#i tried to get through Scholar like 5 separate times and never made it past the forest—

[james-stark-the-writer]

playing the original Dark Souls 2 again (not Scholar) for the first time in forever, the hormones slider in advanced character creation always kills me. Dark Souls 2 was saying trans rights before any other game in the series.

[lastcrystalwitch]

4/11/21

Curbing frustrations due to stopping smoking, *I am constantly reminding myself to be a decent human being, and be decent to others. Its been a while since I stopped smoking. But this is the first time I did so willingly.

I had my heart broke. A close friend of mine turned out to be an enemy. Someone who didn't believe in me from the beginning, lied to my face countless times that I am just finding out about, and told others bad things about me. All I can do, and all I could ever do, however, us just accept this distrust, because that is the person that they want to be and I cant change that. I can only just keep being myself, wishing good for everyone and understand what it is that makes me tick, and focus on my needs. I spent a year and a half doting on that person, taking care of them, bringing them gifts, and trying to make them smile when most of what they did was talk bad about me behind my back, lie to me, and prove to me that they don't respect me, don't care about me, and they are stuck in a childish mindset.

Honestly early drug use in young teens prevents their brain from developing. So perhaps that's the case. You're a lost boy from neverland. And If you want to grow up and stop acting spoiled and entitled, and super selfish, you'll have to try harder than everyone else. But small steps first starting out.

Spirit told me not to burn my bridge with you. That you will grow up, that you will learn, but only after you lose your entire family, people disown you because of your cowardly negligence, and you lose everything. I don't keep liars as friends. And I should have been more careful. They say love is blind. But only the ancients understood it fully. This is why I still love you. I see you for you, and not what everyone else sees. Let me explain.

There are many forms of a persons soul. Spirit, soul, essence, and physical outer spirit, what you show everyone else, are all radically different things.

To help explain this a little bit I borrowed the following list from Wikipedia, which does a fair job at explaining most things. However, there was an exceptional volume written by one of my favorite authors so far, in the early 1800's - and his name unfortunately escapes me. He was a scholar, professor, archeologist, and preserver of ancient history. He had traveled to many many sites from ancient cultures, mainly Egypt, and it is because of his work as a linguist that we were able to get this list together to help others understand there is more to a person than just their spirit and their soul.

1Khet (physical)

2Sah (spiritual body)

3Ib (heart)

4Ka (vital essence)

5Ba (personality)

6Shut (shadow)

7Sekhem (form)

8Ren (name)

So, each one of these is its own separate element that makes up a person. And in this book from the 1800's, the one that escapes my memory - he goes into each of these, and If I am remembering correctly, this is not an exhaustive list; there are more elements to a person. But he goes into each one and breaks it down. I can do my best to explain these, but I feel like I wouldn't do half as much as a good job.

But when I look at a person, I don't know if it is my vision, but I don't see someone's KHET. I see their "ihb", Thier "Shut", and their "Ka."

But that is because as someone who was constantly bullied in my life, by all types of people, beautiful people, ugly people, faking nice people ... I don't look at the way that they dress, or how skinny they are. That is the least important part of a person. The most important part of a person is the part that they show to no one when no one else is there, how they interact with strangers, and how they interact with animals and their environment. Spencer might have broken my trust, but I see his KA, I've always seen it. And his Ka is beautiful, RARE, and so strong. He asked me what I see in him. Many people have asked me what I see in him. He has broken BA, and a very interesting Sekhem. He hates his own Ren as much as I do, and opened up to me as to why. And I know he wasn't lying about that. I enjoy his company because I see who he wants to be. And I see his Shut, (shu*ot) or his shadow. But behind every Shut, there is a light side. And he has the capability to become one of the most successful and influential people I know. He has endless potential which he hasn't even scratched the surface with, and he can change so many peoples entire lives, and doesn't even know it yet. I love his Sah, which isn't easy to explain to someone who has never heard these terms before.

And without which is why I see lots of growth needed for him to do. And he'll get there. It might take him 20 years to stop being afraid of himself, and I say that with so much love. Afraid, not calling him a coward, he is very brave, but he runs away in fear of getting hurt, and in fear of people letting him down, like so many people have done so many times in the past. Your Ka is beautiful. One of the most rare and strongest I have ever seen. As shocking of a presence as being very tall. Someone with a beautiful Ka will always influence others. Always draw attention. They are so rare and unique of a person that instantly others are attracted to them. Instantly they get noticed.

You know what is cute? Someone so tall trying to be invisible. ^-^

They are able to be someone that others depend on, feel safe around, and look up to. People want to be around others with a Ka like that. Always. Even when you're feeling blue. Because when that Ka feels better, when its not sad, when you get out of your comfort zone, set a goal for yourself and get it done, the sun comes out of the darkness. And that Ka starts emanating happiness. People with strong Ka's are like superweapons. They can be the back bone of families. Someone who everyone loves and cherishes. I don't think they know it, but that Ka is the most beautiful part of someone. And it drives me insane to think that he doesn't even know his own worth!

I forgive you for lying to me. I don't accept it, lying isn't good. But I understand why you did it. They were selfish reasons, and I don't use the word selfish in a negative way. Selfish in the fact that you were just looking for a way to get what you wanted, to make yourself happy. So you could have fun, enjoy the day, and smile like you do sometimes.

But you are still a child when it fully understands what it is that makes a person happy. And that's not your fault. You never learned the secret. No one told you because it doesn't exist in your family. It doesn't really even exist in mine, its something that I had to figure out and struggle through myself growing up, and dedicating 15 years to bettering myself and doing everything I could to become the best version of myself;

In order to be happy with the decisions that you make, in order to feel comfortable with you decisions and be proud of yourself, you have to know yourself. When we spend so much time hiding and looping pain around in our heads we spiral down into a circle that never ends. This leads to depression, drug abuse, alcoholism, lying to your friends, lying to your family, and lying to yourself. You'll look in the mirror and not know/not like who you are. To not know yourself.

Take time to practice healthy practices for you. Become an adult. Become who you want to be. You say you wished she'd come out of the blue and make you be someone who you wished you were: Someone confident. Someone happy. You wished you were okay. You said that she'd come into your life and make you stop drinking, stop doing all the drugs.

Be careful what you wish for, Giant. She came into your life. She adored you. She tried to show you how to love. You pushed her away, thwarted her efforts to help you, shamed her, disrespected her, hurt her feelings, tore her soul, made her spend entire nights crying over you and your decisions. She just wanted to trust you. And you broke that trust. YOU destroyed your relationship with select few who really were expecting great things from you.

Because you still need to learn. You still need to try. There is a point, and it is possible. Everything that you want, you can achieve. The only person who is stopping it is yourself. Grow up.

I see your pain. You can't understand that because you can't empathize with others like I can. I know your heartbreak. I can say that because I have a very big heart.

But seriously, grow up. Set a goal. Get it done. You're sitting and rotting in your own filth and its no ones fault but yours. You can blame anyone you want to. Anyone. I can think of seven people you'd probably blame instead of yourself.

Take responsibility for your actions. This is a part of growing up. Accept that you made a mistake. Say your sorry, and try again. When you do something wrong, admit it. When you go out of your way to hurt someone, tell yourself that it is bad. Be a god damn decent human being and the world will be yours. Stop living like a pathetic thief. You're better than that. You're stronger than that. I see your Ka, and I believe in you. Seriously, stop your shit. Just stop. This is bigger than your deep seeded sadness. This is about the rest of your life.

I can't force you to change. You'll either change, or stay the same miserable self you are and end up being hated and shamed by everyone in your family. But its up to you. Its only up to you. She came into your life. You got what you wished for. You had the lock, and she had the key. But you have to be the one that turns the key and opens the door to your own success and future. Sometimes you have to help yourself. Sometimes you have to do things for yourself.

I know you can do it. I believe in you. But it doesn't matter what I say or think, or how I feel. You'll never see it that way, unless you grow up and get your head out of your ass. <3 Be a man, know yourself. Learn what it is that makes you tick. Stop the drugs. They're just a guaranteed trip to self sabotage and unhappiness. Seriously dude, you're going the wrong way on that, and I CAN SEE. So I'm giving you a heads up. It doesn't make you feel better

STOP LYING. Mostly stop lying to yourself. Drugs don't solve anything. What do they make you do? Well, they mess up your kidneys, which always hurt and only feel better when you apply pressure to them. You're rotting your kidneys. You've only got two, and a rare blood type, so the more you drink and the more you do drugs, the higher your creatinine level will be and it becomes like a cutter. You are injuring yourself to the point of self harm. And you do it deliberately to TAKE THE PAIN AWAY.

I know this because I can see your spirit. And there were so many conversations that we have had. So many that I know you don't remember. And after finding out how much you lie, I can't believe all of it anymore. I can't trust you. YOU DID THAT. No one else. And it sucks, but even behind all the lies, the Ka was still there. I could feel your actual hurt as my own, so those 5am talks we had, all those conversations, and the times that you were there for me, weather you were to blind to know that you were there for me and if you even realized it or not, I just want to say thank you.

Thank you for pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and hanging around me sometimes. Thank you for sitting with me on the couch, while I cried because my soul hurt and the world didn't make sense. Thank you for showing me what a kind person and loving friend you actually really are, even if it is hidden under layers and layers of pain and guilt and self loathing. Thank you for letting me get to know a little bit of you, and thank you for making me smile when you know I didn't feel good. Thank you for making me laugh when things were getting too serious. Thank you for sharing your joy with me in my life. You don't know how many times you made me feel better just by being able to forget about all the worlds problems and sing in the car. Thank you for saying things without saying them, and showing me that you are so genuine and unique, there really isn't anyone like you in this world. You are super special, and you've literally saved my life the night you let me come into your room and sit there and watch the fishes. You don't know how much pain I was in. And you were there for me. You helped me not end my life that night. I only walked away with a couple scars. YOU HELPED ME. YOU did. Just by letting me in. We didn't talk. I couldn't. I was crying too much and my Ba and Ka were in absolute shambles. You didn't do anything except be in the right place at the right time, but your energy, as confused as it was at that time, helped me know that I wasn't the only one alone and suffering. And it was okay. and YOU had given me another reason to keep breathing. You'll never know how much you mean to me. Thank you for what you have helped me though.

I hope you can learn and know the Wisdom, not knowledge, that you can do anything you set your mind to, if you want to. I have proved to myself and to you, that you are the only one that is making your life miserable. I have done everything for you. And unless it is served to you on a silver platter, you reject it. You are the only one stopping your life progress. And you've convinced and lied to yourself so much about it that somehow you actually believe it is true.

I wish you could see through my eyes.

Even better, I wish you the courage and strength it takes to change you life and want to succeed better. Because you have all the tools. Shit, I gave you EVERYTHING. The only excuse is yourself. You are what is stopping you.

Life goes on. We never forget them. But we have to live our lives. They forced themselves to be a memory. Force yourself to live. Go live out your own story. Stop lying to yourself. Your a fricking great person! You lie, sure. You manipulate, sure. But I see you! That isn't who you want to be and the time in your life right now is merely a stepping stone for all the endless things that are out there. There are layers of things that you don't understand. I'm not trying to be mean, but trust me when I say there's a lot out there.

Maybe someday we will meet again when you turn into an adult. Because right now I see you as a boy. There is so much out there to look forward to. There are SO many fun things out there in different cultures. You have a journey ahead of you, and I just wished that I could have been part of it with you.

I forgive you. You really really hurt me. And it absolutely is your fault and no one else. But at the end of the day, its You who has to live with who you are. And you can CHANGE and Grow. I have all ready seen the person you are 20 years from now. And you wouldn't believe it if I told you. Rv's, dual citizenship, backpacked across the grand canyon, visited MT St. Helen, been to Yellowstone 3 times, had lots of fun there with friends. Married, divorced. Someone who is comfortable in his own skin. Someone who doesn't feel the need to impress everyone, and who is happy. Someone who has become comfortable in his own skin. Someone who doesn't get offended by what other people think.

In 20 years I see you happy. I see you deciding you're a product of your environment and you wanted to change because everything is not set in stone. Its just what you knew. Past tense.

You can learn from your mistakes.

Just because you've never won the lottery, doesn't mean its not possible. People are winning the lottery all the time. There is hope. Just because you have never felt comfortable in your own skin doesn't mean that its not possible. It just means that you can experience it, and LIVE it, and KNOW it, for the first time, and for the rest of your life.

In 20 years you have more money than you know what to do with, and you have your own place, and like 3.5 cars, 2 that run 2 that don't. Projects. You have goals. You have your own family. You have your own life. People look up to you. You smile more. Your mouth doesn't hurt anymore because you stopped saying, "It doesn't matter." Instead you say things like, "Its possible."

But you have to try. And you have to keep trying.

But first you have to stop with the drinking and stop with the drugs, because you're literally hurting yourself and everyone around you, and you are going to be the only reason that you end up alone and unhappy. The truth hurts. Just like when I found out how much you really did lie to me, after I really didn't deserve it. I did everything I could to help you. I spent hours doing paperwork for you to help you get free dental, researching schools for GEDS, looking at loan and credit repair options, screening background checks to help you find out if you were really hung up locked out of states and not allowed to come back. You're actually not banned from Florida or Texas. There are no warrants out for your arrest by the way, because you never actually did anything super terrible. Otherwise you would have been thrown in jail instead of told to get the hell out of dodge.

There are people out in this world that really do care about you, and really want to see the best for you. But you have to want the best for yourself. You just want to be happy. I don't know how high or drunk you were when we had that conversation, but you just want to be you again. You just want to be happy again.

You can be. You have to do it though. I can't hold your hand like a little boy and do it for you. I tried. YOU were the reason that it didn't work. I did my part. YOU were the one that let yourself down. Literally all you had to do was to sign it. And I see this pattern with you.

Really, lets go ahead and break this down.

You are the cause of your own unhappiness.

Others can literally do EVERYTHING for YOU, and you come up with some kind of excuse and you LIE to YOURSELF, of why it won't happen. You do this to yourself. You are what they call, "A product of self fulfilling prophecies."

That's because you make it happen.

Your success: YOU make it happen.

Your failures: YOU make it happen.

Its really up to you to decide who you want to be. Not the other way around. Really. I'm not joking. I'm being honest. I'm not lying.

You can do it.

But you have to want it.

And you don't have to be alone.

And as shitty as you have treated me, and as terrible as a human you've been to me, doesn't make it ok. That was a really really mean, unnecessary and childish thing you did, for the past year and a half. Manipulating me like you did.

It still hurts because I trusted you, and you shit on me. YOU did that. That was YOUR choice.

But its MY choice to give you a heads up and let you know what you've been wanting to know this whole time, You are the way to your future. If you want to be miserable for the rest of your life, I cannot stop you. If you want to be treated like a little boy, who lies, and who is mean for the rest of your life, I cannot stop you. You are the only one who can change you.

Your entire future and happiness is up to you.

Choose your attitude. Choose your future. Choose to be someone you can be proud of. For once, stop lying to yourself. Its stupid.

[realtalk-princeton]

@Sulpicia do you have any advice on how to achieve such a high gpa in the humanities, when essay grades can sometimes seem subjective and different professors have different preferences? for ex, do you recommend using office hours in a certain way?

Response from Sulpicia:

I think that one thing to keep in mind is that I’m in a humanities major where empirical exams often determine 70-80% of your grade in a class; while they’re not usually curved, the language exams I took had a pretty similar format between classes, and so with every class you’re more prepared to engage with the material in that way. I personally think the best thing you can do to do well in a humanities class is to do the work; coming into class having prepared and done the readings will mean you have things to say, which translates into a better class discussion; this then will inevitably inspire thinking about what to write about for papers, and will also give you a better idea of how your instructor responds to your thinking. I’m not pretending that I showed up to class prepared 100% of the time, but I think sometimes people take humanities classes here and don’t take them seriously and then struggle at the end because they weren’t really trying to understand things on a week-to-week level.

In terms of writing papers, I generally tried to be in contact with instructors as much as possible throughout the process. Going to office hours with an idea (or, better yet, an outline) is really helpful, since you can get feedback before you spend a ton of time writing something that is founded on a mistaken assumption (which was something I did a LOT in my thesis process) or following a line of argument that might not be as strong as you initially think/hope. I often tried to come up with paper topics early on and even when (as was inevitably the case) I didn’t write anything, I knew I a) had the green light from a professor and b) was passively thinking about the topic for a long time. I also tried to write about things that made me excited, since the best papers are the ones you actually care about.

I actually have not found that professors have hugely different expectations for writing, because at the undergraduate level, good academic writing is good academic writing. I’m not the best essay writer in the world, but here are some tips I have for essay writing that I’ve learned over the past few years:

- Structure is so important, and is something a lot of essays miss. You should have a clear thesis statement of 1-2 sentences for a term paper, and this should be clearly positioned at the end of your introduction. For a shorter paper (5-10 pages) this should be at the end of the first page or top of the second page, while for longer papers, a JP, or a thesis chapter, they can be a little bit further in. Overlong introductions are my weakness as a writer, but a good intro basically just needs to provide the context you need to set up your thesis statement. I would stay away from the “three-pronged” thesis you learned in high school, but your thesis should correspond with the structure of your paper by presenting your claims in the order you will address them.

- Structure is important in your main body too! Write an outline before you begin your essay that briefly sketches out the progression of your argument and what evidence you will use to prove each part of it. Use transition words to link together ideas, and make sure to regularly tie back all of your claims to the main idea of your paper. Don’t write anything that does not support your thesis or provide a counterargument that you can then mitigate or disprove. Always let your reader know where they are in your argument, and don’t be afraid to refer back to earlier parts of the paper.

- Every sentence should matter. When you’re presenting a piece of evidence or analysis, think about its relationship to the one previous. Is that relationship meaningful? If not, the sentence shouldn’t be there (or should be placed elsewhere in your paper). The ideal is that every piece of your paper will follow naturally from what immediately precedes it, guiding the reader on a nice walk through your argument.

- In the humanities, close engagement with primary sources is key. Yes, you need to use secondary scholarship. However, engagement with the “scholarly conversation” should be second to your unique contribution, which is your close reading of the text/images at hand. This was something I struggled with in my thesis, since I felt so pressured to read all the scholarship and lost my close focus on primary sources. The absolute first thing you should do when you write a humanities paper is sit down with the sources you’re analyzing and think about them. What questions do they raise for you? Why are they confusing or contradictory? How does this source connect what you discussed in lecture, precept, or seminar? What can one source say about another? If you can, annotate the source on a piece of paper or take notes alongside it.

From there, you’ll start to find your unique insights which will form the backbone of the paper. Then, if this is a research paper and not just a close reading, look at secondary sources. If you have your own opinions about a primary text, however naive, you’ll feel more confident looking at *the discourse*. Sometimes, this will answer questions you had about the text, and so you don’t need to do that work in your paper. Other times, it will give you more interpretive tools to understand a text (e.g. you might find that X feature of the writing is typical of a certain genre, and you can think about the implications of that on your text). Sometimes, it’ll show you that the scholarly consensus is, in your opinions, totally wrong; for example, one chapter of my thesis was inspired by the fact that I visual source I thought was straightforward and was going to use in another chapter had in fact been pretty clearly misread by scholars, so my new project became proving why my identification was correct. However, any engagement with scholarship should only work to support your argument; unless you’re doing a lit review or writing about scholarly history (in which case the scholarship is your primary source), you don’t just want to slap different people’s opinions next to each other.

- Use lots of evidence and use lots of analysis. Graders are not mind readers, even if they are familiar with the material you’re studying. Good essays will present a lot of evidence; one thing I find helpful is breaking up longer quotes into shorter sections and treating them separately. Every piece of evidence should also be given analysis about why a) it is proving whatever point you’re making in the paragraph and b) how this connects to your larger argument. Part (b) might be implicit, but many essays could be stronger by making clear, distinctive points. Obviously not every piece of evidence merits a lot of analysis, and you can feel free to draw together several quotes to make one larger point.

- Speaking of, make specific claims. This refers both to the evidence that you use and how you use it. It’s totally okay to make general statements about a work, or an author, or an artistic movement; you couldn’t write an essay without doing that. However, those broad claims need to (at least in part) be grounded in some form of evidence; this can come from a secondary source or from an illustrative quote from a primary source. Inexperienced essay writers will be too vague and general--while there are dangers in getting to hyper-specific, I think it’s important that if you make a claim in your paper, you point to the specific thing that made you think that way (this is also a good way to avoid misconceptions/bad assumptions in your argument). When you’re using evidence, you should also try to say something as specific as possible about it, rather than just continuing to string up evidence and restating your thesis. Your thesis statement is just a summary of your ideas; your reasoning should be more nuanced and complex than that one concept. The more specific you are the more original you are, which helps you make points.

- Revise, revise, revise! When I did HUM, I would write up to five drafts of each paper. As a senior, I’ve gotten a lot lazier about this, but part of the reason I could do that was because I had learned a lot from revising previous papers and knew what mistakes to avoid. I think that papers grow the most between a first draft and a second draft. My favorite way to revise (and this is what I did with my thesis, JPs, and many papers I’ve written at Princeton) is to take a draft, print it out (with professor comments, if applicable), and then go through and retype the whole thing into a blank document. Optionally you can mark it up yourself as well, which is probably for the best. I like this because it means you have to read every word of your paper and also don’t feel bound by its existing structure; you can move paragraphs or shuffle things around more easily. I also always find myself adding more things or rephrasing analysis, which improves the paper. You’ll never come up with every idea in a first draft, so it’s good to revisit the paper as much as you can.

- Ask other people to read your work. We all have bad writing habits, from overuse of certain words to repetitive syntax to skipping steps in our logic. These things are not always obvious to us, but are very obvious to other readers. If you can, ask a friend (or writing center tutor, or instructor) to read your paper and help you identify these “bad habits” so you’re more conscious of them in future drafts. They can also often help you see where you skipped a step in your structure or the logic of your argument, or where your treatment of evidence doesn’t fully make sense. This is not always an option, of course, but especially early on, having people who will frankly tell you what’s not working will be helpful to your development as a writer.

- Learn from your mistakes. Criticism, even of the kindest, gentlest, most constructive kind, is hard to hear. To be honest, I would sometimes put off writing my thesis for hours because I was so embarrassed that my advisor had seen a stupid mistake I’d made in my writing (which is entirely irrational, yes, I get it). However, it is very important not only to bask in the positive comments on your paper, but to look at any more constructive ones to see what you can do better next time. Every paper teaches you how to write the next one better. Keep old papers and use them as teaching tools; you might even find it helpful to pin a list of things you know you need to remember when writing next to your desk or on your computer desktop. Professors offer comments because they want you to do better and understand more, not because they want to tear you down (unless they’re really mean).

Anyway this was kind of long-winded, but hopefully at least a little helpful as Dean’s Date approaches (the one lesson I never learn is how to stop procrastinating). I don’t know if there’s a secret to having a good GPA. I don’t consider myself to be brilliant or industrious at all, really; I think I’ve been lucky, taken classes that suited my academic strengths, come into them prepared, and really spent time understanding what exams and papers are trying to assess and then crafting my responses accordingly.

[urfavmurtad]

What are some things about Judaism and Christianity that you learned that surprised you? What about polytheistic religions like native american animism, Buddhism, Shinto and Jainism? Zoroastrians? Baha’i? Yazidi?

Anon this is… such an in-depth question! Idek where to begin here. Of all those religions, I have learned the most about Judaism since I stopped being religious. What I knew about Judaism prior to maybe 5 years ago was mostly just what Islam says about Judaism. Meaning, you know, from Adam to Moses, then it skips ahead to David/Solomon/Saul, then there are some brief mentions of Jonah and Ezekiel and that’s really it.

So I didn’t know a lot, and I wasn’t very interested in what I did know tbh. The only reason why I started reading the Bible is bc I wanted to compare it to the Quranic versions of the stories and see how much Mohammed fucked them up. And that was fun but I didn’t bother to look much further into Judaism past that. The Books of Kings and Chronicles, for example, I took one look at them, decided they were boring, and didn’t read them until only a couple of years ago. That’s when I first got into the whole Biblical history thing. I tried reading a book about how the Bible was put together and realized I didn’t know enough about the Bible itself to even begin.

I forced myself to read those four books and then some of the prophet books (side note: all of the female prophets were left out of Islam, I didn’t even know they existed. Damn it Mohammed!!!). And I’m glad I did, because it changed my whole view of the Jewish Bible. It’s a history book!! Like… that’s literally what it’s supposed to be, a (legendary) history of Israel/Judah, and every bad thing that happens to them is ascribed to YHWH getting pissed off at them, but then like my friend and her trash boyfriend he always forgives them and takes them back even tho they just go on to disappoint him again. The Bible is the world’s oldest and greatest self-drag!!!

Once I actually knew the general chronology of the Biblical kings and shit I could actually make my way through this book without getting confused (mostly). Highly recommend this one for beginners btw, there is a PDF online and it’s not overly long.

And damn… I know there’s some debate about certain elements of it like the exact nature of the “documentary hypothesis” but even just focusing on the stuff that people agree upon, I didn’t know any of it before reading this, beyond there being no evidence for the Exodus/the huge kingdom of Solomon etc. I also knew that early Judaism was a system where multiple gods existed but YHWH was just their patron god, but I didn’t fully understand the process in how he got conflated with El and became the god.

More relevant to this topic, though, I didn’t understand the history behind the Bible itself. Deuteronomy being written separately/earlier than the rest and the Bible claiming that it was “found” in the Temple after like 900 years in Josiah’s time… like I had never even heard of Josiah prior to a few years ago and here I am realizing that this bitch perpetrated fraud that would make Linda Taylor proud. Tf. AND, the whole thing with Judah being way, way less developed than Israel, and Israel was actually a multi-ethnic and prosperous society, but then after the Assyrians handed Israel its ass the Judeans were suddenly the top bitch in school and wrote the whole Bible to make their former northern neighbors out to be assholes?? Wow Team Israel tbh.

Then when you get to the time of the Babylonian Exile tho you have to feel a bit bad for the people of Jerusalem, like the Babylonians were uncommonly dickish even for their time and the ppl of the city were clearly traumatized tbh… a lot of the stories in the Bible, especially those believed to have been added only after the exile, make a hell of a lot more sense when you realize the huge changes occurring in Jewish society at the time. The transition from “there are lots of gods but YHWH is our god” to “YHWH is the god” is completely understandable when you realize that people were searching for some explanation as to why they had all been uprooted and thrown out of their homes, and the obvious explanation is that, yet again, they had pissed YHWH the fuck off by worshiping other gods.

I feel like both Christianity and Islam (but especially Islam) try to separate many of Judaism’s better-known stories from the context of ancient Israel/Judah itself, presenting them as more universal stories that apply to everyone, but tbh the whole over-arching story doesn’t work unless you look at it as a history written by and for Jews who were rebuilding their religion and society in a volatile period. I’m reading this rn and it’s relevant to that topic.

It’s truly a damn shame that pretty much like 0% of Muslims have been exposed to any of this tbh? I feel like almost all scholars of Biblical history come from non-Muslim countries. I have more feelings on this subject but let me answer the rest of your question. First of all, Christianity. I read the New Testament in full a couple of years ago as well. It was obviously way easier to read because the Gospels are all different versions of the same story and the rest is just supplementary material, basically. I think the text itself is pleasant and Jesus was a chill dude. I like him. And the whole… sequence of events made much more sense after I’d read the Book of Isaiah and realized that the authors of the Gospels were viewing Jesus in light of those prophecies. Revelation is a fascinating shrooms trip. The Acts of the Apostles were fun to read, but all the letters were just like w/e. More historically interesting (if they’re real) than interesting in terms of content. Though I do think some of the content in them is very nice, idk if people know this but Muslims think Paul was responsible for perverting the (non-existent) “real” Gospel of Jesus and paint him very poorly. But I dunno, the letters seemed fine to me.

Tbh I was surprised to see how different Islam’s version of Christianity/Christian stories is compared to the “real thing”. I don’t even mean his disastrous misconceptions of Christian theology but just like… with the stories Mohammed pulled from the Jewish Bible (and the Talmud–which I also enjoyed flipping through btw, it’s like a bunch of old guys yelling at each other in written form), he gets details wrong but the overall stories are basically the same. But with the Christian stories, barely anything in the Quran is from the Bible. I think I’ve said this before but like 90% of the stuff pulled from Christianity in Islam is about baby Jesus, not adult Jesus, and even that stuff isn’t from the Bible. It’s understandable when you realize that he was listening to these stories, not reading them, and just picked the ones he liked best… which happened to be later texts. That brings me to a subject that is near and dear to my heart:

Apocryphal texts bih. I love this shit, with full sincerity and zero irony. The weirder it gets, the better. I started out just reading the ones that made it into the Quran, like the Life of Adam and Eve, the Infancy Gospels that I’ve mentioned before, and the Testament of Solomon. Then some Gnostic stuff, which I only read because it has the same substitute-crucifixion thing going on as Islam, but WHEW chile the DRUGS these ppl were on while writing this shit…! The Sethians and the Nag Hammadi library produced such treasures of crazy-ass literature. It makes me sad how so much of this stuff is just totally forgotten now that Christianity is mostly just Catholic/Protestant+Orthodox. There were so many sects and people had so many divergent ideas, some more drug-assisted than others probably!! And Middle Eastern Christianity was very diverse even in the 7th century. Some of the stories they produced had such rich lore. My fave right now is this Syriac collection:

I came across this one while looking for the origins of the al-Khidr story in the Quran. There were all sorts of opinions about who he was, bc Mohammed never really gave any details on his life, but Ibn Ishaq recorded an opinion that al-Khidr was the one who buried Adam and Allah granted him long life in return. So I looked for the source of that story and it was the story of Melchizedek in this book. Then I read the whole thing and man this would make for some weird psychedelic series or sth. It’s online, look it over and you’ll see how trippy it is.

Um… anon this is getting rly long tbh so let me sum up my knowledge of Shinto, Native American animism, and Jainism: not much!! Buddhism I have only an intro-level knowledge of, I know the basics but I don’t know more than that. The beliefs of Yazidis I don’t fully understand, but the little I know is pretty cool. From what I understand it’s a blend of pre-Islamic Kurdish religion + early Islamic influence + some other influences thrown in. It’s sad how they’re branded as devil-worshipers or w/e when the story of Melek Taus is actually really interesting and has a good moral and is way, way better than the story of Iblis. I also enjoy Yazidi architecture and that unique ribbed cone top of theirs. I hope they’re able to live on as a community after, uh, recent events.

I actually was taught about Bahai people growing up but I was told it was some heretical offshoot of Islam comparable to Ahmadiyya people. I didn’t realize it was considered its own religion until fairly recently tbh. I did read the Kitab al-Aqdas (which is blessedly short, this makes Bahai a great religion automatically!!) once. It’s definitely super inspired by the Quran in terms of style and to me clearly seems to be an attempt to make a Kinder And Also More Iranian Islam. I think it’s pretty neat. In fact I think a lot of attempts to magically make Islam “nicer” would just end up making it more like Bahai tbh. And it has a really fascinating history, with the Bab basically being a new John the Baptist and Bahaullah being the one he foretold. He even accidentally ended up in Israel lmao. I also really love Bahai architecture in terms of how diverse it is, with the only unifying feature being visual interest, and I would love to see the temple in India irl one day. India always has the best architecture anyway.

I saved Zoroastrians for last bc I have to be honest here. I tried to look into it, because it’s ancient and had an influence on Judaism etc and that makes it important. Fam I got about 3% of the way through the Avesta before giving up. I was still in the hymns part and just like… every other word was something I didn’t understand. I will go back and try again one day but for now the answer is “lol idk”.

ANYWAY… yeah… I’ve enjoyed reading about religion way more now that I’m not religious, both in terms of Islam and other religions, I can appreciate the process or w/e now that I’m not constantly trying to make it fit into Islam or panicking every time I spot something that makes me question my faith. I know a lot of atheists either fall away from religion altogether or just look at it like it’s something dumb, but even if it’s fake, that doesn’t make it worthless imo. The history itself is always worth studying.

[rohitkkumar]

Pooja Batra celebrates International Yoga Day 2021 by doing tripod headstand

I married young, and had two perfect daughters, but my marriage was far from perfect. We had been young and in love. I was entering the community college and Denise was starting her senior year when we decided to tie the knot. Her family’s ready acceptance of me was a huge factor – the family I’d never had, making me feel like a real member of theirs. I can admit it now; I probably loved being a part of the family as much as I loved Denise.

Our split up was inevitable, two teenagers who knew nothing about life thinking their infatuation with each other would make everything else workout. I wasn’t an all-star, super jock, Rhodes Scholar with a 12″ swinging dick. I was just your average student, A’s and B’s, spending some bench time on the football team to get my letter, and losing my virginity at 18 to the girl I’d eventually marry.

When times got rough, we didn’t know how to handle it, and struck out at each other. Her family often stepped in and helped out when they could, but time after time, the great sex wasn’t enough to make up for the difference in our wants, needs and ambitions.

In the end, we gave up. Sometimes I think it’s a miracle we made it through 5 years. Our devotion to our children allowed us to finally see past our own issues, and work out a remarkably amiable truce, with our girls at the center. Even though Denise and I couldn’t live together, it turned out we got along a lot better divorced. We shared our daughters’ time, lived only one neighborhood apart, and worked together as a team to make our personal differences have as little impact on our girls as possible.

I had initially shared an apartment uptown, but eventually bought one of the smallest houses in the same school district, just to make things easier. It was a lot more than I needed most of the time, but when the girls stayed with me it felt like a home. And we only lived a couple of miles apart.

The neighborhood was nice, predominantly younger families, in older, smallish homes. Most of the people were cordial, kept up their property, and after a few years I knew many by name and would exchange greetings at the grocery store, or when out shopping. I had become suburbanized.

This was our fourth Christmas since the divorce. Denise was living with Eric, who I wish I could despise, but he was a decent guy with a great job and lousy taste in sports teams. He doted on my girls without trying to take my place. It had taken a while, but we’d developed a friendship, which wasn’t a bad thing.

My child support was pegged at just over $1500, with the kids on my health insurance. Even though we weren’t married long enough for alimony to kick in, I was paying another $500 a month just to make the kids’ lives better. And for me, that was all that really mattered.

The expense had been rough at first, but with little to concentrate on other than work, my performance skyrocketed. Two promotions in three years had made the financial aspect much less problematic, but increased travel had made the ability to be available for the girls less guaranteed. Denise was good about it, and worked with me. In return I picked up some more of the girls’ expenses, including music lessons and a piano.

Christmas was special. We celebrated Christmas an an extended family. I’d come over early, and we’d have a big family breakfast and open all the presents together. I really went all out to make sure the girls got their favorite items. At six and eight years old, they were still young enough to have simple wants, and the magic of Christmas was as real as it gets. The in-laws would come over in the afternoon with more presents and we’d have a good old fashioned Christmas dinner with all the trimmings. It was nice to be part of something.

I got a Christmas shut-down at work and Denise didn’t, so we agreed that they’d stay with me from Christmas to New Year’s, and any time she could get off, we’d usually work out something to get her time with the kids. It was understood that I wouldn’t leave town, at least not for more than a day.

Summer was great with the 2 weeks I got to spend with them, and we’d usually spend it on the beach. Christmas was still different. Christmas was magical.

I always was given the girl’s wish list, but I’d also start my shopping in late November for the must have items of the season. And I wasn’t stingy; I’d buy them all up, just to make sure I didn’t miss any. Stores, online auctions, Craigslist, I’d use any way possible to get my hands on the hottest presents. The first two years I’d caught hell from Denise for buying everything on the list, leaving nothing for them to get. Now I received a separate list of things I wasn’t allowed to buy.

So it was that I had just finished wrapping my forty-fourth present, all in glitter Barbie paper for Briana, and in Hannah Montana paper for Allora. December 5th, my earliest date so far to finish the bulk of my shopping. Sure, I’d pick up a few more things, including something for Denise and Eric, but my girls were taken care of. The presents were carefully spread around my living room, where they’d remain on display until just before Christmas, when I’d bring them over to Denise’s in a big ceremony.

The call came from Denise’s mother, Sharon. It took me 11 minutes flat to get to the hospital. I was still too late. Denise and Briana had both died en-route. Eric had passed away only ten minutes before I’d arrived. But Allora, my perfect little Allora, was fighting for her life, in critical condition. She’d always been a fighter, would never back down from any challenge. She’d beat this too, I just knew it.

It was a freak accident, with a car dodging out of the way to miss a coyote on the road. An 18 wheeler behind the car did his best to avoid the car in front of him, but ended up fishtailing, and taking out a suburban in the next lane over. That vehicle crossed the median and hit my ex-wife’s family van head-on. Six dead already and one little girl still fighting hard for her dear life.

Sharon and I kept a vigil over the little towhead, and when the doctors came out after 6 hours and declared the worst was over and she was in stable condition, we fell into each other’s arms and cried like children.

We stayed by her side, one of us always present, and Sharon called me when my baby woke up and spoke. For three long days we watched her slowly heal in the hospital, the worst of her bruises, cuts and contusions blossoming on the second day, and only just starting to fade again. I’m not a religious guy by nature, but I found myself on my knees beside her bed, praying to God to take care of her, and giving thanks for pulling her through this horrendous disaster.

At 4:18 pm on December 7th she passed away.

No warning, no reason, she was there, and then she wasn’t. The doctors suspected a clot. I suspected incompetence.

I finally understood how a person could get so down on themselves that life might not even feel worth living.

I went home and shut myself off from the world. After a while I took the phone off the hook. Hell, let’s be honest, I ripped the fucking wires out of the wall so I didn’t have to listen to one more bleeding heart tell me they were “sorry for my loss”. The cell phone was easier. I just turned it off.

Several people from work came by and assured me that I could take as much time as I needed. They’d bring me food, and news, and would leave as soon as they felt they’d spent the minimum time required socially by the situation.

Denise’s family took care of the funeral arrangements. They attempted to call, and even stopped by for my input. I gave them a check for $10,000 to take care of the girls, nearly wiping out my savings. What was I going to spend it on now? I couldn’t bring myself to go to the showing but I did take a shower and put on a suit for the funeral. It was a bleak day, gray skies, 20 mile an hour winds threatening to tear the top off of the outdoor tent. The ground was soggy from rain the previous night. Just perfect.

“Thanks, God. Piss on a guy when he’s down. Well, fuck You too.”

I shook the required hands, and kissed the offered cheeks until I just couldn’t take it any longer. All these fake people. Fake emotions. Tell me how sorry they were then go home to their perfect little families and eat meatloaf. Fuck’em. Fuck’em all.

Fourteen days. Two solid weeks in that dark house. I wouldn’t turn on any lights. No TV. I didn’t bathe, I didn’t shave. I sat in my chair or I lay in my bed and wallowed.

I had a few visitors after the first couple of days, but I’d rarely let them in, and before long they had the decency to stop showing up. Only Cathy from next door wouldn’t let me sink into complete oblivion. Every day, at least 3 times a day, she’d check in on me. I wouldn’t have let her in, but she had a key to the back door for emergencies and wasn’t afraid to use it.

She’d open the windows a crack, and goad me into getting out of bed and at least sit in the living room. She’d bring food, which she’d set in front of me, and refused to leave until I at least tried it. I insisted on getting my key back, and she handed it over willingly enough. And showed up again the next day. She’d made copies. Meddlesome bitch. Again, she badgered me into eating her breakfast.

And she’d talk. God, how that woman could talk! I got tired just listening.

All the neighborhood gossip, town gossip, political gossip, school gossip – she was plugged in everywhere and knew it all. Who was doing what, or whom. Griping about people who still had Thanksgiving decorations up, or had Christmas blowups in their front yard. Church fiascos and neighborhood vendettas, she would sit there, drink her tea (or bourbon and coke if the sun had set) and fill me in.

I didn’t care.

It had been two weeks since the accident. I’d lost more than 10 pounds, and really just wanted to crawl in a hole and die. But Cathy wouldn’t let me. She made it her personal mission to cheer me up, get me to respond, bring me back to life.

Then one day she let me have it with both barrels.

She walked up to me and slapped me across the face. Hard. “Damn it Alex! Snap out of it! Life is hard. And it isn’t fair, but as bad as you have it, there’s always someone who has it worse. Often in your own backyard if you have the eyes to see it.”

“What do you know about it?” I snapped viciously. “I notice your kids are alive.”

“I know my mother died when I was six, and my father left when I was thirteen, leaving Mike to raise my sister and me. He was seventeen years old. But he manned-up and did the job the best he could. That’s what I know. Life is hard.”

“Life is hard. Life’s a bitch and then you die. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When God closes a door he opens a window. If I hear one more God-damned cliché I swear I’ll kill something,” I growled.

“Alex, you got a raw deal. You had two perfect little girls, and now they’re gone. Your past is shattered. Your little bit of immortality is lost. And as bad as you’ve got it, I’d remind you others have it worse, and they just press on. You need to as well,” Cathy told me, kneeling beside me and holding my hands.

The woman barely knew me. A middle-aged mother of three with grown kids, and a workaholic husband. Her life was her home, keeping it immaculate and decorated for every holiday and season. Now it seemed I was her newest project. Why should I matter that much to her? Couldn’t she see I didn’t want her help?

“Sure, starving Ethiopians, children in Nigeria dying of aids, Tibetan monks martyred, it’s a tough world. Boo hoo.”

“You don’t have to look as far as Ethiopia or Tibet. There are people right here, right on your own block that are really struggling. Open your eyes. If you don’t like the unfairness do something about it. Even up the odds a bit. Make a difference somewhere. Get back to living.”

Something she said must have gnawed its way down to my subconscious. I spent my usual 14 hours or so in bed, but when I awoke I was thinking about her constant comments about someone in my own backyard that had it worse.

I cataloged each person on my block, in my head, and nobody really had it that bad. Sure, Neil, three doors down had lost his job, but his wife was still working, and he was looking. The Harris’s on the corner had a boy in Iraq, but as far as I could tell he was still Ok, and they had three more at home. The Martins, one down from the corner, fought all the time, and even had the cops called in on them once but they were still together. What did Cathy mean?

I expanded the radius of consideration to include the blocks surrounding us. Then it hit me. Across the alley in back, two houses past Cathy’s own. Six months ago. Barry Morrison had driven into an empty field behind the local middle school and eaten a bullet. I didn’t know much about the family – I just knew there was one.

When Cathy came over, I had showered off the top two layers of grime and sweat, and was drinking a Coke in the living room.

“Good morning, Alex, beautiful day outside. Why don’t we go out on the porch?”

“The Morrisons. Tell me about them.”

She placed her mug of tea in the microwave, warming it up, then walked out my front door and sat in one of my rocking chairs out front.

Irritated, I followed, and sat in the chair beside her. “The Morrisons?”

“Sandy and her daughter Erica. You won’t see much of her; she’s working two jobs trying to keep the house over their heads. They’re still fighting with the insurance company over payment. Suicide clause won’t pay under two years. He had insurance for years, but just around two years ago he changed the terms. She’s been trying to sell the house, but it’s underwater, and nobody’s buying.”

“How’s the little one?”

“Erica’s not doing so well. She’s seeing a counselor twice a week, and hardly speaks anymore. The school’s talking about holding her back,” Cathy explained. She sounded sad.

“Do we know anything more about why he did it?”

“No crimes, he wasn’t fired, no embezzling, it’s not clear what it was about. Apparently he’d been depressed for quite a while, but the underlying situation is still a blank as far as I know.”

“Harsh on the family, going out like that,” I told her, finding the whole idea hard to grasp.

“To say the least. The poor woman is worn to a frazzle.”

“And how does this all matter to me?” I asked.

“It doesn’t. It doesn’t have to matter to anybody. They’re on their own. Alone.”

“No family help?”

“Not that I know of. If they’re around, we don’t see much of them, that’s for sure.”

“Cathy, how the hell do you know all this stuff?” I had to ask.

“People just like to talk to me. I’m a very good listener,” she told me with a big smile.

We sat quietly enjoying the crisp air, finishing our drinks.

“You’re a good neighbor too, Cathy. Thanks,” I said softly.

“That’s what neighbors are for,” she said, reaching out and patting me on my arm.

That’s what neighbors are for.

* * *

Cathy brought me dinner again and I realized I was starving. She beamed at me when I finished the whole platter.

“Let’s go for a walk, Alex. You could use a stretch of the legs.”

It had gotten chilly, and we bundled up a bit. She took the lead and we walked down the block and turned up the neighborhood. We headed back up the next block and she regaled me with the entire history and habits of the inhabitants of each place we passed. She might have been a good listener, but I had to wonder when she ever was quiet long enough to hear anything.

It was obvious when we got to Sandy Morrison’s place. The “For Sale” sign was a dead giveaway. The unkempt yard and overgrown bushes indicated a lack of care for months. It couldn’t help with the sales prospects. The door paint was faded, and there were no Christmas lights or decorations set up. I thought the Realtor wasn’t earning their commission, letting the place show like this. Through the window I could see a desktop Christmas tree, maybe two feet tall, lit up all in white.

Strangely, Cathy stopped speaking before we got to the house, and didn’t speak again until the end of the block. “Sad,” was all she said.

We took a round-about path back to my house, and our conversation had returned to the safety of weather concerns, community issues, and such, carefully skirting any discussion of the Morrisons.

I was feeling the chill after the walk, and invited Cathy in for a cup of coffee, Irish fortified if she so desired.

We drank our coffee in front of my gas fireplace, warming our old bones. Damn that neighbor of mine, and her good intentions! She’d not only gotten me to think of something other than my own misery, and the unfairness of it all, but she had me thinking about those poor girls behind me, and what they must be going through. Damn it! It wasn’t fair.

I guess I still wasn’t ready for pleasant company. Angry at the world, I threw my mug at the wall, shattering it, and leaned over with my head in my hands, doing my best to hold back the tears. Big boys don’t cry.

Cathy stood and ran her fingers through my hair for just a moment before leaving out the back door. Kind enough to leave me alone to wallow in my misery a little longer.

* * *

December 22nd. Just three days until Christmas.

When Cathy came over that morning, I was already up and dressed. I had my working duds on and coffee and bagels ready.

“You’re up early,” she commented, helping herself to the java.

“It’s almost 10,” I reminded her. “Not so awfully early.”

She laughed. “Seems to me anything before noon is quite early as of late. Got plans?”

I nodded. “Thought I’d head over to the Morrison’s and see what I can do about the outside of the house. Clean it up a bit. Make it a little more presentable if they’re really planning on selling it.”

“That’s mighty neighborly of you.”

“It’ll give me something to do. I need to get out of this damned house.”

After our coffee, she walked with me across the alley, all my yard-work gear in a wheelbarrow. The grass was dormant, but long, and the bushes were out of control. I didn’t notice when Cathy left, but she returned in a few hours with some sandwiches for lunch, insisting I take a break.

I’d finished the bush trimming and had mowed the lawn, bagging the trimmings. I was just finishing the edging when she appeared. I took a break, and listened to her chatter about the neighborhood activities, and how sad it was that in the past few months nobody had offered to do as much as I had.

“I guess we victims of fate need to stick together.”

“It already looks 100% better. If you want to work in the backyard, I have a key to the gate.”

“It figures you would.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“It just doesn’t surprise me. I bet you’ve been helping out when you could.”

She sighed. “Not too much. She’s too damn proud. Doesn’t want any help from anybody.”

I shook my head. “Now you tell me. She’ll probably call the police on me.”

“So what if she does? You know you’re doing the right thing. I’ll bail you out if need be.”

I let her unlock the back gate, and saw I had my work cut out for me. The back yard was worse than the front. The fence needed work as well, some boards were broken and loose, and one whole section was sagging. Luckily, my tools were only a couple of hundred feet away, across the alley, and I was soon at work, determined to finish before the residents arrived home.

The biggest problem was one of the fence posts which had rotted out at the bottom. A new post and some quick-setting cement, solved that problem. Within an hour I’d be able to reattach the fence crossbeams to the new 4×4.

I turned to see a young girl, maybe 7 or 8 years old, watching me from the porch. Crap.

[drabblesaf]

Break The Rules - Mieczyslaw Stilinski Imagine (pt 5)

REQUESTED: Nooo, but I had massive ideas for this, so I’m writing it just to get those ideas out.

WARNINGS: Swearing, sexual tension

SUMMARY: Training heats up, and as it does, so does the sexual tension between you and Stiles. The girls sit down and interrogate you, but there’s someone listening in to every word you say...

NOTES: Direct continuation of pt 4, which you can find here.

Goes along with the plot for 1x03 “Cover”, after the horizontal line (not the “Keep Reading” section).

I’ve finally finished the majority of my work ready for school in two weeks! Perks of being a Year 13, I don’t start back till the 11th woo!

Also, I broke up with my boyfriend, because I didn’t feel it would be fair to him not being able to see me for ages because of our busy schedules, and the fact we live so far from each other. We agreed to stay friends though, thankfully.

Anyways, enough about me. Hope you enjoy the story!

“Show me how much you want me.” That was all it took for him to move forward quickly and flatten his lips to mine. The feeling of it all was otherworldly, and I was struggling to find any way to compare it to past kisses. Being with Stiles at that moment in time just felt...right. He started to walk me backwards until my legs hit the bed and I separated from him for just a second. 

He whined slightly until he noticed that I was getting onto the bed, and smirked slightly. “This is the first time I’ve ever felt anything like this with anyone. Fuck, I wish I’d done this sooner, (Y/N),” he said, reattaching his lips onto mine and running his fingers up my back, my neck, every bit he could expose. It all felt like it was on fire with each touch he produced, and I was lost in him until we heard hammering on the door.

“Yo, (Y/L/N), Stilinski, we’re gonna hit up the bar on site. Wanna come with?” Vasquez’s voice came through the door, and we broke apart, exchanging a look with each other. 

“Coming!” I yelled out, and Stiles sighed. “If you want, we can continue this later?”

“Sure,” he smiled down at me, catching my lips in his once more.

After that night, in which I didn’t allow myself to get totally shitfaced (we still had training. No way I’m putting myself off my game), the training upped slightly. We were going through the more physical stuff, and Stiles, being my roommate, was automatically made my partner. 

When we said we wanted to get closer together the night before, we didn’t exactly mean being zip-tied together and thrown into a pool. “This is sink or swim, ladies and gentlemen. Break free of your ties and get out of the pool. Show me you and your partner know how to work together or... Fail and sink to the bottom.” I was really starting to become less and less fond of that SA O’Connor guy.

“Did you cross your wrists before they closed the zip ties?” I heard Stiles mumble to me, and looked across at Alex and Shelby, who had just broken out of theirs. I shook my head at him, then realised he probably couldn’t see that.

“No, why?”

“'Cause it gives you enough slack to do...” He wriggled slightly and I heard a small snap before he raised his arms out of the water, and I moved mine, free of the ties. “This!”

I grinned at him, and said, “Well done Sti! I could never have thought of that, to be honest,” I said, and he grinned, pulling me closer to him so we were treading water, wrapped up in each other. I heard someone cough beside me and looked to see Alex smirking at me and Stiles, causing us to quickly break apart and begin swimming to the side. He waited a little bit before following, leaving me to swim with Alex and Shelby, while he swam back with Ryan and Simon.

When we grabbed our towels and started walking back, Shelby caught a glimpse of Caleb finishing up his own workout with the other analyst (who seemed to have taken a liking to Simon).  She looked visibly shell-shocked, and Alex actually had to grab her and steer her back on course to walk back to the changing rooms. “Eyes on the road, Georgia Peach,” Alex chuckled, and we all laughed.

Frowning down at Alex’s hand as she approached us, I carried on drying my hair. She noticed mine and Shelby’s concerned looks, and said nonchalantly, “Oh. I cut myself getting out of those zip ties. No big deal.”

“Oh, my wrist could use a little tender loving care, too. You worked me over in there.”

“Oh, my God. I'm so sorry, Shelby. But you have to admit, you were dragging a little today.” We all chuckled slightly at that one, and I shook my head at them. “Maybe you're tired from all those late-night phone calls you take in the bathroom,” Alex said, throwing me a wink.

“Someone missing you back home?” Nimah said, and I raised my eyebrow. Was this girl already tied down?

“Just the family business. Money never sleeps,” Shelby said as she put her hair up, while I pulled on my shirt. “And, apparently, neither does Alex if she's awake before the London opening bell,” she said, causing me to laugh slightly.

“Hey, at least I’m not visibly getting it on with my roommate,” Alex laughed, nudging me in the side. “We need details, (Y/N). How long has this been going on for?”

“I would say, but we seem to have somebody interested in us,” I mumbled, looking over at Vasquez, who quickly ducked her head down as she pulled her shirt over her head.

“I hate that I barely finished in time... no thanks to her,” Nimah snarled, and I shook my head. 

“Don't blame yourself,” I respond, and Alex cuts in as well.

“Vasquez just plays to win.”

“So do I. I'm just getting tired of losing,” Nimah said, slamming her locker closed.

“Lance Corporal Ryan Booth. Served four years in the marine corps, including two tours of duty in Iraq. Recipient of the bronze star,” Miranda said, as an image of Ryan came up on the screen in front of us. 

He looked impressive in his MTP uniform, and Alex looked back at him, before mumbling to me, “Still not getting me into him though.”

“Ms. Shelby Wyatt,” Miranda continued, being cut off by proud whoops from myself and Alex. The blonde laughed slightly at me and smiled. “Champion marksman, Rhodes Scholar...”

“And proud debutante,” Shelby interjected, nodding slightly.

“These are the faces you present to the world... the story you tell about yourself. But underneath that narrative lies the psychology that drives you. When dealing with the crime, the evidence tells you how. The psychology tells you why. It allows you to know the criminal. Before you know the enemy, you have to know yourself.”

We started to have files passed around to us, as Miranda continued speaking. “When you applied to the FBI, we constructed psychological profiles of you... breakdowns of your mental strengths and emotional weaknesses. But it's not enough for us to look inside you. You have to prove that you can look inside each other... NAT and analyst alike.”

We all exchanged looks with each other, beginning to calculate personalities. “In the field, this is the kind of work that you do with a subject you've never met. Here, you've been together for three weeks. So you are going to conduct profiles based on the strengths and weaknesses you find. Get real, get deep, don't hold anything back. I'd better be impressed.” And with that, the new task was set.

“Profile me all you want, I'm an open book,” Caleb said confidently, and Shelby was quick to retort.

“Yeah, I've heard of it. "American Psycho."” I laughed loudly at that one, high-fiving Shelby as we walked out of the room, glancing back at Caleb. He did not look impressed.

“This will be easy,” Alex said to me and Shelby, “I've never had trouble reading people.”

“It's usually the smartest people who have the biggest blind spot,” Simon said, walking with us, causing Alex to chuckle softly.

“So, before we start this analysis of each other, I think there’s one topic we need to breach,” Alex laughed, and I shook my head.

“You guys are relentless, I swear to God.”

“Only because your relationship with Stiles is the most interesting thing we’ve got here, (Y/N)!” Shelby said, grinning at me.

“Yes, I need something to distract me from the anger I’m feeling over the training sessions. Think I could relax just hearing how your relationship is going,” Nimah rolled her eyes, but smiled at us all.

“Fine, go ahead,” I said, laughing at their eagerness.

“Okay, how far did you go?” Shelby started, and I flushed slightly.

“Well, I think we were going pretty far, but we were interrupted last night,” I sighed, and chewed my lip remembering the prior night’s events.

“By who?” Alex asked, and I rolled my eyes.

“Vasquez. Our favourite person,” I nodded at Nimah, and she frowned.

“Do you think she’s doing it on purpose?”

“Not a clue. If she is, then I don’t understand why.”

“Hey, I have an idea,” Shelby interjected, and we all looked at her. “How about you use this task to try and find out why she’s being such a cockblock?”

I smirked at that, and nodded. “Good plan Shel. But, y’know, I’m still going to make out with him tonight, and if she tries to interrupt then I’m just gonna ignore it,” I laughed, and started walking to the door. 

As I opened it, Vasquez was about a quarter of the way down the corridor, and looked back at me, a panicked expression on her face. Was she just listening to our conversation?

Later that night, I waited for Stiles to finish up his notes on Booth and Haas, then quickly pressed my lips to his. “What’s this for then, huh?” He smiled against my lips, and I pulled away.

“Making up for last night’s shambles. How about we actually show each other how we feel, Stilinski?” I smirk, and his eyes immediately darkened in lust. 

“You had me at making up for last night,” he mumbled, pulling me onto him and grabbing my ass, causing me to let out a soft sigh.

[josephsciuto2]

THE KINDNESS OF THE HANGMAN

  Many years ago, over forty years ago, on Christmas night, I gathered with my friends from Parkchester at our favorite bar, “The Golden Note.”

  We drank and celebrated as we listened to Nat “King” Cole sing “The Christmas Song” for the hundredth time before his voice would fade away, once again, into the oncoming New Year.  The Yule theme wouldn’t be heard again until the following year.  Yes, back then in the stone ages, the Christmas season began on the day after Thanksgiving instead of Labor Day (or earlier) as it does now.

  Jimmy was the bartender at the Golden Note that night. He was young.  Before that night, I assumed that he was in his early twenties.

    Exceptionally good-looking with straight blond hair parted on the side, Jimmy’s hair barely touched his shoulders and fell down slightly passed his ears. He was a soft-spoken, amiable guy and everyone liked him.

    At times, I used to think how great it would be to be Jimmy, especially since I was such an ugly little teenager.  How nice it would be to have girls look at you and say, “Wow! He’s a good-looking guy. I wonder if he has a girlfriend?”

  The Golden Note, for all practical purposes was an old man’s bar. It was dark, with the stench of stale beer buried so deep inside the stainless wooden bar that it would take a nuclear explosion to rid the place of the smell.

  Across from the bar, there were booths with torn, green leather cushions.  At any giving time, you might find a regular patron comfortably asleep across the bottom cushion of one of the booths with his head resting on a folded jacket that was used as a pillow.

  We were all teenagers at the time, and even though most of my friends were eighteen at the time, which was the legal drinking age back then, I was still a couple of years below the legal age, but that was of little consequence back then in the Bronx.

  At about 3 in the morning, we decided it was time to go home.  The group decided to leave Jimmy an extra big tip, which at that time was probably thirty-five dollars split among six of us. He was exceptionally grateful, and he bought us all one last drink.

  We were the only ones left in the place, and Jimmy joined us at the end of the bar with a drink of his own.

  Someone asked him, if he had done anything special on Christmas Eve.  Jimmy replied, “No, I just stayed home and watched TV. I like it that way.”

  “So, nothing at all?”

  “Yeah, just stayed home, watched TV, and had a few beers. Ever since returning from Vietnam, I prefer the quiet and uneventful.”

  The war in Vietnam had ended just a couple of years previously and none of my friends, who were all too young to be drafted, had gone to Vietnam. We got our news about the war from the newspapers and the TV coverage. Jimmy’s confession came as a shock to us. He didn’t look much older than most of us.

  “No, I’m plenty old to have been drafted. Just turned twenty-seven.”

  “And what was it like?”

  “Scary,” he replied as his eyes drifted to another time.

    He transformed his arms and hands into a makeshift automatic rifle, which he pointed toward the floor.

  “During one firefight, I remember shooting a dead Vietcong soldier over and over again.  It wasn’t until my sergeant pulled me away that I realized that I just shot like forty rounds into a corpse.”

    Jimmy unwound his arms and hands, looked up, shook his head and smiled a haunted smile.

  Ten years later, sitting at one of my favorite bars, Mirabelle, on the Sunset Strip, I drank a cold, refreshing beer.   I occasionally looked up from the newspaper I was reading and glanced admiringly at Ava, the barmaid, a Czechoslovakian beauty who, at 41, made the young, aspiring starlets walking along the Strip and sitting at the tables at Mirabelle look positively plain.

  The gentleman sitting next to me asked me if there was any “new news” he should know about. I simply shook my head and replied, “The same old shit.” He was in his mid-thirties, with long straight hair coming down past his shoulders and sported a bushy mustache.

    The man was soft spoken and drinking a coffee, which I assumed he brought with him from the table where he probably ate dinner. Ava put a fresh beer in front of me, and I asked the gentleman if I could buy him a drink to go with the coffee.

  “No,” He replied as Ava refilled his cup of coffee. “ I haven’t had a drink in nearly ten years, since I went on a five year binge after coming back from Vietnam. I was there for about a year and a half and saw virtually no action, even though I went on routine patrols throughout my whole time there.”

  He paused as he took a sip of his coffee and looked straight up and into the mirror behind the bar.

    “Just before I was going to leave Nam, we were out on just another routine patrol and we were suddenly ambushed by the Vietcong.  For what was probably no more than five minutes, we were in a firefight.

  All I remember was shooting wildly into the jungle straight ahead of me during the entire time. When it was all over, there were dead and wounded soldiers from my company spread out all around me.

    “I didn’t have so much as a scratch… just the smell of gunpowder, sweat, and the cries of my wounded comrades,” he continued.

    He took another sip of his coffee and repeated, “And that was all the action I saw over there.”

    Ten years later, sitting at table #27 at the Palm Restaurant in West Hollywood I listened to Hal Goodman tell me some fabulous stories about the entertainment business.

  Hal was short, maybe 5 feet, 5 inches tall with broad shoulders and short, gray hair. He had worked in the industry close to fifty years and, for most of that time, Hal worked as a comedy writer for Johnny Carlson.

  Like me, Hal was also from the Bronx.  He told me when he was about eleven-years-old, his mother forced him to take violin lessons.  He said he never felt so embarrassed as when he had to walk through the neighborhood holding that stupid violin case. But his mother meant well, he said, and he still loved her.

  Hal was soft-spoken, extremely gracious, and I don’t know if there was a mean bone in his body.

    After a few minutes, we got off the subject of the entertainment business and discussed the upcoming Presidential election between President Clinton and Senator Bob Dole. We both agreed that it would be very difficult to beat President Clinton, especially with the economy so strong.

  I felt that the only advantage I saw Senator Dole had was his war record.  Hal reminded me that it didn’t matter much when Clinton beat President Bush, a war hero, and that most people of voting age today were not even born when World War II ended.

  Hal, to my surprise, told me he served in the army during World War II. The army and Hal just didn’t seem to go together.

  Hal was so easygoing and kind that it was hard for me to picture him holding a rifle, nevertheless aiming and shooting at another human being. He told me that during one fierce battle with the Germans everything suddenly went dark and he was knocked unconscious.

  When he woke up, the dismembered bodies of his friends were scattered all around him. The Germans had dropped a bomb on them and he had no idea how he survived. He was wounded, and airlifted to an army hospital, which would become famous in the following days when General Patton visited wounded soldiers.  The mercurial general went on his famous tirade against a soldier suffering from post trauma stress.

  Hal reiterated that he did not see Senator Dole getting any boost in the polls for his military service, and he went on to tell me a very funny story about Red Skelton.

    A few years later, while sitting in a chair in the backyard of a friend’s parents’ home in Beverly Hills, Lisa’s stepfather, Henry, picked up a copy of one of Goethe’s books and started reading it in very fluent German. He remarked, “When you read it in its original German it sounds so much better.”

  Having Goethe read to you in German during a yard sale is a rather surreal.  And to answer your next question…yes, they do have yard sales in Beverly Hills.  But I cannot imagine you getting the best deals.

  Henry was an optometrist and, on a few occasions, I accompanied my wife to see him for her annual checkups. He was quite enthusiastic about his profession, and there was never a time I went in which I didn’t learn some fascinating facts and stories about the eye.  For instance, he had recently seen a patient suffering from an eye infection and, after a number of failed attempts to get rid of the infection, he did further tests and discovered the patient’s infection was actually syphilis.  Syphilis of the eye…now that is something I never even knew existed.

  I tried not to imagine where that individual’s eyes had been, or more likely where his hands had been when he unknowingly spread the virus from his hands and into his eyes. Thankfully, he was cured and hopefully learned not trek too deeply into dirty places.

  Henry was thin, with gray, bushy hair and was occasionally frazzled from too many patients.  He wore glasses and without knowing anything about him, you would assume that he was a doctor, a researcher, a scholar, or a professor.

  In fact, he was all of the above. He was born in Cologne, Germany, and at five-years-old, he witnessed the rise to power in 1933 of Adolf Hitler (Talk about a deranged and syphilitic mind).

  Henry unfortunately was born Jewish, and he and his family were uprooted from their home in the lovely city of Cologne and relocated to a ghetto at Lodz, Poland.  Shortly after the forced relocation, he received a one-way, fourth-class train ticket to Auschwitz where he was separated from his family and would never see them again…

  Amazingly, Henry found the strength to survive while almost everyone around him succumbed to the gas chambers, starvation, experiments, hangings, a bullet to the head, and disease. Henry was one of only 19 German-speaking Jewish boys to survive the concentration camps.

  Henry Oster died two weeks ago. He lived to 90-years-old, and most people would agree that is a nice long life.

    I can’t help thinking how many years is “just” compensation for the torturous childhood he was forced to live: The stench of death and disease that surrounded and engulfed his youth.

  Ignorance will argue that at least he made it, whereas six million others died.

  Henry made the most of that time.  He donated his time to the Thalians, a charity to help people with mental problems.  He spoke at conferences around the world about the Holocaust at many venues ranging from local Los Angeles schools to the Holocaust museum to events in Europe.

  This man, who had arrived in the United States with no money, no education, and unable to speak English, let nothing hold him back.

  After all, he survived the Nazis.  Every day of his life was a victory…a slap in the face to the brutality and inhumane culture that this syphilitic ideology produced.

  In 2014, Henry Oster published a book titled, “The Kindness of the Hangman” that was a harrowing retelling of his very early childhood in Germany, his re-location in Poland, and finally his long-term internment in the hotel Auschwitz where many checked in and only a few rare cases were allowed to checkout.

  After reading the book, I had the pleasure to carry on a lively correspondence with Henry about the book.  We talked about his torturous experiences as a child and as a young teenager.

  He was a treasure trove of information and insights.  There have been many books written on the Holocaust by survivors and historians.  By 2014, however, very few living survivors of the Holocaust remained.

  Henry answered all my questions truthfully; even though with each answer, I could still feel the pain and isolation he felt some 70 years after. The suffering, torture, and pain went to bed with him each night and woke up with him each morning.  I suspect that it gave him no relief during his sleep, either.

  In our last correspondence, Henry emailed me to congratulate me on a book I just had published. We talked about the current world situation, and I asked if he saw any parallels between the current world situation and what he went through some 70 years ago.

  He said he was disgusted by what was going on in Syria and Yemen, but what was most troubling for him was what was going on in the United States.

  The anger, bigotry, and racism right here in his adopted and beloved country was more like what he heard back in Germany as Hitler consolidated power. It saddened him greatly, and he wondered what would become of this moment in time in ten or twenty years from now.

  A few nights ago, I was asleep when my son, Bogie, a handsome, debonair feline decided to jump on me and use me as a trampoline. I woke up, desperately trying to catch my breath as the big fur-child feigned his innocence.

  I patted his head and looked across at the TV, which my wife had left on. A young girl, maybe 4 or 5, came toward me from the screen. She was dirty, her clothes torn, and her hands pressed against her tiny ears.

  She was screaming as the Syrian army bombarded a village of innocent civilians. I had seen images similar to this over the last decade and I thought to myself, “Well, maybe if she is lucky enough to survive, she might not remember any of this.”

    Then, I thought about Jimmy, the stranger at Mirabelle, my friend Hal, and my friend Henry.

  I couldn’t help but laugh at the stupidity of my hope that the little girl could escape the terror of her life.

  If she is lucky enough to survive, that moment in time always will be with her, buried deep inside her soul.  One day, it finally will emerge, screaming and shrieking, before it goes quiet and voiceless…if she lives that long.

  The terror will haunt her for the rest of her life, whether she lives to be 90 or only for another day.

  Yet, somehow, I’m sure that Henry Oster is watching over her, telling her that she is not alone.

    REST IN PEACE, my dear friend, Dr. Henry Oster.  Your courage, your generosity and your kindness have left the world a better place.

A CURIOUS VIEW: “THE KINDNESS OF THE HANGMAN” THE KINDNESS OF THE HANGMAN Many years ago, over forty years ago, on Christmas night, I gathered with my friends from Parkchester at our favorite bar, “The Golden Note.”

[johnchiarello]

Acts 22

ACTS 22

Acts 22:14 And he said, The God of our fathers hath chosen thee, that thou shouldest know his will, and see that Just One, and shouldest hear the voice of his mouth.Acts 22:15 For thou shalt be his witness unto all men of what thou hast seen and heard.

https://youtu.be/wsxfxta_D9U Final thoughts

 Acts 22- https://youtu.be/rUV-gp_WDY0

https://ccoutreach87.com/9-12-17-acts-22/

https://ccoutreach87.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/9-12-17-acts-22.zip

 Dogs 1- At the park https://youtu.be/srNPlAdTv4w

Dogs 2- In the truck- on the way for their shots https://youtu.be/DiUTEnBlvOU

Dogs 3- At the vet. https://youtu.be/a0dZE6rIDWI

Dogs 4- After the shots https://youtu.be/BZ02F05QKI4

Dogs 5- on the way home https://youtu.be/PoyYlel4DUA

 Micah 6:9

The Lord's voice crieth unto the city, and the man of wisdom shall see thy name: hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it.

https://youtu.be/wcs_8TW2EC8 Fear God- Judge

ON VIDEO [Acts 22]-

.Animal ministry too

.FEMA

.They wanted to kill Paul- over religious disagreement

.Violence is never the answer- then- or now

.Paul’s defense

.He recounts his conversion [Acts 9]

.Another vision

.What did Jesus tell Paul?

.How did it impact his teaching?

.Spiritual gifts and theology worked together in the early church

.The vision was confirmed by the writings of the prophets

.Plea for religious tolerance today

.Open forum good- have open debate

.But don’t advocate for violence while doing it

.The Reformers

.Church history

.Paul spoke out against injustice

.Halfway house story

 Isaiah 26:9

With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early: for when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.

 NEW- [Past teaching- verses below]

 After I taught Acts 22- I went to see my homeless friends at the park.

Caveman [Jammer] told me some people were going to pick up his dogs- Fat Boy and Paisley [who you have seen on my videos in the past] and take them to get their shots- and the people were going to pay for the dogs shots.

 As we were sitting there my daughters and LuLu showed up- sure enough- they were the people who Jammer was talking about.

 I rode with them to the Vet and held them as they were getting their shots.

The dogs know me- I play with them all the time- so it was good that I went in the truck with them.

 fat-boy did growl and scared the nurse- but I told her ‘just do it- don’t wait so long’.

He got thru it fine- and Paisley did great too.

They slept on my lap on the way back- it was cute.

 So- the videos titled- Dogs 1- Dogs 2- etc- are short clips of the animal ‘ministry’ my daughters do.

Hope you enjoy them.

 4 In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ,

5 To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

1Cor. 5

 NOTE- before I taught acts 22- we went to Alice [from Sandia] and Becky and Lu treated a ladies kittens with medication- we drove for a few hours and then went back to Sandia [where Becky lives].

Then I taught Acts 22.

 We went our separate ways- I wound up in the Bluff spending a few hours with my homeless friends [I see spending time with them- as ministry- we talk- the guys ask questions- it’s a part of ministry in my mind].

 That's when my kids showed up for the dogs-

 Lesson-

Ministry- teaching- preaching- it should be a part of ‘ministry’ and it should come out of a lifestyle of good works- reaching out- charity.

 As I teach the books of Acts- we see Paul on a journey- going form place to place- making a defense of the gospel.

But he was on the move- like Jesus and the 12.

 It’s easy to think of ministry as simply holding meetings in a building- on Sunday.

That's ok- but we are all called to be a part of the work.

 While I was at the park- Jill asked me ‘when did you decide to be a minister’?

Jill is a new homeless person in the area- from Boston.

 I told Jill- I really do not view myself as a quote ‘minister’ I told her for many years I worked with people in trouble- bible studies in the jails- stuff like that.

 But I tried to simply say- it’s really more of a lifestyle- give yourself away- help others-

Yes- teaching plays a role-

 But being active- works of charity-

Those things- at least to me- are the heart of the matter.

 PAST POSTS- [past teaching I did that relates to this post- ACTS 22]

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/09/15/kings-12-3/

https://ccoutreach87.com/romans-updated-2015/

https://ccoutreach87.com/galatians-links/

https://ccoutreach87.com/protestant-reformation-luther/

https://ccoutreach87.com/hebrews-updated-2015/

 ACTS-

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/01/18/acts-1/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/01/26/acts-2/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/02/02/acts-3/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/02/09/acts-4/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/03/23/acts-5/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/03/31/acts-6/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/04/06/acts-7/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/04/14/acts-8/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/04/18/acts-9/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/05/07/acts-10/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/05/16/acts-11/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/05/22/acts-12/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/06/01/acts-13/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/06/14/acts-14/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/07/03/acts-15/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/07/07/acts-16/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/07/27/acts-17/

http://corpuschristioutreachministries.blogspot.com/2017/08/acts-18-acts-1828-for-he-mightily.html

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/08/09/acts-19/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/08/20/acts-20/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/09/04/acts-21/

 (820) ROMANS 6- Lets talk about baptism. To start off I believe that the baptism spoken about in this chapter is primarily referring to ‘the baptism of the Spirit’, that is the work of the Holy Spirit placing a believer in the Body of Christ. The Catholic and Orthodox [and Reformed!] brothers believe that Paul is speaking about water baptism. The MAJORITY VIEW of Christians today believe this chapter is referring to water baptism. Why? First, the text itself does not indicate either way. You could take this baptism and see it either way! You are not a heretic if you believe in it referring to Spirit or water. You are not a heretic if you believe in Paedo baptism [infant baptism]. ‘What are you saying? Now you lost me.’ Infant baptism developed as a Christian rite over the course of church history. The church struggled with how to ‘dedicate’ new babies to Christ. Though the scriptures give no examples of infant baptism, some felt that the reason was because the scriptures primarily show us the conversion of the first century believers. There really aren’t a whole lot of stories of ‘generations’ of believers passing on the faith to other generations. So some felt that the idea of dedicating babies to the Lord through infant baptism was all right. The examples they used were the circumcision of babies in the Old Testament. Infants were circumcised [a rite that placed you under the terms of the Old Covenant] though they weren’t old enough to really understand what they were doing! This example was carried over into the Christian church and applied to infant baptism. Now, I do not believe in infant baptism. But I can certainly understand this line of reasoning. As Christian theology developed thru the early centuries, particularly thru the patristic period, you had very intellectual scholars grapple with many different themes and ideas. Some that we just studied in chapter 5. Some theologians came to see infant baptism as dealing with original sin. They applied the concept of infant baptism as a rite that washes away original sin. The church did not teach that this meant you did not have to later believe and follow Christ. They simply developed a way of seeing baptism as ‘sanctifying’ the new members of Christian households. This basic belief made it all the way to the Reformation. The Reformers themselves still practiced infant baptism. It was the Anabaptists [re-baptizers] who saw the truth of adult baptism and suffered for it, at the hands of the reformers! Ulrich Zwingli, the Swiss reformer, would have them drowned for their belief. Some Protestants stuck with the infant rite, while others [the Restorationists] would reject it. Today most Evangelicals do not practice infant baptism, the majority of Christians world wide do. Now, the reason I did a little history is because Evangelicals [of which I am one] have a tendency to simply look at other believers who practice this rite as ‘deceived’. Many are unaware of the history I just showed you. The reasons the historic church developed this doctrine are not heretical! They used scripture and tradition to pass it down to future generations. I do not believe or practice infant baptism, many good believers do.

 [parts]

HERACLITUS- Ok- lets pick up on my philosophy stuff.

Heraclitus lived in the 6th/5th century BC. - He was from Ephesus and his key thought was Ever Present Change.

 That is he saw everything as being in a state of continual flux- one of his famous sayings was ‘No man ever steps into the same river twice’.

 He is called the Weeping Philosopher- sort of like the prophet Jeremiah in the bible- also called the Weeping Prophet.

 Heraclitus is known for his concept of the Logos- the Word- or thought/reason.

 Now- this aspect of his thought plays a role in the development of the Christian understanding of Christ himself- in our New Testaments [written in Greek] Jesus is indeed referred to as the Logos- or Word of God.

 The Greek philosophers understanding of the Logos was not the same as the Christian view- mainly expressed thru the writings of John [The gospel- the 3 epistles- and Revelation].

But- some see the Greek view as a precursor to Christ.

 In the work of one of the early church fathers- Hippolytus ‘The Refutation of all Heresies’ he attacks Heraclitus view of the Logos as an early form of heresy.

 The apologist Justin Martyr is more gracious- he [Like Ulrich Zwingli- the great Swiss reformer of the 16th century] viewed the early Geek thinkers as ‘pre- Christian’ or ‘Christians before Christ’.

 Though many reject this view- yet there is some scripture to back it up.

The apostle Paul said in his letter to the Romans that if the Gentiles [non-Jews] do by nature the things contained in the law- then they are justified in God’s sight.

 Of course these things are debatable- but I add this to show you that some great Christian thinkers did indeed view the early Greek thinkers- who did live by a moral code- as being right in God’s eyes.

 And the bible does teach a theme that we will be judged according to the amount of light [understanding] that we had at the time.

 I should note that Plato [one of the 3 titans that arose after Heraclitus- from the city/state of Athens] disagreed with Heraclitus on all things being in a state of constant change.

 When [if?] we get to Socrates- Plato and Aristotle- I’ll try and cover the ways they advanced- built upon- the thought of the pre Socratic thinkers.

 As a side note- the most famous student of Aristotle- who was the most famous student of Plato- who was the most famous student of Socrates- was Alexander the Great.

 This goes to show you how great an influence Greek philosophy had on the ancient world.

 A few nuggets from Heraclitus- ‘all things come to pass in accordance with this Logos’ ‘follow the common’ ‘not having their own judgment’.

 Recently I covered Acts chapter 2- and we see some of these ideas in the early Christian movement.

The first Christians did ‘follow the common’ they sold their goods- and had ‘all things common’ [communal lifestyle].

 The apostle Paul teaches the early church to all ‘speak the same thing- that there be no divisions among you’.

And the New Testament also says the scripture should not be given to Private Interpretation- meaning- ‘not having your own personal judgment’.

 All in all- we do indeed see a sort of pre Christian thought in the pre Socratic thinkers- they did indeed speak of the Divine- God- though there understanding of him was not the same as the Christian church.

 In a sense- Heraclitus idea that in life- the only ‘constant’ is the fact that there is no constant- that life itself is made up of an ongoing journey- we live day by day- not ever knowing what ‘the next day will bring forth’- Jesus.

 Yeah- the man had some good points- the later Stoics would consider Heraclitus as the father of their movement.

And in the study of Philosophy- the Stoics- who had a good run from a few years before the Common Era- were overtaken in the 4th century [as the main influential philosophy of the time] by some new and lasting philosophy- started by a man named Jesus Christ- who his followers claimed rose from the dead.

Yeah- this New Way was called Christianity- and this philosophy has endured now for over 2 thousand years.

[parts]

 (1335) GALATIANS 5- Paul’s main theme is if we possess the Spirit as believers [being indwelt by God’s Spirit] then let us also walk in/by the Spirit, as opposed to trying to please God by the law and being circumcised. Paul will use the somewhat controversial term ‘ye are fallen from grace’ which simply means that these Gentile believers started by faith and went back to the old Jewish system, much like the themes in the book of Hebrews. Paul says when you go back to the law you have left grace. Christ has ‘become of no effect to you, you who are justified by the law’. This is a good example of how words and certain phrases can develop over the centuries of church history and develop a different meaning over time. In essence the bible does teach that a person can ‘fall from grace’ but this does not describe what the modern reader might think. The first church father who attempted to formulate the Christian doctrine of the Trinity was a man named Tertullian, he lived in the second century and was what theologians refer to as one of the Latin fathers [as opposed to the Greek ones- Origen, etc.] Tertullian was famous for the sayings ‘what does Jerusalem have to do with Athens’ and ‘I believe because it is absurd’ he was resisting the influence of Greek philosophy on the church, he felt that Greek wisdom was influencing the church too much. He was trained in law before becoming a theologian [like Luther and Calvin of 16th century Reformation fame] and he used the words ‘God is one substance/essence and also three persons’ later church councils would agree with this language. But the word ‘person’ at Tertullian’s time was the Latin word ‘personi’ which was taken from the theater and meant a person/actor who would put on different masks during the play; the word had a little different meaning then what we think of today as ‘person’. Later centuries would come to condemn certain Christian groups who seem to have formulated language on the Trinity that expresses the same thing as what the original developer of the doctrine meant to say, but because words and their meanings change over time we get ourselves into disputes that might be getting us off track. Paul also tells the Galatians that if they become circumcised that they are obligating themselves to keep all the law. Of course the medical procedure that many have done in our day is not what he is speaking about, but in Paul’s day getting circumcised was the religious rite that placed you into the religion of Judaism, and this is what Paul is refuting among the Galatians, he tells them not to go down that road. This chapter has lots of good ‘memory verses’, the famous lists of the works of the flesh versus the fruit of the Spirit are found here, and it seems pretty clear to me that Paul identified circumcision with the moral law of the 10 commandments, that is he saw being circumcised as an act that obligated you to ‘keep all the law’ some theologians are discussing whether or not Paul meant the law of Moses when speaking about going ‘back under the law’ some think Paul was speaking only of the ceremonial law and the system of animal sacrifices when he was telling the gentiles that they should not go under the law, I believe if you read Paul in context both in this letter and the book of Romans, that he is speaking of the moral law too, not just the ceremonial law. All in all Paul exhorts these believers to fight for their right to be free from the past restraints of religion and bondage, he tells them to not desire to go back under a system of bondage, that Christ has made us free from that legalistic way of life and he has liberated us by giving us the Holy Spirit- if we ‘walk in the Spirit we will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh, for the flesh lusts against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh, and these two are contrary one to the other, so that you cannot do the things that you would’ amen to that.

[parts]

[1773] LUTHER CLASHES WITH ROME

   Let’s do another post on the Protestant Reformation. I’ll probably only do a few more before I transition into another study.

 By the way- all the studies I do thru out the year are posted in the February posts of the following year.

 Okay- last we left off Luther was just beginning to butt heads with the church [Tetzel] over the abuse of the sale of indulgences that was going on in Germany.

 In a previous post I mentioned how the priest- Tetzel- was selling these ‘get out of Purgatory’ type coupons in the area where Luther operated out- Saxony.

 Actually- Tetzel never entered Saxony itself- but was selling these out of a bordering city- and many of Luther’s students/parishioners were being hoodwinked into spending their money to rescue a loved one out of Purgatory.

 Tetzel is known for a jingle he started in connection with the sale of the indulgence- it goes ‘as soon as a coin in the coffer rings- a soul in Purgatory springs’- ouch!

 Like I said before- the church never taught this- they did teach the Treasury of Merit [previous post] but the way Tetzel used it was a real abuse of the teaching of the church at the time.

 Now- Luther responds to the abuse by writing the famous 95 thesis. This is the act that is often associated with the launching of the Reformation- the act that got the ball rolling.

 The 95 thesis were simply 95 questions challenging the whole practice of the sale of indulgences- there was no mention of the doctrine of Justification by Faith- which will become the trumpet sound that springs out of the Protestant Reformation.

 Luther takes these questions- written in Latin- and nails them to the university church door at Wittenberg. Sometimes while reading church history this ‘nailing to the door’ is seen as a sort of vandalism - you know- ‘he nailed them to the door!’

 In actuality Luther was simply using the system of the day that one scholar would use in order to bring up an official point of contention with the church- Luther wrote the Thesis in Latin- which was the scholars language- not the language of the common man.

 But Luther’s students quickly translated the Thesis into the vernacular [German] and it was said that in 2 weeks the paper made it into every village of Germany.

 The challenge was a spark in the lives of many Christians who also believed the church was off track and that someone needed to rebuke her- and they picked Luther as the man for the job.

 Now- the Catholic church wanted Luther to go to Rome and discuss the situation there- Luther’s friends warned him not to go- so they agreed to meet- a few times- in Germany.

 The first meeting was in 1518 at Heidelberg- Luther actually gave a great defense of his argument and convinced some other top Catholic scholars that he was right [as a side note- the church had already scheduled this meeting because of a controversy that rose up between the Augustinian order of monks and the Dominicans. They were debating over which philosophy was more consistent with church teaching- Nominalism or Realism- for those of you who have read the posts this past year- I taught this when doing our posts on philosophy].

 One man- Martin Bucer- wrote a stirring account of Luther- Bucer would later influence another young Swiss priest with  Reformation teachings- his name is John Calvin.

 As a side not Calvin will become one of the 3 big heavy hitters of the 16th century Reformation [Ulrich Zwingli is the 3rd].

 Luther will meet again in Augsburg- and debate the leading Catholic scholar of the day- Cardinal Cajetan.

 Then he goes to the city of Leipzig- and debates the leading German scholar- Johann Eck.

 And his last meeting with the church will be at the famous Diet of Worms [pronounced- Vurmtz] and it will be here that Luther makes his last stand and officially will break with the church and launch the Protestant Reformation.

 It should be noted that Luther held what we call a High Church position for most of this time- he still saw the church at Rome- and the Pope- as a legitimate expression of true Christianity- his beef was what he saw as an abuse of the system- by the priest Tetzel.

 As time progressed- the other beliefs of Luther- founded upon the bible- did come into contention with Rome.

 The main disagreement eventually became the teaching in the bible called Justification by faith. I have written a study on the topic on the blog- I have also written a bible study on the book of Romans and Galatians.

 For those of you who can- try and read Romans chapters 2-4 and Galatians 2-3- these are the key chapters that cover the teaching.

 Down the road I will cover the official teaching of both the Protestants and the Catholics on the doctrine of justification- the Catholic Council of Trent- referred to as the Counter Reformation- spells out the official teaching of Rome- and there are a few papers put out by the Reformers that explain their belief.

 Since the 16th century Reformation there have been efforts made by Protestants and Catholics to bridge the gap as much as possible- to try to come to some common language since the historic split.

 I like some of the efforts that have been made- and recently both groups put out a statement that jointly said we all believe that we are saved by Gods grace thru Christ- that’s good.

 But as we get into some of the actual discussion- you will see the points at which the 2 sides disagreed- and the main one was on the act- the actual thing that happens- when a person is declared just- the Reformers said it takes place when a person has faith- believes- the Catholic church said it takes place at baptism- water baptism.

 This- as well as a few other things- will be a defining distinction between the 2.

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   VERSES-

Acts 22:1 Men, brethren, and fathers, hear ye my defence which I make now unto you.

Acts 22:2 (And when they heard that he spake in the Hebrew tongue to them, they kept the more silence: and he saith,)

Acts 22:3 I am verily a man which am a Jew, born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, yet brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers, and was zealous toward God, as ye all are this day.

Acts 22:4 And I persecuted this way unto the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women.

Acts 22:5 As also the high priest doth bear me witness, and all the estate of the elders: from whom also I received letters unto the brethren, and went to Damascus, to bring them which were there bound unto Jerusalem, for to be punished.

Acts 22:6 And it came to pass, that, as I made my journey, and was come nigh unto Damascus about noon, suddenly there shone from heaven a great light round about me.

Acts 22:7 And I fell unto the ground, and heard a voice saying unto me, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?

Acts 22:8 And I answered, Who art thou, Lord? And he said unto me, I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou persecutest.

Acts 22:9 And they that were with me saw indeed the light, and were afraid; but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me.

Acts 22:10 And I said, What shall I do, LORD? And the Lord said unto me, Arise, and go into Damascus; and there it shall be told thee of all things which are appointed for thee to do.

Acts 22:11 And when I could not see for the glory of that light, being led by the hand of them that were with me, I came into Damascus.

Acts 22:12 And one Ananias, a devout man according to the law, having a good report of all the Jews which dwelt there,

Acts 22:13 Came unto me, and stood, and said unto me, Brother Saul, receive thy sight. And the same hour I looked up upon him.

Acts 22:14 And he said, The God of our fathers hath chosen thee, that thou shouldest know his will, and see that Just One, and shouldest hear the voice of his mouth.

Acts 22:15 For thou shalt be his witness unto all men of what thou hast seen and heard.

Acts 22:16 And now why tarriest thou? arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord.

Acts 22:17 And it came to pass, that, when I was come again to Jerusalem, even while I prayed in the temple, I was in a trance;

Acts 22:18 And saw him saying unto me, Make haste, and get thee quickly out of Jerusalem: for they will not receive thy testimony concerning me.

Acts 22:19 And I said, Lord, they know that I imprisoned and beat in every synagogue them that believed on thee:

Acts 22:20 And when the blood of thy martyr Stephen was shed, I also was standing by, and consenting unto his death, and kept the raiment of them that slew him.

Acts 22:21 And he said unto me, Depart: for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles.

Acts 22:22 And they gave him audience unto this word, and then lifted up their voices, and said, Away with such a fellow from the earth: for it is not fit that he should live.

Acts 22:23 And as they cried out, and cast off their clothes, and threw dust into the air,

Acts 22:24 The chief captain commanded him to be brought into the castle, and bade that he should be examined by scourging; that he might know wherefore they cried so against him.

Acts 22:25 And as they bound him with thongs, Paul said unto the centurion that stood by, Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman, and uncondemned?

Acts 22:26 When the centurion heard that, he went and told the chief captain, saying, Take heed what thou doest: for this man is a Roman.

Acts 22:27 Then the chief captain came, and said unto him, Tell me, art thou a Roman? He said, Yea.

Acts 22:28 And the chief captain answered, With a great sum obtained I this freedom. And Paul said, But I was free born.

Acts 22:29 Then straightway they departed from him which should have examined him: and the chief captain also was afraid, after he knew that he was a Roman, and because he had bound him.

Acts 22:30 On the morrow, because he would have known the certainty wherefore he was accused of the Jews, he loosed him from his bands, and commanded the chief priests and all their council to appear, and brought Paul down, and set him before them.

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