Writing Projects, Bringing Old Sketches to Life, and Other Things

 The past week for me has been a blur.  For one thing, I got an offer for a substitute teaching job (on-call, so not full-time yet) at St. Francis Academy in Triangle, VA, which is close by Quantico.  There are a few logistics to work out - the commute being the biggest - but I am happy about this overall.  Also, I have been turning some long-sitting projects into reality this past week.  As of yesterday, I published the second of my fiction books, and for those of you who have been with me from the beginning here, it's going to look familiar.  Let's talk about it.

In August of 2012, just shy of two years into doing these blogs, I published a story on there called "Appointed to Consecration."  I had originally written this back in 2001, and it was a sort of Catholic apocalyptic novel inspired somewhat by my own interest in both Frank Peretti's This Present Darkness, and the LaHaye/Jenkins series Left Behind.  However, this was to be something different.  In it, there are no Rapture scenes or theology, no Tribulation with the Antichrist, or an millenarianism.  My story took its imspiration from three pivotal Catholic eschatological themes - the Three Days of Darkness, the Great Schism in the Church, and the Great Catholic Monarch.  I decided that since I have some time to do it now, I would finish the project, and I did.  The book kept the title, Appointed for Consecration, but it greatly expanded it to include even some recent personal references (one of the antagonists, as a matter of fact, is modeled upon the vile man who served as campus minister at the last school I worked at - that guy disgusted me, and I was able to create a character based on him).  The book ended up being 119 pages, and it comprises 12 chapters.  Later, I am going to do a deep dive as I have a discussion curricula planned, and I may turn it into something on here.  The book just went to press yesterday, and is currently available on Amazon if anyone would be interested in getting one.  I ended up being quite impressed with it myself in all honesty.   The first fiction book I did prior to that the earlier week, however, is not going to be available publicly, as it is basically a fictional story that serves as a love letter for my fiancée Azi, so for now that one is for her and my eyes only.  Besides writing though, I discovered something fascinating with Google Gemini - you can actually turn a drawing into a realistic picture.  That is the second thing I was working on this week, so let me share some of that here.  

At around the same time I published a story that would evolve into the first chapter of Appointed for Consecration, I also had decided to create a post at around the same time called "The Thrower Art Gallery."  It featured a bunch of my original sketches that I had done over the years, and what I am going to do here today is share a few of the realistic pictures I was able to create based on those sketches.  So, let's begin. 

This first picture was of a church I sketched in my early 20s.  The re-creation as a realistic drawing did not come out exactly as I planned it, but it doesn't look bad either.  

This second picture was made much earlier, I believe when I was in high school.  I really like the way this one came to life in all honesty.

This next sketch was one I drew during my early college years, around 1990 or so.  I was wanting to be a new type of Pentecostal then, a high Churchman who was liturgical.  This type of architecture also reflected the influence I drew from the Christian East as well. 

This is one of the last sketches I drew.  I made this one in 2013 on a Post-it note, and I decided to do it two different ways to bring it to life.  The first is a plain, rustic building, and the second is a more up-to-date version that has been painted.  It symbolized my nostalgia for home at the time when I lived in Florida, and looks like many old stores I recall on the highways during my childhood in West Virginia.

This one was one I drew about 20 years ago, and represents an ancient baptistry constructed in a Syriac Christian tradition.  It was part of the larger church pictures I had made, as I was more or less trying to draw a panoramic portfolio of how I would construct my dream church.  Fr. Aidan Kavanaugh's story about a first-century baptism was also a point of inspiration for this.

My love of vintage big bands inspired these next two.  The one above was scaled down from the 40-piece orchestra I made in the sketch, but it still captures the spirit of it. 

And this one represents an empty bandstand. 

I really loved how this one rendered - it is my rendition of a coastal Lebanese village. 

My rendering of a south Georgia village, with a giant Holiness church dominating it.  I liked how this turned out too - rustic, but with its own charm. 

This one turned out to be one of my favorites - it was inspired by the little mountain towns I grew up when I was a kid in West Virginia.  This one has potential for other projects.

The sketch is reversed here from the picture that was made from it, but it represents probably one of my grandest church models.  I am really proud of this one. 

Since I kind of like Florida Cracker culture, this was my interpretation of a classic Florida Cracker cottage, and looking at it one can envision it being in the remote Everglades somewhere. 

The final one I want to show here (it is not the last one I did, but for time and space considerations, I just picked out some of my best work) is the entrance to that large church I dreamed up.  This was a miniature drawing, sketched out on a small notepad that was maybe 3"x2" in size.  I did a lot of those too back in the day, and the way this one turned out was phenomenal. 

As you saw the outside of the church, this is my envisioning of the inside brought to life.  It wasn't exactly as I planned, but the realistic depiction actually looks better.  

So, there you have it, some of my artwork brought to life, thanks to the magic of Google Gemini.  I am not always happy with Gemini though, as at times I have yelled at it for trying to turn something into what looks like a totally different concept.  Even on a couple of these I battled with it, but the end result was pleasing.  Was it perfect?  Not always, but I like them for the most part.  This is the sequel then to the 2012 "Art Gallery."

All in all, this has been a busy year for me - a lot of publishing (including 5 books) and also some other new things.  It is actually quite satisfying to get a lot of these old "bucket list" things caught up, and I am glad I did.  I probably will have new stuff brewing later, so we'll see what happens.  This month, however, is the cutting and pasting of all these blogs into the manuscript for the annual "Blog Book," which will be massive this year too.   When you write books, the editing and formatting can be two of the biggest pains in the butt I have personally experienced, but the finished product is ultimately what counts. 

That catches everything up for the week, so will see you soon!

Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth - Dake, Syriac and Ethiopian Bibles

 Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth

2 Timothy 2:15 (KJV)

This Bible verse was one of the first ones I ever learned as a new Christian after my conversion at age 16, and it has also provided me with a strong conviction for proper discernment.  At times - especially in my 20s as a young minister still getting my bearings - this was tested heavily.  I dabbled some in the hyper-charismatic version of Pentecostalism, and even took some questionable televangelists seriously in my younger years.  But, I grew up, and in time I was able to see errors in things I once championed.  We have all been there at some point - you have an initial enthusiasm about your faith in the beginning which makes you a sponge willing to soak up and absorb any type of teaching, even if it is wrong.  This is natural, and it happens to many of us at points in our lives.   However, while not beating yourself over the head about accepting errors at some point, we also should have the capacity to outgrow the errors as our faith begins to mature and we understand things better.  That is what 2 Timothy 2:15 is all about.  I am going to apply this today to a very specific area that seems to have gained some popularity over the years, and that is the usage of certain translations of ancient Bible translations such as the Syriac P'shitta and the Ethiopian Canon.  In their orthodox forms, I love and value both of these Bibles, and indeed I have a deep connection to the people who speak these languages.   However, there are some Christians who haven't matured much and think that there is some "hidden wisdom" in an ancient text that it never claimed to have, and this leads to some rather odd ideologies.  I want to start first by telling my own story somewhat in relation to this, and then I want to take each of these and analyze them individually, the Syriac and the Ethiopian Biblical traditions. 

Back when I first started Bible college at the age of 19, there were two things I was passionate about.  One, it was my association with Assyrian, Armenian, and Coptic Christians.  Secondly, it was my identity then as a Pentecostal.  Both of these intersected in both good and bad ways, and in doing so I was launched into a bit of education that I never anticipated.  Back in the day, I used two major Bibles as my main go-to versions.  One of them was the massive Dake's Annotated Study Bible, which was gifted to me by a preacher uncle.  Like many young Pentecostals then, I thought that using a Dake's Bible was the Pentecostal thing to do, and to be honest the four-column format and the extensive commentary notes did have some attraction to me.  I will talk more in detail about the Dake Bible later, but there was another Bible I used too.  After getting to know many Assyrians in my early 20s, I became close friends with Assyrian nationalist Dr. Sargon Dadesho - he at the time had an organization called Bet Nahrain in Turlock, CA, and he published a magazine as well as having TV and radio stations (both KBES).  In 1995, I would have the opportunity to both visit and be interviewed on KBES by my dear friend Deacon John Khio, but my first contact was Sargon, and even to this day I consider him a dear friend.  Sargon's magazine featured articles in both Assyrian and English, and there was a lot of cultural content in those then.  On one occasion, he mentioned something about an Assyrian Bible translator named George Lamsa, and I made it a point to obtain a Lamsa Bible - I was able to purchase one through my college bookstore in early 1990.   While I will go into more detail about the Lamsa Bible later, as it pertains to my story at this time, my Lamsa and Dake's Bibles were what I used for everything - if I prepared class projects, sermons to preach in churches, or anything else, those were my go-to Bibles.  That went on for a few years until I started to become better educated in what both of these Bibles were actually, and in time I would get rid of them because I discovered a lot of heretical stuff within them that didn't match traditional Biblical hermeneutics.  As I grew in my own faith beyond Pentecostalism into a more Catholic grounding, it became evident that neither the Dake's or Lamsa Bibles were really appropriate for serious discipleship, and I thankfully outgrew them as well as a lot of things associated with them.  I use my own story to preface this because I am coming at this topic from a position of experience, and am not just shooting down anything I simply don't agree with.  I used these Bibles, and I believed in them as valuable translations then, and I was completely clueless as a young man as to what sort of damage they could really do.  But, thankfully, I grew.  So, why am I addressing this topic.  Let me give the introduction to that and we will go on from there.

Over the past couple of days, I have been listening to YouTube videos of my friend, Dr. Stephen Missick in Texas, who is creating some good content that deals with the Assyrian Bible in particular.  Unfortunately, Stephen suffered some damage to his home during a bad storm, and a tree crashed into his house that almost destroyed the very valuable study library he has that he had accumulated over many years.  Fortunately, the majority of his collection was spared damage, due to the providential hand of God, but this motivated him to explore his own collection and do some content on different translations and versions of the Syriac Bible he has come across over the years.  I relate to that, because for the most part Stephen and I had a parallel course in our studies and association with the Assyrians in particular over the years - he is a few years younger than I am, and he also had the privilege of meeting some people I never was able to meet, including the Assyrian Patriarch Mar Awa.  And, a lot of his own journey reminded me of myself - he was soaking up pretty much everything that entailed Syriac studies, as I also did, and he came across some of the same material I did over the years.  Some of these included some spurious and somewhat controversial English translations and commentaries on Syriac Bibles, and of course he became familiar with Lamsa's work as well as that of others - notably the New Thought Syriac researcher Rocco Errico, as well as the translation work of Victor Paul Wierwille (who led the neo-Arian cult, the Way International) and some people who splintered from Wierwille's group such as Janet Magiera.  When I discuss Lamsa directly, I will go into more detail about who these people are because they do tend to be given a higher level of importance in Syriac Studies than they perhaps should have.   Stephen's video though made an important distinction between the work of people like Lamsa, Wierwille, Magiera, and Errico and their actual doctrines they possess, and I think that is a fair assessment.  With a chronically limited English-language reservoir for Syriac Studies (that thankfully is changing, but it still merits work) I completely understand why we may have to by necessity take a sip from a proverbial "poisoned well," and I only hope for Stephen and others that Mark 16's promises that if a believer "drinks any deadly thing it shall not harm them."  That is why I feel the discussion is warranted.  I want to do this in three sections.  First, I want to address the esotericist and cultic interest in Syriac studies, primarily through Lamsa's post-mortem influence.  Secondly, I want to talk about the Ethiopian Bible, and how at times it gets many people who have a mystical motivation for interest in it.  Third, I am going to deal with Dake's - how Dake intersected with Lamsa on some things, and also how many popular televangelists - Benny Hinn, Jimmy Swaggart, and others - use translations such as Dake's or Lamsa's to justify some of the odd doctrines they proclaim.   Hopefully, by the time you read this, it will aid in you strengthening your own sense of discernment so you too can "rightly divide the word of truth."  I am starting this on a Tuesday, and due to its complexity, it will take me several days to work on this so you more than likely will be seeing it several days after I finish it.  

Let's start with George Lamsa.  George Lamsa (1892-1975) was a Bible translator who was an ethnic Assyrian.  In my earliest Bible college days as I started to learn about the Assyrian community, I first heard of him through Bet Nahrain Magazine, which published an article regarding some historical preservation of his back in 1991.  Being I was looking for an actual Assyrian Bible, I immediately had the college bookstore order me one.  It was more massive than any Bible - outside of my Dake's  - that I had seen, and for a few years I used it quite regularly.  I published an old book of my early sermons that is available on Amazon, and if you read some of my material from the early 1990s, you will note that at that time I quoted Lamsa's Bible extensively.  However, as I grew in my faith, I started to notice things - when I looked more into George Lamsa's life, he was associated with a lot of weird stuff, including New Thought groups like Unity, the cultic Way International (Lamsa was a close friend of Victor Paul Wierwille, who founded that group), and the controversial Pentecostal tent evangelist William Branham (who, among other things, taught a version of Oneness Pentecostalism as well as a variation of the Calvinist "Two Seeds" doctrine).  Of the latter, this explains why some in the "Word of Faith" movement, including prominent televangelists like Benny Hinn and the late Kenneth Hagin, utilized the Lamsa translation.  I also found out later from my good friend, the late Fr. Quasha Klutz, in a phone conversation that the official Assyrian Church had never endorsed Lamsa's Bible, and indeed discouraged its faithful from using it. Learning of all that, I immediately began to distance myself from Lamsa's material, and instead focused on actual Syriac Bible studies and translations, including those done by the late Aramaic Bible Translation founder, Wycliffe missionary Esther Matteson, as well as more credible recent translations like those of Dr. George Kiraz (his is very helpful, as I understand the Western Syriac, or Suryoyo, dialect better).  While I have close friends who are sound Christians that see some value in Lamsa's work - I get that, and can appreciate it - I would also discourage them and others from taking his translation work too seriously, as it may be questionable due to the influences he himself had. 

Speaking of the Way International, that is of interest because after the death of Victor Paul Wierwille and the later scandal that surrounded his successor, Craig Martindale, a number of groups split from the original cult and formed their own versions of it - they differ some what in administration, as some of them don't have Wierwille's original rigidity, but they haven't changed the quasi-Arian doctrines that Wierwille taught.  These groups believe in a school of thought called "Aramaic Primacy," which would assert that because Jesus spoke Aramaic, the original Bible must have therefore been written in it.  There are two big issues with this.  First, traditional Biblical scholarship - including the Syriac and Assyrian Church traditions - acknowledge Greek as the original language of Scripture (and some Hebrew as well, especially in regard to the Old Testament).  Therefore, given this is the accepted view and it has the evidence to support it, Wierwille and even to a lesser extent Lamsa were wrong about the "Aramaic Primacy" just on that alone.  But, there is another complication too - the Aramaic many of them rely on is either Assyrian or Suryoyo, or possibly ancient Estrangelo, which the latter two dialects derive from.  The Aramaic Jesus spoke would have been a totally different dialect entirely, as it was Palestinian Aramaic, and if there was an existing dialect that was closer to that, it would more than likely be the Aramaic spoken by the small Samaritan community in Israel today.   With that established, one of the branch-offs of Wierwille's original cult was a woman named Janet Magiera, who more or less compiled her own Aramaic translation.  There is little fundamentally different about it from Wierwille's, and therefore it is to be studied or read with a big grain of salt.  In our enthusiasm, we tend to embrace some weird things, and it seems these ancient Christian communities like the Assyrians often end up being exploited by groups that are radically different than their traditional Churches.   The same is true with the Ethiopians too, which we will get into next.

If one browses online shopping platforms like Ebay, Amazon, or Temu, you will see literally dozens of books with the title "Complete Ethiopian Bible."  This seems to be a recent phenomenon, as I didn't recall seeing these a few years back.  I don't see anything fundamentally wrong with them on a theological level, but the problem is they are not the authorized Ethiopian Church translation, which doesn't exist yet (although I have heard rumors about one being in progress).  Also, these books seem to be knockoffs of each other too.  Unlike Lamsa or the various incarnations of Wierwillism though, the problem with these Bibles is not necessarily their theology - they don't claim to be something "secret" or "hidden" for one thing - but rather their authenticity as actual translations from the Ge'ez text.  While some of them are actually quite good and are decent study aids - I so far have liked Asher Wilson's as well as the Faith Made edition of this - it's important to be consistently factual about what these resources are.  However, for an even longer time, there are these other versions of Ethiopian Bibles, liturgy books, and classic works like the Kebra Nagast that I would find theologically suspect as well, and that is because of one thing - those particular English-language materials are often the production of Rastafarian sects, and that brings in a whole new level of heresy.  If you are looking for research material particularly on the Ethiopian Tewahedo Church, I would advise looking to authentic Ethiopian sources first, and often a good Ethiopian scholar or priest can help with that.  

Finally, let's talk about Dake a little.  Finis Jennings Dake (1902-1987) was a Pentecostal minister who was first with the Assemblies of God, and later the Church of God, before becoming independent.  An uncle years ago when I was still young myself gifted me a Dake's Bible, and I have to be honest with you, it is impressive - most people read it for the extensive liner notes more than anything, and the four columns of text on each page could easily elevate Dake's notes to the level of Scripture, which is an inherent danger.  The connection that few have made though is that Dake too also relied on some of Lamsa's work - Dake's citation of Lamsa's work as being "authentic Aramaic" led many Pentecostals to be exposed to Lamsa indirectly, and this is why it has been even noted that some high-profile televangelists such as Benny Hinn, the late Kenneth Hagin, and Kenneth Copeland will often use passages from Lamsa to justify their own odd theological ideas.  I admittedly did this too, as when I was a young minister I heavily relied on both Bibles for my own sermon preparation.  I honestly regret doing that now, and that is why I wanted to publish something here warning people about the risks of relying on unorthodox translations of the Bible just because they promise some "hidden meanings" or they have an impressive amount of notes and commentary in the margins.  I have actually learned over the years to be more cautious of that.  Hopefully, that is a warning many will take seriously.

So, of these three Bible translations - Lamsa, Dake, and the numerous English-Language "Complete Ethiopian Bibles" out there - I think the only one I could still utilize with good conscience is the Ethiopian Bibles, and that is fine as long as you understand that these are not official translations.  The one I have by Asher Wilson in particular is actually quite good - he and his co-editor, both of whom are fairly sound Lutheran Evangelicals with Concordia Seminary credentials - and I can find value in it as I have a few neat takeaways of my own by learning to appreciate the Ethiopian Canon better.  It is also good to be at least familiar with Lamsa and Dake too, and you can research them as long as you are grounded enough in your own faith to reject some of the wilder and somewhat heretical ideas they had.  

Thank you for joining me today, and will see you next time. 

The Importance of the Creative Outlet

 I am just writing today because I have something important to talk about.  Have you ever been brimming with ideas, but just cannot find an outlet to express them?  You're a gifted writer, or you can create music, or you are an artist - but the society we live in seems to not care.  Many people - including unfortunately our own families - tell us "Oh, you can't make money off that stupid idea!" Then you have the gatekeepers. Used to be if you wanted to create and publish something, there were ways to do it - you wrote a book, and then you gave it to a printer, and voila! You then have a book.   Well, not anymore.  There are self-publishing platforms, but they often make it so constrictive to publish something - it's the wrong font, the page count is too low, the page count is too high, and all the other BS they throw at you to make you want to throw your computer through a wall.  Add to that the fact we live in an overly litigious society - if someone gets their feelings hurt over something you say, they go after you (in some cases, it's not real damage either - there are crooks out there that find ways to actually scam authors and publishers, and one has to be careful of such people).  Then you are bullied and forced into withdrawing your work, and there are evil people out there who Google their names constantly just to find offense (yes, they are at heart opportunists).  So, how do you get a creative outlet?  Let me tell you how I have navigated that over the years.

The first thing to remember is not everyone is going to love your work - there are haters and critics out there all over the place, some of whom have nothing better to do, and they can really mess up a good day if we let them.  I have come up with an answer to that over the years that seems to be a good repellent of the cockroach din of haters and critics - just tell them that if they don't like it, then maybe they should write or record their own then.  When a writer, musician, artist, etc., puts a considerable amount of work into producing something, no critic should even exist - the person did their best, and if perhaps you don't like it, then the advice I would give to a critic like that is to shut the hell up and do something more productive with their lives.  A lot of this is just plain jealousy too - we all have our likes and dislikes of course, and that is not the real issue.  The issue is when someone else tries to impose their individual standards on everyone else.  Usually, the hater or critic in that case probably has no talent of their own, and they are almost resentful that someone actually succeeded.  The self-elected critic may not even have an interest in what whoever is doing in reality, but they just have to be an idiot and attack a person with real creativity.  Again, here's a radical idea - if you don't like it, then no one is twisting your arm to look at, listen to, or read it. so again, shut the hell up.  But, it isn't just badmouthing haters that are an issue with this, but also bigger "gatekeepers" too.

By bigger "gatekeepers," we are talking about corporate, political, and even academic entities who can just arbitrarily determine what deserves to be published and what doesn't.  These people are not concerned with developing talent, and to be honest they never (or rarely) invest in true talent.  They are often out for one thing - making a quick buck.  That is why a person like Simon Cowell - who is tone-deaf and wouldn't know good music if he was ran over with it, yet he is such an arrogant ass - has so much power.  If they really wanted to scout for true talent, they would use real musicians on those stupid shows.  However, I don't watch them or keep up with the newest no-talent with a pretty face anyway - I just personally detest Simon Cowell because frankly the guy is a pompous ass.  If a musician on the scale of Benny Goodman or Pablo Casals were to come in front of him, Simon Cowell would be the first one to reject them because they don't shake their asses on stage and lip-sync bad songs.  Simon Cowell, therefore, is not a musical genius; he has a sex fetish for young girls dancing around in mini-skirts.  

I know I gave Simon Cowell some flak that he rightly deserves, but there are others like him.  Academic organizations are full of them.  If you don't go along with the party line that a group of Ivy Leaguers and West Coast radicals are pushing, it is a 1000% possibility they won't publish your work.  Again, they are looking for a platform, and not true scholarship.  You see this also more often with literary magazines as well - it is a shame how so many talented writers were pushed into obscurity by some arrogant jerk who sits on the board of a big university.  If true scholarly integrity were a thing, those guys would not be sitting on those boards, nor do they deserve to be.  So, why am I going off in this?  It is a complete side issue for me in all honesty, but it ties into something more important I want to talk about now.

I am a Ph.D.  I worked hard to earn that degree, and I stand behind my hard work.  Because of that, I also love to write and research.  While a lot of my writing has been reflective or theological/historical, in the past week I have been working on my first creative writing fiction piece.  It is a piece that I won't publish - not because of the critics and gatekeepers, as they haven't seen it.  Rather, I used some personal feelings to create a fictional narrative, and it is very personal.  I wrote it though to print into a single book - not one for sale - for myself.  I went into some of the details of the story line earlier, but it is romantic fiction, something I never thought I would actually write.  However, when you meet a special someone, they tend to bring out things in you that maybe you have repressed, and I have that special someone.  She is my girl Azi, a beautiful woman of Filipina heritage that I met a year after my divorce.  Azi was not someone I expected to meet, but I couldn't be happier as she embodies all I have ever wanted in a soulmate.  My fictional writing was inspired by her, and in fictional prose it is technically a love letter to her.  Therefore, it stays in that realm of personal security, although if I get an opportunity I could change a few names and turn it into something bigger.   That still remains to be seen.  Any rate, that is what all this is about - it is important too in understanding that when a writer, artist, or composer creates a masterpiece, it is often a labor of love.  There are numerous famous pieces of literature, many great works of art, and many music compositions that could fall into that class of art, and they should.  And, often, if you really look or listen, you will see the creator is sharing a part of themselves too.  This is why the idea of professional critics of those types of media is a useless profession.  A typical professional critic tends to be a person with the soul of a garden slug - they don't have artistic talent, musical ability, and it is a chore for them to compose a text to their drinking buddies.  Yet, they think they have the right to make or break someone who really has done a lot of work and put their own heart and soul into something.  If our society were ordered the way it should be, we should be paying the artists, writers, and composers and let the critics starve until they find another more productive means of employment.  We have a lot of things backwards in this society, and that is a shame.  

Any rate, this was about the importance of the creative outlet, and I probably spent more time attacking those who attack creators.  The creative outlet one has is much more important than the haughty critic who tries to pick it apart.  That is a reason as well why society has been in decline - when you defile the transcendental properties of being (truth, beauty, goodness) to a marketing scheme, it cheapens creativity and diminishes the creative process.  Making money in itself is not bad, but when it becomes the primary object of societal advancement, it then becomes irrelevant because it is driven by selfishness instead of an intrinsic need to have supernatural grace work in our lives to elevate, heal, and perfect creation.  Greed kills creativity, and the greedy man is the worst type of idolater in all honesty.  Don't be greedy then, but be creative.  You will contribute more to the preservation of Western Civilization if you take that advice.  Thanks for allowing me to share, and will see you next time. 

Reading the Signs

 I know that for many of you reading this, you are probably thinking astrological signs or something like that - that isn't what this week's reflections are about.  Rather, it is just picking up on subtle things that maybe the Holy Spirit is saying, and that we sometimes miss.  Then, Fr. Grassi, my former parish priest in Charles Town, also complemented what I was thinking in his homily at Mass yesterday, and let's see if we can integrate those here.  I am still working on the article I want to put up that addresses things such as the Lamsa Bible and related issues, but that is going to entail more study.  The reason for that is why I am writing this today.   Let us begin by first talking about Fr. Grassi's homily briefly.

For anyone with any background in Catholic theology or philosophy, listening to Fr. Grassi's homily yesterday rings with a bit of familiarity.  He was talking about the "tyranny of work," and how it is almost a sin against the self to be always busy and never taking time to just rest.  He observed (correctly I believe) that now the technological advances society has adopted have also choked us - we are now taking work home at all hours, and we have smart phones, smart watches, smart glasses, etc., in addition to desktop and laptop computers.  His homily was very convicting to me, as I find my mind racing with this, that, or the other, and I am always checking a screen for something even when nothing is there.  All of this is of course very relevant to the day and time we live in, and I believe Fr. Grassi hit the proverbial nail on the head with what he shared.  However, it also demonstrated that Fr. Grassi is an astute student of what he reads to, as much of what he said deals with a negative trait in society called acedia.  This is a term that the Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper talks about a lot, especially in his seminal book Leisure: The Basis of Culture.  Although Fr. Grassi didn't mention the concept by name, he pretty much identified the core aspect of acedia - being so busy that our activities almost become an idol to us.  I won't get into Pieper's total analysis of acedia, as I have discussed it before, but Fr. Grassi's homily definitely reached something.  And that is what I want to talk about today.

The reason I haven't been as active last week is due to one thing - I am working on my first fictional creative writing piece.  I have only ventured into fictional writing a few times, and mostly it was not anything overly spectacular.  It takes a special gift to write fiction, and I am not endowed with it in all honesty.  But, I also remember what Robert Newton Peck, an old friend and perhaps one of the best children's writers of the 20th century, once wrote in his book about writing - get the raw idea out, and then refine it later.   So, I used personal experience to construct a fictional story that entails a long-distance relationship where an American teacher falls in love with a Filipina, and he feels imprisoned by circumstance (some of that part of the story also resonates with Fr. Grassi's homily too) until one night he and his Filipina fiancée have an identical dream - in it, they are twenty five years old again, both of them (despite the fact in real life she is about 14 years younger), and in the dream they are beginning to make a life together.  At a point in the dream during a small storm on the Sulu Sea outside their Palawan bungalow, they realize that they are in a dream but feel the connection strongly.  They both wake up to rather unsatisfied lives, and they are their real ages again.  But, as they video call each other, it dawns on them - they have not been able to be together for the five years they had their relationship, and between bureaucratic red tape, financial constraints, and other factors, it seems hopeless.  But then this dream opens up something, especially in him - after a heartfelt talk with her, in which she reminds him to "remember twenty five," he makes a decision during his morning commute to just act on his true feelings, and within six months he had made the arrangements, and he makes a one-way flight to the Philippines where he and his girl step into a new life together - a very touching scene on a beach, where the sand sends a surreal feeling to his mind as his bare feet step onto it, solidifies the entire overarching point of the dream.  As a result, they make a life together, and it ends up being a beautiful story.  I won't go into a lot of detail about the story itself, but I wanted to summarize some lessons to take away from it that I dressed in a fictional scenario. 

The whole point of the story boils down to one thing - sometimes the life we think we are living actually obscures the real person we actually are.   We are afraid to let that real dimension of ourselves out because to be honest, it would probably cause problems with most people.  The majority of the people we call family and friends would not have a clue as to that inner part of us, as it is something we often cannot explain for ourselves.  The protagonist of the story is actually based on myself - it is about an inner aspect of myself I don't often share with just anyone, and this story provided a creative platform to sort of let it out.  And, like Pieper's discussion of acedia, we tend to let things choke those parts of us which would actually be liberating because we have schedules, tasks that keep us busy, and a lot of mind-cluttering distractions.  That unique aspect of ourselves is then just sort of obscured, although at times things we come across remind us that it's there.   The point of my story is that if we know how to look for it, that right person is going to be there to help us rediscover that, and that person is often one we love - a husband or wife, a soulmate, a fiancée.  Those people are a gift of God for a reason, and they are the ones we are meant to give our entire selves to, even those hidden things we don't feel comfortable sharing.  Let's take a totally hypothetical example of what I am talking about.

Let's say there is a guy (or a girl) who is a brilliant person, but they are also somewhat introverted.  The image they give to those around them is someone who is withdrawn, and also hard to know.  This often leads to them getting ignored in the same way that Ficus tree in a bank lobby is - you know it's there, but it is not something you think about or care to pay attention to.   However, underneath those layers is another person - this may be a guy who actually maybe likes singing karaoke, or he secretly may even like something like skateboarding but doesn't feel like he is someone who should do that.  In his mind, he secretly may fantasize about it, but he is scared to death to try it because it would look out of character for him.  Is this pride?  I don't think so - it's more fear of being rejected or misjudged than anything.  But, then he meets a nice girl who really connects with him, and all of a sudden he's thinking of trying it for the first time.  He may fall on his ass doing it, but he just gets to that point where he has to give it a go.  In the story, it is something similar, but not skateboarding (and believe me, personally that is not my secret guilty indulgence either!).  He feels comfortable with that new soulmate, and she encourages him as he begins to share those deep things about himself.  And, at some point, he just has to let go and go for it.  That is the second point of the story too. 

I talk about this because this is me - there are intimate things about myself I don't share with just anyone, and many of you reading this know what I am talking about.  Even in 28 years of marriage to Barbara before we divorced, I never truly felt comfortable sharing a lot of things with her - it was not her fault, but one thing she told me once is that it seemed like there was a shell I had that she could not penetrate, and to be honest, she was right.  The connection, in other words, was not really there.  Sure, we cared for each other, and even had some wonderful moments together as a married couple, but that dimension of our relationship was missing, and it was no one's fault.   We have a series of mental and emotional filters that are actually good for us, as they prevent the wrong people from weaponizing our personal feelings against us.  But, if we don't take care to develop relationships of trust, that is a part of us that remains repressed and we never are quite our complete selves as a result.  So, that is why God instituted marriage - that soulmate is just that; they are connected to you at the soul level, and in a sense this is what Scripture describes as "the two becoming one flesh."  This doesn't happen with just anyone either - God built in those protections with us for a reason, so we should not consider them bad.  And, that leads to the second aspect of this - the feelings of frustration and incompleteness.

Protecting yourself is a good thing - it keeps you from being wrongly exposed to the negative influences that can destroy us.  But, it can also be overdone too - we can be so walled up that no one - not even God himself - can get through to us.  And, we start to feel it.  Because you can never be your full self, you feel like something in your life is missing, and that repression can become a prison to us.  It needs to be broken by someone or something, and that someone should be the person we choose to spend the rest of our life with.  And, we compensate that by distractions; we become overly busy, and we let routine and calendars enslave us to the mundane while that important aspect of ourselves is repressed.  That is the real danger of Acedia - it can potentially lead to a type of idolatry of busy-ness.  And like Fr. Grassi noted, it becomes rather tyrannical to us. It often takes a radical step to bring us back to where we should be, and that is the point of my fictional story.

In the story, the teacher, after that dream, has a heartfelt video conversation with his Filipina love, and then his morning commute to work, has an epiphany.  While he was taking an Uber to his school where he taught, a thought came into his mind - "I wish this was taking me to the airport to fly out of here," and then his inner dialogue pierces with this question, "Why not? What do you have to lose?"  He ruminates on this all day, and that causes a crack in the facade he built up over the years - the realization that he couldn't do that slavish routine anymore led him to say in his heart "This is my time, and this is my fiancée's time - it is OUR time!" and he returned home that evening a different person - a realization became clear that he needed to just step out, and so he did.  Within six months, he and his beautiful Filipina fiancée would be sharing a smoldering, tender kiss on a distant beach in Palawan when he not only made the step, but he did so radically - he bought himself a one-way ticket and had no plans to return.  There is a saying I have utilized and others have too that is proverbial - sometimes you just have to rip off the bandage.  My character in that story did just that, but it took a dream and an Uber ride to make him realize just what he needed to do.  Now, I want to transition to my personal feeling in this.

The point of creative writing - especially a fictional story - is that the author is often talking about themselves, and that is true here too for me.  The character in that story personified me, and to be honest writing it helped me to see more clearly.  Will I make that radical step my character in the story did?  I don't think I am there yet, but I think God was speaking something through that to let me know that sometimes you just have to take the first step, kind of like the old Rankin-Bass Christmas cartoon Santa Claus is Coming to Town, where a young Kris Kringle actually converts an evil wizard into a good friend.  The wizard, named Winter, was scary, evil, and had a lot of issues within him.  Kris giving him that little toy train was the catalyst that cracked that ice shell around Winter's heart, and Kris sang a song in that cartoon to him that summarized it - "Put One Foot in Front of the Other."  Taking the first step is the hardest and scariest sometimes, but once you take that step, it's a whole new world and you see things in a new way.  With a lot that has been going on the past few years, I think that is where I am personally, and my character in the story definitely had that revelation too, just like the fictional wizard Winter did in that old Christmas cartoon.  A few months back, I talked about the "unknown frontier," and it ties into this - you won't know what the frontier is unless you take the first step toward it.  What's ahead may look clouded, scary, and uncertain, but taking that first step may be the best thing you can do for yourself.  I am preaching to myself with this too, as  I am sort of in that process myself, and it is no accident I was able to write the story either.  I could say much more about this, but it would take a lot of sorting out to really do it, and I don't have the time to do that now but may hash it out in my journal at some point so I can articulate it better.  Rest assured though, I will be revisiting it. 

Thanks for allowing me to share my thoughts this week, and will see you next time.   

False Idolatry in Christian Context

 I am writing a piece of reflection I didn't want to have to address, but it is becoming evident that it has to be addressed.  When we invest god-like reverence and devotion to concupiscent human beings, we commit a form of idolatry clothed in "Christian" language.  What I have seen indicts both Protestant Evangelicals and Catholics, as both are guilty of doing this in different contexts.  Unless it is corrected and understood for what it is, I fear that any potential for evangelization and conversion of others is in jeopardy.  I am going to address both of these separately, and then bring it all together.

On social media, I read a news story that radical Jewish settlers in Israel pepper-sprayed a 9-year-old Armenian boy named William just for riding his bike.  When I read that, I was immediately heartbroken - who would do this to an innocent child??  And in Israel?? You sort of expect ISIS or Muslim Brotherhood terrorists to do things like this, but these are supposedly Israeli Jews who committed the act.  The mother of this child said the boy is traumatized and is terrified of Israelis now, and I can see why - getting a dose of potent capsaicin in your face for nothing tends to do that, and for a young kid like him it is even more devastating.  This story prefaces the first form of idolatry I wanted to talk about, and I am about to ruffle some feathers with this one.

I myself have both Sephardi Jewish and Armenian forebears, so what I am about to say here I am not doing in pleasure at all, but rather just extreme disappointment.  For the majority of my life, I have always been a firm supporter of the state of Israel, and even seen the Jewish birthright to the land as a legitimate and historical claim.  I still do, and that has not changed any.  However, there are other people in that region who also have a birthright too, and I have been a long-standing supporter of the rights and legitimacy of indigenous Christians in that region too.  In all honesty, these two things are not supposed to conflict, but they often have - there are some indigenous Christians who do harbor a historic anti-semitism, and there are also Jews who hate Christians, and both are wrong.  That is a problem that is not going to be resolved overnight in all honesty, and it does cause me some distress knowing it is happening.  However, in perhaps one of the most ignorant and stupid forms of idolatry, we enter the territory of "Christian Zionism," and this is where I want to go.  The problem here is not with Christ-hating Jews, nor is it with antisemitic indigenous Christians - it is with American Evangelical Protestants who seem to be too stupid to know better about the history and demographics of the region, and hence "Christian Zionism" has become an idolatrous cult to some of them.  So, let's attack this first.

Christians in the Middle East are our brothers and sisters in Christ, and as such they constitute a large number of traditions and religious communities - some are Protestant, some are Catholic, and some are Orthodox.  These communities of Christians have been there for centuries, some even going back to the very birth of the Church.  Many of them are also distinct ethnicities in themselves as well as being distinctly Christian - you have Armenians, Assyrians, Maronites, Copts, Rums (Arabic-speaking Greek Orthodox and Catholics who are not ethnically Arab), and communities of long-established ethnically Arab Christians as well.  These communities have deep roots, rich traditions, and many have maintained their faith in the face of numerous persecutions over the centuries.  Yet, American Evangelical Protestants are ignorant of them.  I have a good friend in Florida whom I have known since my college days.  He is the son of a conservative Lutheran minister who was involved in the earliest days of the Charismatic movement, and due to that he tends at times to be a bit hyper-charismatic in his expression.  Although he is well-meaning, he is also woefully ignorant being much of his worldview is shaped by televangelists on TBN and Daystar.  And, yes, he is a "Christian Zionist."  When we were talking about Israel one day, I mentioned to him that we need to also be supportive of indigenous Christians in the area, and he mistakenly thought I was referring to Messianic Jews!  He knew nothing of the ancient Christian communities in the region (despite the fact that his late sister-in-law was an Arabic-speaking Palestinian Christian - note that irony!) and like so many others who think like him, he was even somewhat dismissive of them.  That, my friends, is the idolatry of "Christian Zionism," and let me explain how that works.  The modern "Christian Zionist." fueled by the ignorant rantings of idiots like John Hagee and others on religious TV, considers Israel and every Jewish person to be perfect for some reason - everything they do (even when blatantly wrong) is ordained by God, and must be treated like a living Scriptural writ.  Therefore, that verse in Scripture that says "touch not my anointed" is taken so far out of context that it almost sounds like a foreign religion, and indeed it is.  "Christian Zionism" is not support for the Jewish people, nor is it support for the right of Israel to exist.  One can completely support Israel's right to exist, and respect Jewish people, without being a "Christian Zionist."  And, criticism of a bad Israeli policy or of the behavior of an individual Jew as a person subject to personal accountability is not antisemitism either.  Jews, just like every other human being on earth, are in need of Christ too, and they must accept him to be truly saved and offered eternal reward in heaven.  Jews individually can be bad people (look at George Soros - perfect example - as well as very left-leaning actors like the late Rob Reiner), and this bad behavior can be condemned without laying it on every Jewish person alive.  "Christian Zionism" in contrast sees this differently - the true devotee of this nasty cult will actually say that Jewish blood supersedes Christ's Atonement, and if a person who espouses that view is claiming to be Christian, they are in heretical territory with that.  For a person like John Hagee, an evil man like George Soros can get a free pass into heaven for having the right DNA, but a true saint and Doctor of the Church like St. John Chrysostom is condemned to hell because they are not "part of the tribe."  For the "Christian Zionist," the Jewish person and the state of Israel become an idol, molded in their vision of perfection and thus every time a Jewish person does something good or bad it is considered a perfect act.  This denigrates Christ, the true Jewish Messiah, and it makes Israel the "god" instead of him.  It is because of this "Christian Zionism" must be rightly rejected, and no sincere Christian should embrace it because it is a different religion.  You cannot be Christian and a "Christian Zionist," and it is totally possible to support Israel's right to exist and the dignity of personhood of a Jewish person while also acknowledging them as being like the rest of us, sinners in need of God's grace.  "Christian Zionism" then has become a golden calf to some sectors of American Evangelicalism, and has raised itself up as a counterfeit of actual Christian faith.  But, lest you think American Evangelicals are the only problem, there is an equally disturbing trend among American Catholics in particular as to confusion about what Papal infallibility really is.   

In the past 20 years or so, the object of the Papacy in the Roman Catholic Church tends to focus on the person rather than the office, and a confusion of sorts seems to have generated among some laypeople in the Church about this.  I don't believe that even the most radical sedevacantist would deny the validity of the Papal office - that is a See that was established by Christ himself, and is a historic episcopal chair of the Church.  However, what many lay Catholics fail to understand is that the person who sits on that chair still is a human being, and is subject to the same concupiscent nature to sin and other human limitations as the rest of us.  The first point here to establish is that neither the office or the person is God, and therefore neither are entitled to any type of worship.  You respect the office, and if the person sitting on the chair in that office is sincere and faithful to Church teaching, then you honor the person with the respect they deserve.  But, due to the fact that the human holder of the office is a mortal, sinful man, does that mean that he all of a sudden assumes some sort of "holy immunity" if he openly defies 2000 years of Church teaching?  The answer to that is simple - NO!!!  The sitting Pope has a responsibility to uphold historic Church teaching and to make sure that the Church maintains its integrity as an institution.  When a Pope fails in that role, he essentially is forfeiting his office if it is on such a scale that it brings scandal and schism to the Church.  So, with that in mind, let's look at the Papacies of Leo and Francis in recent years.

Francis instituted what is called the "Synodal Church," which supporters tout as being the fulfillment of the legacy of Vatican II.  However, having studied the Vatican II documents myself in my Master's program, I see little resemblance.  For all the criticisms of how Vatican II has been implemented over the decades, the documents for the most part have many good things - they addressed true reform, which is necessary at times, and they also affirmed the continuity of the faith.  The problem with many of the documents - in particular Gaudium et Spes - is that they often have ambiguous language embedded into them by what I believe were the periti who served as advisors to the Council Fathers - these periti included questionable figures such as Karl Rahner and Edward Schillebeeckx, both of whom had some questionable ideas.  While these periti could not overtly include their own visions of the Church, they were able to nonetheless exert influence by inserting ambiguous language that can be interpreted by anyone essentially any way they chose.  And, that is where some modernist ideology entered the discourse, and it is what informed even future Popes like Francis and Leo.  Therefore, I don't even think it can be justified by just identifying these modernist things as "the spirit of Vatican II," as I really don't think that was the real spirit of Vatican II - it is more an issue of implementation due to taking liberties with certain ambiguities in the Council documents.  This of course creates a problem for the Vatican bureaucracy - how can you, for instance, try to profess that "there is no salvation outside the Church" when at the same time you have some people taking ambiguities in documents like Gaudium et Spes to say that "all religions lead to God?"  You can't have both!  And, as for the definition of the Church, why is it that often many of these Vatican officials have more empathy with liberal non-Catholic hierarchs like the liberal Archpriestess of Canterbury, and then don't extend the same charity to either the SSPX or Protestant Evangelicals?   And, therein lies a problem with some Catholics creating a "Pope-olatry" that is at odds with the official teaching of the Church, and this in turn makes the current person sitting on the Chair of St. Peter an idol.  This is where we want to go now.

In the past couple of weeks, I have had some interesting discussions with people who think that for some reason every time a Pope farts it is new Scripture or some sort of divine revelation.  For challenging them on that, I have been called "Protestant," "heathen," and "schismatic," yet all I am doing is challenging them with what the Church actually teaches.  The problem with many lay Catholics is that they are not as theologically literate as they should be, and because of that they also have a mistaken view of what "Papal infallibility" actually means.  Recently, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano wrote a lengthy book entitled The Capital Schism, in which he argues that there is a distinction between the Papal office itself and the one who currently holds it, and there are times when the person sitting in the chair may actually be a mortal enemy of the Papal office itself.   It sort of stresses what I said earlier, in that the person and the office are two different things, and a sinful man can indeed occupy the office.  When I hear uninformed lay Catholics actually say that Leo is appointed by the Holy Spirit and therefore allegiance to him must be absolute, even when he is in error, it raises concerns.  No Catholic - or for that manner non-Roman Catholic Christians like the Orthodox - disputes the validity of the Papal office.  The Eastern Churches have affirmed for centuries that the Bishop of Rome is a valid office.  However, the Christian East in particular objects to this idea of Papal primacy, because it is giving the Bishop of Rome authority he never actually had.  When that happened, problems started almost from the beginning, in that it raised the Pope to a position in which he had inflated authority, and questioning that would somehow be questioning God.  What does that sound like?  Every cult and new religious movement of the 20th century in particular has had undisputed leadership like that - Jim Jones, Warren Jeffs, Sun Myung Moon, etc., and the list goes on.  No Eastern Church patriarch or bishop claims that type of power in all honesty, and indeed, collegiality seems to be the accepted norm in all other branches of Christendom.  Therefore, it creates a sort of cult inside the Catholic Church of Papal devotees, and there is an inherent danger there - it raises a Pope to some sort of semi-divinity, and that then creates ignorance and confusion among lay Catholics who are somehow conditioned that the Pope cannot be questioned, challenged, or even stripped of his office because he was "ordained by the Holy Spirit" to have that office.  And, if you somehow differ with that interpretation, you are labeled a "schismatic," "Protestant," or worse, as I have been many times, as have Archbishop Vigano and others. So, that leads to a specific problem, and this is what it is.

When a Pope is raised to be equal to or above Christ in the latter's own Church, it means that a cult has been established around that Pope, and anything therefore he does - even if it blatantly violates centuries of doctrine and tradition - is somehow holy.  There are way too many Catholics who think like this, and it betrays their own ignorance as to what a Pope truly is as well as his actual responsibilities as a Pope.  As for the argument of "the Holy Spirit chose him," so was King Saul chosen the same way, and look what happened there - the king the "Holy Spirit chose" ended up consulting familiar spirits with a witch later.  And, even if this is the case, God may have another purpose for allowing a wicked king or an errant Pope to occupy an office - he may be using it to winnow his harvest.  Just because the Holy Spirit chooses something does not make it a blessing - at times it can be a judgment too.  So, did the Holy Spirit choose Leo and/or Francis to occupy the Papal office because they are holy men and everything they do is blessed of God?  Not necessarily - God may have bad Popes sitting on the throne of St. Peter in order to chastise his Church.  That means that perhaps we shouldn't see the Pope as a divine vessel, but rather as an instrument of judgment to separate the true Church from the false one.  God is ultimately in control of all things, yes, but that does not mean that the person God allows to occupy a position of power is somehow anointed of him - it may mean God is allowing a season of self-examination to test where his people stand.  So, don't be quick to defend a Pope when you know he is wrong just because you think "God put him there."  That becomes idolatry, and the reason that guy is sitting in that seat of authority may be to expose that idolatry rather than affirm it.  So, for those of you who think Leo is farting divine decrees whenever he drops a deuce in the Vatican commode, I would challenge you to think of this another way - and, self-examination may expose the idolatry you might be sheltering in your own soul if you think the Pope is above the Tradition and Scripture that has guided the Church for two centuries.  I think that is the point Vigano and others are trying to make too, and we would do well to listen.

These two forms of idolatry in American Christianity - the Protestant idolatry of "Christian Zionism" and the Catholic idolatry of Papal exaltation to a level the Papacy cannot claim - are why in many cases we have failed in the culture wars in the past.  When we realize that neither Bibi Netanyahu nor Leo XIV fart rainbows (and dare I add Donald Trump to that too), the sooner we come to understand that there is something greater than we can see and it should move upon us to seek it out.  May God heal our nation, but may he also help educate our people to understand that misplaced devotion in the wrong things will only end up disappointing.  Thanks for allowing me to share, and will see you next time. 

Upcoming Things

 This is a short post today just to give an idea of what we are going to be discussing for probably the remainder of this year, as there are a couple of important topics I want to explore.  Creating a lot of information with a personal touch has been the overall dynamic of what I do here, and have been for approximately 16 years now.  While I originally started this blog as a sort of creative outlet for just random thoughts, I can see how it has evolved over the years to include a variety of topics ranging from political and religious trends, to memory exploration, and to specific ideas.  And although I don't make them available for mass markets, I also do print all of the blogs for each year into their own books at the end of the year, usually meaning that the last blog post for a given year is mid-December (there are exceptions to that, such as this year's book when I compile it, given I had two other posts post-publication of the previous year).  If anyone reading this is interested in obtaining those, feel free to send me a message and I can tell you how to get them.   At this time, there are eleven volumes of them, and this year will be twelve once it is published.  I do these as a sort of "yearbook" of my work, and it makes them look good on a shelf.  Let me talk about how that evolved in a moment.

Back in 2013, I was starting to preserve physical copies of my articles, and did so by essentially printing them out and first putting them into sheet protectors and three-ring binders, and then later using my GBC to comb-bind them.  That in all honesty did not look good, and the volumes were clumsy and not as easy to access.  When I published my first book in 2014, an idea hit me - why couldn't I create bound blog books each year too?  When I compiled the first of these at the beginning of 2015, it consisted of two large volumes of over 500 pages each, as I was essentially compiling 5 years worth of articles at that point.  However, I was impressed overall with the way they turned out, as my self-publishing service, Lulu, does good work with binding and everything.  From that point, I made a commitment to print these out every year and have them in bound volumes, and they varied by years - for instance, the 2019 book was tiny, as was the one for the years 2020-2022, as I didn't write as much then.  However, the books for 2023-2025 were massive, as I tended to write a lot more then.  I also had the idea in the earlier volumes to include things from my old Bebo page and my early Facebook notes, both of which were earlier attempts before I was able to set up this Blogspot site.  The articles contained in those date back as far as at least 2006, and while they were not as extensive they did provide a sort of picture of how I was evolving as a blogger. And, that leads me to talk about a few things relative to this too.

Most of us recall the earliest days of social media.  For the most part, before Facebook became a thing sometime around 2007, the major social media site was called MySpace.  Many older people (I doubt the Gen Z crowd will) probably remember those early MySpace days.  I never liked MySpace personally, so I never actually had a MySpace account, but it had competition even back in the day.  One of the less-traveled competitors of MySpace was a similar site called Bebo, and I did have a Bebo account for a number of years - I signed up with that back in 2005, and used it as a sort of impromptu writing platform once I became more familiar with it.   In many ways, Bebo was essentially a MySpace knockoff, but more people my age used it because to me and some others I had talked to then, MySpace was more or less a place for teenage girls and effete metrosexual guys to hang out, and it just had little interest from me - I feel the same about TikTok now, as I don't have a TikTok either and am not too enthusiastic to get one.  But then 2008 came, and Facebook made its appearance on the cyberstage, and it appealed to everyone.  I was invited by a dear friend to sign up for it then, and I did.  That was about 18 years ago, and I am still fairly active on Facebook even today.   Upon entering the Facebook universe, I discovered their "Notes" feature then (I think they may still have that, but am not sure) - so, as part of my active presence, I started doing weekly "Notes" on that, and continued to do so until about two years later when I found out I could actually have a true blog site, which is how I ended up here.  So, I have about 2 years or so of Facebook "Notes" that I may or may not have published in a blog book yet, so I will have to go back and check that.  If not, I may give them a separate book with the Bebo posts, and that will constitute a prequel to this blog.  This is actually a good time to be talking about this, as I have just hit my 16th year anniversary publishing blogs like this, and I am very appreciative to Blogspot for allowing me to do so.  While I haven't gotten a huge amount of traffic (I can count my actual followers here on my fingertips), I do occasionally get nice messages and notes from people and those are always appreciated.  I have had the occasional trouble though - last year, a disgruntled Fundie who I evaluated took issue and almost cost me my teaching position, but thankfully the school administration saw beyond it and it blew over.  I suppose when you put yourself out there in the public square, there will always be a malicious pigeon that wants to crap on the monument of your achievement, but you just wash the crap off and continue on.  There is a good life lesson in that somewhere I have to revisit too. 

This blog was actually the second of three I had started back in early 2010, as Barbara encouraged me then to use online opportunities as a resource to get my own word out as a sort of ministry or something, and that is how the first blog, Sacramental Present Truths, began.  Some months later, I started this blog, which originally had the stupid name of "The Creative Side of David" before I finally changed it to "David's Mountain Memories."  When you are trying to think of a title of something, it pays to sound it out first before settling, because in a pinch you can come up with some idiotic names and people notice that.  "The Creative Side of David" made me sound more like a metrosexual hippie, and it really wasn't me, so I am glad I did change it eventually.  The URL for it though has not changed, but no one will notice that anyway so I don't worry about it.  The food blog "From David's Kitchen," came shortly after, and the end result of that is my cookbook I just published a couple of months ago.  As cooking and trying to immortalize some of my favorite (and least-favorite in a couple of cases) restaurants made up a substantial interest of its own, I wanted at the time a separate platform for that.  However, as the years commenced, it became clear that it was more practical to combine everything into one blog, and since this one had the most activity, it was the one I decided to continue by integrating SPT first in 2022, and at the end of this year I am also merging the food/restaurant blog into this one as well.  Starting next year, this will be my sole publishing platform, although I am going to leave the other two sites up for archival purposes in case anyone needs to access them.  And, that means I have a short word to say about the blog's future before moving forward.

I have essentially decided to close the blog on my 60th birthday, which is in 3 years.  So, I will continue to write and add content regularly for another couple of years, and on December 31, 2029, we will say farewell to it.  In this next three years, I have some more in-depth topics to explore, and that will start with what I plan on rounding this year out with.

For upcoming articles here, I am planning on doing a more deep-dive commentary into dream interpretation from a Catholic perspective, as I have a couple of books to peruse as well as some other important material.  I want to do something on this because in recent years dream interpretation has become more of an interest, but it is also dominated by occultists, Jungian psychology, and hyper-Pentecostals.  Based on the fact that I believe dreams are nothing to dismiss as well as also wanting to present a sound Christian perspective, I want to give my thoughts on what I am reading as well as giving some basic ideas for people who may be pondering the question as to whether their own dreams have meaning.  I will be writing that in the next couple of weeks.  The other article is also very entailed, and it has to do with some Georgian writers I find interesting, including one of my favorite authors named Konstantin Gamsakhurdia as well as the work of Ilia Chavchavadze.  These are writers that most American and European people have heard little about, but they have some profound ideas they communicate in their works.  So, at some point in October we are going to explore them as well.  I have a vested interest in the nation of Georgia as well, and feel that it is a mission to help more Americans appreciate Georgian literature (and the beautiful polyphonic singing they are noted for as well, not to mention their food - I love khatchapuri, although without the raw egg!).  As one of the oldest Christian nations in the world, Georgia is integral to me to know more about, and thankfully here in Baltimore we do have a good Georgian restaurant (I reviewed it last year too on my food blog).  That gives you an idea of what I will be exploring as this year begins to wind down, so stay tuned.

Anyway, that is a quick catch-up of everything, so will see you next time!