Beginnings and Endings

Closing in on wrapping up a decade writing this blog, having switched from publishing a monthly column for twenty years before that, I now keep wondering when it's time to stop. After all, there is always a beginning of something as there is an ending. Will I just run out of words or the brain power and/or the will to write them?

I have always claimed that I write to find out what I think and that hasn't changed. What is different now is that I am more inclined to reason that I don't have to write what I think because what I think doesn't matter, in the big picture. I am not (nor ever have been) an influencer. What I am is able to see ahead because I know the predictable patterns in human nature. 

Over time I have found that humans do not like being told they are predictable. So, being intuitive and able to see five steps ahead has often been a curse instead of a blessing. Seeing ahead not only makes one an outlier but also one who cannot be heard or understood.

Thus, now I am leaning toward keeping what I think to myself. No wasted breath, no frustration at the sound of crickets, no stress on arthritic fingers typing/editing/retyping and navigating the upload process. No being canceled or judged or vilified for not going along to get along with the ever changing rules of the current culture police.  

For the better part of my 74 years I have walked as a non conformist in a world too easily conformed, persuaded and manipulated to believe the BIG LIE that humans can be gods and therefore designers of human destiny. 

Here's a tough truth I need to share, believe it or not, beneath everything we see unfolding in real time, all the moving pieces, coming together today like a ginormous storm, has one goal - to blow away any and all original standards of Christianity, thereby and therefore eliminating God. I specifically used the word 'original' alluding to the morphed standards modern Christianity has surrendered to. Going along to get along might make you feel all righteous and get you a nice lifestyle but it does not represent the Original Christ or foundational laws. 

I did warn that it's a tough truth. [Cue crickets].

I have also warned, in as many ways as I could think of, that this is a classic trick of satan, who is the template for the first psychopath (who knows he can't win but still believes he can). While he is unable to create anything new, he is an accomplished mimic and uses the same ole tricks over and over again. Why? Because they always work. Human nature desires to be a god, implemented via the false delusion of godliness of self-righteousness, so this craving is easily tapped into and used for nefarious purpose. I've often referred to this as the state of being committed to good-for-goodness-sake - not God's sake. 

I admit I am peculiar, always have been, and that is often attributable to knowing too much as well as not enough. I started this strange life journey at the age of nine when my mother had a middle of the night vision of the future that changed our lives and set me on a lone path of being here but not being of here. At this stage, in spite of being mostly an outcast, I am grateful that He kept me separated out. 

Full disclosure: I don't like it here anymore and now I'm very glad I don't fit. 

Even so, I have lived a very blessed life even as I knew one day, things might start happening that I grew up expecting and always subconsciously lived prepared looking for the signs, even as I hoped it wouldn't be in my lifetime.

At this point, I won't say this is my last post, a part of me prefers to keep the door cracked open a bit for possibilities. Instead I am going to try out another way to say what I wish others to consider by posting links to those who have bigger voices and whose words might be better received.  I don't have to be right I just need to see good results.

I admit we often are taken by surprise even when we have been expecting 'something' to happen, not knowing what it would look like. But if we trust the still small voice and are discerning enough we will know when to just say no, no matter the earthly consequences. Human life is short compared to eternity. 

The day does come, for beginnings as well as endings. What I wrestle with in this moment is - how much time do we really have? Are we truly past the point of no return or is there a chance to delay what has been written? God is not bound by our clocks and calendars. He could give us more time. Satan has come close to ending us many times before but somehow God intervened for the sake of a faithful remnant.

I keep asking, though, why should God give us more time when we are deluded to believe we don't need Him because we can be Him by simply reordering and redefining His laws to fit our sensibilities?

For Him,

Meema

An 8 minute vid worth watching

What Everyone Needs to Know

A post by Michael Boldea worth reading

http://mikeboldea.blogspot.com/2021/10/one-hill-too-many.html

Dibs On The Apple Core

 Sometimes, when the world is too much with me and I need a bit of perspective, I take a look back in history to...you know...compare notes...then and now.

My father and mother were born in 1913 and 1914 respectively. They were toddlers when WW1 raged. Then they were in their mid teens when the Great Depression caused global economic collapse. My mother had just started her first of four years in a Baptist boarding school and my father was working as a soda jerk in a local drugstore. He also played a saxophone in a band for extra cash. 

Even as kids, just like others of their generation, they each did what they had to do to not just survive but to stay optimistic that life would one day get back to some kind of normal. 

They met each other as they were finishing their teen years and chose to enter their adult years together. A year later, 1935, my sister was born. If surviving having nothing and next to nothing as a couple was a challenge, adding a child to care for to the mix must have been overwhelming. Somehow they managed and five years later, 1940, they added to the family with the birth of my brother. 

Then my father caught a break and was given a management position in a men's shoe store but it required that he move his little family to a brand new location, in another town and state. Imagine that. Not yet 30 years old and scary as it was he could see the opportunity to start a better life was worth moving away from his birthplace, parents and siblings. 

Then WW2 came shortly thereafter. Having a wife and two kids to support my father chose to declare the allowable exemption and did not join the military. 

Life for the average American was pretty tough in the 40s but having grown up in the Depression they knew exactly how to do without. They were not shocked by shortages of food or being unable to get certain essentials like tires, household goods and clothing.

The family of four lived in a tiny duplex until February 1948 when, the war over, the concept of suburbia had exploded and housing communities popped up all over America. Somehow they were able to get a mortgage for a small, two bedroom, one bath house. They had run out of room in the duplex.  I was 9 months old.

I grew up in that house, never once feeling poor. I never thought about my brother not having a bedroom who slept on a studio couch as I shared an 8x10 room with my sister. And now I have no idea how a family of five managed to coordinate with one bathroom. 

Over time my parents were able to improve the house, closing in the one-car carport and the screened in porch giving us two more living spaces. My mother was able to upgrade from a hand wringer washer to an electric washing machine but still had to hang out the laundry on the clothes line stretched across the backyard which seemed perfectly normal. I try to visualize that now every time I complain to myself about having to switch a load from my washer to the dryer. It's always about perspective.

When I was 8 or 9 they got a home improvement loan and bought a refrigerator with a freezer compartment, which meant we could buy Eskimo Pies and have them just sitting there waiting to be pulled out. Frozen foods were still in the developmental stage of launching with the amazing TV dinner. But I now compare eating only fresh foods then to having two side by side refrigerators and two fully packed chest freezers and I feel vaguely entitled if not silly. 

My parents also installed wall to wall carpet and a window air conditioner for the living room. I have limited memories of living in Houston Texas prior to having no air conditioning anywhere, including school or cars. I start sweating even thinking about it.

But it was the Fabulous 50s/60s, I was an official bonafide Boomer. And like most of my generation, I was shaped by the Age of Innovation, TVs in every home, the rise of consumerism as a religion, and a lack of knowledge about having to make do or do without in the same way my parents did. We were not rich, by any means, but I don't recall having to count every bite, to ration or abide by the old saying 'waste not/want not'. My mother was full of old sayings.

One pithy saying that my mother explained to me when I was a kid when I was not willing to eat all the food on my plate paints a very complex picture. She said when she was young and someone in her circle of friends was lucky enough to have an apple, someone else would shout - 'Dibs on the apple core!'  Which meant, when the person finished eating all that could be gotten from the apple, the core remaining would go to the first person to claim it and not the trash bin. 

I guess when you have nothing and next to nothing even a bit of something is worth fighting for. Again, perspective. I can't stop my brain flashing back to people fighting over toilet paper and paper towels in 2020. 

I admit to some concern that several generations have had it so easy for so long now, I don't know if they can do what the Greatest Generation did who grew up in the Depression then had to make sacrifices for war as they reached their launch into adulthood. They lived hardship and yet still managed to hold onto hope that things, not just could, but would get better. Not unlike the people of western Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl era when every year for a decade the crops would fail and they would say - maybe next year. 

I've had some rough years in my life too, so I'm not claiming I've never had to deal with adversity. There were not a few times when I had to roll pennies to be able to go buy a couple boxes of Kraft Mac & Cheese and a can of green beans to feed my three kids. I admit dealing with occasional angst at the threshold of a great unknown future, but I always had something deep inside that kept me moving forward, meeting every obstacle as a challenge to be faced with determination to overcome. 

Somehow, something planted in me by the example of my parents gave me courage and hope that there are two things that no one can take from me - my attitude and gratitude. As I age I find I think that could be also called faith that God is in charge no matter what we are asked to step up to, give up or do without.

So, if I can't have the apple, then I can be grateful for the core. If I can't have the core, I'll say, okay, maybe next time. 

For Him,

Meema

Sound Familiar?

 

I admit frustration - part of me is tired and wondering what is the point of speaking out anymore. Clearly the spirit of Self-Righteousness has the wheel at the moment - recklessly driving the bus closer to the edge of the cliff. 

Then God reminds me of all the men (and women) who gave their last breath to denounce tyranny. 

Okay, fine then. I choose not to be blind or silent. I'd rather be a vocal thorn in the side of evil than a silent facilitator. Eternity is a very long time. 

So, here goes... 

Milton Mayer, in his book, They Thought They Were Free, explored the question, "what would I have done?' by interviewing ten ordinary Germans after the end of WW2. In the time he spent getting to know these men, Mayer discovered what is intrinsically true about ordinary citizens during a slow take over of their lives and country, i.e., they often go along to get along, focusing more on their daily lives than on what is occurring in the secret agendas and determinations of those given the power to rule.

By examining the men's reasons for joining the Nazi party, why they chose not to resist, and how they reflect back on Nazism, Mayer convincingly demonstrated that while the German people did have a unique political culture and history that enabled the rise of Nazism, the Nazi movement or one like it could happen anywhere or to any people. 

Australia comes to mind, 2021.

After his year in Germany, Mayer concluded his ten Nazi friends could not admit that what had been allowed to kill millions of people, including all those who fought to stop Nazism, was bad. Almost all of his ten friends still talked about Nazism in a positive light. Herr Kessler openly admitted that while he considered National Socialism as a bad thing for him personally because he 'lost his soul', overall it was good for Germany. Most of Mayer's Nazi friends seemed to agree. None of the men expressed feeling any extreme guilt about the Holocaust, and on multiple occasions some of the Nazi men alluded that they were not fully convinced that the Holocaust actually happened.

Does this sound familiar?

“But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.” 

― Milton Sanford Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45 

Conclusion:  It is easier to fool someone than to get him to admit he was fooled is not just a terse quote. It defines the worst weakness of human nature - the inability to admit weakness - the root cause for the collapse of great empires. 

For Him, 

Meema