]

Tsuki ga Kirei – 07

It ain’t just the game of thrones—in the game of love, you win or you die…romantically speaking. It’s take no prisoners; shit or get off the pot; even moreso when you’re young and just figuring this stuff out.

With the Dome City amusement park as the setting for this phenomenal episode, Akane, Kotarou, Chinatsu and Hira all learn harsh lessons about the game they’re all playing, and how being on the winning side can be fleeting. It’s a side that must be defended.

I honestly can’t stop snickering at Kotarou’s face while on the roller coaster. That is the face of someone very unhappy he didn’t decline Chinatsu’s suggestion they sit together. He might as well be shouting over the roar of the coaster “I’VE MADE A HUGE MISTAKE!”

Because he’s next to Chinatsu, Akane is next to Hira, and because she doesn’t handle coasters so hot, it’s Hira, not Chinatsu, who serves as her support during and after the ride. It doesn’t help Kotarou that the majority of the rest of the group is shipping Akane and Hira (except Roman, who we learn has had his suspicions about Kotarou and Akane before Kotarou confirms it).

Kotarou and Akane simply start out the trip all wrong, due to their general passivity in a scenario that requires activity. Akane ends up with Hira a lot of the time, but did nothing to prevent it; Kotarou ends up with a super-aggressive Chinatsu, who understands she’s got to hustle to have any chance over Akane…and may even be moving so fast and forcefully because she already knows she has no chance.

In either case, after Kotarou sees Akane with Hira, Akane sees Kotarou with Chinatsu, and after some time passes, Kotarou sees Akane with Hira AGAIN, Kotarou has finally had it; he’s groaned his last ineffectual groan. Time for some muthafuckin’ ACTION!

He calls out to Akane, then tells Hira he’s in a relationship with her, which she backs up. He then takes her by the hand and they walk off, just in time for Chinatsu to spot them together. As her tears start to fall on the souvenir photo of her and Kotarou on the coaster, I can’t help but feel for her. She got off to a good start, but ends up running out of steam.

After a great series of reactions from the group after Roman confirms Kotarou and Akane are going out (which NO one else saw coming), the happy new couple finally has their precious time alone. What had felt like such a delicate bond strengthens with each activity they do together.

I appreciate how they mirrored my own glee over the whole situation with lots of beaming and giddy laughter, neither of them able to contain their elation at being able to hang out together.

After eating together for the first time, going on various rides and to a haunted house, the two close in closer and closer for a couple selfie, and their bubbly contentment only intensifies when they see how much like a couple they look in the photo.

Meanwhile, Chinatsu returns to the group, her eyes raw from crying, and her girl-friends get the bad news that Kotarou chose Akane over her. Chinatsu might’ve stolen Akane for the coaster and gotten temporarily “lost” with him, Akane ends up stealing him back, though mostly thanks to Kotarou taking action.

No matter; it’s the action Akane wanted to be taken. She’ll be the proactive one next time. As the fireworks explode across the night sky, Kotarou takes her hands in his and leans in for a kiss, and Akane leans in right back.

A nosy little shrimp interrupts them (where are your damn parents, kid?), but they get so goshdarned close to kissing, I’m going to go ahead and call it a kiss, even if it isn’t officially their first kiss. Neither of them bailed out; it was a matter of being surprised by an outside stimulus. Close enough, I say!

Chinatsu…she was never that close, because Kotarou simply isn’t interested in her the way he is in Akane, just as Akane isn’t into Hira that way. At the end of the night, Akane and Kotarou are exactly where they should be, where they want to be.

hen Chinatsu texts Akane that she couldn’t confess, Akane says “Sorry” to herself. I’ve no doubt she feels bad about Chinatsu getting hurt. Chinatsu was the one who chose to keep going even though she knew Akane was with Kotarou, but Akane could have been more forceful in discouraging her.

But at the end of the day, when made to choose between her happiness and Chinatsu’s, there is no choice. Akane won the game today, as did Kotarou. Here’s hoping the wins keep coming.

By: sesameacrylic

[samanthamoreno534-blog]

When you are actually raising children, these essential approaches come in helpful. Parenting guidance improvements therefore usually that this is actually simple to seem like you're doing that inappropriate whatever. Parenting is actually everything about your partnership along with your child.

Kids are consistently parched as well as consistently must pee. Even if they mention they are actually certainly not, when confronted with a glass from water or a potty, they'll do it. Neglect your mother-in-law. She recognizes nothing at all. Being thereis a large part of parenting. Certainly not only being actually literally found, however mindfully and also psychologically existing, as well. When you return from job, if whatsoever feasible, leave your phone in your bag and also simply exist for your kid for the initial portion of your time (10 moments? an hour? it depends on you). Regardless of whether you are actually emphasized off your day as well as crabby concerning something, it is actually therefore necessary to place that apart for some premium opportunity with your little ones, before you introduce in to supper or even going to bed or whatever homework you need to perform. Actually, often the kid is actually too busy for top quality time (playing intensely or even carrying out homework) yet just knowing that you exist and readily available sufficients!

Find out which duties they such as. My child enjoys having the rubbish out as well as my young boys like emptying the dish washer and vacuuming. The one they all contest? Washing the stovetop. I don't obtain this either. I presumed their heads would explode in exhilaration when I instructed them exactly how to perform the laundry washing. The task they detest? Cleansing their space. To ensure's consistently a wreck, but the stovetop is actually typically tidy. I can easily cope with that. Purchase fluorescent beaniesfor your youngsters in the wintertime. They can easily work however they can't conceal!

Bear in mind, too, that your child is actually carrying out the most ideal she can. At a youthful age, she does not possess the abilities and also strategies to take care of the sensations that come with being actually individual. Our company're all merely performing our finest to browse with lifestyle. The even more our team remember this, the even more it could assist us to possess compassion when someone-- your child, your husband or wife, your own self, or anyone else in your lifestyle-- is struggling. Self-care is often neglected in our hectic daily lifestyles. When you are stressed out as well as fatigued all the opportunity, this's complicated to be an efficient parent. By practicing self-care, you will definitely possess the power to tackle your child's behavior as well as feel inspired to regularly use brand-new parenting tools. Possessing a "self care plan may be valuable over time from stress. This may be everything you wish this to be, off doing an activity you enjoy, participating in bodily relaxation, journaling, or even chatting with somebody about the issues you are actually experiencing. When they are anxious or even in highly emotional scenarios, numerous of the households our company communicate along with opinion on just how helpful this is to possess the option to name our team. We're right here to aid in those specific moments.

Self-control is quiting something you wish for something you wish a lot more. That is actually crucial as a child matures. If they would like to acquire proficient at something, they must learn how to endure on their own with the challenging locations. Empathize with the irritation and promote your child to operate through the problem if his learn tracks won't suit together or even her problem is actually as well tough. OK, you can not constantly observe that procedure. However play is actually a child's job. If they enjoy carrying out something so much that they lose on their own in that, that's the type of passion as well as circulation they'll need to achieve success in whatever they perform as an adult.

A trouble shared is actually a concern halved (or at least, strengthened). A great social team could be a lifeline as a parent, whether your good friends are nearby, or even on Mumsnet or various other social networking sites. This is specifically essential if you are at home yourself with young kids and also do certainly not possess family help to hand. Everybody possesses poor times, and also everyone requires help at times, so don't fear to share exactly how poor your day has been actually. Certainly not simply is going to it make every person else feel much better, but that may motivate others to speak up regarding their have problem with parenting too, which consequently will assist you.

Many teens and tweens regretfully report that there are aspects of which they cannot talk along with their parents, either considering that their moms and dads will not listen, will not know, or are going to over-react. Yet think this or otherwise, there are moms and dads whose youngsters which talk with all of them, or even ask their advice, throughout the teen years. This website is committed to the opportunity that you could be some of those moms and dads. Phenomenal minutes usually masquerade as average life. Thus check out the riot as well as tell yourself to become thankful for every single minute you reach devote with your children as they develop. These years pass quicker compared to we can easily envision, and when kids recall, these are actually the memories that will definitely determine family for all of them.

Deliver time-out to the sidelines.Practically every parent has tried to correct or even discipline actions by sending their child to break, yet most have actually located it simply does not function or result in better actions. That is actually considering that a time out in the edge or even bed room doesn't teach kids the best ways to create far better choices the upcoming opportunity, and typically, a time out only rises a power battle. Kids, particularly the stubborn, will definitely push, as well as hard. As an alternative, focus on instruction, certainly not punishment. Inquire, What can our company carry out differently next time? and job participate in the do-over. Simply claim no-- to pointing out no.Kids storm our team along with concerns everyday, and also generally, our response is actually no, and children dislike that. When you can, discover opportunities to claim yes. If your little girl inquires to visit the inside swimming pool during a busy weekday, try mentioning, Visiting the pool sounds like a great deal exciting. Should our company go tomorrow after university or even on Saturday? Naturally, there will regularly be points that will definitely need to have a major no, but try to reroute them to a more favorable choice.

[ixvyupdates]

Here’s How the #MeToo Movement Is Continuing in Our Schools

In her Cecil B. DeMille Award acceptance speech at the Golden Globes, Oprah Winfrey addressed young girls around the globe by saying, “When that new day finally dawns, it will be because of a lot of magnificent women, and some pretty phenomenal men, fighting hard to make sure that they become the leaders who take us to the time when nobody ever has to say ‘Me Too’ again.” She spoke of a future free of gender inequality and abuse, stating that the time for that kind of behavior is up, and a new day is now “on the horizon.”

“Me too”—two words that, first shared on social media in 2006 by Tarana Burke, have spread virally over the past few months in the form of a hashtag and have been used to expose the all-too-enormous presence of sexual assault and harassment that has affected the lives of countless people in today’s world.

But what about the youth Winfrey was addressing?

“The idea is so foreign to people, that there could be sexual assault and an epidemic of sexual harassment and assault in schools,” said Esther Warkov, executive director of Stop Sexual Assault in Schools (SSAIS), a nonprofit organization she co-founded after her own daughter was raped during a school field trip in 2012.

SSAIS was created to address K-12 students’ rights regarding sexual harassment and assault in schools. “Most people think that schools are a safe place to send their kids,” Warkov said, “when that’s not really true.”

She explained that SSAIS works to provide resources to students, K-12 schools and organizations “so that the right to an equal education is not compromised by sexual harassment, sexual assault and gender discrimination.”

At the beginning of January, the organization also launched the #MeTooK12 campaign to spread awareness about how this issue affects youth. According to Warkov, the hashtag spotlights the widespread sexual harassment that students experience before entering college or the workforce, and underscores the urgency of addressing this problem in early education.

“Obviously we want to pay homage to the creators of #MeToo, and at the same time we want to show that #MeToo is a movement that spreads horizontally,” she said. “By linking the K-12 part of it, it shows that there is really not a separation between K-12 and #MeToo—it’s one massive problem that actually starts in childhood.”

“Students are probably the most vulnerable in this entire problem. Because they’re often unable to speak out for themselves, their complaints are silenced through intimidation and fear—fear of retaliation, fear of punishment, fear of social isolation for reporting—so it’s really important that we have a hashtag that talks about their unique vulnerability.”

This ‘vulnerability’ is backed up by data

Although it is rarely reported by both students and schools—despite the fact that, according to Warkov, schools are required to collect data on this issue—in 2014, the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights reported receiving more sex-discrimination complaints than ever. In 2011, the American Association of University Women (AAUW) found that nearly half of all students surveyed experienced some sort of sexual harassment over the course of the school year, and 87 percent said it had a negative effect on them.

“The prevalence of sexual harassment in grades 7–12 comes as a surprise to many, in part because it is rarely reported,” concluded the AAUW.

“Among students who were sexually harassed, about 9 percent reported the incident to a teacher, guidance counselor or other adult at school (12 percent of girls and 5 percent of boys). Just a quarter (27 percent) of students said they talked about it with parents or family members (including siblings), and only about one quarter (23 percent) spoke with friends.”

“Girls were more likely than boys to talk with parents and other family members (32 percent versus 20 percent) and more likely than boys to talk with friends (29 percent versus 15 percent). Still, half of the students who were sexually harassed in the 2010–11 school year said they did nothing afterward in response to sexual harassment.”

As #MeToo moves into schools, Warkov stresses the age of this issue and how addressing it is long overdue.

“This has been on people’s radar for a long time, but no one [has really done or is] really doing anything about it for the most part,” she said.

She thinks that most kids aren’t educated enough about this subject, and that anything from classes on the subject to posters on the walls or daily announcements about the issue could make a difference.

“I would like to see schools supporting anti-sexual harassment campaigns in school,” she said. “Every year of a student’s education, beginning in kindergarten, there should be age-appropriate education about sexual harassment [and] what constitutes sexual harassment.”

Sophie Colson, a senior at Santa Fe High School, agrees. “I don’t believe that enough teens are educated on this,” she said.

“It’s something that isn’t dealt with effectively enough in sex education, nor in any discourse,” Colson said. “People don’t want to talk about it because it’s uncomfortable, but if we turned a blind eye from every uncomfortable thing, there would be no change.”

SSAIS has put all of its education online, allowing students around the country to access resources that can help with anything from how to get help if they’re being sexually harassed and their school is being unresponsive, to how to start a gender equity club.

“Anyone that wants to learn about their civil rights can do so by accessing all the resources on our website,” Warkov said.

Colson stresses the important role young people play in all of this.

“I think that the youth should be getting more involved in the movement, and should be calling out their friends—male, female, nonbinary—it doesn’t matter who you are, as long as you open your mouth and take action,” she said.

This movement affects everyone. “It’s not just a female problem…students of all genders are sexually harassed, boys are sexually harassed…LGBTQ students are harassed at the highest rate,” said Warkov. “This isn’t just a movement to protect female students—it’s to protect all students.”

Warkov believes that everyone in the school community needs to get involved and emphasizes the importance of following Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits sexual discrimination in federally funded educational settings (including both public and some private schools). This, Warkov said, is something many schools are lacking.

“The responsibility is on the schools to do the right thing, and they’re just not doing it for the most part.”

Santa Fe Public Schools defines sexual harassment as “harassment based on sex or of a sexual nature; gender harassment; and harassment based on pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions.”

The Sexual Harassment Policy contract states, “Harassment occurs when unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature is so severe, persistent, or pervasive that it affects a student’s ability to participate in or benefit from an education program or activity, or an employee’s work environment, or creates an intimidating, threatening or abusive educational or work environment. A hostile environment can be created by a school employee, another student, a parent or even someone visiting the school, such as a student, or employee from another school.”

If an SFPS student feels they are being harassed or discriminated against in the school system on the basis of sex (or anything else such as race, national origin, disability, age, etc.), the district offers several methods to report it (compliant with SFPS’s Board of Education Policy 330), including talking to a district or school employee and filling out a District Complaint Form, which is available on the SFPS website.

It’s Bigger Than The Schools

Warkov stresses that increasing the reporting of this kind of behavior in schools is just one of the changes that will result in changes in society.

“Students have years to [build poor habits] of sexual harassment and even sexual assault in K-12 schools, so if you want to address the problem at the source, you have to stop enabling this kind of behavior,” she said. “The school is a microcosm of the larger world, so as the change is made at school, there’s going to be a beneficial effect on society because you won’t see all of these perpetrators feeling that they can continue this sexual harassment in college and the workplace.”

Isaac Hernandez, another senior at SFHS, agrees that a big part of this issue is entrenched attitudes and that it must be taken seriously.

“I think it’s the culture behind it,” he said. “A lot of people appropriate rape culture a lot of the time, and they make it seem like it’s OK. It’s like a watering down of it…so that adds to it.”

“I think what schools could do is [provide] the resources, or have teachers call out students, or enforce [policies against the use of] those kinds of jokes or…sexual innuendos. Let them know that’s not OK, and that by saying those things they’re contributing to that kind of [culture].”

Now that this issue is being talked about more than ever with recent movements coming after #MeToo, such as Time’s Up—a call for change from women in the entertainment industry to address inequality in the workplace that also took center stage at the Golden Globes—one can’t help but wonder what it means for teens today as they enter a bigger world.

“I hope that our society and our workplace are revolutionized,” said Colson. “I think this movement needs to explode even more. This is really only the beginning of something that we are going to see grow in our lifetime. I would like to believe the punishment for this behavior becomes even harsher, and that there is a deeper understanding about the issue at hand, so much so that everyone everywhere is fighting to stop it.”

“The #MeToo/Time’s Up movement is very empowering to me,” she continued. “It means a lot to be a part of this revolution for women. I think this is the first time we are getting to see women taken seriously about their assault, and the removal of the shame around it for victims.”

And the future?

Warkov hopes that “schools are proactive in being trained in their responsibilities and abiding by the civil rights laws they’re supposed to.”

She advocates for every school to have a trained Title IX coordinator whose job it would be to make sure that Title IX is properly implemented, including proactively addressing sexual harassment and assault before they occur, protecting students who report sexual harassment and sexual assault and making sure that victims’ needs are prioritized over perpetrators’.

Colson hopes to find the source of the problem.

“The difficult thing is, yes, we can call out those who have assaulted, we can fire and ostracize them, which we should, but I think we need to start addressing and exploring the depth and root of the issue,” she said. “There is so much beyond calling out the assault; we must now start to address why.”

Hernandez added, “I hope that we can just respect each other, have a loving community where a person shouldn’t feel like they’re endangered anymore, where we don’t have to have these kinds of talks about sexual harassment because it’s not there—maybe live in a world where we all respect each other, and women have the same opportunities and rights as men.”

“The start of ‘a new day’ can only happen once discourse starts,” added Colson, “and now that it has, now that all of this is being taken seriously, I think that anything is possible.”

An original version of this post appeared on The Demon Tattler as Schools Say, “Me Too”.

Photo by CHRISTINA CORSO, Twenty20-licensed.

Here’s How the #MeToo Movement Is Continuing in Our Schools syndicated from https://sapsnkraguide.wordpress.com