#at least Paul has correct beliefs now | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

yhwhrulz · 4 months ago

Text

Morning and Evening with A.W. Tozer Devotional for April 19

Tozer in the Morning God's Word Gives Light

"I'm sorry. . . . I'm a stranger here myself." That is the only honest answer. Others are sometimes given, but they are never valid answers. They spring out of pride or error or uncritical and wishful thinking, and they are not to be trusted. It is no good asking for information of another who is as ignorant as ourselves. We are all strangers in a strange world. Is our state hopeless then? Is no answer to be had? Must we live in a world we do not understand and go out into a future of dark uncertainty? No, thank God, things are not as bad as that. There is an answer. We can find light. Our questions have been answered. "From a child," wrote Paul to Timothy, "thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." It is the universal t estimony of the saints of the ages that when the light of the Scriptures enters, the darkness of spiritual ignorance vanishes. God's Word giveth light. It has answer for every qestion that matters. The merely curious question it ignores, but every real inquiry made by the sincere heart is met with full light. It is important that we search the Scriptures daily, and more important still that we approach them with faith and humility, bowing our hearts to their instructions and commands. Then through faith in Christ we cease to be strangers and become sons of God.

Tozer in the Evening In the Pursuit of God - Apprehending God

O taste and see.

Psalms 34:8

It was Canon Holmes, of India, who more than twenty-five years ago called attention to the inferential character of the average man's faith in God. To most people God is an inference, not a reality. He is a deduction from evidence which they consider adequate; but He remains personally unknown to the individual. He must be,' they say,therefore we believe He is.' Others do not go even so far as this; they know of Him only by hearsay. They have never bothered to think the matter out for themselves, but have heard about Him from others, and have put belief in Him into the back of their minds along with the various odds and ends that make up their total creed. To many others God is but an ideal, another name for goodness, or beauty, or truth; or He is law, or life, or the creative impulse back of the phenomena of existence. These notions about God are many and varied, but they who hold them have one thing in common: they do not know God in personal experience. The possibil ity of intimate acquaintance with Him has not entered their minds. While admitting His existence they do not think of Him as knowable in the sense that we know things or people.

Christians, to be sure, go further than this, at least in theory. Their creed requires them to believe in the personality of God, and they have been taught to pray, `Our Father, which art in heaven.' Now personality and fatherhood carry with them the idea of the possibility of personal acquaintance. This is admitted, I say, in theory, but for millions of Christians, nevertheless, God is no more real than He is to the non-Christian. They go through life trying to love an ideal and be loyal to a mere principle.

Over against all this cloudy vagueness stands the clear scriptural doctrine that God can be known in personal experience. A loving Personality dominates the Bible, walking among the trees of the garden and breathing fragrance over every scene. Always a living Person is present, speaking, pleading, loving, working, and manifesting Himself whenever and wherever His people have the receptivity necessary to receive the manifestation.

The Bible assumes as a self-evident fact that men can know God with at least the same degree of immediacy as they know any other person or thing that comes within the field of their experience. The same terms are used to express the knowledge of God as are used to express knowledge of physical things. O taste and see that the Lord is good.' (Psalms 34:8)All thy garments smellof myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces.' (Psalms 45:8) My sheep hear my voice.' (John 10:27)Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.' (Matthew 5:8) These are but four of countless such passages from the Word of God. And more important t han any proof text is the fact that the whole import of the Scripture is toward this belief.

What can all this mean except that we have in our hearts organs by means of which we can know God as certainly as we know material things through our familiar five senses? We apprehend the physical world by exercising the faculties given us for the purpose, and we possess spiritual faculties by means of which we can know God and the spiritual world if we will obey the Spirit's urge and begin to use them. That a saving work must first be done in the heart is taken for granted here. The spiritual faculties of the unregenerate man lie asleep in his nature, unused and for every purpose dead; that is the stroke which has fallen upon us by sin. They may be quickened to active life again by the operation of the Holy Spirit in regeneration; that is one of the immeasurable benefits which come to us through Christ's atoning work on the cross.

But the very ransomed children of God themselves: why do they know so little of that habitual conscious communion with God which the Scriptures seem to offer? The answer is our chronic unbelief. Faith enables our spiritual sense to function. Where faith is defective the result will be inward insensibility and numbness toward spiritual things. This is the condition of vast numbers of Christians today. No proof is necessary to support that statement. We have but to converse with the first Christian we meet or enter the first church we find open to acquire all the proof we need.

A spiritual kingdom lies all about us, enclosing us, embracing us, altogether within reach of our inner selves, waiting for us to recognize it. God Himself is here waiting our response to His Presence. This eternal world will come alive to us the moment we begin to reckon upon its reality.

I have just now used two words which demand definition; or if definition is impossible, I must at least make clear what I mean when I use them. They are reckon' andreality.' What do I mean by reality? I mean that which has existence apart from any idea any mind may have of it, and which would exist if there were no mine anywhere to entertain a thought of it. That which is real has being in itself. It does not depend upon the observer for its validity.

I am aware that there are those who love to poke fun at the plain man's idea of reality. They are the idealists who spin endless proofs that nothing is real outside of the mind. They are the relativists who like to show that there are no fixed points in the universe from which we can measure anything. They smile down upon us from their lofty intellectual peaks and settle us to their own satisfaction by fastening upon us the reproachful term `absolutist.' The Christian is not put out of countenance by this show of contempt. He can smile right back at them, for he knows that there is only One who is Absolute, that is God. But he knows also that the Absolute One has made this world for man's uses, and, while there is nothing fixed or real in the last meaning of the words (the meaning as applied to God) for every purpose of human life we are permitted to act as if there were. And every man does act thus except the mentally sick. These unfortunates also have trouble with reali ty, but they are consistent; they insist upon living in accordance with their ideas of things. They are honest, and it is their very honesty that constitutes them a social problem.

The idealists and relativists are not mentally sick. They prove their soundness by living their lives according to the very notions of reality which they in theory repudiate and by counting upon the very fixed points which they prove are not there. They could earn a lot more respect for their notions if they were willing to live by them; but this they are careful not to do. Their ideas are brain-deep, not life- deep. Wherever life touches them they repudiate their theories and live like other men.

The Christian is too sincere to play with ideas for their own sake. He takes no pleasure in the mere spinning of gossamer webs for display. All his beliefs are practical. They are geared into his life. By them he lives or dies, stands or falls for this world and for all time to come. From the insincere man he turns away.

The sincere plain man knows that the world is real. He finds it here when he wakes to consciousness, and he knows that he did not think it into being. It was here waiting for him when he came, and he knows that when he prepares to leave this earthly scene it will be here still to bid him good-bye as he departs. By the deep wisdom of life he is wiser than a thousand men who doubt. He stands upon the earth and feels the wind and rain in his face and he knows that they are real. He sees the sun by day and the stars by night.

He sees the hot lightning play out of the dark thundercloud. He hears the sounds of nature and the cries of human joy and pain. These he knows are real. He lies down on the cool earth at night and has no fear that it will prove illusory or fail him while he sleeps. In the morning the firm ground will be under him, the blue sky above him and the rocks and trees around him as when he closed his eyes the night before. So he lives and rejoices in a world of reality. With his five senses he engages this real world. All things necessary to his physical existence he apprehends by the faculties with which he has been equipped by the God who created him and placed him in such a world as this.

Now by our definition also God is real. He is real in the absolute and final sense that nothing else is. All other reality is contingent upon His. The great Reality is God who is the Author of that lower and dependent reality which makes up the sum of created things, including ourselves. God has objective existence independent of and apart from any notions which we may have concerning Him.The worshipping heart does not create its Object. It finds Him here when it wakes from its moral slumber in the morning of its regeneration.

Another word that must be cleared up is the word reckon. This does not mean to visualize or imagine. Imagination is not faith. The two are not only different from, but stand in sharp opposition to, each other. Imagination projects unreal images out of the mind and seeks to attach reality to them. Faith creates nothing; it simply reckons upon that which is already there. God and the spiritual world are real. We can reckon upon them with as much assurance as we reckon upon the familiar world around us. Spiritual things are there (or rather we should say here) inviting our attention and challenging our trust.

Our trouble is that we have established bad thought habits. We habitually think of the visible world as real and doubt the reality of any other. We do not deny the existence of the spiritual world but we doubt that it is real in the accepted meaning of the word. The world of sense intrudes upon our attention day and night for the whole of our lifetime. It is clamorous, insistent and self- demonstrating. It does not appeal to our faith; it is here, assaulting our five senses, demanding to be accepted as real and final. But sin has so clouded the lenses of our hearts that we cannot see that other reality, the City of God, shining around us. The world of sense triumphs. The visible becomes the enemy of the invisible; the temporal, of the eternal. That is the curse inherited by every member of Adam's tragic race.

At the root of the Christian life lies belief in the invisible. The object of the Christian's faith is unseen reality. Our uncorrected thinking, influenced by the blindness of our natural hearts and the intrusive ubiquity of visible things, tends to draw a contrast between the spiritual and the real; but actually no such contrast exists. The antithesis lies elsewhere: between the real and the imaginary, between the spiritual and the material, between the temporal and the eternal; but between the spiritual and the real.

The spiritual is real. If we would rise into that region of light and power plainly beckoning us through the Scriptures of truth we must break the evil habit of ignoring the spiritual. We must shift our interest from the seen to the unseen. For the great unseen Reality is God. He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.' (Hebr 11:6) This is basic in the life of faith. From there we can rise to unlimited heights.Ye believe in God,' said our Lord Jesus Christ, `believe also in me.' (John 14:1) Without the first there can be no second.

If we truly want to follow God we must seek to be other-worldly. This I say knowing well that that word has been used with scorn by the sons of this world and applied to the Christian as a badge of reproach. So be it. Everyman must choose his world. If we who follow Christ, with all the facts before us and knowing what we are about, deliberately choose the Kingdom of God as our sphere of interest I see no reason why anyone should object. If we lose by it, the loss is our own; if we gain we rob no one by so doing.

The other world,' which is the object of this world's disdain and the subject of the drunkard's mocking song, is our carefully chosen goal and the object of our holiest longing. But we must avoid the common fault of pushing theother world' into the future. It is not future, but present. It parallels our familiar physical world, and the doors between the two worlds are open. Ye are come,' says the writer to the Hebrews (and the tense is plainly present),unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel' (Hebr 12:22-24) All these things are contrasted with the mount that might be touched' andthe sound of a trumpet and the voice of words' that might be heard. May we not safely conclude that, as the realities of Mount Sinai were apprehended by the senses, so the realities of Mount Zion are to be grasped by the soul? And this not by any trick of the imagination, but in downright actuality. The soul has eyes with which to see and ears with which to hear. Feeble they may be from long disuse, but by the life-giving touch of Christ alive now and capable of sharpest sight and most sensitive hearing.

As we begin to focus upon God the things of the spirit will take shape before our inner eyes. Obedience to the word of Christ will bring an inward revelation of the Godhead (John 14:21-23). It will give acute perception enabling us to see God even as is promised to the pure in heart. A new God-consciousness will seize upon us and we shall begin to taste and hear and inwardly feel the God who is our life and our all. There will be seen the constant shining of the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. (John 1:9) More and more, as our faculties grow sharper and more sure, God will become to us the great All, and His Presence the glory and wonder of our lives. O God, quicken to life every power within me, that I may lay hold on eternal things. Open my eyes that I may see; give me acute sp iritual perception; enable me to taste Thee and know that Thou art good. Make heaven more real to me than any earthly thing has ever been. Amen.

0 notes

cacaitos · 2 years ago

Text

so i wanted to rectify this part pon further reflection (specifically abt JnS at least) w what i was saying earlier. while obviously the characters are going to be affected on a personality level by their respective kind of opression and obviously where thwy intersect with others', i now think that's not the true purpose of the story.

but the more i think about it the more it seems to me that it's there to facilitate certain situations or types of interpersonal relationship. am i making sense? that their oppression exists vaguely and/or marginally from the actual character development, or that is defined through the rejection of other things, as a shadow of itself and its material qualities. that the story is not about them but how they set up other things?

say, for starters, obviously J or any random Joe or Jane character on the 60s for that matter, wouldnt start articulately and verbosely describing their complex relationship with xy or z about their identity in modern term bc yk, Exposition, not what im asking for. but moreso it's the point w her that despite it being technically her story, so much is told from other people's point of view or from this more distant style of narration. few internal dialogue; more action oriented, at least for her. at how many points does J say what she feels abt her gender versus the more overwhelming verbal and physical statements other people do to negate it or validate it. while directly affected by it, storywise it's more relevant the effects of the oppresion it has on her personality and the personalities of others than the way itself those two characters' opressions are related.

paul, for starters rectifying he's half ethnically jewish but mostly always christian, not a *religion* convert itself. as far as the story is concerned for the plot, it or his jewishness is defined by what is or what's not christian, by what is not-jewish or un-jewish, what's 'un-normal' (for the american identity), not by almost any definition of what it 'is'. he disavows his father, even if just through indifference didn't care much his traditions (esp gone his mothers wishes too) and is an avid christian, so his story is not so much *about* being jewish so much as is abt how he feels abt it being a shadow, a ghost that creeps behind it. am i conveying correctly what i mean. even christianity (in many other works from places where christianity isnt majority and a given anyway) is more important in the kinds of people (characters) or associations abt character it creates rather than any specific belief. it's not about christianity either.

so paul dislikes J (for ex) not because he's christian but bc she lives openly and 'incorrectly' in a way he can't bc of the things (stability, belonging, etc) he gets though being 'correct' by the acts and appearance of performing christianity, not for christian beliefs.

rita escapes me right now but i hope im conveying my point abt (and i will keep it between JnS, TnS and ktknu for now) ethnicity/race so on while technically relevant to the characters it could very well be better defined as a narrative tool before it is actually important or the foundation to the character/stories. that is not their mariginalizations that instersect but their residual personalities caused by them. or something.

#txt #this got a bit long bc of the examples and repetition.. well..

0 notes

hobbitsetal · 4 years ago

Text

@loubuttons, ask and you shall receive.

I've spent the last two years deconstructing and reconstructing my faith, and one of the things I've wrestled with and ultimately rejected is complementarianism, the view that men were created to lead and women to follow and submit. That is not the subject of this post.

Tied into the complementarian worldview I was taught was the belief that a woman's highest calling, and indeed her primary daughter, is to be a stay-at-home wife and mother. Now, while I currently am a SAHM, I do not think I'm theologically obligated to be one, nor is that my only or primary designation. It's part of my life right now, as dental assisting was my life for twelve years.

Rachel Jankovic is a complementarian (though perhaps she would say patriarchal, given that her father is Doug Wilson) who advocates the SAHM lifestyle as The Theologically Correct Way For Women. A loved one whose views I have diverged from sent me an article by Jankovic:

https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-harvest-of-homemaking

I'm here today to pick apart what I disagreed with most strongly. Under a readmore, because turns out I have a lot to say.

First of all, Jankovic begins her article with talking about how mothers who stay at home are pitied and considered to be using less than their full potential.

To quote: "For a generation at least, homemaking has been spoken of as a prison-like existence that stifles a woman’s gifts — as though homemakers have less ambition than others, less ability, less scope, less understanding."

I'm not sure who she's been talking to. My experience with me or my husband mentioning I stay home has been that people either respond with a degree of envy or laugh about the challenges of raising a small, active, and inquisitive boy.

She speaks of moms who complain on social media--specifically TikTok--that their families don't appreciate their work, and calls that sort of complaining the result of "worldly propaganda," making the point that women who stay at home just need to see the inherent value in their work.

In a lot of ways, I don't disagree. Contentment is a choice. Joy is a choice. Paul speaks of learning to be content in situations that ranged from beatings to imprisonment; I can certainly learn to choose contentment and joy when my son drops crumbs all over the carpet that I just vacuumed. But I take strong issue with her hermeneutics, her tone, and her belief that SAHM is the only Godly choice for Christian women.

She says, "Scripture is the basis for my commitment to being a homemaker, and if I never saw any other reason to love it, never saw the fruit, never understood the importance of the role, that should still be enough. ... At this point, some readers may have rolled their eyes because I mentioned Titus 2 and Proverbs 31 in the same embarrassingly uncool paragraph. Why is that? Could it be because you have been trained to despise passages like these? Could it be that you have listened to countless people explaining them away? Could it be that you have taken in enough worldly propaganda that you feel free to look down on the tone of the word of God and those who embrace it?"

Actually, no. Her exegesis of Titus 2 is lacking--Paul wrote to a specific situation, as Marg Mowzcko talks about here: https://margmowczko.com/busy-at-home-how-does-titus-24-5-apply-today/ .

Further, Proverbs 31 speaks of a woman engaged in business, not just running her house. Real estate, physical labor, delegation--the woman of Proverbs 31 isn't necessarily a SAHM, not with everything she's doing.

If I roll my eyes at Jankovic's invocation of these two passages of Scripture, it's because they are the go-to passages for patriarchs trying to limit women's gifts. It's because there are so many more passages we could look at when exploring the question of how Christian women ought to live (1 Corinthians 13? book of James? Philippians? anybody?) and I don't care for articles that assume my reaction like this.

I take issue, too, with Jankovic's dismissal of women's complaints:

"When I read those sorrowful monologues about the mental load, about how much it all weighs on the poor woman, about how unfair it all is, about how husbands should be responsible for far more housekeeping, all I can see is that women are suffering from the horrible pairing of trying to do the Lord’s work with the attitude of those who hate him. There will be no joy of obedience there. There will be no fruit of free giving there. There will be no strength and laughter and dignity there, because there is a thick fog of accusation, discontent, and envy."

Really? Women who complain about housekeeping are all malcontents who just need to have more joy and love God better? Somehow, I'm deeply skeptical of that.

Raising children is hard. Keeping house can be a lot of work. I have it easy right now--I'm in a small apartment and I only have one child who takes two naps per day--and I am profoundly grateful some days when my husband comes home and takes our son for a while.

Housekeeper is an entire job unto itself, as is childcare, cooking, and the other zillion tasks that go into running a house. My mother, when she had five children under ten, hired someone to clean her house twice a month because she couldn't keep up with everything alone. She had that privilege as the wife of a military officer. Most people don't have the disposable income to hire someone.

So what of the women who complain their husbands don't help with housekeeping? Maybe some of them are being malcontents. But I'm willing to bet a lot more feel like they aren't receiving the support they need.

My husband listened to me complain about communal laundry and immediately offered to take over the laundry for me so I wouldn't have to worry about it. How many husbands would respond by offering to take on more work in addition to their weekly jobs?

And that's just housecleaning. What about the women who want a little break from childcare, from the constant On of looking after tiny people, or some help with the cooking? How many of them have to fight for personal time, and how many of them have husbands who go out of their way to care for their wives' needs?

I'm further peeved by the way she elevates keeping the home:

"Is there any other work I could be doing that would be this exponentially fruitful or influential? A hundred years from now, I hope there are people who do not know my name or remember me, but nevertheless carry about with them seeds of faithful living that were first planted in the soil of this home."

Listen. I'm not here to denigrate the work of SAHMs. My mother put a lot of work into raising us kids; my sister and sisters-in-law are raising their children with care and thoughtfulness. Heck, I am a SAHM and a large part of that is that I want to pour time and attention into my children.

But any other work? Yeah, actually, a lot of fields. My twelve years in dentistry were exponentially fruitful and influential; I helped a lot of people overcome their fear of dentists and live healthier lives.

Or how about my nurse friend? She literally saves lives. Pretty sure we can regard that as exponentially fruitful and influential.

I can go on about this one for quite some time--my parents' work as Biblical counselors, my sister's career as a piano teacher and accompanist, my friend who works in ministry--but let's not belabor the point. The idea that raising children is The Most Fruitful Work any woman could do ever is insulting to the range of human capability and experience. Not every woman wants children. Not every woman enjoys children. And beyond that, not every woman can have children. Does this mean their work for God is less important? God forbid we say that.

The implications of claiming children are the pinnacle of Christian womanhood are far-reaching and dreadful. If children are the pinnacle of Christian womanhood, then any woman who doesn't have children--whether from celibacy, medical necessity, or personal choices--is failing to live up to God's Best For Her. She becomes a spiritual cripple in this view.

We are not spiritual cripples in Christ. God's best for us is that we become more like Him, that we are united to Him fully. Our gender doesn't matter, our ethnicity, our marital status, our parental status. Those play into our stories and into who we are as people, but when it comes to who we are in Christ, they don't matter.

"For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Galatians 3:27-28

And whether we are stay-at-home mothers, working women, single or married, we are all in Christ. We are all precious to God, and we are all united. I am not better because I'm staying home. I am not closer to God or living The Ideal Christian Life more than my friends who are working, single, childless.

Rachel Jankovic's mindset leads to heartbreak. Christ offers healing and joy. And whatever path He leads us in, may we find that joy fully.

#anti-complementarianism #egalitarianism #getting hyper-specific in the tags #i feel like i need to rant more about this but idk where to go next #anyway #lou darling this one's for you

17 notes · View notes

theotherjourney7 · 5 years ago

Text

“I was gonna leave The Week In Tory until Friday the 2nd October but at their current rate it'll be very long by then, and I'm worried about you, mate.

It's OK to get drunk on at 5pm on Monday the 28th of September, isn't it? Well, that's my recommendation anyway. Here goes...

1. In June UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said to Black Lives Matter protestors: “I hear you”, and acknowledged the “incontrovertible, undeniable feeling of injustice” that “we simply cannot ignore”

So obviously, 40 Tory MPs refused to take part in unconscious bias training

2. The government shut pubs an hour early, seemingly under the impression coronavirus (an inert, sub-microscopic infectious entity with no brain or nervous system) can tell the time.

The government demanded we all follow the rules

The government exempted House Of Commons bars from the rules

3. Health Minister Helen Whately said “people who get drunk and leave the pub to keep on partying should remember their responsibility for the nation’s health”

Helen Whateley, who is *actually* responsible for the nation’s health, was sober when she said this. Presumably

4. After 6 months of world-leading “throwing apps in the bin but taking the cash anyway”, the government finally proudly released an NHS Testing App

It didn't work with NHS tests

Or on 18% of phones

Or in Scotland or Northern Ireland

And a report said only 10% of the us will use it, cos we don’t trust Dominic Cummings with our data

Nor should we: the Data Commissioner said Cummings' proposed changes to privacy law will see the UK barred from sharing global data, and cost the UK economy "up to £80bn"

5. Meanwhile the promise of 500,000 tests per day won’t be reached because, in news that should shock nobody, the government failed to order enough raw materials

So the government stopped releasing evidence of how many are being tested, cos if you don't look at it, it isn't real

6. The government, which only weeks ago was demanding we go back to work or all get sacked, now demands we all stay at home

7. Them the government said the reason the UK had the worst Covid response AND worst economy in Europe is because we are “freedom-loving”

8. And then government freedom-lovingly banned schools from using any materials that criticised capitalism

Not content with this, they also banned schools discussing “victim narratives”, which is going to make it tough to maintain their national anti-bullying strategy

9. And then a leaked report said the government was planning to freedom-lovingly deploy the military on the streets

10. Meanwhile, the government announced only 24% of businesses have done any preparation for Brexit, and only 30% of cross-channel HGVs have the correct paperwork

11. The government finally admitted what they’d been told repeatedly since 2016, and said Brexit would create 2-day queues of 7000 lorries at Channel ports

7000 lorries (at the average 16.5m each) is 1155km. That’s a queue over 70 miles long. Every day.

To solve this, the government announced a new internal border in Kent, helpfully relocating 70 miles of queues to London, Essex, Surrey and East Sussex instead

A month ago, Tory MP Sir Edward Leigh was demanding we “take back” Calais. Now we’re essentially abandoning Kent.

Because we only had 4 years to plan for this, our lovely new border will start on 1 January and be controlled by software that – and you should probably open a second bottle around now - won’t be ready until at least 4 months later

Oh, and border checks won’t be ready in Northern Ireland either

But we might not have a problem anyway: it was revealed there are just 2000 EU haulage permits for our 40,000 UK hauliers. That’s 5% of what we need, for any Govt Ministers struggling with the maths

12. And we don’t even have enough pallets for the goods we import, cos we currently rely on a supply we share with the EU, and have neither the wood nor the treatment plants, nor the required chemicals to make and treat our own

So now the government has to make a 200m border, a mechanism for policing it, an internal passport system, software, admin, buy 38,000 permits and grow enough trees for 700,000 pallets. In 3 months.

It had 5 months to add up some A-Level results, and that went swimmingly

13. I’m sure supply-and-demand won’t force prices sky high, cos it never does when you have 5% of the food the nation needs and a govt which boasts about breaking the law, but it was also announced tariffs will add £3.1bn to the nation’s food bill in Jan 2021

14. As a mark of confidence, Jim Ratcliffe, Britain’s richest man and a leading Brexiteer, buggered off to Monaco

15. And an unnamed minister was quoted: “We are stuck in a bind. If we try to cancel Brexit we destroy ourselves; if we go ahead with it we destroy the country”

16. The London School of Economics reported the long-term cost of Brexit will be 2-3 times the cost of Covid

So Rishi Sunak cancelled the budget, cos once again, if you don’t look at it, it doesn’t exist

17. JPMorgan shifted £200 billion out of the UK and into Germany calling it “a result of Brexit”.

At least 22% of our entire national economy depends on international banks based in the City of London, so when the largest one fucks off, it's a relaxing development

18. Former Prime Minister Theresa May said the government’s bill to break international law is “reckless” and “risks the integrity of the United Kingdom”

19. The Attorney General, who takes an oath to parliament, the Queen and The Bar to observe the law, said she was “very proud” to be breaking the law

The UK is a signatory and legal guarantor of the Good Friday Agreement, which brought peace to the island of Ireland after 3600 violent deaths. The Attorney General, who is sworn to maintain peace, says Brexit will break the GFA, and she is “extremely proud” of that too.

Turns out, the advisory Professor who told her she should go ahead and break the law and endanger peace in Ireland is the partner of Michael Gove’s special advisor. It’s amazing, these coincidences. Almost as if they don’t want to listen to anybody else

20. Speaking of which, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s old friend and unfailingly irrumating backer (google it) Charles Moore, who has spent his life demanding the end of the BBC, and said the BBC causes "human misery worthy of Dickens" (does he mean Mrs Brown's Boys?) is in line to run the BBC

And it was reported ex Daily Mail Editor Paul Dacre, who shouts c*unt so much his meetings are called “the vagina monologues”, and whose paper is banned as a Wiki reference cos it lies so often, is going to be put in charge of Ofcom: ensuring decent and honest broadcasting

Oh yeah, and Boris Johnson tweeted “a free press is vital in holding the government to account”, which is probably why the people holding his govt to account are being replaced with his mates and cheerleaders

21. Tory MP and successful conscience-donor Andrea Jenkins got paid £25k from a thinktank that doesn’t exist

22. And because no list is complete without a disturbing nocturnal visitation from the smirking angel of death, Home Office Secretary Priti Patel was accused of incitement to racial hatred

23. Whilst Patel, Jenkyns and the Attorney General were busy redefining “the party of Law and Order” the rest of the govt took a wild swing at “the party of fiscal responsibility”, when it was revealed the government has wasted £3,895,556,000 since March.

This includes unsafe testing kits; face masks that don’t work; broken tracing systems; useless antibody tests; cancelled ventilator challenge; and inexplicable contracts to sweet manufacturers and dormant companies with no employees, to provide PPE that never arrived!

24. The government, which insisted schools and universities reopened, said it was now vital to lock down students and prevent them from mixing in large groups

And then the government said it was sanctioning class sizes of up to 60 which ... remind me, is that more or fewer than 6?

25. Health Secretary Matt Hancock said “we’re giving up to 11,000 iPads to care homes to enable residents to connect with loved ones”

“Up to” is a bit telling, but even if it’s 11,000, there are 21,700 care homes in the UK. I guess they’ll just have to share. Goodbye forever, nana!

26. And finally, if you feel all alone in despairing at this: you aren’t. Belief in Britain as a “global force for good” has fallen 10% since 2019. I, for one, am shocked to the core....”-Russ

77 notes · View notes

cherryblossomwatts · 5 years ago

Note

Hii, can you tell me what happened between Shane and Garret?

absolutely, anon!

basically. shane and garrett used to be incredibly close - they described themselves as platonic “soulmates,” best friends for life. garrett was heavily featured on shane’s channel, and connected shane with andrew, essentially setting them up for the success and critical acclaim they’ve achieved today. for a few years the whole “squad” was really happy and all appeared to get along well.

once shane started collaborating with j* and more “high profile” youtubers, however, things started to change. the last time garrett was seen in any of the squad’s videos (in person) was in ryland’s taco bell hotel video. he was also featured very briefly in shane’s second series with j*, and also attended the opening of the morphe store with them where they “premiered” shane’s collection.

shane’s made it clear by now that he doesn’t associate with garrett anymore. i’m not sure exactly when this happened, but i believe it was at some point during the beautiful world of shane dawson series. garrett wasn’t paid homage to or referenced a single time in his makeup collection or merch line - whereas ryland, andrew, tana mongeau, and trisha paytas all had shades/lipsticks named after them. andrew even has his own hoodies. you’d think garrett would be a given in the collection, since shane described him for years as his “soulmate,” but there’s absolutely nothing.

my own personal theory is that shane drifting away from garrett is due to a combination of three things: 1) shane’s sudden, dramatic increase in income, 2) the influence of j*, and 3) the influence of ryland.

shane is turning into a completely different person imo, as i referenced in this post. money has changed him. as for j*, he made his sexual interest in garrett disgustingly clear in his first series with shane. he told shane he would pay garrett’s rent for months if he would have sex with him, in complete seriousness. i don’t personally believe that garrett had sex with him, although it is a possibility. my belief is that j* either turned on garrett after being rejected by him, or they did have sex and it for some reason didn’t go or end well. either way, i think j* has been influencing shane to push garrett away and get him out of his life.

and finally, ryland is an incredibly vain and jealous person. i find it hard to believe that he isn’t extremely jealous about shane’s previous, obvious attraction to garrett, and the fact that they dated and were physically intimate for a brief period of time. he “played nice” on camera and pretended to be friendly with garrett, but it’s been clear for a while that he doesn’t like him very much. i think he’s also been encouraging shane to cut ties with garrett for a long time.

however, garrett’s the one who’s semi-officially cut the friendship short. he’s replied to tweets referencing shane’s slander of sociopaths (read: the entire jake paul series), and has liked posts referencing getting rid of toxic people in one’s life. i think it’s possible shane wants to become friends again, or at least stay on good, if somewhat distant, terms, as he still follows garrett on tiktok (garrett doesn’t follow back) and posted a picture of him on his instagram story the other day. but i don’t know if that’s ever going to happen. garrett also used to be incredibly self-deprecating around shane, and constantly displayed insecurities about his body - but now that he’s been staying away from shane and spending more and more time with andrew, he hasn’t made a single derogatory joke about his appearance this year (as far as i’m aware - correct me if i’m wrong!).

(shane also didn’t congratulate either garrett or andrew for their song hitting #3 on hip hop charts. i think that says it all.)

so there you have it, anon. this is mostly my speculation, of course, but it’s become increasingly more obvious as time has passed that things aren’t right between shane and garrett. i really hope that eventually things are rectified, because i truly loved seeing their friendship - but if garrett is truly better off without shane (which it seems like he is), then more power to him. garrett’s happiness and mental health is so, so important. his videos and content thrive when he’s in the right headspace.

shane can keep buying gucci slides and making dumb conspiracy videos, for all i care. maybe he’ll wake up someday.

#liv rants #long text #shane and garrett #ryland and garrett #j* and garrett #an ask #shane discourse

76 notes · View notes

michelles-garden-of-evil · 4 years ago

Text

Episode 43 Review: Curiouser and Curiouser

{ YouTube: 1 | 2 | 3 }

{ Full Synopses/Recaps: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

Maljardin, an isle of mystery. Much remains unknown on Jean Paul Desmond’s isolated island, including the locations of the conjure doll, silver pin, and the missing cyanide, the contents of the final week of Dr. Menkin’s missing notes, and the true cause of death of Jean Paul’s beloved wife Erica. Now that a mysterious black rabbit has appeared on the island which has known no wildlife for three hundred years, new mysteries arise, including one that literally surrounds that rabbit’s neck.

In Ian Martin’s original timeline, this would be the point where the Reverend Matt Dawson exorcised Raxl and Quito’s writing box (although whether that would have revealed the Conjure Man’s also mysterious original message is anyone’s guess), but executive meddling required him to negate that timeline and write about the Rabbit of Evil instead. Come, let’s follow the black rabbit into the increasingly bizarre rabbit hole that is mid-Maljardin-era Strange Paradise.

A minute and a half in, and Cosette Lee is already in top form. Chew that scenery, Cosy!

We open with a recap of the séance from a week and a half ago, courtesy of Raxl and Jean Paul. Raxl gives us the great line above comparing the falling chandelier to “a fist of the devil,” which she delivers beautifully. She connects the falling chandelier to the rabbit who just appeared--or, as she calls it, "this THING that mocks the problem!"

This is Jean Paul’s concerned face.

When she reminds him that the black rabbit appeared out of nowhere on the island which previously harbored no wild animals, he looks increasingly concerned. Whereas in yesterday's episode, he dismissed her claims as superstition and the rabbit as a harmless animal that probably came over on the boat, now he appears willing to think them over. At least that’s how it appears in this part of the scene, although it’s also possible that he’s just worried about Raxl’s sanity. Raxl may be melodramatic and she may sometimes go to extremes in her efforts to protect her home from THE DEVIL JACQUES ELOI DES MONDES, but she is arguably saner than you are, Jean Paul.

"Oh, master, believe me!" she begs. "This…thing, this…thing in the form of an animal is a manifestation of evil!"

“Evil, in your eyes, Raxl,” corrects Jean Paul, or so he thinks.

“Not only mine. Look at Quito. He has eyes, too. He knows. Oh, master, believe me! This black rabbit is an emissary of DEATH!”

Jean Paul continues his mansplaining.

Oh, Jean Paul! To think, I had so much hope for you! I guess that, even after repeated possessions, Dr. Menkin's mysterious death, a leaking capsule, a falling chandelier, and all the things that have happened to Holly, you still refuse to believe in "superstition." You know that, down in Hell, Jacques is kicking back in his peacock chair, gloating about this again:

Jacques: “Jean Paul, what was that again about your IQ of 187?” *evil laugh*

"Then how could it be on Maljardin?" she asks.

"The supply boat, perhaps," he repeats from last episode. "Holly Marshall had no trouble in hiding herself in order to get over here. Surely a small animal like this would be even less likely to be noticed." It sounds plausible, but it’s still doubtful that the rabbit would have lasted so long after the supply boat returned to Maljardin without eating some poisonous plant and dying. I doubt that Quito leaves fresh produce just lying around on the boat.

"If you want to, believe that," replies Raxl, "but I believe it is possessed by EVIL!"

"Raxl, it seems that you are the one who is possessed by fear.”

"It seems the Devil is possessing us all, quietly, cunningly, and each day just a little more," she says, before leaving for the crypt. Quito follows behind, carrying the rabbit, who is just as enthusiastic as it was last episode about being part of one of Canada's first domestically-produced soaps. The way it squirms trying to escape from Quito’s arms in the crypt scene is priceless:

ROFLMAO

Meanwhile, Jean Paul argues with Jacques about the rabbit. Jacques agrees with Raxl on the rabbit's supernatural origins, which further angers Jean Paul. He asks him why he wants to convince him of that, and Jacques gives this cryptic reply: "Big beings have little beings on their backs to spite them, and little beings have smaller beings, and so on, ad infinitum."

"Now, perhaps Raxl is right," Jean Paul muses. "Now just what is in your mind?"

"Perhaps you'll find out at the séance," Jacques teases. He goes on to suggest to him that perhaps Erica did not want to be frozen in the "ridiculous" cryonics capsule. Jean Paul gets all defensive in response and accuses him of trying to break their pact. "Isn't it about time that you delivered her back to me?" he demands.

"We'll find out at the next séance," says Jacques, and Jean Paul demands that he not attend. Jacques implies that there may not be another séance (but why not?), and Jean Paul flips out on him:

FEAR the finger of DOOM!

The acting from both Colin and Cosette in this episode is so over-the-top that it’s somewhere in outer space.

And then...

The Reverend Matt Dawson walks in on him arguing with Jacques and thinks that he was talking to himself.

How does Jean Paul respond? Why, by gaslighting him, of course! “It’s hard to imagine that a man of the cloth would lose control so easily,” he says as though Matt were the one with a screw loose. Now, isn’t that charming?

Matt warns Jean Paul that the people on Maljardin--himself included--are looking for an escape. "We are not children, and we are not completely powerless," he tells Jean Paul. "We will find a way to cut the knots that bind us here."

He also says that his faith, which was challenged when he arrived on the island, is returning. Jean Paul uses this as another opportunity to gaslight him: “You are not regaining your faith. You are merely losing your faculties.” One would think that was a Jacques line, but it’s not. There’s neither a shot of the portrait disappearing, nor any Jean Paul headache faces followed by Jacques’ beringed hand grabbing his face, nor is Fox-C grinning psychotically like Jacques would probably do while saying that. It’s Jean Paul at his most unpleasant.

“On Maljardin, only I speak,” he continues. “Others listen.” It’s like he’s determined to be as much of an asshole as possible in this episode. Bless his heart.

But all the despotic orders in the world won’t shut the Reverend up. “Now I know why I came to Maljardin,” he replies, and it’s not to stalk a twenty-year-old teenager. “It was my destiny to be a force of good among all the evil here.”

“A savior?” Jean Paul asks.

“Perhaps,” he replies. “Is there one here who needs saving from himself?”

Sometimes I wonder if Reverend Dawson was intended to be the real hero of SP.

Raxl and Quito enter the Not-So-Hidden Temple of the Serpent with the rabbit. She pleads and begs for the Serpent to give her answers about the Rabbit of Evil, calling the adorable animal a “monster.” This scene is classic Raxl and belongs on any list of Raxl’s best scenes. Here are my two favorite lines from it:

Raxl: "Speak to me, Great One, for the sake of my master and his beloved visitors and for all the spirits in this house who are roasting on the spit of the fire of evil. OPEN YOUR SPEECH TO MY UNDERSTANDING!"

"Quito, TAKE THIS EVIL THING! Its foulness has stilled temporarily the voice of the Great Serpent!"

But it doesn’t stilt the Serpent for long. The mysterious locket at the beginning of this review appears around its neck, where it wasn’t before. When Raxl touches it, it stains her hand with blood.

Meanwhile, in Jean Paul’s hidden monitor room...

Jean Paul: "Erica, my darling, I wonder how you will find me when at last we are together again? I fear the strain of all this has made me hard and cynical. The Reverend is good, twice the man he was when he first arrived. If only he could see the rightness of my cause, he would make such an ally for my purposes." [You’re deluding yourself, Jean Paul. You have zero chance of convincing Matt that your cryonics scheme is anything but blasphemy.]

"Some serve me, to their honor and reward. Some cross me--to their death!"

*reading Teleprompter* "No one understands. There is an inner circle, my love, and it is big enough for just the two of us."

Jean Paul: "My darling, the second séance is very close at hand. The Conjure Woman recovers and this time nothing will stop us!"

*more obvious Teleprompter reading* "You will come, you will speak, and at last for the first time, for just a little while, you and I will be together."

He’s so cute! <3

Like the previous episode, it’s obvious that they rushed this one even in comparison to the others, because of how often Fox-C reads the Teleprompter. I’ve noticed that he does so more often starting during this week of the show and increasingly until Cornelius Crane takes over writing the show--which won’t be for another two weeks--before slowly petering out until Desmond Hall. I see this as a measure of how hastily an episode was slapped together, although I could be making assumptions.

Anyway, Raxl asks Quito if he noticed the bloody locket before, and he shakes his head. “I am right!” exclaims Raxl about her belief that the rabbit was a demon. She follows this up by asking the Serpent, “Where did it come from?” and we cut to the camera panning over the cryonics capsule:

Obvious foreshadowing is obvious.

Quito leaves the temple to find Matt and Holly sneaking into the crypt, and chases them back up to the Great Hall. Holly demands to know where the rabbit is and Raxl (who enters just then) announces that it ran away!

“Discovered something, didn’t you?” Matt asks Raxl. He asks if she found the doll and pin or the week of missing notes, to which she answers no and no. “For Heaven’s sake, what? Another demon?”

Just as baffled as I am that a Christian minister like him doesn’t believe in demons, she accuses him of mocking her. He accuses her of turning irrational, which means that Jean Paul’s “everyone is irrational but me” delusion must be rubbing off on him. Holly accuses Raxl of having already killed the rabbit.

“Foolishness! Madness!” Raxl shouts. “I tell you that-”

Matt interrupts to point to the rabbit, who, despite its tall ears, is somehow able to sleep through this argument. Must have selective hearing.

Holly grabs the rabbit and Raxl starts screaming for her to hand it over. “IT IS EVIL! IT MUST BE KILLED!” she cries as Matt restrains her. “IT MUST BE DESTROYED BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!” Fortunately for Holly (but unfortunately for Raxl), Jean Paul hears the commotion and comes downstairs to take the rabbit from them.

When he does, we hear the sound of a small object dropping. He leans over to pick it up and reveals the strangest detail so far in this mystery:

Jean Paul: "This locket…" Raxl: "Yes, master, I-" Jean Paul: *more pained* "This locket…was…Erica's!"

Everyone’s jaw drops--which we see in a series of close-ups of all five human actors in this episode--and the music swells. After commercial, Raxl tearfully reveals that Jean Paul gave Erica the locket on her birthday, and tells Jean Paul and the others that she knows that the locket was not around the rabbit’s neck until after she called upon the Serpent. Holly accuses her of being superstitious, and they get into a fight where Raxl tells Holly that she and her fellow Christians don’t understand the spirit world and Holly calls Raxl’s beliefs “mumbo-jumbo.” Matt also accuses Raxl of lying about how the locket appeared “so that we would believe in spirits and demons.” I know that not all Christian denominations believe in the literal existence of spirits and demons, but it’s still odd hearing the Reverend deny their existence.

Raxl calls him a fool, too, and says once again that the rabbit must be killed. She and Holly are about to go back to arguing when Jean Paul cries out, “YOU ARE ALL WRONG!” And then we have yet another shocking revelation: Erica was wearing the locket upon her death, and still when she was entombed in the cryonics capsule!

Somehow he’s able to get the rabbit to hold still for a few minutes, even with all the shouting in the final scene.

In case anyone’s wondering why this entry took so long, it’s because I’ve also been working on a couple posts reviewing Ian Martin’s entire period headwriting this show. That’s what I plan to do at the end of each arc or at the end of each writer’s stint on the show (with the exception of those writers who only wrote a few episodes, like James Elward, Joe Caldwell, and the team of Ron Chudley and George Salverson). You can expect my two-part review of Ian Martin’s SP shortly after my review of Episode 44, which may also be slightly delayed because of it.

Coming up next: Ian Martin’s final episode, the much-anticipated second séance and its shocking conclusion.

{<- Previous: Episode 42 || Next: Episode 44 ->}

#strange paradise #review #maljardin arc #ian martin #week 9 #episode 43 #the bloodied locket #jean paul's monitor room #foreshadowing #great serpent #lost episode summaries #the not so hidden temple #passive aggressive jean paul #rabbit of evil #scenery chewing #times infinity #sp and religion #tape recorder journal #teleprompteritis

2 notes · View notes

pollylynn · 6 years ago

Photo

Title: Rhizome WC: 1000

Kyle Jennings bothers her. He doesn’t bug her. Castle is still the leading man in that role. For the moment, at least. For the moment. But Kyle Jennings, the fact of him out of make-up and costume, off Perlmutter’s autopsy table, bothers her. He disrupts the point of view she’s been holding on to for dear life these last few weeks.

He is not Rhett, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, who has gone into who knows how much student loan debt, not just to craft some kind of intellectual justification for his eternal childhood, but to make himself the poster boy for postmodern life, in general. He’s not Paul, an apparent stoner for life, who’ll probably drift right through his “adulthood” and on into old age.

Kyle Jennings is a normal man with a normal job—with what, frankly, sounds like a deadly boring job—who happens to have a slightly oddball, moderately expensive hobby. But his home, his finances, his friends, his life, they’re all normal. His reaction to the revelation that he is almost certainly responsible for a homicide he claims to have no memory of committing is normal, if the word even applies in such a bizarre situation.

Men who play ludicrously complicated games of tag, who play dress-up in costumes that would probably consume a good chunk of her monthly salary, should not be capable of functioning in the real world as Kyle Jenkins seems to be. They should be impossible misfits, losers she sees across the interrogation table, because they always wind up a person of interest in some crime or another. They should be oversized little boys, all hormones and impulse, and anyone who trusts them to be more—to ever be more—does so at their peril.

They should be the thing—the one, blindingly obvious thing—you always knew they were. You fucking knew it, and as painful as that truth is, it’s at least simple.

But Kyle Jennings is not simple. Even his zombie alter ego—what draws him to the game—doesn’t seem to be simple. That alone bothers her, and what’s worse is that she believes him. She watches him carefully as he takes the absolutely correct amount of time to glance at David Locke’s photo and conclude he’s never seen the man. She registers his anxiety and confusion, but there’s nothing to indicate that he’s eliding details or flat out covering anything up.

She feels her cop sense do a flip-flop of surprise at the way he doesn’t bullshit at all. His gaze fixes on the screen capture of his costumed self. She sees his injured hands clench and unclench as though he’s reminding himself of the fact of the cuts and bruises. He makes his devastated, yet unadorned reply—Yes, that’s me—and she believes, without reservation, that he has no memory of what transpired in the parking lot of David Locke’s firm.

But Castle does not believe.

It happens in an instant. She thinks of a foosball table, with its lines of weighted figures moving side to side as one, rearing back and shooting their feet forward in concert. She thinks of being five or six, of her grandfather lifting her up above a crowd of bigger kids so she could see the inner workings of a series of giant Rube Goldberg machines. The row of little men spins wildly. The sliver ball spirals down the ramp and there’s the drawn-out sizzle of dominos falling.

Castle does not believe, and in an instant, she connects the dots to Bobby Lopez, to her belief, without reservation, that the little shit was lying, to the abandoned cup of coffee on her desk. That part is simple—how it happened, when it happened, what happened.

Why it happened—why it has been happening and is still happening right here in this hospital hallway—is not simple at all.

He is an oversized little boy with enough money that he doesn’t have to be a misfit. He is all hormones and impulse, and he’s mean. He is what she knew him to be when she scoped him out from the margins of that book party four years ago. He’s a man who signs chests with an air of noblesse oblige and believes his own hype.

That’s the simple explanation she’s dug her fingernails into through flight attendants and flirtations with the dark side. It’s the Occam’s Razor she’s been gladly cutting herself on for weeks. It’s the quick and dirty, miserably painful, eleventh hour reveal that has been, in a terrible way, a relief, because she almost certainly can’t do this—she can’t be more, and thank God, he’s not worth it anyway.

But he’s looking her in the eye now. He is squaring his shoulders and he is angry, he is hurt. He’s been mean, he’s lived down to the expectations she’s always been quick to voice, and it’s not that these last few weeks—who he has seemed to be—are her fault, but it’s not without explanation, either. It was never so simple as something inevitable.

It all happens in an instant, and then the instant is over. Perlmutter is there. Tom Williams is simple, exactly what everyone except his fiancée can see he is, and Kyle Jennings is putting away childish things. It’s a shame, really. It’s a shame for so many complicated reasons.

But it serves its purpose—this thing that is more complicated and bothersome than it should be. She talks and he listens. She realizes all that he doesn’t know—all that he had no way of knowing—and just like that, the sting of the lone, pernicious thing he did know is all but gone.

She wants him around.

He’d like to stay.

And in honor of the bothersome Kyle Jennings in all his contradictory glory, she smiles and tells him in all honesty—I don’t know. I kind of think that the zombie make-up suits you, Castle.

A/N: Costumes. Hmmm.

images via homeofthenutty

#Castle #Caskett #Castle: Season 4 #Castle: Undead Again #Kate Beckett #Richard Castle #Fic #Fanfic #Fanfiction #fan Fic #Fan fiction #Writing #Hmmm

28 notes · View notes

a-queer-seminarian · 5 years ago

Text

Working through antisemitism in Holy Week, post 2

cw: violent antisemitism in history

The article below is the most helpful I’ve found so far in my search for information on how to confront the antisemitism of Holy Week. It’s by Amy-Jill Levine, who is Jewish herself and is the Professor of New Testament Studies and Judaism Studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School.

The article’s simple list of “options” we have for how we approach all the anti-Jewish sentiment that permeates the New Testament is much appreciated, because I’ve felt directionless! I’ve felt like there are “no options,” that this whole thing is too overwhelming, too complex for anyone to get a handle on -- now there are options, and some of them are actually good options!

I’m pasting most of the article below -- “Holy Week and the Hatred of the Jews: Avoiding Anti-Judaism at Easter”

_______

‘ Jesus of Nazareth, charged by the Roman authorities with sedition, dies on a Roman cross. But Jews - the collective, all Jews - become known as “Christ-killers."

Still haunting, the legacy of that charge becomes acute during Holy Week, when pastors and priests who speak about the death of Jesus have to talk about "the Jews."

Every year, the same difficulty surfaces: how can a gospel of love be proclaimed, if that same gospel is heard to promote hatred of Jesus's own people?

The charge against "the Jews" permeates the pages of the New Testament.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Pilate literally washes his hands while "all the people" - all the Jewish people - clamour for Jesus's death: "Let him be crucified ... His blood be on us and on our children!" (Matthew 27:23, 27).

John's Gospel identifies the Jews as "from your father the devil" (John 8:44) and blames them for backing Pilate into a corner and forcing him to kill an innocent man.

In the Acts of the Apostles, Peter charges "the entire house of Israel" (Acts 2:36) with crucifying Jesus and so having "killed the Author of life" (Acts 3:14-15). Paul then bluntly refers to "the Jews, who killed the Lord Jesus" (1 Thessalonians 2:14-15).

Perhaps this vilification was inevitable. Jesus's followers could not understand how the vast majority of Jews could not accept their belief in him as the Messiah.

The majority of Jews, in turn, saw no sign of the Messianic age having dawned: no general resurrection of the dead; no ingathering of the exiles to Zion; no end to death, war, disease, or poverty. What was self-evident to one group was incomprehensible to other. Incomprehension turned to mistrust, and mistrust, on both sides, turned to vilification.

Today, interfaith conversation, in which Jews and Christians learn to appreciate their common roots and better understand the reasons for the gradual and often painful separation, can reverse the process. Official (and unofficial) church statements facilitate healing as well: Nostra Aetate , the 1965 declaration of Vatican II, proclaimed that all Jews at all times should not be held responsible for Jesus's death, and Pope Benedict XVI, in the second volume of his Jesus of Nazareth , strongly reiterated the point. Christians from many (but not all) other branches of the tradition, generally agree.

But we still have to deal with our pasts, and with our Scriptures. Every time the Passion narratives are read, the threat of anti-Judaism reappears.

There is no catch-all for resolving the problems in the New Testament - or in Tanakh/the Old Testament, for that matter; we all have difficult texts in our canons. But there are strategies. Here are six, in order of usefulness.

Excision The first option is excision: take a pair of scissors to the offending passages - or, in today's parlance, hit the delete key. Howard Thurman recounts hearing from his grandmother how the plantation minister always preached, "Slaves, be obedient to your masters ..." and how she determined that if she ever learned to read, she would never read that part of the Bible. The story has morphed into the common sermon illustration that Thurman's grandmother, once both freed and literate, took a scissors to the text. Had I suffered what Thurman's grandmother suffered, I may well have taken the same approach. However, the destruction of a text considered sacred seems to me extreme. To erase offending texts is to erase memories of both the victims of those texts and those who struggled against them. Moreover, if we each design our own canons, we eliminate community. A variant on the excision approach is to claim that Paul or Jesus never made the problematic comment and therefore, we can ignore them. For example, scholars commonly argue that Paul did not write 1 Thessalonians 2:14b-16 - it is inconsistent with his positive comments about Jews (such as, "They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises ... as regards election they are beloved ... for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable" [Romans 9:4-5; 11:28b-29]). The offensive passage can also be removed from the letter without harming the rhetorical flow. Similarly, many scholars argue that Jesus's invectives in the Gospels stem not from the man from Nazareth, but from the later church in competition with local synagogues. Comforting as such arguments may be, they are based on hypothesis, not fact. Paul may well have changed his mind; Jesus would not be the first Jew critical of fellow Jews. Moreover, Christian proclamation is not based on some scholarly construct of an original text or a "historical Jesus" apart from the Gospels. It is based in the words of the Bible as interpreted by the faithful community. Therefore, Christians must deal with those words.

Retranslate The second option is to retranslate - or, bowdlerize. For example, some "progressive" translations read John's Gospel as condemning not "Jews" but "Judeans" or "Jewish leaders" or "religious leaders" or simply "leaders." Such translations are well-meaning, and at least "Judean" is legitimate translation of the Greek term Ioudaioi. But to replace the New Testament's "Jews" by other terms is to have a judenrein text, a text "purified" of Jews. Such bowdlerizing obscures part of the reason why Jews have been persecuted over 2,000 years, divorces Jews not only from Jesus and his earliest followers, and even serves to de-legitimate the relationship of Jews today from the land of Israel. Hence, politically correct translations are not necessarily biblically faithful ones.

Romanticize The theological answer to the question ‘Who killed Jesus?’ is not ‘the Jews’ but humanity. This is an excellent place to begin. The problem, however, is that those who see themselves as ‘Jews’ on Good Friday then see themselves as redeemed "Christians" on Sunday morning. The Jews, by not accepting Jesus as Lord and Saviour, remain in their guilt. The same romantic approach today is best exemplified in the celebration of the Passover seder in churches, usually on Holy Thursday. ...Baptizing Jewish symbols in Christian terms is not a strong move in interfaith sensitivity. Nor do Christian seders remove the problem. To the contrary, the performance serves to absolve the congregation: how could they be anti-Jewish if they are doing something so Jewish as having a Passover seder?

Allegorize The fourth option is to allegorize: to say that the text really doesn't mean what it says. For example, we take Matthew's blood-cry (27:15) not as a self-curse, but as a plea for redemption: the people are ironically asking to be redeemed by Jesus's blood. While this approach redeems the verse theologically, it also suggests that the Jewish crowd wanted and needed this redemption, so that Judaism apart from the Christian message is ineffective. The move turns Jews into crypto-Christians.

Historicize The fifth approach, the darling of the academy, provides historical rationale and often justification, for the problematic statements. For example, we claim that Matthew is a Jew writing for a Jewish community; therefore his words cannot be anti-Jewish - as if Jews cannot be anti-Jewish, which is a silly idea. Also complicating this view: we know neither who wrote the Gospels, which were originally transmitted anonymously, nor the community to which they are addressed. It is a dirty little secret in biblical studies: we determine, based on the contents of the Gospels, both author and audience. Then we interpret the text on the basis of our reconstruction. This is a circular argument. Similarly, we note the historical unlikelihood of "all the people" saying, "his blood be on us and on our children" - that all of us Jews would say the same thing, ever, is a tad unlikely. Then, we see how Matthew understands the destruction of Jerusalem, witnessed by the "children," to be punishment for the Jews' refusal to acknowledge Jesus as Lord. Therefore, so the argument goes, since the people never said the line, we can ignore it. But the line remains in the text; ignoring it is not an option. Another variation on the historicizing approach is to claim that the anti-Jewish language is reactionary: invective would be quite natural from the pen of those excommunicated from the synagogue. The problem here is, first, that we have no evidence, other than John's attestation (John 9:22; 12:42; 16:2) of synagogues tossing people out. If some synagogues did expel Jesus's followers, we should ask why. Because they wanted to replace Torah with Jesus? Because they were seen as compromising monotheism? Because they told synagogue members that unless they worshiped Jesus they would go to hell? Because they put the community in danger, given Roman distrust of the new messianic movement? Because they cherished their own traditions, which they found completely fulfilling? Any of these would be quite good reasons, and would likely result in censoring in my synagogue today. Finally, if we define this polemic as reactionary, again we blame the Jews for the problem. Finding history behind the text can help. But we cannot be secure with the history we posit, and when all the historical work is said and done, we still have to address what the New Testament actually says.

Admit the problem We come finally to our sixth option: admit to the problem and deal with it. There are many ways congregations can address the difficult texts. Put a note in service bulletins to explain the harm the texts have caused. Read the problematic texts silently, or in a whisper. Have Jews today give testimony about how they have been hurt by the texts. Those who proclaim the problematic verses from the pulpit might imagine a Jewish child sitting in the front pew and take heed: don't say anything that would hurt this child, and don't say anything that would cause a member of the congregation to hurt this child. Better still: educate the next generation, so that when they hear the problematic words proclaimed, they have multiple contexts - theological, historical, ethical - by which to understand them. Christians, hearing the Gospels during Holy Week, should no more hear a message of hatred of Jews than Jews, reading the Book of Esther on Purim, should hate Persians, or celebrating the seder and reliving the time when "we were slaves in Egypt," should hate Egyptians. We choose how to read. After two thousand years of enmity, Jews and Christians today can recover and even celebrate our common past, locate Jesus and his earliest followers within rather than over and against Judaism, and live into the time when, as both synagogue and church proclaim, we can love G-d and our neighbour.’

#readings #antisemitism #issues in christianity #holy week #amy jill levine #article

12 notes · View notes

yhwhrulz · 1 year ago

Text

Morning and Evening with A.W. Tozer Devotional for April 19

Tozer in the Morning God's Word Gives Light

Tozer in the Evening In the Pursuit of God - Apprehending God

O taste and see.

Psalms 34:8

The Bible assumes as a self-evident fact that men can know God with at least the same degree of immediacy as they know any other person or thing that comes within the field of their experience. The same terms are used to express the knowledge of God as are used to express knowledge of physical things. O taste and see that the Lord is good.' (Psalms 34:8)All thy garments smellof myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces.' (Psalms 45:8) My sheep hear my voice.' (John 10:27)Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.' (Matthew 5:8) These are but four of countless such passages from the Word of God. And more important than any proof text is the fact that the whole import of the Scripture is toward this belief.

As we begin to focus upon God the things of the spirit will take shape before our inner eyes. Obedience to the word of Christ will bring an inward revelation of the Godhead (John 14:21-23). It will give acute perception enabling us to see God even as is promised to the pure in heart. A new God-consciousness will seize upon us and we shall begin to taste and hear and inwardly feel the God who is our life and our all. There will be seen the constant shining of the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. (John 1:9) More and more, as our faculties grow sharper and more sure, God will become to us the great All, and His Presence the glory and wonder of our lives. O God, quicken to life every power within me, that I may lay hold on eternal things. Open my eyes that I may see; give me acute spiritual perception; enable me to taste Thee and know that Thou art good. Make heaven more real to me than any earthly thing has ever been. Amen.

0 notes

apparitionism · 6 years ago

Text

Mercury 13a

This is kind of old-school for me: the first part of a two-part part. A conversation spans, and is the bulk of, both parts. It’s lengthy, that conversation, and while it hits a few beats correctly, if actors were actually going to perform the thing, it would most likely need some serious workshopping—which, if the parts were cast appropriately, I would certainly enjoy witnessing. I tried linking to the previouslies, but tumblr disappeared me, so I’m reposting without links. The other 12 parts are quite findable, via my tumblr’s search or archive.

Mercury 13a

On the drive back to the hotel, Myka sat alone in the back seat, as she had the night before. She wasn’t quite sure how that had happened this time, but she had a sense of having been manipulated. By Pete, which was strange… but then he started talking. To Helena, in a very sincere tone of voice. Which was also strange.

“Hey H.G.,” he began, “I think it’s pretty sweet, how we figured out that Rosebud deal together.”

“Are you feeling all right?” Helena asked. Strange to her too, then.

“Come on, don’t hate on me.”

“I… don’t? Am not?”

“I’m trying to make nice, okay? Because now you know what I’m scared of, and I don’t want you getting any ideas.”

“You know what I’m afraid of as well.”

He snorted. “Nothing?”

“If that’s your pronunciation of ‘further revelations of a disturbing nature regarding what happened when my body housed a consciousness not my own,’ then yes.”

Pete didn’t answer immediately. Myka didn’t want to breathe, lest she distract him from getting wherever he was going, wherever he and Helena were going.

Eventually, he said. “Got it.” He paused again, then threw over his shoulder, “How you feeling back there, Mykes? Still got the upset tummy?”

So much for thinking something important might be happening. “I’m not a five-year-old,” Myka said. “My stomach is fine.”

He swerved, and she swallowed a wave of what was absolutely not nausea.

“Well, shave my head and call me Steve,” he said without glancing into the rear-view mirror.

Helena said, hurriedly—clearly to head off another swerve, which Myka appreciated—“On the topic of fear. Or an aversion, at the very least: why did it occur to you to change, of all things, Myka’s interpretation of sugar?”

“It’s like that time we told you about with the juggling and the hairbrush and all, how Myka knew we’d never in a million years have slept together,” he said to Helena, who responded with a muttered “thank god.”

“High five, right?” he enthused, holding up his hand. And Helena, who when she tried to high-five always looked like an anthropologist who found the idea of being a participant-observer intrinsically perverse, did in fact high-five him. “To check up on something for real,” he went on, “you go big. Little stuff might not matter. Might not show. We’d never sleep together. Myka would never think sugar was good for her.”

“I heard you just as loudly and clearly,” Helena pointed out. “Why didn’t it matter to me, I wonder?”

“You eat sugar all the time. Plus you sneak it. I’ve caught you raiding Steve’s secret stash of those S’mores Pop-Tarts, those ones Meryl-me would Method-midnight-snack her way through.”

“They aren’t secret. Everyone knows he keeps them in the leftmost cupboard on the far wall, middle shelf, behind the fondue pot, and he doesn’t mind others eating them as long as they replenish the supply. Which I did. Which everyone does.”

“Everyone?” Myka wondered aloud. Everyone was in a secret Pop-Tart snacking club? Including Meryl-Streep-as-Pete? Everyone?

Helena and Pete turned matching of-course-not-you eyerolls on her. “In any case,” Helena said, “my point is that I know—in fact, believe, for I fervently believe in science and its findings—that sugar has little to no nutritional value. So why didn’t I feel a difference, in terms of my beliefs?”

“Huh. That’s interesting.”

“My question?” Helena asked.

“No,” Pete said, and Myka was surprised when Helena didn’t react to what she normally would have taken as a slight. “What’s interesting is that Myka’s all science-y like you, but she didn’t figure it out, like how Ida sherlocked the rabbits.” He began to slap out a rhythm against the steering wheel—focused fidgeting. He was thinking. Finally, he said, “But also, maybe she really really really didn’t want to figure it out.”

Helena said, casually but not, as if she’d been waiting for him to reach this exact conclusion, “The enthusiastic consumption of pie would suggest.”

“Just to remind you both, I’m sitting here,” Myka said.

Helena shook her head. “Shh. Pete is doing philosophy.”

“Aha. That’s why my head hurts. And I’m hungry again.”

“We’ll be at the hotel soon, where you’ll order a pizza and recover,” Helena assured him.

“It’s like you’ve met me.”

“Certainly met the pizza delivery personnel. Paid them, in fact, at times.”

Pete turned his head away from the road to look at Helena, and the look lasted a little longer than Myka was comfortable with, from a safety perspective. Finally, with his gaze back where it was supposed to be, he said, “It’s true that maaaybe I haven’t given you full props for that kind of thing.”

“It’s true that maaaybe,” Helena echoed—and there was that awkward anthropologist again, for Helena rarely said “maybe,” and never said it like Pete did—“I have owed you that and more.”

A pause. Then: “I’m tired,” Pete said.

Helena nodded. “Understandable. Nap until your pizza arrives?”

“No, I mean, of all of it. Let’s just not anymore, okay? Any of it.”

Now Helena was the one to pause. “It’s an idea,” she said, slowly.

“Yeah, but I mean it. We worked this one out together. Let’s just.”

“You’re certain?”

“Who knows. All I do know is, I know what I’m scared of. And it ain’t you.”

Myka watched Helena look swiftly at Pete, then turn her face back to the dark road. “Good,” she eventually said. “All right. Good.”

He smiled. “No pullback on snark, though. For Claud’s sake—she’d whine about us being boring, and I’m pretty sure the main ingredient in any Recipe for Disaster is Claudia Donovan thinking she’s gotta start manufacturing her own entertainment.”

Another glance from Helena, this time accompanied by an answering smile. “Fair. Agreed, and fair.”

“The fair. Where it all just happened,” he said.

“It did.” She offered him a low five, and he patted her palm.

Myka was extremely unsure of how she was feeling about what she’d been witnessing… witnessing for most of this day, and now the nighttime too. It wasn’t quite a mirror image of yesterday and last night; instead a softening of those, like looking at them through a Vaselined lens.

At the hotel, instead of dashing away, Pete said, “You’re both coming out of that room alive in the morning, right? Alive and together?”

Now the difference between yesterday and today wasn’t Vaselined at all; now it annoyed Myka. “What do you care if we’re together,” she said.

Pete did not take the expected exaggerated offense. Instead, he shook his head sadly at Myka, then said, “Look out, H.G. That sounds like a sugar crash, and it’s headed right for you.”

“I doubt she’ll be persuaded that mud makes everything safer,” Helena said, also sadly.

“Look at me not making a joke about naked mud wrestling. How’s this: make sure she gives you your two minutes to try and restart.”

“Comedians,” Myka said. Now she knew exactly how she felt: like she wanted to hit them both. And hug them, despite not being a hugger. The twinning of those impulses didn’t have anything to do with having eaten sugar—that, she knew, because it wasn’t by any means a new sensation.

“Alive and together,” Pete repeated. Then he said to Helena, “I’d add ‘sane’ and ‘good,’ like Ida did, but I don’t want to set the bar too high for you.” He applauded himself, two little claps. “See? There’s your snark.”

“Here’s one for you: don’t order an extra-large pizza,” Helena advised. “The size will give you nightmares. As will your consequently inflated waistline.”

“That’s actually not a bad one. Hang onto it for when we get home; it’ll make Claud laugh. We make sure to remind her about the rabbits, and she’ll call me Anya and I’ll get offended, and then you can go into the pizza bit.”

As he plotted, Myka realized she was unsure again: about whether she would be able to survive a long-term Lattimer-and-Wells strategic-improv team. Was that even a thing? Would Claudia eventually catch on? And if she did, would she insist on making them wear matching Lattimer-and-Wells T-shirts? Could the Caretaker dictate agents’ wardrobe? If so, Claudia would never stop at T-shirts, which made Myka’s mind, for reasons known only to refined sugar, leap to the idea of herself, Helena, Pete, and Steve done up as KISS. She determined to never let her mind leap that way again, given how immediately confused she got about who should be who.

But: “If I tell you you’re Gene Simmons, can we call it a night?” she asked Pete, who said a confused “If you tell me I’m Gene Simmons for what?”

“Reasons,” Myka told him. “Your-ego reasons. Obviously Helena’s the Paul Stanley, but then Steve and I fight it out, because I bet we both want whiskers.”

“This is not a sugar crash,” Pete declared. “This is some kinda episode.”

Myka said, “If so, it’s one where Claudia gets drunk on power—”

“Episode ending in Y,” he mumbled.

“—and makes us all wear leather outfits and platform boots,” Myka finished.

Pete looked to Helena, and she affirmed, “This is an episode. With an increasingly desperate tone that I am beginning to recognize, one translatable as ‘Helena, I know we will soon be speaking privately, but I am nervous about what that will entail.’”

Helena really was every bit as annoying as Pete. Particularly when she was right.

“Not your first rodeo,” Pete observed.

“Demolition derby,” Helena corrected.

Pete looked like he was about to return volley, but Myka preempted him with a quick, “Goodnight, Pete.” She grabbed Helena by the arm and pulled her down the hallway toward their room.

“Don’t be nervous, Mykes!” he yelped, but he stayed put, so his voice receded as Myka hurry-walked them away. “She’s actually kind of okay, once you get to know her! And so are you! So I really think alive and together is gonna be the…”

They rounded a corner, and Myka slowed. She said to Helena, “Sorry. I think I was a little overcome by the whole you-and-Pete peace treaty.”

“I don’t have any real purchase on why it happened, so I am as well. What is a Paul Stanley?”

“We can worry about it later,” Myka said, for they had reached the room.

The space was pristine, all evidence of last night’s estrangement tidied away. The chair was a chair again, not Helena’s self-imposed prison. The bed was a bed, a white-sheeted, blankly innocent canvas.

The coffeemaker still did not have a filter basket.

“Scene of the crime?” Myka tried, as they stood in the doorway, as the door then swung shut behind them.

“At the very least,” Helena said, “the scene of a disastrously unsuccessful attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable.”

Myka gave in—to exhaustion, or the sugar crash, or whatever it was—and took the three steps to the bed, sitting down and then letting her length collapse back across the formerly inhospitable expanse. “The phrase ‘endless wonder’ makes me cringe,” she told the popcorn ceiling. “It’s practically Pavlovian.”

“In truth I can’t imagine a scenario in which endlessness wouldn’t be a burden. Wonder, torment… you know Charles wrote an essay on Pavlov. In 1927.”

Now Myka carefully told the ceiling, “I did not know that. I also didn’t know you’d been doing so much digging.”

“It was hearing his voice in that interview that made me determined. He used the word ‘jolly’… he did so often use that word.” She said “jolly” again, as if it were from a language she knew only phonetically. “I’d been so angry with him, but he turned back into my brother, if you see what I mean. A speaking human. With whom I had spoken. I wanted to know what he’d done. As it happens, I have relatives.”

“Do you want to find them? Meet them?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay,” Myka said, still careful.

“But—will you listen to the interview?” Helena asked, with a little inhale of… uncertainty? Insecurity?

Odd. Both the request and the inhale. “If you want me to,” Myka said.

Her unvoiced “but why do you want me to” might as well have been said out loud, for Helena responded, “Because,” and she looked down, up, down, up, “it’s the closest you can come to meeting him.”

She would have wanted me to meet her brother. “I think maybe he’s not the only Wells who’s sentimental,” Myka said, to stave off the idea that she herself was the sentimental one here.

“You might have liked him. I misled you on that point, early on. I was so dismissive of him.”

“You were angry.”

“But he was my brother. Was. My brother.”

Myka propped herself up on her elbows. Helena had remained standing, there by the door, in a pose—and with an expression—far too hologram-reminiscent. “Come here,” Myka said. “Please.” Helena nodded and moved to sit in the chair by the bed, and Myka said, “That’s not—” But she needed to be careful. “This day,” she settled on saying, and she laughed a little. “That pie. I really did feel like I was someone else, eating it. Enjoying it.”

“Well. You were. Someone else. You were a body, one resembling Myka, who was no longer in possession of a salient piece of information about yourself. Something constitutive of yourself, as you have historically ideated that self.”

She said it mildly, so Myka tried to do “mild” in return. “Okay. I get it. My sugar-sick body gets it. It’s not the same—it wasn’t my full self—but I get it.”

But no: she didn’t get it at all; in fact she’d got it wrong, for Helena near-snapped, “As mentioned earlier today, it wasn’t my full self either,” and Myka braced herself. But Helena backed off. Her tone lightened as she repeated Myka’s words: “‘Sugar-sick body.’ Pete was exactly right, you know.”

“He was?” This pact between them, if it held, was going to be… peculiar.

“You ‘really really really’ did not want to figure out—to understand—that your belief had been altered. Why did you enjoy the pie so much? For you did enjoy it so much.”

“I’d’ve licked if off the Pinto,” Myka agreed. That earned her a vaguely horrified “what?”, so she said, “Never mind. The color was the same, and so I… never mind. My honest best guess as to why? No slippery-slope problem. Complete freedom. In real life, I try hard not to start any kind of slide, because I’m so susceptible. You say a piece of pie’s okay one time, and then it’s all pie. Morning, noon, night.”

“Surely you’re exaggerating.”

“Am I? You say meeting H.G. Wells at gunpoint’s okay one time, and then…”

She’d said it without really thinking—because meeting at gunpoint was something they did joke about, gingerly—but saying anything without thinking was foolish here, foolish now. Helena slumped deep into the chair. “So you believe I am as unhealthy for you as you now once again believe refined sugar to be.”

It was true that Myka was susceptible to slippery slopes. It was also true that meeting H.G. Wells at gunpoint one time had launched her into a slide down such a slope, one of morning-noon-night want, and it was additionally true that as Myka was sliding, she’d tried to make herself believe that Helena belonged in the same category as sugar and other indulgences. Then, after Yellowstone, she’d tried to discipline herself back up that slope to recapture the morally high, self-denying ground.

But there, too, Myka had been doing the Regents’ work for them: punishing herself.

“No,” Myka said now. “It isn’t like that at all. I believed in you and I was right. I got it wrong for a while—the part about believing—but then I got it right. Nobody had to use an artifact on me. Unless at the very beginning you shouted ‘you’re in love with me’ through that microphone?”

Helena didn’t answer immediately. She moved her head mindfully again, not up and down, but as if she were trying to work a crick out of her neck. Then she said, “That isn’t as fanciful as you make it sound. Earlier, both Pete and Ida understood my implication that in intimate contexts, you could be said to be, at times, similarly… voracious.” Myka was about to concede that Helena wasn’t wrong, when Helena continued, “I like you that way.” She could have said this suggestively; instead it was simple.

If she’d been suggestive, Myka would have understood exactly what she meant, and would have dismissed it because of that. But simple? “Why?” Myka asked, also simply.

And Helena answered in kind. “Your being unashamed of your appetites is—please don’t take offense—somewhat out of character. I suppose it has to do with your slippery-slope problem… but that such rare lack of shame could stand in relation to me seems nothing short of a miracle.”

Only occasionally did Myka feel that she was granted access to something like the real everyday texture of Helena’s distant past. Most of the time, Helena told smooth stories, making light of then-now differences, but the way she said “such rare lack of shame”—that wasn’t just about Myka. In those words were serrations, deep and old and yet still raw, and shame had been the knife, no matter who had wielded it, there in that distant past, whether Helena herself or someone else or everyone.

“It does stand in relation to you,” Myka said. “But more importantly, in relation to us.” She didn’t imagine it would counter any part of that past, but it was true.

Helena took her time. Then: “Surely you said that through the microphone.”

Myka turned on her side. Helena was small in the chair again, but her eyes were bright. They were quiet for a while, breathing. Two bodies performing respiration. Far older than science, Myka thought.

“I’ll tell you about the bet,” she said, when the silence threatened to become too meaningful. Then she reconsidered. “Except for now I sort of don’t want to tell you. You might hear it wrong.”

Dry: “That would not be new.”

Myka matched her. “This is nobody’s first demolition derby, is it? Anyway, plastic duck-boats and water guns, and obviously I lost, but the important part was, I was trying to win us a week free of stuff like ‘Wow, Myka, you sure enjoyed yourself last night’ and ‘Hey H.G., quit staring at Myka’s assets.’ Not because I’m ashamed. Because it’s Pete.”

“I understand.”

Myka appreciated that, but a loss was a loss. “Shooting,” she said, still frustrated with herself, with the game, and particularly with Pete. “Even water guns, I figured I’d win.”

“But you lost. Did you ‘psych yourself out’?”

Adorable anthropologist. Myka would have preferred to grimace, but the anthropologist made her smile instead. “Defective game. I wish it’d been those giant ducks of yours, and they’d made him run away screaming.”

“What do you want me to tell you?” Helena asked, and there it was.

“I honestly don’t know,” Myka admitted. “Nothing? Everything?”

“You wanted to know her name.”

“I wanted to torture myself with it. That was a really stupid thing to want.”

“Not stupid. Unproductive, perhaps, yet completely understandable. Are you happy with me?”

That seemed like a real question, so Myka gave it a real answer. “Not every minute, but a whole lot of the time.”

“There you are. We all feel a need to torture ourselves, because none of us believes we deserve to be happy. Rightly or wrongly. You didn’t believe you deserved a pardon, either.”

“Shame? No, that’s guilt. Anyway I’d probably really rather not.”

“Be happy?”

“Torture myself.”

Helena took another of those meaningful pauses. “No version of myself could have said her name the way I say yours. And she may know something of this body—some softer version, not the one that says your name—but she doesn’t know me.” She paused, began a smile. “For example, although she knew that I had an affinity for the historical H.G. Wells, as anyone with a love of literature would, she had no idea how fervently I despised that hideously bearded Frenchman Verne.”

“You didn’t like his beard?” Myka asked, smiling too.

“I didn’t like him. As the beard was attached to him, what do you imagine I thought of it?”

“I figured maybe you were anti all facial hair. You were really dismissive of your brother’s mustache.”

Helena crossed her arms and sniffed. “Well, who wouldn’t have been?”

“He did keep it though. Decades. I’ve seen the pictures.”

“I know. Every photograph I saw, I wanted to shave his ridiculously bewhiskered face. He was so handsome as a boy.”

“I’m partial to his handsome sister.”

Now Helena pushed her chin and chest forward a bit; she raised an eyebrow. “You certainly know what to say to me.”

“It doesn’t take H.G.-Wells-level genius to figure out that you’d like hearing you’re more handsome than your brother.”

“If only because I am clean-shaven?” she asked, running the fingers of her left hand over her upper lip, around her chin.

Myka shrugged against the bed. “Your call if you want a mustache.”

“Unlikely,” Helena said. She sat back, arms again crossed. “I can’t tell you everything, in the main because I don’t have your memory. I told you I listened more than I spoke. I told you: I wanted to know. What had… happened. As much an invitation to torturing oneself as your wanting to know her name, I suppose. I know you think I act the martyr. Not an unjustified accusation. But… they were kind to each other. I believe they loved each other.”

Myka should have expected such a dagger. “I changed my mind; I can’t hear this.” Was saying that—feeling that—a step in a bad, last-night direction?

“But you can,” Helena said quickly. “Or you need to? I certainly needed to. So as to ease my own mind about what she… did. And you certainly need to hear that some version of myself could be kind, could be loving. That the guilt, the shame, both of those could be peeled away, and that at least some bodily decency remained. I hadn’t believed that could be true.”

A better direction: “I’ve been trying to tell you. I’ve seen it, felt it. I believe it. I don’t need Emily Lake for that, and I don’t need a microphone. Maybe you do. I don’t.”

“You certainly needed something last night, something this version of myself couldn’t give.”

“Last night was awful. I was awful.”

“I don’t see how it would have gone differently,” Helena said, an oddly gentle condemnation. “You felt what you felt, and why should you have had to pretend otherwise?”

That did nothing to mitigate Myka’s self-reproach. “You felt what you felt too. And there’s a not-so-fine line between ‘not pretending’ and ‘being an insensitive jerk.’”

“I didn’t know what I wanted. Needed.”

“Me to be there?” Myka tried. “As something other than an insensitive jerk, and I wasn’t.”

“I’ve made the same error in the past, of course. Not being any sort of beneficent presence for you.”

“In your defense, some of those times, you were a hologram,” Myka said, using her I am making light of things that can never be made light of voice.

In the same light-but-heavy-but-light way, Helena said, “My own fault. Due to earlier non-beneficent times.”

Myka shifted her tone only slightly to ask, “How did you leave it with her?” You will be fine with whatever the answer is, she told herself. You will be fine, and you will not cause more trouble.

“With a sense of finality,” Helena said, and her words carried that sense as well. Myka began, minimally, to relax. Helena continued, “I can’t imagine she and I will meet again. It’s astonishing that we met at all, isn’t it?”

Myka was about to agree, but a new, terrible thought stopped her—and reversed all release of tension. “Did you ask her why she came here, to the fair?”

TBC

(I have to warn you, what comes next isn’t going to be any really gut-punchy, gasp-of-astonishment reveal; I never meant to break the conversation here, but it was stretching. And I’m of course disinclined to stop them from stretching.)

Anyway, my tag commentary on this part would have something to do with that line between “not pretending” and “being an insensitive jerk.” It’s a bright line, and I’m pretty sure it’s called empathy. But when you find yourself in one of those insensitive-jerk nosedives, it’s awfully hard to pull up and see any line at all, bright or otherwise...

#bering and wells #Warehouse 13 #fanfic #Mercury #part 13a

32 notes · View notes

rethinkingthefaith · 6 years ago

Text

Wanted: An End to Dogmatic Religion

Dogmatists think it their sworn duty to pass judgment on their brethren. They see it as a great commandment to spatter fellow Christians with the title "heretic," and that duty they discharge with all diligence.

They also use such terms as "deceiver" and "false teacher," sometimes even “antichrist”, but their relationship with the word "heretic" is special. It echoes through the ages of religious bigotry. In a bygone era, the cry of "heretic" sent men and women to the flames and a host of unspeakable tortures at the hands of "the orthodox." It is only fitting, then, that today’s super-orthodox should have such an attachment to the word.

The amazing thing is that the issues that distinguish the "heretics" from the "orthodox" are highly abstract with few, if any, practical applications. Neither the precise natures of God and Christ, the dynamics of the atonement, nor the means of creation, produces the Christ-like goodness so essential to discipleship.

Dogmatism convolutes the mission of Christ. Why did Jesus walk among sinners and preach his message? Was it to make men theologically astute? Did Jesus come chiefly to give us right metaphysics, to present dogmas to the mind?

The doctrinal stalwart believes so, at least in part. To him, one of the great duties before God is to mark the right doctrinal box on the Christian checklist and to drive from the church all who don’t. The doctrine may have nothing to do with whether he loves God or neighbor, but to him, it is a matter of spiritual life and death. The dogmatist must expose all who deviate. He must ruin their reputations in the Christian community, and for this, he expects someday to hear the words, "Well done, good and faithful servant."

Many heretic hunters will respond by quoting New Testament passages that condemn false teachers. There must, therefore, be such a thing, and it must be incumbent upon the church to find them and drag them into the light of day. So goes the reasoning.

But the reasoning is flawed. Virtually every false teaching attacked in the New Testament is ethical in character. The biblical authors oppose these teachings because they led to either immoral living or harsh asceticism. The condemnation is not over the doctrine’s technical incorrectness, but over the consequences of belief in it.

Gnosticism, for example, in one form taught that matter was unredeemable. It made no difference to Gnostics, therefore, what one did with the body. This led to sexual promiscuity and perversion. The early churches were infected with this teaching. It endangered Christian purity. The New Testament writers condemned it on these grounds.

The Judaizing sects also caused problems in the church. They took the unfettered character of the faith and killed it. Austere Christians (as they do today) put heavy burdens on the saints. But Jesus never imposed any of these laws on his followers. Such things were never his emphasis. He knew they engendered only pride, an outward show of piety. This was the "other gospel" anathematized by Paul in Galatians. It was not an abstract belief about the nature of Jesus or the mechanics of salvation. This is a point the dogmatists always miss.

Another is that false teachers of Paul's day openly withstood the apostles and led away disciples after themselves. They shouted down the very messengers that Christ had sent into the world. For this Paul, John and others issued stern rebuke. But honest dissenters from orthodoxy today (at least the responsible ones) do not rise up and demonize Paul. They, like their orthodox detractors, acknowledge the New Testament authors as authoritative. It is a matter of differing interpretation of the same data, not a flouting of apostolic authority.

Still, the objection is common: The Bible enjoins us to follow sound doctrine, but the word "doctrine" simply means "teaching." We would really be better off if we discarded the old term "doctrine," for it is misleading. Many Christians think it means "abstract, theological concept," but there is no justification for this thinking. Any teaching is a doctrine. Jesus’ statement "love your enemies" is a doctrine, a teaching.

Another misunderstood word is "heresy." Look up the word in a concordance or a lexicon. You will find that it does not address doctrine per se, but only division. A heresy is anything that proves divisive. A heretic is one who ruins unity among brothers and sisters. Yes, false teaching can divide Christians, and thereby be a heresy, but so can true teaching and the insistence upon theological purity. Dogmatism is itself a heresy, maybe the worst. Few things have so severed the communion of saints. Few things have so pitted brother against brother, as William Ellery Channing so eloquently points out:

"It is truly wonderful, if excommunication for supposed error be the method of purifying the church, that the church has been so long and so woefully corrupted. Whatever may have been the deficiencies of Christians in other respects, they have certainly discovered no criminal reluctance in applying this instrument of purification. Could the thunders and lightnings of excommunication have corrected the atmosphere of the church, not one pestilential vapor would have loaded it for ages. The air of Paradise would not have been more pure, more refreshing. But what does history tell us? It tells us that the spirit of exclusion and denunciation has contributed more than all other causes to the corruption of the church, to the diffusion of error; and has rendered the records of the Christian community as black, as bloody, as revolting to humanity, as the records of empires founded on conquest and guilt." [1]

But, says the detractor, how do we know what to believe unless we have an orthodoxy pointing the way? The answer is that only those things that are obviously Christian – part and parcel of the church’s witness from day one – should be deemed indispensable. These are the great themes that traverse the sacred scriptures from cover to cover, then the life of the church from the first century to the 21st. They shape the character into the image of Jesus. These, and only these, are the non-negotiables.

I believe we must each decide for ourselves what these central tenets are. (The alternative is to let someone else decide for you.) I’ve come up with my own list of non-negotiables. They are small in number, but are believed by nearly all Christians in one form or another. Dogmatists complain that these things are "least-common denominators," but in today’s increasingly secular age, they may yet be revolutionary.

I would include the following:

God is a Heavenly Father, characterized by love, goodness and justice.

Jesus bore a profound relation to God and exhibited the divine characteristics to a profound degree.

He was crucified as a supreme act of self-sacrifice. Three days later, his followers had an encounter with him that shook their lives and changed the world.

By the Holy Spirit, he bears a special relation to his people, who have found him to be a source of strength, healing, inner peace.

There is a future life.

Wickedness and righteousness will be recompensed.

God desires that we live in faith, peace, love, goodness, self-control, servant-hood.

Prayer is of great benefit.

There exists a family of saints, an intimate connection between members of the faith family. They meet regularly, become involved in each other’s lives, partake of the Lord’s Supper and practice baptism in one form or another.

No, this is not a creed. Creeds are meant to condemn non-conformists. It is a personal interpretation of what is basic to Christian faith. If someone wants to omit baptism, for example, for his or her belief system, I won’t hurl insulting names at them or deny them the Christian name. I will simply realize that not all Christians see things as I do.

My list omits doctrinal refinements, such the nature of God, the atonement, the meaning of inspiration. I believe these are side issues. To be openly dogmatic about them is to sow dissension and, thereby, become a true heretic.

If we must adhere to a creed, let it be that ancient minimalist statement of faith, the Apostle's Creed. Here is a basic set of truths that most Christians can agree upon (give or take a few points). For large portions of Christendom, this sufficed for a long time. Not until Christ's people drank deeply from the well of Greek speculation did the arcane become binding.

The world is unimpressed with our erudite arguments. Our metaphysics seldom lay hold of the human heart. But when a group of social-minded Christians moves into a disaster area to fix houses, people notice. When a man accustomed to wild, self-centered living, adopts a Christian character, it astounds all who know him. Nobody cares whether he embraces one of the historic creeds. They see life, and that's all that matters to them.

It is time, more than ever, to unite on the heart of Christian faith, to live it rather than demand conformity to somebody’s idea of "essentials," and to exalt the parable of the Good Samaritan above the churches’ most hallowed creeds and confessions.

Dogmatism has had its day. Its chronicles reek of shed blood. Broken lives and relationships litter its halls. But a new day is here, theological bigotry must now be relegated to the dead past.

Dogmatism needs a stake through its heart.

Footnotes

1 Channing, W.E., "The System of Exclusion and Denunciation in Religion Considered," from The Works of William E. Channing, D.D, (Boston: American Unitarian Association) 1889, p. 488.

1 note · View note

boogiewrites · 7 years ago

Text

Choking On Sapphires 61

Title & Song: Maybe I’m Amazed

Characters: Alfie Solomons x Genevieve (OFC)

Word Count: 4800+

Summary: Alfie and Genevieve enjoy their time alone together in Paris/ They finally have time to talk about the big questions in their future. Alfie learns something new about Genevieve and he couldn’t possibly be more in love with her for it.

Warnings/Tags: Language. FLUFF. The Louvre. Almost getting arrested. Talk of babies and marriage. Gen crying over paintings. A piece of Gen’s past is revealed to Alfie.

**Chapter song is Maybe I’m Amazed by Paul McCartney**

Click on my icon then go to Mobile Masterlist in my bio for my other works and chapters. (Had to do this since Tumblr killed links, sorry.)

You have lunch at a cafe, sitting in the afternoon sun at your small table with the elaborate backed chairs. You make whispered speculations about the other patrons, sitting with your faces close together, hands held together in plain sight on the top of the table. You share coffee and bread before full courses of soup, fish and vegetables and a cheese plate. Proving again that he knows you, he orders you dessert.

"And Babas au Rhum for the missus," he says, hand motioning out to you. As you lower your face and cover it with your hand and silently laugh. "What is it Genny, you don't want to play me wife now?" he chuckles, taking a sip of coffee.

"A girl tries to have a little fun and gets caught and has to pay the price."

"That'll teach ya not to get caught." he snickers.

"That..." you sigh and shake your head, resting on the table with your elbows. "That's entirely valid." you start to laugh, running your fingers through your hair. "It's been so long since I've made up a life I suppose I've gotten rusty. " you say with a thoughtful pout.

"At least nothing was at stake. And it's just me that caught ya."

"That'd be death for any ordinary man."

"Well you are no ordinary man are ya love? Even in trousers." he says playfully wiggling his eyebrows.

"I like to think not." you grin.

"How long have we been married, by the way, just so I know." he says with a quick nod of his head at your expense.

"Almost four months."

"Ah. Still new. How romantic of you, Gen." he grins. "And where was our honeymoon if not Paris?"

"New York." you admit, looking down at the table.

"Ah yes, plenty of Jews there innit there? Were we vistin' family as well?"

"No. I didn't go that far." your face is back to easy going and you don't mind sharing the fantasy with him really. He was being a big tease about it, but you he wasn't making you feel bad about it, and that certainly meant something good didn't it?

"And what about the wedding? What was it like? Did you take me for every pound I've got? " he says sweetly, picking away at his beard.

"Of course I did," you say obviously with a playful tilt of your head. "Why do you want to know?" you ask with narrowed eyes. "You're asking an awful lot of questions for someone making fun of the fantasy."

"I ain't makin' fun and it's not entirely a fantasy now is it, love?" you feel the hairs prickle up on the back of your neck. You see his casual delivery, the confident pout of his lips as he explained. "Fantasy is usually something extravagant, something out of reach. Or something you'd never want but only enjoy the idea of." he goes on with that Alfie Solomons tongue twisting. Sharing his knowledge as if it were a gift. "Marriage and a wedding aren't things I would describe as such. So it ain't a fantasy innit?"

You study his face for a moment, as unreadable as ever, and you knew it was on purpose. He was trying to feel you out, wasn't he? "More of an artist's imagining?"

"And you must draw inspiration from somewhere. So certainly it's something you could share with me, of all people."

"I could." you pause, now trying to remain stoic as well, trying to figure out the reasoning behind those blue eyes of his. "If you'd like me to."

"Of course I bloody do, wouldn't have asked, would I?" he says obviously.

"There were lots of flowers." you say with a softer tone, looking out across the street to a flower shop.

"So this wasn't fantasy at all. You'd love a chuppah dripping in flowers wouldn't you love?" he says watching your face glaze over into the daydream again.

"I suppose I would. I hadn't thought about it up until now." you shake your head and the corner of your mouth turns up. "And that was precisely what I described. Lilacs and lavender falling down like cherry blossoms in the spring. A dress so big and a train so long there weren't enough children in the family to carry it." you begin to grin again, breaking the dazed thousand-yard stare and looking back to the table. "Perhaps not actually that big for real life though." you let out a little giggle and meet his eyes for just a moment.

"Well that's a relief." he says with a laugh and raise of his brows.

"It is?" you ask with a tilt of your head.

"It'd be a shame to not be able to get close to you on the day of after waiting so long." he says matter of factly before meeting your cautious gaze.

You share a moment of silence, you find the others face to be softer than expected. You'd never talked about marriage before with Alfie. It should seem a natural thing to do, given the delayed circumstances of your courtship. You knew only a few people that had waited a year before getting engaged. Although you were still learning about the rules of Judaism, you knew from distant memories of childhood that the process was far different from the usual traditions you were more familiar with, growing up with a Catholic father.

He sees that look in your eyes, although it was rare, he still knew it to be fear. "Is marriage still only a fantasy to you, Genevieve?" his voice was cool and calm. "I recall the last I had heard you didn't want to be married."

"I never said that," you say with blinking eyes and a hesitant tone. "I had spoken from the point of view of assuming I would never find anyone worth marrying." you clarify, a blush rising to your cheeks.

"Ah," he says, a slow nod, reading your nervous body language. He didn't want to push you too far, but surely he was reading the signs clearly. "Like your belief of romance to be dead?" he suggests.

"Yes, like that." you hold his stare, willing yourself to face this conversation. You wanted to get closer to him in Paris. This hadn't been what you'd meant by that though. You should tell him you love him first, shouldn't you? And you most certainly did. You never wanted to be without him, that meant you should marry him, right?

"And I believe you've told me you had changed your feelings on that particular subject, yeah?"

"A particular someone has changed my mind on that yes." you give him a slow-growing smile, looking back down and the table, willing yourself to face the fear you'd held for so long when it came to love and commitment. You reach out and hold his hand.

"Who is he? I'll kill 'im." he says, leaning in closer to you with a charming smile that always causes you to address the tension you hold in your shoulders and release it.

"Bold of you to assume it's a man." you say with raised brows before you both laugh.

"Entirely different set of problems there, mate." he chuckles and squeezes your hands. "Then if I may be so bold as to believe it was somehow me that changed your mind. And you have in fact changed your mind, yeah?" he nods his chin your way. "Then may I also be confirmed in my belief that you have changed your mind about marriage as well?"

"I was never against marriage with the right person."

"The person who made you believe in the romantic sort of marriage, yeah?"

"Yes. That particular person." you say softly.

You see a new sort of smile come across his face. His boyish handsomeness coming through as he gives you a closed lip smile with slow blinking eyes. He leans forward and kisses you gently.

A plate with raspberries and rum smelled sponge cake is slide onto the table, interrupting the eye contact you'd managed to hold. "Excusez-moi, voici vos babas au rhum." the waitress says with an apologetic smile behind bowing her head and leaving.

"I think we would've had this conversation a lot sooner, had we had time alone like this, pet." he says, moving to take his fork and slice the end of the sweet bread and holding it out towards you.

"So do I." you say before taking the piece into your mouth. "But we have all the time here in Paris to do so." you say, finishing chewing.

"That we do, my love." he says before trying to cake himself.

"Perhaps if it were made with your bread?" you suggest with a crooked smile. He hums in appreciation for your praise.

"Perhaps." he nods and reaches out with his hand again, assuring you felt that he mean what he was about to say, as in reflection to the weeks you'd been together had led him to feel guilty about the effort he was putting into seeing you. "I'll make a point to mark more time for us once we return to London, eh? Can't very well be a man who neglects his wife now can I?" he grins.

"For my sake, I'd certainly hope not." you say with a gentle smile as you let out a quiet chuckle.

"Here love, let's eat ya sweeties and let's be off to see the paintings. Would that please the missus?" his face continues to be amused and soft and you feel your heart fluttering about in your chest.

"It would please her very much." you say with a giggle before taking another bite of cake off the fork in his hands. --------

You move throughout the long hallways of the museum much like you had the rest the Paris, hand in hand. Alfie is distracted by the expressions that pass over your face as you look over the painting and statues that line the walls. He notices you keep speaking of wishing you could be as good as good as the works that hung in these halls. He believes you to be, and when he keeps correcting you, a light tap to the nose to scold you speaking any ill of your skills each time until you stop. You do cry, and it was expected. He gives you his sleeve, his handkerchief and tenderly wipes your stray years from your cheeks with his fingers as you sigh heavily and rest your head on his arm.

"Oh, look at it Alfie, darling. My love isn't it just heartbreaking?" you'd say, your hand to your chest and your eyes were hundreds of miles away in thought.

You reach a painting that he knows, a hearty chuckle from him as you approach and he points to Carravaggio's, Judith Beheading Holofernes.

"Oh look, Gen it's our epilogue." he says with a gruff single note laugh.

"Come off it mon Fie." you chuckle, with a roll of your eyes.

"What I don't like is that he truly looks like me in 'is one." he says with his bottom lip disappearing under his mustache.

"I won't deny that. But I'd never cut off your head, darling, I'm much too fond of it." you coo at him, lightly cupping his cheek. "But I must admit she has much the same approach as I doesn't she?"

"If you were left a widow you would cut off the offending parties head? Sounds like you love, yeah." he nods and pouts his lips in agreement.

"I meant in the story, the text of "Approaching to his bed, she took hold of the hair of his head." you say with a smirk. "Something I much adore doing with you."

"Naughty thing. Turnin' bible stories into flirtations. Dirty girl." he says with a deep chuckle.

"It's not a part of our works, so who cares." you let out a dismissive laugh. ------

You come across another painting to resemble him, St. Matthew and the Angel by Rembrandt.

"I don't want to draw attention to it but it would seem as if we're very popular in these works." he says quietly with a pointed finger to the painting.

"That would resemble you, were you old and gray." you nod. "But this is St. Matthew he was an apostle."

"Ah. Then perhaps not." he lets out an amused little chuckle. "But it does remind me of us, yeah. Me workin' away and you come fluttering in, perching on me shoulder to remind me of how heavenly things could be."

"Yes if you'd stop working and let me have me way." you say in a prissy way and he snorts in amusement.

"Always the same with ya Genny. Meowing about, rubbing on me and demanding attention like a cat in heat." he teases.

"How rude. A woman can vocalize her need for affection and attention, mon Fie." you giggle. "Although your comparison is almost embarrassingly accurate." you shrug and grin, taking his hand and tugging him away from the painting. -------

The last painting to draw a deep, gut-wrenching emotion from you was, of course, a Leonardo da Vinci. He feels your stuttered inhalation and looks down at you, finding your face solemn while taking in La Scapigliata with wide watery eyes. It wasn't a very large piece, especially in comparison to the ironic giant size of the statue of David or the entire wall-sized paintings of battles and myths you'd come across. Its size was no indication to the way it seemed to move you.

"How is it this one moves you, my love." he asks, kissing your head as you sigh and put an arm around his waist, and he moves to rest his over your shoulders.

"Look at her face." you whisper. Even though the face was the only true part more fully fleshed out in the portrait, he does as he's asked. "How did he imagine or capture such an expression?" your hand rests on your chest as your words barely scrape past your lips in their raspy and emotion filled response.

Alfie could tell this one was hitting you particularly hard. "What do you see, Genevieve?" he asks softly, leaning down to your ear.

"I see a fully expressed inner emotion, depicted outwardly as if caught candidly on her face." you let out a long sigh. "The slightly messy curls falling about, the downward casted soft eyes, the glow that is reflected off her skin. She doesn't care about anything else except that exact moment. That exact feeling she's being consumed by."

"You should describe things to the blind love. Your words are doing the art justice." he whispers, another kiss to your hair as he watches the tears fall from your eyes like he did the night of the opera. Now more certain in his choice to buy you the teardrop earrings for a memento from these days spent together. "What feelin' is it, my beautiful flower?"

"Love." you sigh out, another stuttered inhale past your trembling lips.

He studies the woman's face and truly tries to see in through your beautifully worded depictions. "I wonder what it is she's looking at?" he asks aloud.

"I imagine it to be what looking at your child for the first time must feel like. The exhaustion on her face, only countered with the slightest upturning of her lips, the heavy corners of her eyes crinkled just so, pouring wordless devotion to the new babe in her arms."

Suddenly he's hit with it. He sees what you see for a moment. "That is what it is, innit?" he whispers. Besides the babe itself, nothing else would matter at that moment except the emotion, and the unfinished state of the painting somehow made it more poignant suddenly to him. "You are bloody brilliant, Genevieve." he rasps out.

You blink rapidly, taken out of your fantasy of feeling the emotions for yourself. Beyond exhaustion, in pain and flooded with emotion, you lie in bed with a pinked babe to your breast, a vision coming to you as you cry silently. You turn your face with its tear-stained cheeks to meet his. You find his brow furrowed, lips in a tight line of thought as he brushes your cheek and holds the warmth to your face.

"The things I have seen you do, my love. The animal I have known and adored just the same as the tender and gentle soul that resides within you and it all astounds me. Your dual nature gives me hope that being hard and covered in blood isn't all my life may be. To have proof one can access such a broad range of emotions gives me a reason to believe there is more for me even when I am in doubt of it. The capacity for maternal love you hold was something I never expected in you."

"Having a child is a brutal and bloody business for a woman. You risk your life, you face unimaginable pain and gore just the same as coming by it through means of violence, you can come by it by means of love just the same."

"And you know of pain through violence, my love." he nods.

"Intimately."

"Do you wish to know of that pain through love, Genevieve? To bring a life into the world by blood instead of taking one out?" his brow shifts and he searching your face for answers. He holds his breath and he does not mean to. It was clear the art was working away at his emotions as well, forcing life's biggest questions out of him.

You nod and let out a shaky exhale. "I do." you answer simply. You realize the weight that lifted off of you that you hadn't known was there dissipates as you openly admit it to another person. To say it so closely, and to the person you hoped you would be making the life with touches you both. You can both feel it, a heartbeat shared in tandem for a moment as it skips at the thought of creating another heartbeat to share outside yourselves. So many things that seemed out of reach to you both were now attainable things because you'd found each other. You lean in to kiss him, he tastes the salt of your tears on your lips. "Is that something you wish to create as well?" you ask with a weak voice.

"Because of you... with you... yes." the delicate up turning of your lips as he confessed his hidden and never before shared thoughts with you stirs something deep and rooted within in at his core.

A tender and pure kiss, you place on his lips in repayment of the words you had spent so much time wondering if you'd ever hear from him. ----- Emerging from the stone rooms you feel the sun on your skin again as you take a deep breath of fresh air and have a good stretch, leaving the heaviness you felt as the emotions from the art weighed you down. You stand with your hands on your hips, looking about as Alfie adjusts his jacket. You suppose he too was dealing with the heaviness you felt. After all, you'd dealt with both topics of marriage and children today and so boldly and rather fearlessly for you both, the hangover from the intensity you shared when discussing deep topics.

"Excuse me?" you hear from behind you, revealing a policeman standing with his hands behind his back and an unwelcome look on his face.

"Yes?" you ask, straightening your posture, not hiding your distaste for the look he had on his face.

"I'm afraid your attire isn't legal in this city and I'm going to have to be placing you under arrest."

You openly laugh in his face and you feel the heat and power radiating off Alfie despite him being out of his jurisdiction. You hold your hand out behind you to signal him to stop, keeping your eyes on the man in front of you.

"My attire?" you scoff.

"Yes, it is illegal for a woman to wear trousers. It gives way to transvestitism and the law doesn't support that sort of behavior."

"Your city is full of artists, darling, you do nothing but support it!" you laugh with your head back.

"You're under arrest miss for the trousers and the attitude will not be helping your case, come now." he says as he reaches for the metal cuffs.

"I think not." you say with a deeper tone, narrowing your eyes at him.

"I can make a scene miss, or you can come with me as a lady should." he says as you continue to take steps backward as he approaches you.

"There will be a hell of a scene if you try and throw a Lafitte in jail." you say with a stubborn nod your head, your words strong and biting.

The man stops, his head pushing back as he studies you. You knew he would know who your uncle was. And if he wasn't in a precinct that was under his pay, chances are he was one that still feared him and his power.

"So you can leave me the fuck alone or I can call my uncle Altar from jail and have him come down and deal with you." you lean forward, hands on your hips and you stare into the man's uncertain eyes.

"Your uncle?" he says not convinced. "He's not your uncle, who are you? I've never even seen you before." he says with a worse attitude than you had.

"I'm Lilly Lafitte." you say crossing your arms across your chest, standing tall and taking a step towards him. "I've been living in London for years which is why you don't recognize me you pup." you say with a nod of your chin at the young man.

"Lilly?" he says with a face showing clear confusion. "But she disappeared."

"And I've reappeared, dear." you state obviously. "My goy father tried to silence me and now I'm back in the light. You could take your chances but do you really want to risk angering Altar by bothering his favorite niece with something as stupid and pointless as this?" you bark back at him.

You see the thoughts running across the young man's face. You keep your stern face and confident body language. You knew young ones like him wouldn't believe a woman to lie, and you were using that to your advantage.

"I won't arrest you." he says with narrowed eyes. "But may I ask that you change your attire? You're asking for trouble."

"You may ask but I will not respond in kind." you say with a purse of your lips.

He nods and looks you over, an annoyed look on his face as he turns and leaves, mumbling to himself.

"Fuck me, Genevieve," Alfie says gruffly. "Ya wanna make me think I'm gonna have to raise hands at a fuckin' French copper, love? Jesus." he says with a big roll of his eyes, lips pursed as he wags a finger at you as he speaks. "That was really fuckin' risky trying to pull the Lafitte name like that ya know?" he says with a scolding tone and a stern look on his face.

"What risk?" you ask in an innocent tone. You tilt your head and soften your body language as you take slow steps back to him. "There is no risk." you say with a soft huff of a laugh and a shake of your head.

"They could've taken you anyway and then where would you 'ave been, eh?" he says, leaning in close to your face as you stand only a breath away from him.

"But I wasn't lying." you say with a slow blink of lash up at him in a calm voice.

His chin pushes back into his neck, his brow shooting low just as fast. "You...weren't lyin'?" he clarifies with an angry but not aggressive stare. There's no way, he thinks.

"No." you state plainly, large eyes looking up at him as a smile slowly comes across your face. He really hadn't known. You thought in all the research he might've done that he would've heard of your old alias, the first real criminal work you'd done under the name Lily, the one your uncle gave you. And your uncle happened to be one of the most powerful Jewish men in France, at least when it came to the French mafia. Where had he thought you'd learned all your skills? Perhaps he'd never thought about your origins beyond what you'd shared with him.

"You're...fuckin’ ‘ell..." he blinks rapidly, his brow shifting unevenly, his eyes darting about the street before returning to you with a quick shake of his head, clearly his brain was backfiring at the realization.

"My first criminal alias was Lilly Lafitte." you say in a tone so casual he cannot understand why you are so cool in your delivery of the news. You place a hand on his chest to steady him. It'd been so long since you'd said the name, memories of museum and jewelry heists float about your mind in a warm and happy haze.

"Ya fuckin' wot?!" he says loudly as you laugh quietly at his dumbfounded face. You loved the expression as it was so rare. "You? Standin' there? Fuckin' Lilly Lafitte?" he harshly whispers, trying to get a control on the volume of his voice.

You nod and smile with a mischievous look he's seen before.

"You're a fuckin' legend, mate." he groans out, eyes wide and brow low, studying you to find any fault as if you were lying to him. He'd heard of the young woman, rumored to work with the French gangster Altar Lafitte of the same name, who made her way through Paris stealing art and jewels in the least likely of places and never being caught. He'd thought Lily Lafitte would've been older, as the jobs and their tales would suggest someone of more experience might've done them. But no, he sighs, you've had it in your blood the entire time. Raised under the influence of a man even he looked up to for his business sense. "I used to tell stories 'bout you." he says with a strange feeling of lust coming over him.

"A lot of Jewish boys did." you smirk.

"YOU are Altar fuckin' Lafitte's niece?" he asks with wild eyes and a crazed smile, scratching his head.

"Yes. He's the uncle I've spoken of on many occasions."

"Fuck me." he groans, shaking his head. "I've been with Lily fuckin' Lafitte." he says with a hard guttural laugh that makes him bend slightly, slapping his own knee. "If only I could've told me younger self about this. Well he wouldn't have fuckin' believed it but he'd like the fantasy I'm certain." he laughs heartily.

"And how does the fantasy live up to the reality love?" you coo.

"No fuckin' comparison, you magnificent creature." he groans and leans in close. "As always you make my words ring true as you can only be outdone by yourself, eh?" a bright and boyish grin on his face down at you.

You lean in to kiss him. What was meant as a treat for being so damned charming turns into his hands wrapped around you, picking you up slightly off the ground as he grunts into your neck, noisy kisses with his plush lips finding their way across your skin. You giggle and squirm under his touch, his beard tickling away at your ears as he mutters praise and disbelief.

"Would you like to meet him?" you ask with an innocent lilt.

"Meet... meet Altar? The fuckin' Jewish crime lord of Paris? Just fuckin'... meet him?" he says with a wide motion of his hand. "Pop is for tea like it's bloody Shabbat and we don't have a thing else to do?" he amuses himself and laughs.

"Yes, I could call him. He never minds when I drop by." you say with a shake of your head, once again your casual tone confounds him.

"I'm with a woman who can "drop in" on Altar Lafitte and be welcomed," he says quietly, taking your face into his hands. "What did I ever do to deserve you?" he asks with a sweet and simple kiss, words muttered against your smiling lips. The business opportunity's now open to him scramble around in his brain.

"You're Alfie fucking Solomons. That's what." you say with a doting smile as he growls and wraps you up in his arms, pressing his lips to yours as you kick your feet and wrap your arms around his neck and let out a happy squeal you don't recall ever having made before.

@fangirlfreakingout @jaegeeeeer @cosettewinchester @lookuptheskyisfalling-blog @brianaisasongbird @cry5t4l-w4rri0r @iliveonchocolateandnetflix @jess2464 @hardygal69 @thegarrisonpublichouse @a-flock-of-angry-pigeons @pootle @negansdirtygirl22 @musingsby-night @wtf-is-wrong-with-this @shine-dont-shadow @inkinterrupted @vale0413 @lafayettes-baguettes-1 @sxlomons @aphnxrising @emerald-bijou @elaenom @give-jack-a-lightsaber @anrm1 @ultrablackwidower @tinastarkandco @arrowswithwifi

125 notes · View notes

michelles-garden-of-evil · 5 years ago

Text

Episode 29 Review: The Missing Cyanide

{ YouTube: 1 | 2 }

{ Full Synopses/Recaps: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

{ Screencaps }

Welcome back to the isle of Maljardin, whose lush foliage and majestic château mask a deadly evil, one who has grown deadlier with the acquisition of a bottle of cyanide. SIx episodes ago, Jean Paul Desmond removed the bottle from the medicine poison cabinet in the former laboratory of the late Dr. Menkin, only for Jean Paul’s ancestor Jacques Eloi des Mondes to spirit it away shortly after and hide it the-Devil-knows-where. Now the inhabitants and detained guests of the island search for the bottle before its contents can spell their death.

We open with Alison searching for the vial of cyanide in the aforementioned poison cabinet. (Speaking of which, the fact that Dr. Menkin had a whole cabinet full of bottles labeled “POISON” makes him appear just as suspicious as Jean Paul. What kinds of experiments might he have performed that required the use of poison?) For those of you who love to make fun of YouTube’s automatic captions (I hope it’s not just yours truly), the opening scene is a treat, with a whole 30 seconds of subtitled background music:

The YouTube caption bots have officially gone mad.

She sees Quito and asks him if he has seen the bottle, even drawing a picture of it to make sure he knows which one she’s referring to. He tries to tell her using various gestures, but she doesn’t understand the meaning, and neither Raxl nor Jean Paul is around to interpret. During his first two attempts, he touches his head and then sweeps a hand either outward or upward: “Jacques possessed Jean Paul and swiped it,” perhaps? For his third attempt, he points at himself, then towards the doorway, then makes a “chatterbox” motion with his hand, then points below. I think that means, “I’m going to tell Raxl” (or “I,” “go,” “talk,” “down below”) if only because he goes to fetch her to interpret next.

THE DEVIL JACQUES ELOI DES MONDES, here playing the role of the Greek chorus. Colin Fox doesn’t appear in this episode[1], but he did record a voice-over for Jacques’ portrait in advance. Jacques is also looking especially rosy in this shot--very cute.

Back in the lab, Raxl interprets Quito’s signs, and it turns out I was close with my guess on the meaning of the first combination. According to Raxl, touching the forehead followed by the swiping motion means “the master took it.” Alison asks when he took the bottle, Quito signs some more, and Raxl translates: “Two days ago.” She adds that she doesn’t believe that Jean Paul intentionally took it, but that “I fear that he was under a spell of that accursed Jacques Eloi des Mondes.”

After Alison says that the bottle contained enough cyanide to kill everyone on the island, Raxl makes the Sign of the Great Serpent for the first time, albeit with only one hand instead of both.

This brings up the issue of who killed Dr. Menkin (obviously Jacques) and Erica (true cause of death still unknown), and is reminiscent of the mystery of where the conjure doll and silver pin was hidden. Alison begs her to search everywhere including Jean Paul’s room--which is normally off-limits to her--for the doll and pin, even though that will end her erotic dreams about dashing chevalier Jacques. I suppose we all need to make sacrifices.

In the Great Hall, Raxl tells Quito that she is going to contact the Conjure Woman aka Vangie Abbott. Quito shakes his head and grabs her as though pleading for her not to do it. This is reminiscent of the scene in Episode 13 when Quito freaked out over Raxl’s mention of Vangie’s father, the Conjure Man, and also begged her not to. Kurt Schiegl did an excellent job conveying Quito’s thoughts and feelings without speaking. He could have gone into silent films, if they were still a thing in the sixties.

Quito is undead. Does he even still have a heartbeat?

She descends to the crypt and then waits for Quito to join her before entering the Not-So-Hidden Temple (good, atmospheric scene).

Some favorite shots from the scene.

Meanwhile, Matt finds Alison calling for her in the Great Hall:

OK, Captain Obvious.

She tells him about the cyanide and convinces him to help her find it, but won’t tell him who she believes has it.

Meanwhile, Raxl lays out some Tarot cards in the Not-So-Hidden Temple. “The Tarot is as Evangeline Abbott said. Now with the help of the Great Serpent, I shall summon her.” She begins a ritual, bidding Quito beat the drums as she calls for the Conjure Woman to join her.

We cut back to the Great Hall and learn that Matt now considers Raxl’s beliefs superstition, because she believes in Jacques’ ghost and he does not. He doesn’t believe in witchcraft or possession either. Remember, this is a man who said nineteen episodes ago, “The Tarot is the soul’s way to God. Any path that leads to God should have a minister’s approval.” He’s far from anti-superstition when it comes to the Tarot--and besides, the Bible mentions witchcraft and possession, as Alison points out. But Matt denies that those two things exist and dismisses them as ancient, outdated beliefs. You know that his denial is making Jacques absolutely giddy and that somewhere in Hell (or wherever he goes when he’s not inside Jean Paul’s body) he is sitting on his throne grinning from ear to ear and polishing his ring.

Jacques, upon hearing that Reverend Dawson doesn’t believe in possession.

In the temple, Raxl lays some Tarot cards onto the altar. I have no idea if these cards were deliberately chosen to predict future events on Maljardin or if Cosette Lee just drew ten random cards, but I like writing these Tarot analyses, so I’m going to assume it’s the former. First, a photo of the cards, cropped, lightened, sharpened, flipped to show from Raxl’s perspective, and with the card names marked:

Because both the King of Swords and the Queen of Cups appear twice, these cards must be from two decks combined. (Normally, there is only one of each card in a Tarot deck, but some people choose to use multiple decks when doing readings. That's what I gather from a Googling "using multiple decks in tarot," anyway.)

Using the meanings given to certain cards in previous episodes and the established interpretations on Tarot.com and The Tarot Guide for the others, here is my brief card-by-card interpretation:

Strikingly, two of these cards, the Ace of Swords and the World, have very positive meanings. The Ace of Swords can be about force (in the sense meaning power, not the sense of being forced to do things) or it can foretell a new beginning or the start of a new project, according to The Tarot Guide. The World denotes success and the fulfillment of dreams; some interpretations such as that on Tarot.com consider it to always be a positive card, even when reversed (although The Tarot Guide argues in favor of a negative interpretation of The World RX). The Tarot Guide says that the Four of Coins/Pentacles can mean "possessiveness,” but I'm thinking that it, if this spread of cards was intentional, Ian Martin may have meant for it to mean "possession" instead. I included both Elizabeth and Holly as posible Queens of Cups in my interpretation, because, although I am inclined to believe Raxl’s and Vangie’s interpretation of the Queen of Cups over Matt’s, either one may be correct.

When examined together, these cards suggest a “new beginning” for Jean Paul, Elizabeth and/or Holly, and Dan. Jacques will either possess them or have them become possessed, and this scheme of his will be a success. We know that Jacques foreshadows Elizabeth’s eventual possession (in his original outline for the plot) as early as Episode 12, and we also know from Episodes 6 and 19, respectively, that Dan and Holly both had counterparts on 17th century Maljardin. If Martin had been allowed to stick to his original outline, would Dan have ended up being possessed by d’Anton and Holly by the blonde girl in her dream? Was that his original intention?

But I digress. The Tarot is less significant to this scene than the fact that Raxl is trying to summon Vangie again to the island. Quito pounds on the ritual drum, Raxl prays in a trance while kneeling before the altar. Unbeknownst to them, the Reverend Matt Dawson sneaks into the temple to search for both the cyanide and Erica’s notes.

Raxl and Quito in the Temple of the Serpent.

Raxl: “COME, CONJURE WOMAN, TAKE YOUR PLACE ON THE ALTAR OF THE GREAT SERPENT...CONJURE WOMAN, TAKE WHAT STRENGTH IS LEFT FROM THE SOUL OF YOUR FATHER AND USE IT! USE HIS STRENGTH! USE HIM!”

Matt discovers that he’s not strong enough to force the door open and so gives up. “What doors are closed to me I suppose I have no right to open,” he tells Alison cryptically as the “sad Jean Paul” music plays in the background. (That’s what I call the cue at least, because it mostly plays during sad Jean Paul scenes.)

Raxl: “COME, CONJURE WOMAN!”

Vangie: “When I die, it will be here on Maljardin. Why did you call me?”

Vangie protests that “[she] must be brought [to Maljardin] some other way” instead of summoning, which is pretty pointless, because Raxl’s ability to summon her to Maljardin eliminates the need for an invite from Jean Paul or Jacques (or, in Holly’s case, skill with sneaking onto ships). She ends this episode with a cryptic line that could refer to one of several female characters on this show: “When the master of the house is no longer the master of his soul, the house needs a mistress."

Overall, a good but not very eventful episode--but then, at this point, you can’t really do much unless Jean Paul and Jacques are around to stir things up. They’re not the only interesting characters--I would be more than happy to watch this, too, if it were The Raxl Show--but Jean Paul and Jacques are the catalysts, the “movers and shakers” if you will. Fortunately, the handsome devil and his 20th-century descendant will be back next episode

Coming up next: Vangie tries to convince Jean Paul to bring her to Maljardin by boat and we try to determine if the Lost Episode summary for Episode 30 was truly for a lost episode.

{ <- Previous: Episode 28 || Next: Episode 30 -> }

Notes

[1] Steve (leafshimmer) sent me an article recently with behind-the-scenes information on the show, including the reason why Fox is absent from roughly one episode per week:

Last year [i. e. 1968], Fox broke his neck while taping the Stratford Festival company's Three Musketeers for CBC. Although he doesn't have to wear a neck brace all the time, he still suffers pain. "Most of the early problems were cleared up, but it's much too exhausting doing this--working 12 hours a day," he said. "My doctor has given me a letter which insists I get one working day off a week. I have less than 48 hours off, with rehearsals every night, including Sunday."

(Source: Sid Adilman, “TV’s Colin Fox and his Strange Paradise,” Toronto Telegram (Nov. 29 1969).)

#strange paradise #soap opera #ian martin #week 6 #episode 29 #review #analysis #foxless episodes #the not so hidden voodoo temple #scenery chewing #sign of the great serpent #sp and religion #speculation on ian martin's original story #tarot #youtube automatic captions

1 note · View note

donnnoir · 6 years ago

Text

Dallas, TX June 30, 2019

Well Friend’s, although currently I suspect there are no readers of my crude blog. Other than those that may have an interest from the Shadow Government’s perspective. They always keep tabs and monitor my actions and interactions at large or singular. An annoying fact of Life as me. So hopefully at some point and time in the future an interested party will have numerous pages to sort through. I am trying to get all my material under one or two roofs / forums which can and are accessible to everyone. At least that is my hope and the intention of all this. Granted it also allows me an outlet to vent some of my frustrations and the various events, occurrences and histories with this and more that I have Lived and experienced throughout my Life. Now in such a spirit I am posting a electronic log entries after I arrived back in Austin TX, following the events I experienced in Southern California. Which events culminated in my being shot twice in my left leg and subsequently ran over by an F-350 dually pick-up, running me over from toes to my head being dragged under the dual tires on the driver’s side of the vehicle. Needless to say it was an interesting evening. I was run over on East Anaheim St. about one hundred feet from the intersection with North Henry Ford Ave., on the south bound side of East Anaheim heading back toward Long Beach, I believe the location is still in Wilmington. With the location of my being shot some distance from there and that being approximately 325 North Lecouvreur Ave., Wilmington. These events happened on or around the 5th of March 2018. I was transported to St Mary’s Hospital at 1050 Linden Ave. Long Beach, CA..

The following are a series of electronic entries to an ad hoc journal at the time. I Post this ad hoc journal in its raw form, the only editing being for the most part that of correcting some of the major spelling mistakes. Hopefully I have retained the jagged nature of my mind set at the time. I freely admit that upon my return from California for the first time in my life I was showing signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I still have on occasions bouts associated to this PTSD. I trust as coming events unfold and I have New Obstacles and Challenges to focus my attention and thereby forestall the elements of the Disorder. Thus I Post this warts and all. Without regard to its chronological or content of order. Because of this I will no doubt be covering much of the data, information and stories at a later Posting. I will also be Posting the images of my hand written journal, as the loose leaf entries that I have adopted as my handwritten format. Since every log or journal I have started has been stolen repeatedly. So I now write on whatever loose leaf papers I have before me in the moment. I hope to Post those as packaged folders Postings in their chronological order. There is a degree of overlapping entries between this Posting and those of my handwritten entries. Bear that in mind should you actually elect to read all of these. Most of the entries some date and location headers. I hope that in doing this that no seeming contradictions arise, especially since I am the source. I welcome any inquires from any reader of my material. Thus I submit the following:

Welcome, seems it has come to this. I am going to attempt to compose my thoughts and histories via electronic medium. My reservations must give way to practical realities. Not to mention the fact that each and every one of my previous logs / journals has been stolen from me. A immensely annoying recurring theme.

Thus I am going to try and make a virtual journal. Presumably I will augment this with the additional paper journal. Which will then be uploaded into a file of images. The hope being the combination will effectively accomplish the task. Towit that of providing a record of my life including events in the extreme. Additionally I wish to leave behind in some convoluted fashion my diverse understanding of things. By far I would consider the latter to be a far greater contribution to the brain wealth of humanity. I would like to think that should any of this writing come to light. It does so some time in the future . When the more fantastic elements can be seen in historical context. Such that what would otherwise be seen as speculative ventures into science fiction writing, will be known as simply fact. Because believe me when I say I truly wish and hope to be / will be wrong, regarding that which is to come. For a change!

Sigh… I must take a break, now. Necessity requires I consider many issues, not the least of which is where to start, and how best to proceed. Besides the fact I have not developed the requisite manual dexterity to type with my thumbs.

Monday July 2, 2018 … Killeen Texas

Sigh… damnit all to hell! I am having one of those rare days when I feel anxious, overwhelmed to the point of feeling trapped. I do not know if it is possibly PTSD related. I suppose I have to accept that as a issue with in me from now till the day I die. Regrettable not to mention humiliating for me. Granted, I suspect that the the cannabis Jade bought had a little something extra in it. So she could anesthesias more effectively giving her a reprieve from the increased infra-sound, ultrasound, microwave along with the entirety of the electromagnetic emissions I am at present enduring. I am concerned for her and her son Joey's well being. Despite her being one of the girls / operatives / victims of our government’s illegal covert initiatives know as MK Ultra. She is a bundle of contradictory issues and personalities. Your typical Golem. Her biological father is Warren Causey. He was George Bush Sr. right hand even prior to Sr becoming head of the Central Intelligence Agency. Causey was Sr's go to man for wet works and deep black bag operations. Especially if the back side had a tail which could be exploited for control of any or all parties involved. Causey is a true satanist and worse. He recently developed a rapid onset of Alzheimer’s. Not quite as sever as my own father and name sake Donald Paul Williams. But the timing of both though separate is suggestively coincidentally to events associated to me and those involved in FOXing me. I suspect brother Magnus of being petty. Grinding and hammering on old grudges. Along with becomingly increasingly punitive in operational objectives concerning breaking me to the point of my “losing” it. At which point and time my only anticipated options would be to appeal to their overview and / or full capitulation to their agendas. Thus far I have successfully thwarted their attempts. Yet it has come at an immense cost to me, across the board. Okay in anticipation that I may never acquire the journal I started last year upon my departure from Long Beach, California. A long walk beginning by The Queen Mary and which ultimately landed me in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is becoming increasingly incumbent that I reiterate elements I previously wrote down back then. You would think it would be a simple straightforward process. Naturally such is not the case, for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which are context and my desire to avoid sounding narcissistic, or worse disillusion. Yet failing to do so will ultimately end in me portraying myself as such, even more so. Besides I really hate repeating myself, sorta a pet peeve of mine.

To the uninitiated this is going to sound ludicrous and insane. However, any comprehensive primer would require volumes of esoteric information, along with accompanying commentary and should include appropriate citations. All from tomes that are closely guarded. That I am denied access to permanently and utterly. Thus it is best to proceed directly into the matter wading through the initial convolution, realizing by degrees it will work out becoming about as clear as mudd. The luciferains according to their Canon refer to me as “The Dark One”. It is an appellation pulled directly from their actual scripture as initially iterated to Cain from lucifer, himself.

Obviously atheist may take exception to these concepts, especially the language used. There is not much I can say in response to their misgivings. Because their beliefs lack the framework from which to attach this model. Hell most individuals beliefs also in like fashion lack similar mental framework. Yet most have allowances or the tools where with the modular architecture of their minds are able to “build out” an additional wing to the mansion in their minds which houses their understanding of “reality”. At the very least they can entertain the blueprints to an “add-on” to their mansions. Similar to the operations of our minds “cognitive consistency”. Dr Richard Alan Miller is fond of noting “I would never have seen it if I hadn’t believed it”. Or by extended reference the belief that if you have enough information to postulate a coherent question, you already have enough to know the answer. You just have to convince yourself of it. The implications are profound. Stretching into metaphysics and the issues of faith preceding the miracle(s), and even magick! All topics I have and will continue to touch upon in my ramblings. But I go too far afield of my primary focus. Simply, I am The Dark One. This is both metaphoric and literal. For the few people whose sight allows them to to clearly see into the underlying spiritual realm of our world. Because all things that “are” where first created in spirit. Elsewise they would not exist or remain lifeless sterile elemental at best. There are also at worst case possibilities, but we will forego any such dialogue for the moment. Everything we see and interact with has a corresponding spiritual aspect providing impetus to the whole. Usually the spiritual aspect even resembles the physical expression, although at times the proportions differ. A fact that I know I will touch upon in other areas as topically necessitated. Nonetheless if one was to see our spirits they much resemble the physical form of our bodies, though a bit taller (note this is a foreshadowing hint, to a vastly different topic I Will Be Addressing. At times I may interject future foreshadowing hints, though sans the extensive explanations). Depending on the scope of vision applied a person may / can see many other things. For my current model I am going to stick to issues of direct correlation to what we perceive as the physical world.

Okay, yes I do know I tend to take a long round about, seemingly loquacious manner, almost tediously so in my explanations. This is due to the fact that words are nebulous, our ability to effectively communicate was fractured becoming compromised long ago. As a consequence, for clarity's sake I find this too wordy manner necessary to minimize confusion later in the discussion. By degrees we lose our way, or perpetuate our lost condition. Therefore it is by incremental degrees I am trying to more properly realign the various skewed beliefs we all hold. It is simple geometry, trigonometry or if you prefer vector math. If your initial bearing line is off by a few degrees, as you proceed further down its vector, or direction of travel where you end up will be considerably different than you meant to be. I wish to be aptly clear as to this fact early in my shared discourses.

Back to the proximate relationship of the spirit to our physical nature / condition. Also know that our spirits are gender specific. The entirety of humanity in this expressed Creation, the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve. Have migrated to this plane and place from Our Heavenly Home. That being a higher plane of existence, a organized realm of Love and Light. We, being all of us from Adam, Lilithe, and Eve till the last child of Eve is born, we are they that kept our first estate. Thereby earning both our right and place to be born here in this that by our common assent / consent / agreement we agreed would be real, thus we call it reality, simple. Wherefore, this being real by our mutual assent, means by extension that our actions here shall have real consequence to our station thereby effecting our progression. Those within Our Divine Family that rebelled and failing to reconcile back into the Family are denied participation in the progression of this estate and the subsequent assignments as to which paths we are to be assigned to in our individual journeys to progress back home. Meaning, i.e. lucifer and the one third that fell (more properly “that were cast down”) with him. At times I will refer to lucifer as lucy or louie a small affectation I have over the years grown fond of as pet names for he who would seek dominion through his lies. Know that for my part I have always viewed our existence as an ongoing extension of the war in Heaven. Even as a toddler this was simply the nature of the world, in both a literal and metaphoric sense. Lucy is playing an end game gambit. As to our day to day offenses he for the most part cares little, seldom choosing to involve himself. As I try to tell people; we can do bad all on our own, we don’t need the devil or louie's help. Matter of fact regrettably this particular Creation is an aberration. Most Creation’s do not have a Lucifer, who refuses to repent and reconcile, and worse yet becomes Satanish. In so doing thereby becomes completely nonredeemable. Fit only to be cast out beyond the dark realms / dimensions. So far that not even a god could ever hope to make it back to Our Heavenly Home. Heady fanciful stuff, with a touch of discordance due to conflicting superlatives, I already know. From the presumed position of our understanding as a whole it is the best I can do with our shared mythos. The presumed contradictions fade as our understanding increases. Please accept I know little, next to nothing. What little I may grasp, has been fought hard to obtain over a tumultuous lifetime.

One of the hopeful eventualities concerning our collective situation in this Creation which I try to communicate to those that appear to show potential for understanding the following idea. Is that, Once we “eventually” progress through this Creation. As our then on going progression continues through multiple future Creations we will in all probability never encounter another such circumstance / Creation wherein any of those will again be with the added burden of a Satan / Lucifer persona to add complications to our individual, group, and familial progress. Who would threaten to usurp Creation from G-d and all of us. We can do bad all on our own. We really don’t require an objective excuse or archetype on which to pin our failings. If you are acquainted with the Book of Revelations, in its pages are the clues to understanding Lucy’s actual focus / agenda for our Creation. For we are eternal beings, Children of Divine Parentage. We live through infinite eternities, progressing and striving to Perfect Ourselves unto the Image of Our Heavenly Mother and Father. Now I sound like a some traveling revivalist preacher. Might as roll out the tent and tambourines, hahaha.

Wednesday July 4, 2018 – Killeen, Texas

Well happy 4th of July, U S of fucking A. Not to be cynical, but here we are celebrating another Independence Day in the Land of the Free. The irony is inescapable. Sadly too many individuals become distracted and lost in the perpetually shifting landscape of dysinformation. Yes the horrors these people revile against are very real and indefensible. Except in the losing of perspective, failing to see that these innumerable struggles are purposely being generated to engage the population to distraction. Usually these horrid distractions are set cross ways of social and cultural lines. This formulaic tactic is meant to ferment hostilities, hate and conflicts across the associated strata. This has been repeated throughout history to create wars, fracture our social structure, warp our values, and indoctrinate the population en mass with beliefs such as to reshape our view of reality shackling all of us to a diminished image and sense of self along with the entire human race. Once we accept this warped view as the archetypal potentiality of us all. We are guaranteed to sell ourselves and our brethren into slavery. In due course I will be discussing at length the geopolitical history within the framework of our limited knowledge of what we recorded since the flood. Rather what we have been permitted to know of said records. The fact that much as been redacted from the common brain trust passed on to us via academia. Those alabaster halls occupied by self appointed guardians of the approved versions of knowledge and information released to us vulgar unfortunate masses. So burdened, I shall pass this Holiday celebrating the antithesis of its traditions.

Continuing in the same vain as previously began prior to the day’s celebrations, in much the similarly convoluted fashion as before… I, The Dark One of Occultic Lore. I have been told; that I have done things no one in the history of the world has ever done previously. Personally I can only cite one quality as being demonstrative of such high praise. Though in all honesty I am more often than not being chastised for lacking focus, being lazy, acting the fool in the face of my enemies, or being cavalier in my affections, or placing myself at undue risk of life and limb, and the list goes on and on ad nauseaium. This from the select few who know and understand who and what I am. Those who may actually care about me, and would see me fulfill that which I have been foreordained to do whilst sojourning here. The totality of our circumstance here, now at this moment, we soon shall enter perhaps the most critical and precarious point of our history and that of this Creation. I am all too well aware of this along with that which shall soon come to pass shortly. This awareness, I experience across multiple vectors while being cognizant of a sea of permeations which ultimately stream toward a specific Crux in Our Familial Aggregation (I am trying to develop appropriate nomenclature – wherein I avoid certain more readily common labels or descriptors and/or appellations. Whose usage has been subverted into the double speak practiced by the various satanic and blood occultic families which run the world. Who have ritually (via trauma) conditioned and indoctrinated their acolytes, golems / victims to hear and respond to accordingly, never in a positive manner. Wherefore it is incumbent upon me whenever possible to avoid affirming these, even to the point of reinventing the ascribed nomenclature.) within this Creation. As a consequence I must stumble through idiomatic constructs, ungainly though they be. Believe me if you knew and understood the actualities ascribed to words and the double or multiple meanings applied to them within the Families. The evils, the pain, the denigration of the individuals / victims usually by those nearest them; ultimately by extension it eventually infects and corrupts societies unto the world at large. You would weep an endless river of tears unto filling the seas, if you could see this in your minds eye properly. As long as this perniciously malicious spiritual / familial / multi-generational / social / cultural pathogenic practice continues, our struggles will end in naught. Hence into this morass I must seek to keep my appointed task. How best to explain this? I have spent the majority of my life in the haze of denial. Avoiding my differences. Putting off my preparations for that which is to come.

Since approximately twenty four plus months prior to Operation Jade Helm our covert Intelligence apparati, including elements of the ruling shadow government began a concerted effort at Foxing me. The on set of Operation Jade Helm and its scope marked an exponential increase in expanded efforts against me. Now, let me make clear Operation Jade Helm’s purpose was not solely to target me, there where many targets across the greater portion of the United States of America. Death dealers and various squads of assassins executed / murdered an increasing number of American Citizens, most had been identified for some time to be exterminated. Impunity seems to have become the operational by word. The extremes demonstrated continuously since that time defy all reason. Defining the architects of this action as being criminals is almost quaint. This level of criminal insanity goes beyond the point of being treasonous. With the majority of resource allocation comes from “military Intelligence” which then utilizes other military resources and supplies. Thus it is that we have been duped into financing our own demise.

For purposes pursuant to their agendas, they have labeled me a domestic terrorist. Thereby presumably justifying illegal exercises and persecution of my person. Rationalizing by extension similar acts against my family and anyone I may care about and or Love. Death for them would be preferable to the horrors their personages have been and are being subjected. I know I sound ludicrously paranoid with delusions of grandeur in the extreme. Hahaha…. gosh how I wish, hope and pray such were the case. I make this record in defense of myself and my actions. Naturally I fear all my good intentions with their accompanying actions are for naught. I realize that upon my death as allotted to the sons of man, as to the first part, my character will be maligned in the worst manner possible. A issue I will address at length later in this on going exposition of myself and my misadventures as they may be.

Thursday July 5, 2018. Killeen Texas

Despite my misgivings it seems I survived all the pops and bangs of our nosiest of American Holidays. A joyous circumstance to be certain. From now till my last day of my allotted life as unto the children of men, my life hangs in the balance. The ante to live my life as it were.

My current accommodation over the past almost six weeks has been with an old flame and friend Jade Causey – Chamlee, and her 18 year old son Joey, whose given name was Freddie. Bless their souls for extending to my worn out arse a place to stay and recover. Regrettably my physical recovery is taking much longer than I anticipated. I am fully aware my expectations regarding the time necessary for a complete recovery was / were unreasonable. But I need to set the bar high to keep from being complacent. Now had my situation been inclusive of adequate financial resources I would be at least relatively close to my timetable. I would have had access to better medical, dietary, living and therapies. Hell my injuries would have been properly tended to at the hospital in my initial admittance. Instead I continued to be the object of curiosity and experimentation. With little consideration to trying to give me appropriate medical care. I have come to know what to expect, due largely to my younger brother's general attitude. Wherein he rationalizing what him and others do to me, as simply a matter of effect associated to the who and what I am. It is rationalized that if I, Donn am this special chosen person than he/I should be able to survive everything, whatever it may be. Because if he/I don’t than obviously he/I am not that special and thus not protected from on High. Horrific logic used to rationalizing a growing list of atrocities committed against my person. A ugly fact of my reality, one I anticipated. What issues make this whole fucked up process unacceptable, malicious, acutely painful and unforgivingly egress is the manner by which they have targeted and used others. Especially my younger brother, father, son, Tiffany, Revaka, Heather, Angie and numerous others. They have been tortured, abused and treated as disposable commodities. All are scared and precious, some are very unique with abilities reaching into arenas not generally accepted or understood in today’s world view. Yet these individuals are denigrated, abused in some of the most deviantly sordid manners. Most are ultimately destroyed, first robbing them of their minds, bodies and in some final insult of their very souls. As it appears that they are being harvested for physical vehicles to have demons placed in their bodies. Yeah, I suppose I could say it in some sort of more politically correct parlance as “aliens” from a lower resonating dimensional reality / realm. Somehow I find that by doing so it fails to communicate the malicious evil inherent in the process. I find the old nomenclature to communicate the Truer meaning. Though some eras of our past carry their own obvious failings magnified exponentially by ignorance while fueled by misguided zealotry. They were not called the Dark Ages for nothing. Similarly different cultures, societies, periods, places and times have fallen to various abysses of Darkness. We have this false mental image of life on Our Earth proceeding in some linar fashion from primitive man (including Adam, for those of a theological inclination) struggling out of caves. Fighting against their own primitive brain / mind which was trapped in a diminished brain pan capacity from questing for fire against ignorance and superstitions. With us being the cumulative beneficiaries of this on going process. Peoples of those ancient times could not have been as intelligent as those today. Therefore they could not have grasped the concepts we do. Some of the most ridiculous fallacies of logic ever presumed to rationalizing and justify conduct or beliefs. Matter of fact the inverse is actually True. But what the fuck could I possibly know!

Sadly my frustrations are rearing their collective heads as it were in my writing. I wish I had been more diligent in securing my journal I started last year upon my departure from Long Beach towards Utah. I was more focused recording relavent issues in a contemporaneous fashion. Not to mention a considerable investment in explanations dealing with a variety of associated topics. Grrrrr… all I did then was walk and write. I may soon be in a recurrence of such, shortly. I can no longer abide where I am. All the more so under these conditions. Deep in my mind I am aware of happenings which require my attention. Not to mention my friend’s household is not psychologically conducive to my state of being. At least not in a healthy way, good intentions not with standing. My largest obstacle to my leaving believe it or not, is my need for acceptable footwear. Flip-flops aren’t going to cut it. Hell they are wholly inadequate to even walk just up the street a block or two. I must admit the sidewalks and streets of California were well suited for walking.

Monday July 9, 2018. – Killeen, Texas

As Pooh would be apt to say, “Oh bother”. I feel for the most part Tigger. Bouncing all about spinning, twisting, flipping… as well on my head as my tail. I am most acutely wanting to find my focus once again. My communication skills seem heavily compromised. Not that I was ever able to write as effectively as the great Nobel Laureates. Generally speaking I could at least maintain some linear cohesion in my writing. Physically, emotionally, spiritually and mentally I am shaken. Much as if my being was trapped in the tremors of advance Parkinson’s. In similar fashion my expressed thoughts and experiences lack focus, my abilities at lucidly articulating my larger life occurrences is choppy at best. Failure is NOT an option! No matter how I feel or how events are or may effect me, I must regain my composure and find my center. While reacquiring my skills of teaching and sharing what I have learned. Please excuse me if I don’t edit the foregoing entries. As convoluted and murky as they may be, their relevance contemporaneously can not be diminished. Hopefully they will in due course provide a benchmark to juxtaposition future writings and notes thereby effecting a glimpse into my state of being at the time of writing. Grrrrr…….

They have done a very good job of isolating me. All the more so, as I try to come to terms with the potential cost to those I would seek commerce with across all levels of our socioeconomic strata. If what I endured while being the object of a Foxing protocol by our shadow government’s covert intelligence community are any indication. Anyone who associates with me, either at mine or their initiation is subject to become targeted for retribution as punishment to me. Too high a cost to blindly impart with out consideration to finding possible means of mitigation. Or at the very least terms whereby I am ultra selective with whom I interact. Along with the rationale for said interactions. Soon enough our social dependency will require I abandon all such pretext or attempts at shielding anyone from consequence. I fear that time shall be upon us/me far too soon. Perhaps I am again being exceedingly naive. My efforts are most probably for naught. An on the at large canvas of the bigger picture my presumption at damage control will only result in a larger area and impact of effect upon our society as a whole. Not that I am some savior or prophet, far from it actually. In the grander scale of things, I might best be referred to as a “wild card”. Meaning that in any analysis of the interaction of variables, one may with a degree of certainty predict the outcome of any issue, contest, conflict even war. However should certain individuals or a very small dynamic group of individuals enter the forum. Suddenly the landscape of the matter shifts radically to the point that the original outcome no longer applies or is meaningful. We have numerous examples of such occurrences throughout our histories. Of salient import to us here in America is The Battle of Thermopylae, and the 300 Spartans. We all learned about continents in school. Did you ever notice that Europe and Asia were counted as separate despite being one land mass. The reason is that Western Culture and Asian (Oriental) Cultures being vastly different it was traditionally ascribed to them being two separate continents. We may naively presume to ridicule such a blatant indulgence as arrogance. Yet there are fundamental reasons for this error being valid. We as the heirs of Western Culture, need to understand the mythical / legendary impact of these distinctions upon our mameic memory, especially those of us of the West. From Greece to Rome, then following our Angelo – Dutch (Iberian) roots it is transmitted to us. The importance and permanent impact of the actions and sacrifice of Leonidas and 300 Free Spartans against over a 1,000,000 servile basically slaves to a potentate deemed quasi divine, carved out a legacy of Freedom which stands even today. An Epic “wild card”. There are many others, most are lost to us today. With the occasional exception that survives in our Epics, our Mythologies, our Legends. Most such stories are the blending of factual events with older religious or semi religious traditions. Which aliteration was a common and accepted means of teaching the lessons of both convanents in a factual and metaphoric means. Much the way Jesus Christ taught using parables, allegories composed to have layers of meaning dependent upon the degree of understanding had by the student. So a natural continuation of this is to be inclusive of many historical events, along with the trans literal substitution of the individuals to those of prophecy or the the Divine or Angelic intercession of some ancient history. These depending on circumstance would be iterated and reiterated in verbal traditions to be celebrated in the retelling, usually in association to particular annual festivals. Such as the case with the Saga of the Norse Kings. A subject I hope to have the opportunity to entertain at length later in my writings, scribblings. The vast majority of my ideas, concepts, models and histories can generally be attributed to greater minds than mine. As has been said before, the reason I / we can see so far is that we stand on the shoulders of giants, those that have come before us. Yes I paraphrase taking a degree of liberty. More particularly to hopefully retain its original meaning.

Funny I have been much as I am, the entirety of my life. Before I commence an in-depth sharing of many of the somewhat unique occurrences and events that have brought me to this proposition in time. I wish to clarify and reiterate some postulates. Elsewise a portion of my own records and logs may well be used against me. Principally by interests who would wish to call my lucidity and grasp of reality into question, in the hopes of indicting or coloring my character via my words. No doubt they shall do so nonetheless. I only wish that my original is sufficiently vetted in the sane understanding of reality has to be a defense to my honor and mental facilities. Thus, again – I am No prophet! Nor am I an Alien. Hahaha… Nor am I some savior! As far as religion – I will say as was told to me by what would be termed alien contactees, or more specifically those that I felt and believed we’re genuine. Of the many I personally met back in the 1970s. According to these individuals as to the subject of religion and the Bible when broached to the various aliens these contactees interacted. All the aliens responded that yes the Bible was more or less correct and that it was wholly applicable to us, our Creation, and Our G-d. I know not at all what they say on the popular shows in the media today. Hmmm,…. As to my personal religious beliefs and inclinations, I am Mormon by conversation and have been excommunicated for many more years than I care to mention. By the way my excommunication was due wholly to personal moral matters not issues of doctrine or beliefs of Faith. So if somewhere in my upfront acknowledgements, you find me wanting of naïve. Fine, do or do Not as is in you, or as is your want. I make no apologies, nor seek to compromise in some misguided attempt to achieve an accord or consensus. Rather quite to the contrary, I share, present, seeking dialogue broader than an account of the happenings surrounding my life. Simply because I am appalled by the amount of lies and disinformation being used to indoctrinate the populace. Add to this the lack of corrected and broader views from the dreadfully homogenous perspective droning from damn near every sector. The present modalities disgust me, breaking my heart such that I would to weep day and night for Our collective Family. Yet better spent are my efforts in defense of the Truth and an improved accounting of our histories and circumstances. In pursuit of same I find I must submit my private life and experiences to general scrutiny. The majority of which I have never shared with anyone prior to the last six to eight years. I have desired to live a rather conventional life, for the most part. Realizing that soon enough I will forever be denied the Joy of such.

To this end and the accompanying process I submit some of the earliest memories and events of my life and childhood. One of my earliest, if not the earliest is being in my crib prior to the age of two. My father was working for numerous government and governmental contractors at the time. Naturally I don’t recall those details. Our family had just moved to Southern California. We were living with my mother’s sister somewhere in East Los Angeles. Their home was the typical Spanish Colonial. Anyone familiar with the style and form of such. Know that hallways usually converge into a common room, you cross to the hallway leading to the room you have as your destination. In this pass through common room is where my crib was stationed. Probably the best location for it and me. So the various women could occupy my attention should I become fussy. An many times this common room was an area where the women would congregate as my recollection is. Well across this room was a pantry closet, with selves and full of the sundry items found in such for the time. In the coming and goings of my family and relatives there were numerous occasions that would find me unattended, alone in my crib. It was during one such interlude that the commencement of a reoccurring vision / dream began. I having been left alone to my own devices (parenting back in the day). When the door to the aforementioned pantry slowly opened wide. A beautiful female Golem, her physique had the appearance of red bricks. Yet the contours of her form were singularly female. Rather she had distinct curves with aquiline sculptured features. Most hauntingly she had these striking blue eyes. She never spoke a word, her eyes spoke volumes to my initially shocked mind. As the sounds of returning relatives approached, she gracefully returned from whence she came. On the first couple of occasions I witnessed this I raised a bit of a commotion. I was not yet verbal, and in all honesty I was a late talker. Well the relatives thought I might have seen a rat. So they dutifully opened the pantry to inspection. The pantry was then as it always was, with neither a rat or exquisite Lady Golem. This parade continued off and on for the majority of the our short time residing at my aunt’s house. Usually the Lady Golem had those blue blue eyes, though green and grey versions are among the visits. Each and every time she would come to the side of my crib, moving her head, or tilting (cocking) it just so. Always her eyes full of questions and disbelief. Her eyes seemed to express; You? You are the one sent? Hmmm… You don’t look like much! Look more like a little wet rodent, but who knows?. This was more or less the sentiment expressed in her eyes. Following my first encounters I became accustomed to her visits and would actually miss her on the rare occasions of absence. Needless to say from early childhood I saw the “world” differently than others around me. I also learned to accept this altered perception without fear, understanding its validity within the accepted context of what is “actual” or the “concrete” reality of our existence.

If you may recall back in the haze of school days. During various lectures the teacher's would sometimes use what is commonly referred to as an over head projector. Depending on what was being taught, it was also common practice to layer over lays. These would either complete the image or at times super impose other images as needed. Sometimes even as multiple layers of over laid transparencies. Some of you more contemporaneously educated individuals may never have seen such primitive presentations, having known only power point. For those so blessed what I describe next may be Greek to you. For the dinosaur amongst us most should have some recollection. This model is the closest I can use to illustrate how the world appeared to me growing up as a child. Usually I would see what could best be described as up to two transparencies overlapping the “real world” in general. I could even lift these overlays to get a clearer view of what was being presented before me. At times these would both be at in the foreground of “reality”, other times both would be in the background, while at other times it would be split one in front and one in back. Yet there were numerous other configurations, sometimes completely unrelated to the happenings around me (foreshadowing alert). Gradually this ocular affect of the world began to diminish till it no longer was within my field of vision. By the time I was around sixteen to seventeen years of age this effect was effectively gone. Since then I have experienced this only a handful of times. I usually take a different approach, I will address momentarily. One of the proximate results almost immediately of perceiving my world in this manner is that I usually know the scope and degree that anyone is lying. As an adult it is not quite as prominent as in my childhood. Though there have been exceptions. As a direct consequence my earliest life lesson was in due course the hypocrisy of the adults around me. Everyone would profess such devotion to “the necessity” or importance of always “speaking the Truth”. Yet I would be punished to no end for pointing out the hypocrisy of the fact the adults more often than not lied as suited them. I learned to keep such to myself. Something I still do to this day. I tend to filter or make allowances far too much now as an adult. Invariably leading to greater complications. Besides transparencies certain images or objects would “float” across my field of vision in similar transparency manner. Some of which I could not decipher any context or meaning at the time or since. To begin to place elements of this visual experience I need to explain tangent events of recent.

The advent of the Internet and the information highway is as with most such paradigms, both a blessing and a curse. Dependent largely upon the nature and supposed inclination of man. We are all no doubt familiar with the media platforms of Facebook and YouTube. Like everyone else to some degree I have had occasion to surf around doing research or simply for mindless pleasure. Back prior to Jade Helm, when my Old Lady (though she was substantially younger) Tiffany and I were keeping house in Austin, Texas. I noticed a YouTube video regarding the Apollo 20 mission. Oh by the way according to my histories the Apollo lunar missions went up to 20. I wanted to see what was been discussed along with what twists and turns the disinformation specialist spin their distractions. Which if you can determine it sometimes conclude what they are trying to hide or if their direction of spin is a “z” vector you can sight 180 degrees opposite to determine the landscape they don’t wish you to see. You may consider all this a large investment of mental energies, it is just how my mind works at times automatically. Back to the Apollo 20 video. In the video there was some general discussion of aliens, their nature and origins. During this open dialogue, there was a series of various old clips. I presume were some how removed from the archives of NASA. Many of the older non-defined clips I was quite familiar with the images. Not because I have ever seen them as photos, images, clips or video. At the time I was floored, since previous to that moment I was unacquainted with their context or related meaning. These objects I use to see in the exact same configuration and involved in the exact motions approximately forty years earlier as I was growing up. Matter of fact judging from the age of the imagery I would have to conclude I was witnessing them contemporaneously as a child. Without the context of outer space or NASA I had presumed I was watching some complex interactions of some sort of strange protozoal life from. I even remotely as concerned they had some how become infected to my cornea, so prevalent we’re the objects across my vision. So striking was their imposition upon my sight that more than four decades later their association was immediate and most assuredly certain. One less mystery to worry about. Yet the implications are troubling profoundly. Both of myself and the world at large, considering how maliciously the world's population has been lied to and manipulated. The ends of which are too shocking and horrible to ever discuss. Although in previous conversations at moments of weakness I have divulged a greater portion than may have been prudent.

Wednesday July 11, 2018. – Killeen, Texas

You may right so wish to ascribe or diagnosis me as having a form of delusions inclusive of all types of hysteria, grandeur, psychosis with severe religious obsessions. For what passes for psychiatry today within the public ledger domain, you may be correct. I would offer in defense a extensive lifetime containing a ongoing accounts of a similar or even greater note. Although I am not a Moses, peoples of another time would recognize me as being touched by The All Mighty, as it were. I will at least own any such appellation. Am I some righteous man deserving of beautification unto sainthood, I would argue Not. At best I have tried to be a descent man, who speaks the Truth as much as possible. I am burdened by an additional commitment.

Back in my youth, being around nine years old. I had a singularly profound series of visions / dreams. I repeatedly dreamt my death, accompanied by the various permeations associated to reaching same. The process took several days (nights) between three to five. Being so young I didn’t think to take particular note of the days my dreams were thus occupied. They obviously had a unique feel with a equally sensational intensity, they still abide with me today. I distinctly recall a voice of sorts coming to me following the last night of witnessing this panorama of my life's end (as are the days accorded to the sons of man). Now this voice which came unto me, I presume it was within the precincts of my mind. Not that it would have mattered greatly since I was alone when it came unto me. Nor did I think to ask from whence or whom spoke. I knew and could feel the light of our Divine Home as I heard the intent along with the presumed words. It was a simple dialogue, stating; “this is how it ends, this is what you have come to do. You need not do it. You have the right to choose. However if you are to complete this task. You must choose to do so now.”. Being a precocious and arrogant child, I immediately presumed that if I had been sent to do such, than the obvious was that I was the best candidate to accomplish the prescribed task. Armed with such infallible logic, I whole heartedly accepted my calling understanding it would come at great cost. Now granted, an understanding of the true scope or magnitude or the enormity of the cost or suffering I fully lacked. I have spent my life preparing. I have come to know that even at the prescribed time I will lack of my own what is necessary. I shall present to the task my all, trusting in Our G-d to shore me up to complete that which I would do. Subsequent to acceptance of this appointment I am to keep in the near future, my sight / vision increased. The frequency and quantity began increasing dreams, visions, revelations, transparencies along with my general perceptions increased. I now openly own the fact that I see the world through the eyes of the mystic. Only recently was my sight dampened. A heart breaking topic the occasion of which surrounds losing my Love Tiffany. The subject of which shall also be laid upon the alter for examination by the modern day augers. Find what fault if you will, I care little. Only know that matter and its accompanying are for later. I must at present attempt to continue in this established vain of thought recounting events long past in my short life. Besides the notations contemporaneous to me and my circumstances or any of the other tripe I have need to spew forth. Believe this, if I could accomplish my foreordained task without sharing, discussing or placing ultimately for public review any of this – such would be my desire. Painfully I have had to come to terms with the ugly reality I must prostrate myself to assure I am able to do what needs be done. Onward thru the fog, as it were.

Without going into specifics too much, early on I displayed another aptitude. Sometime around first to second grade. My Dear sweet mother recognized I somehow had a hand in the going ons of the other children that back then composed the group of children who had commenced to being around. Now my mother was blessed with a keen intellect. Which included the wisdom to not over think somethings. Instead wherever possible if there was a direct and simple solution to apply one's efforts to the solution. Thereby allowing life to continue on as meant. Almost elegant in its simplicity, usually quite effective in solving any problem, a quaint provincial version of Occum's Razor. Consequently the solution was simple, as she noted; “son, I don’t know what you are doing. But it is wrong. Apparently you need my help understanding that.”. There after I regularly got my hide tanned. Until sometime around the age of seven plus the realization that just because you could do something; does not mean you should. And that everyone is entitled to make their own choices. Afterwards the occasion necessitating my tanning ceased as a consequence to those particular actions. By no means did I fail to earn other occasions of corporal punishment as befits a young boy trying to find his wings, so to speak.

Growing up making my way through our education system of public schooling. I never cracked a book. Now one should not presume schools and childhood were smooth sailing. Quite to the contrary, in second grade my school in southern California labeled me “retarded”. Lacking a separate facilities or classes you were simply shoved to the back of the class with similarly challenged children. Nor did they have to test the child or give notice to the parents. Following a few weeks at the back of the class I began to demonstrate “odd” behavior. Which my always observant mother was quick to question. She went to the school and raised holy hell. In actuality it was more of a racially motivated issue. My parents being divorced, the school only saw my Hispanic mother. Being profoundly dyslexic, their initial assessment was that I was a Mexican, and you know you can not teach their kind. I was going to a all white school at time. Not to mention kindergarten in Watts. During the riots in 1965. I had to have police escorts to school. While I still have very distinct memories of the entire family sleeping in the living room with all the doors and windows blocked and barricaded against the rioting blacks. A sort of difficult time growing up. Believe me I know what racism is like. I am not going to hold my tin cup up on that lame ass subject. The fact that there are those in this country that hold onto this issues as the reasons for all their troubles. Or that there are groups and individuals who exploit this history for their enrichment. All this does is allows an ever expanding rifts in our society. The age old axiom of divide and conquer. Yet we all seem oblivious to this, instead we rush to our own deaths.

Thursday July 12, 2018,. – Killeen, Texas

Aaagh, fuck, damnit…. I fucking swear. Why do I even try to help anyone. Generally they hold to their own practices of appeasing the least common denominators by which they live. What can I say. As gracious as my hostess and her son may be. I doubt if I can tolerate much more of their dysfunctionality sans any self realization or objectivity. And they wonder about Joey meeting someone (female). I can’t imagine the woman who would find any of this manner or lack of is appealing. I try to maintain perspective because I do recognize the roots of most of the antisocial behavior. Even if it expresses its self differently than one may anticipate. I just don’t have the tolerance I usually do. In my current condition of convalescing from my injuries, makes me subject to the vagaries that define the lives of normal people. Due to the obvious singular quality of my life I have had to come to terms with the fact that I do not process anything in like manner as my peers. An before everyone thinks I am trying to sound all superior or some such, please note that I am continually making stupid mistakes principally due to my own naivety. We all have this aspect wherein we judge our circumstance and that of others from the pigeonhole perspective. Everyone else's view though differing from each other falls within a given area, or a few degrees of each other. Mine falls a extreme distance outside of what could be considered the norm. Nonetheless being very human I continue in the belief I perceive “reality” much as the other person from a similar understanding and values system. Invariably this attitude finds opportunity to smack me in my face by its differences. Each and every time I am recalled that, oh I knew better because I am fully aware of the differences and should have factored accordingly. Even now at this more venerable point in my life I find one of my biggest failings is naive belief in the character of my fellow man. Yet if my assertions as to my last day as are allotted to the sons of man be True. For the greater part I will be doing so for the entirety of Our Familial Aggregation. Even for those who seek only to cause me and those I Love and care about, harm or maliciousness. Because that is the way of things in our Creation. Soon enough the vile evil shall reveal itself, the kid gloves shall come off and life will never be this peaceful again. If it be the will of he who sent me I will seek to balance many scales of injustice. Till then I must endure and prepare as best I can.

Well enough complaining about friends who do their best given the circumstances. I appreciate all they have done on my behalf. Especially since to a large degree they grasp what potentially may be the cost. Even if in some small ways they may have been influenced by the same malicious or “Bees”, that seek to be the cause of my failure. For such is the nature of things in the abyss. Especially considering the length of time I have elected to spend wrapped in the confines of twisting throughout what we commonly refer to as “reality”. I generally feel more comfortable surrounded by its miasma and ickor than anywhere else. As much as it may appear to be a contradiction it ultimately is fact. Sigh!!!

For the time being I guess I will change the temporal focus of my entries. I can seldom stay focused on any particular time frame for an extended period. Doing so usually causes me to shift to the associated memories which become very visceral in nature. Soon it begins to become a tad overwhelming. All the more so once framed in relation to the present context. I sincerely hope that suffices and is remotely coherent. I am usually deconstructing my conceptual models and ideas into a form more acceptable to being understood. Sometimes I become lost in the process to the point I know what I mean despite the fact that the words and or syntax are nonsense. In conversation I sometimes have to stop and ask if what I have postulated or presented in the dialogue makes sense. I know it all made sense and sounded good in my head. Aaah but I can’t always presume to have effectively communicated the same.

Saturday July 14, 2018. – Killeen, Texas

Well here it is the weekend, somewhere in Who-ville are working stiffs cheering at the arrival of the ritual with its time off. It has been interminably long since I have have lived a life so constrained as to include the simple Joy of a defined weekend of days off. Hell I am usually engrossed in my vocation daily. With my ever prevalent purpose always driving me. For the most part I have become unfit to be amongst civil company. Yes I am conversant. I am genial enough when in mixed groups. I tend to empathic of those around me. I genuinely give a damn as to the well being of others. Even so, the inescapable Truth is that the darkness is too imbued into my being. Because of the darkness of my spirit, I have become rolled into the ubiquitous abyss of our “reality”. Though it does not effect me quite the same as others its taint has woven into my fibers. Not being much of a liar I lack the necessary tools to hide it from general view.

Wednesday July 18, 2018 - Killeen, Texas

Well damn, I sometimes really get fucking frustrated. At one level I am perpetually detached from the day to day focus and obsessions of everyone around me. I can’t bring my mind to focus on the general ideological concepts propagated by the geopolitical theater. Which resembles an episode of the moppet show as far as I what it appears. Are the offenses and injuries less or non-existent to my sympathies or moral indignation; not in the least. They still represent injustices and crimes which need to be effectively dealt with and hopefully the scales will balance. Even so, I just can not seem to get all worked up over these slight daily travesties. All the more so since I tend to view all these for what they are within the larger perspectives and plans of globalist / occultic families. Typical divide and conquer, or simple distractions from their primary objectives. I can appreciate everyone’s sentiments and attitudes that the scenarios of what is to come are not perceived as real or likely. Hell even I given enough distance and time begin to feel as though none of it is possibly factual. Except for the fact that I have lived a life associated to these eventualities. Even when I was in the thick of things all those involved would tell me bold faced lies as to what was occurring. As if to make me question the obvious, because the obvious Truth of the matter was outside any social norms. I guess there are those for a convenient lie is preferred to Truth too extreme to accept. I have been at this life, spending the majority of my existence living in the abyss. Which is everywhere, it co-exists with whatever social or cultural conventions occupying our realities of the moment. It is ubiquitous yet invisible to all but those who have had the misfortune to have grown up in its mists, or the uninitiated. Due to my unique occular abilities I am sort of self initiated. It took me a little while to come to understand the meaning of this subset of our world. I have always seemed to rub against this sub culture, even as a child. A odd fact which has taken me many years to come to terms with it. Even then it was a process of educating myself to be able to grasp the entirety of the concepts. Though outrageous beyond belief, it is nonetheless part of a larger pool of knowledge I have fought long and hard to achieve. We are a phenomenal expression of life, even across the multiverse. For all our uniqueness, we are seemingly determined to trivialize who and what we are. More importantly the processes and manner whereby we are to accomplish our purpose “here”. Truly phenomenal!!!

Yet I digress. I am simply getting on my soapbox, whipping the horse, so to speak. Grrrrr…

How best to convey some of the basics back into the discussions and open forums in our sea of opinions. A perplexing problem one that has vexed my soul for almost three decades. I suppose the real source of my reservations has principally revolved around my own reluctance to be centrist to any reintroduction in a general dialogue. Much to my consternation it is plain that to accomplish this and thereby facilitate me being able to keep my appointment in the future, I must find the where with all and means to personally become directly a part of our social dialogues. I can freely admit to my own megalomania. I try not to buy into it myself. I shan’t feed such feelings or Mali-adpted inclinations. What ever a person's tendencies, we fail our own interests in doing so. To the point of it becoming a all consuming psychosis. Our histories are replete with the villains who are consumed by base desires at the cost of all else. Not that such is my fear. Rather I prefer to do what I can from a position far from the limelight. We don’t always get to choose how best to accomplish our goals. My non-object oriented way of thinking I suppose. Aaagh, this is an area I would deeply desire some assistance. Not to mention the realities of presently being impoverished. I had best get used to my condition, I fear I shan’t know any other for some time to come. I guess I need to find the way and means to broadcast my ugly mug on to the internet. I guess I will start some YouTube type of series. I need to really get my act together!

Amazingly as we and our solar-system has traversed the apogee of its elliptical orbit with its sister star. This having occurred back in December 2012. We are now accelerating towards our sister star on the side closest to our Galactic Center. We will soon be re-entering the flows of Magick. They are part of the natural order of things. Think of it as a higher order of physics. We conveniently suppose a posture of superiority over some earlier more organic beliefs or systems of interactions within our realities. Although witchcraft, paganism, shamanism, and various other practices have been collectively maligned for associated practices related to satanistic practices (which Are very evil). In many such cases we have throughen the baby out with the bathwater. I am not trying to condemn nor make excuses, only to ask for a broader open review of these strangely different beliefs and practices. Many times they are simply corrupted versions of our Judaeo-christian thought, beliefs and practices. Sometimes I even find missing pages of our religious histories amongst these. An to borrow a quote; “We are too hasty when we set down our ancestors in the gross for fools for the monstrous inconsistencies (as they seem to us) involved in their creed of witchcraft.” - C. Lamb.

Friday July 19, 2018. – Killeen, Texas

Now as to my disjointed quaint manner of writing, I am recalled of yet another quote from Webster’s, “Prolix, Diffuse. A prolix writer delights in circumlocution, extended detail, and trifling particulars. A diffuse writer is fond of amplifying, and abounds in epithets, figures, illustrations. Diffuseness often arises from an exuberance of imagination; prolixity is generally connected with a want of it.” [1913 Webster]. As to which, my confused manner may be likened, I leave such determination to those who due to some pathological compulsions decide to continue on through the disjointed tediousness of my log. Excuse my quoting, it but appears the best and most eloquent descriptive means external to my own critiques. Wherein Webster provides what I believe is a more accurate description of my loquacious manner and style of communication. Bleck, ugh…

On to more relevant matters. As I continue to play my game of catching up to the current state of affairs in my existence. Jumping back to around August last year, at the time I elected to take my leave of the Long Beach / Wilmington area of the LA Basin. The majority of occurrences I previously wrote down in a contemporaneous log as I walked out of LA ultimately reaching Salt Lake City, Utah. With a brief momentary stay in Las Vegas, Nevada. My mind aches at the memories from that time. Regardless, there may in the retelling be wisdom or beneficial information for myself or others. Sorry if some of this has a choppy feel to it. There are mountains of unresolved emotional context and histories, which continue to elicit extremes within me. I hate sounding apologetic from the get go. Not that any of the vacillating diminishes the importance of the material or what I endured.

In July of last year, my younger brother was arrested and placed in presumably Twin Towers downtown Los Angeles. It was involving drugs and a handgun. I saw him and the P.O.S. , earlier that night. I already knew there were going to be problems. Additionally I had been indirectly informed my situation was about to become difficult. No more niceness regarding my treatment, operational dictums were changed. Initially I was was acutely aware my younger brother was not in police custody. I figured he was being held some where on or around the federal facilities of Terminal Island in the Port of Long Beach. Later parts of my sight of his circumstances were confirmed to me, though the exact location never has been (foreshadowing). Sometime during the second week of his presumed incarceration. He digitally appeared in the system with the appropriate arrest date, and information. To this day I am not convinced of the terms and conditions accompanying this purely “staged” event. No doubt there were days he was in the Twin Towers facility. Anything else is highly suspect at best if not solely manipulated data for the purposes of the Op. Nonetheless, I was sorely put upon. Due to the determinate fact that whatever had previously as well as on going to date are the proximate results of his being “my brother”. I was aware my brother was not my brother. I later would describe the fact as, “my brother was murdered on the mesas of New Mexico 4 (5) years prior”. I freely declared the fact, even with my younger brother present. At the time of his arrest I had invested two years trying to awaken and heal his soul. During this ordeal, he was on goingly conditioned (subject to various satanic trauma assisted by ultra high technologies deployed by our Shadow Government for the purposes of mind control). I can not escape a degree of culpability. Many may seek succor in the belief that I was not responsible, nor the individual inflicting these horrors to my younger brother. I acknowledge the physical reality as being so. However the moral reality is that, We are our Brother's keeper. An for myself it has a immense literal quality. We are all part of Our Larger Familial Aggregation, what we do, say or do not effects all. While in my particular case, he is my younger brother – same Mother and Father. I have known what to expect from the future all my life. I have even attempted to convey this knowledge in abstract to my brothers. Granted I did Not know that in recent times the evil practitioners of these vile satanistic rites had made a huge technical breakthrough. It use to be, if an individual attained adulthood free of these practices or influences, then they would die free of its chains. Obviously a person could freely elect to cultivate any base desires or perverse inclinations. By “choice” being the operative mandate, those chained to the MPD / DID minds of victims of Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) are forever robbed of any choice in the matter. Not even I can “set” them free or the chains forged in their infancy and childhoods. I can only unlock the gates and offer them the means to heal. The process is long and painful, requiring more years than anyone can live to hopefully heal. Sadly as each victim is considered chattel to the perspective heads of each “family”, who is in turn property of another. Hence there are functionally twelve Satanic Patriarchs seated at the heads of their “family”. Under Satanic Dogma they consider themselves “gods” of their worlds. According to their beliefs you exist as titled property, if not than you are of no consequence thereby you do Not exist. The worth of you and yours is less than the trash sent to the dump.

Sunday July 22, 2018 – Killeen, Texas

Continuing with similar point of fact as discussed, it may all sound or would be considered linear, a straightforward affair. Appearing almost orderly, locked in some strange perverse dance. When it is anything but. Take into consideration the matter of succession. You might be inclined to infer that being Patriarchal, it is a matter of patrialinacal father to son. The reality is far from such Familial Sensibilities. Simply put, upon the death of the head of any household. He, who inherits is the male gains control of his clan by right of arms, or force. Basically if you are not yet feared enough to demand your seat as the heir to the estate. The one who rules does so because he has murdered and killed all the opposition by blood rite according to Antediluvian Law. Meaning you not only kill your opposition, the action is inclusive of all males of immediate consanguinal association. The wholesale murder also removes any potential blood retribution by those who possess an immediate claim to do so. Secondly it demonstrates to clan members at large the vicious response dissent will meet. Terror then substitutes conditioned context within their trauma-based mindset vicariously confirming that male's natural right to head that Family’s Branch of the Larger Familial Group. If you can remotely rationale order from such chaotic slaughter. You more than likely were raised under such paradigms, or your values are perversely twisted and I recommend you seek professional help from any school of thought practicing a highly structured value system, preferably based on some well established benevolent religion. Notice I qualify said using the word benevolent. Cause if you use the most liberal definition to the concepts of religion you could quietly slip satanism or luciferinism in as established religions. The distinctions are sufficient as to invite debate. One I feel is much a waste of time for all parties. Generally I ascribe it principally to a matter of semantics shackled to vastly differing modalities of operations defining values. Our time can be better spent educating ourselves up and out of overly cerebral arguments designed to trap us in artificial concepts posing as reality. A overwrought process favored by Academia in defense of entrenched theories dressed in the ideology we refer to as the “Scientific Model”. Yes, I have great disdain for what passes for education and schools of higher learning. They have long since been co-oped into the problems they were meant to free us from being slaves. I will tuck that soapbox away now, thank you for your indulgence.

What is even more incredible is the fact that this insanity is governed by their own set laws and rules. They even have a court system with defined jurisprudence. Not any sort you or I could consider properly legal. Rather it is more a system to maintain the “status quo” based on traditions, precedence, along with a strange quasi religious tones from Antediluvian Laws. Even known lies are acceptable if left uncontested but those who have standing and recognized Familial context. Elsewise the stated lie will stand as fact, enforceable to the fullest extent to which the system can accommodate.

Now if you followed that loose explanation, allow me to attempt to give an overview of some of the semi-societal interactive relationship between myself and these psychopaths. Especially above the standing rank and file victims constituting the entirety of the Families. I have a singularly unique interactive connection to them, their Families, their politics, traditions, religious dogma, technologies of the Shadow Government, including possible contingencies for what is to come. It is a chaotic and confusing dynamic paradox. Perpetually in a state of change, in recent times there has been much difference of opinion concerning how to acknowledge or interact with me. Technically I am a nonentity, because I exist outside the direct consanguineous relationship, nor am I amenable to joining their point of view. I remain in opposition to them, their practices, beliefs to the extent of being fundamentally adversarial to “them”. It is worth noting I have been at this so long that everyone I know or deal with daily belongs to this subset of our society. Almost all my friends, associates, girlfriends or anyone else comes from some blood occultic families. Some even to what capacity they are able seek to support me in my efforts. I am alive today because some evil bastards simply decided not to do as they were instructed. Knowing full well the consequences for siding with me. Try to understand these individuals have lived corrupt malignant lives, they hate themselves but are forbidden to take their own lives. There is virtual nothing they can do to truly cause those over them to flip out or take offense. Yet they do recognize that my stumbling about is upsetting. Having run around everywhere doing what I do. I have always done so without a net, so to speak. It is a source of boarder line amazement, more particularly they think I am “bat-shit” crazy! Nonetheless I am still here. You may know people who collect body art, fashionably tattoos these days. I sometimes joke of my own collection of scars and injuries to my body. Thankfully I heal exceptionally well. Most of my scars heal to the point of being almost unnoticeable, if you did not know my histories. It is an exhausting hobby, painful too! A frequent refrain I hear while being admitted to the ER or ICU has been, “Mr Williams, you are very lucky to be alive”. “Yeah Doc I hear that allot. Do the best you can.”. It has become somewhat of a ongoing joke, amongst friends and family. These days those groups have become ultra thin. Another reason I make this record of events in my life including improved contemporaneous writings. We can all hope for such. Believe me if it was up to me, no one would know much if anything about me, or my life. I have been, or more correctly I have allowed myself to be forced into a dreadfully unpleasant set of circumstances, as I have whined concerning previously.

Okay Sherman set the way-back machine to the 80’s and 90’ of the last century. Seeing patterns across the country in the minds of crazy ass bitches, now I do Not mean that in a bad way. I have a immense affinity for beautiful crazy ladies. Now as I was saying, the imagery within their minds was too consistent to be coincidence. The language of our sub- conscience is imagery, archetypal, motifs, iconography, mythical, dreams, visions, will of the wisps and whimsy. I believe we all “see” much more of one another than we choose to accept. The largest hurdle to understanding is this compulsion to read or understand what we “see” before the picture is finished assembling in our minds. This tendency has been increasingly pushed into smaller and smaller bits. Which as a negative exponential inverse function has become more and more confusing as to be nigh meaningless with each subsequent reduction. Hence at a time when we should be more connected to everyone. We find increased feelings of isolation and alienation. No matter how much we communicate with our neighbors next door or abroad we have less consensus or feelings of commonality. We sequester these feeling with their accompanying anxieties, less we inadvertently offend anyone. Like what the Fuck! It is part and parcel of the Adult World. Being offended or offending others is how things get done. Usually for the best interests of everyone. Granted we should strive to be engaging to achieve our goals, short of violence or intimidation. Yet as any honest government would gladly concede. Once negotiations by normal means come to an impasse then comes negotiations by “other means”. The debased conduct of sordid persons is best met with our best foot forward, right up their ass! Like most animals, immediacy tends to be the most effective in correcting Mali-adpted conduct. Back to the horse I rode up on, hahaha.

At any rate, over the years I began to solve the underlying issues. I actually came to my own work arounds prior to fully grasping the centralized source or the impact of its implications. Years later I did begin to hear limited bits of information over the internet. Although it did take me a while before I started to correlate the “conspiracy theory” data with what I was “seeing” in women throughout the country. Largely because few had any real coherent information. Eventually, information concerning Project MK Ultra and our government's Psy-Ops programs sufficiently surfaced to flesh out the details. As a child, young teenager I was familiar with the government’s LSD experiments for a variety of reasons, mind control being one aspect. Frankly I can not believe there are people today who do not know or refuse to believe that our government conducted such experimentation on the populace. It was just common knowledge in the circles I travel. If you read the Program Outline for MK Ultra it has an extensive list of lines of “study” information was to be explored, accumulated with a focus of deriving paradigms of control on individuals, groups, countries, cultures, and from that to the world at Large. The Globalist, New World Order, G-7, Trilateral Commission, Illuminati the individuals and their constantly shifting panorama of institutions and foundations are continually sifting beliefs and cultures in an multi-generational game of Three Card Molly. Degree by degree all the world’s various societies and Cultures have been manipulated via global misdirection with large quantities of restructuring of values and beliefs. Till everyone on Earth thinks good is bad; and bad is good. I should think we have all heard these arguments before, usually framed as the delusions of conspiracy theorist. All rather convenient as a means explaining away any descent or even an open fair discussion. Our social structure has drifted far from where we should be. Starting in 2020, everything is going to change and never be this pleasant or nice again. Well at least not till after the Second Coming. Hahaha, despite sounding …...

2 notes · View notes