Overwhelmed and Winding Down

 As I am writing this week, there are a few things I wanted to talk about.  However, first, this week is the final week before Spring break, which means next week is Holy Week as well.  This is a good thing, as it shows that the school year is starting to wrap up soon and we are in that season where things are going to accelerate somewhat going forward.  However, I am feeling it too, as the toxic political environment of Baltimore is visibly draining me, and I am not sure what is going to happen as far as new opportunities - hopefully God loves me enough to have some mercy to open other doors soon, because I am at this point where I have to get the hell out of this place.  It sort of came to a head yesterday with my students in one class, who were extremely disruptive - I had to kick one of them out of class, and the rest found themselves on the receiving end of a brutal tongue-lashing about their futures.   Essentially, I told them that if they persisted in that type of conduct, no college would have them, no job will hire them, and they will end up wrapped in a blanket taking shelter under the Gay Street bridge a few blocks north of here.  If you are not familiar with Baltimore, North Gay Street has a weird intersection that looks like a spiderweb, and traversing it is a light rail/train track that creates a bridge over the intersection.  At that intersection, almost every morning, there are heaps of matter laying there which essentially are sleeping homeless people.  Some days there is maybe one out there, but on others I have witnessed as many as 10.  It encapsulates the general condition of this city - it has been governed for generations now by a corrupt mayor and city council - mostly Democrats, go figure! - who seem to have the goal of enriching their bank accounts rather than revitalizing the city.  It is also the reason why you can see so many abandoned and boarded-up rowhouses, garbage strewn all over the place, and there is an epidemic of porch piracy in many neighborhoods.  My goal at this point is to get out of here as soon as possible, and I plan to do so by looking into other opportunities for work.  I have started that process already, and am just waiting for the right opportunity to bite.  Please keep me in your prayers for this.

Now, let's talk about things at work.  I was a bit disturbed yesterday by our campus minister at school here - a frumpy, unkempt, obese man who looks like a stereotypical sex offender (although to his credit that is not one of his vices) and is indoctrinated totally with heretical "liberation theology."  The man has spent some time in El Salvador, where he met his wife supposedly, and he has crafted a narrative which to one who doesn't know better sounds so compelling yet is so full of BS that I can smell it a mile away.  Any rate, yesterday, he sponsored an anti-ICE rally here at the school, and I personally chose not to attend it because I could not do so in good conscience.  To recap this issue from last week, it has two basic flaws.  For one, ICE is not like a predatory hawk ready to swoop down on the first person who says "buenos dias," and by perpetuating that narrative, this campus minister is actually trying to stoke unrest in the student community here.  Secondly, because ICE does not operate like that, this campus minister basically just painted a huge bulls-eye on the backs of many students and their families because he will be drawing attention to them now.  That is dangerous, irresponsible, and also immoral.  As was my premise last week, if this ding-dong who calls himself a campus minister really wanted to help these students and their families, what he would be doing instead is trying to help them get their papers in order so they can be legal.  Also, if he was more consistent - I never heard a peep out of this man about Cuban refugees, or what my Assyrian and Armenian friends experienced at the hands of ISIS - he would also be advocating for homeless citizens (like the aforementioned people who camp out under the Gay Street Bridge every night) who need attention too, and he would be seeking to clean up this city a little. But, he is a leftist, and leftists are noted for one thing - gross inconsistency because they are fundamentally stupid (as moderate Muslim cleric Muhammad Tawhidi points out many times).  Therefore, don't expect people like this to be the saviors of civilization - they would quickly destroy it in the name of the false "justice" they preach.  Anyway, enough about this clown, as I am feeling nauseous just talking about him and I can see his office just outside mine here at the school anyway.  I have a few other things to discuss I wanted to get into.

As rough as this school year is getting for me, I still have a number of students I am genuinely fond of, and they make this job worth it.  One of them, a short Black girl who for her protection we'll call Tammy here, has been fun to have in class.  She is extremely intelligent, and she has a sense of humor that is refreshing some days.  A couple of days ago, she really made me smile and chuckle when in class she brought up this one question - if someone is in hell and they have excessive gas, will they explode if they fart?  After almost losing my composure laughing at the hilarity of that question, my response to her was "well, I don't plan on going there to find out."  This story is now part of my personal legend, and I probably will be recounting it to friends for years to come.  It is moments like that though that remind me that this is not just another job, but is a vocation.  And, while I desperately want to get out of here, I will in all honesty miss many of these kids when I do go, because some of them have been real joys to have in class. 

And, that leads me into the other big piece of news for the week.  I have begun a bucket list project I have been waiting a while to get started, and that is turning my 38-lesson Genesis study into a book.  While it has been over a decade since I last put that together, I feel it is a good resource that many people could benefit from.  However, the challenge is incorporating a lot of new information into it as well as I revise it and get it ready to go to press, and that will take some time.  I am anticipating about two months to make the revisions and do the editing and formatting, and then it can be published.  I then want to put into print two other books I have been compiling, one being of my old sermons and the other my long-awaited cookbook.  Once I get those in print, then my next writing project will be from the other direction - a more eschatological book that deals with my work with Assyrians, Armenians, Maronites, and others over the decades.  I have to acquire a lot of books I lost to make that happen again, and I am starting that process now as well.  This will be a project that will be somewhat different but is essential - it will combine some eschatology with things such as just-war theory, monarchism, the minorities of the Middle East, and also the growing Hebrew Catholic movement as well.  I feel these are all connected, and that is why I want to get a book out there which deals with the topic from a very comprehensive view.  I have friends who have published similar books - notably my good friend Stephen Missick, as well as Ron Susek and some others - but mine will be somewhat unique from those as I am doing this from a Catholic perspective rather than Evangelical Protestant.  It is a way of getting the message across in a way that gets people's attention, and now that my formal schooling is completed and I have the doctorate I waited long to get, I can begin to focus more on writing projects like this.  And, that means a new focus for blogging as well.

Over the years, I have made the point of putting into printed form every blog article I have written, as I want a set of complete volumes available for when I finally decide to close my blogs for good, which I want to do at my 60th year.  I feel my writing is entering a new level at this phase, and it is time to make my various observations and insights into something more focused and organized.  At the present time, counting my dissertation I have 5 books I have authored, and those have not been made mass-marketable yet - some I am frankly afraid to put on the market because the first time I did that I caught flak from people who wanted to tell me how to write my own material - not criticism, but actual threats and even condemnation of my work.  I know criticism comes with the territory when you present your perspective out there, but in all honesty sometimes it is as if the "critic" who is attacking you doesn't just want to offer constructive advice, but they want to muscle you off the face of the earth because they want you to write their perspectives rather than your own.  I have come up with a good way to handle idiots like that - if you don't like what I say, write your own damn book.  I make it a point not to criticize other writers like that - I am mature enough to know I am not going to necessarily agree with every word they write, but at the same time I have the grace to understand that it is their perspective, and their hard work, that went into that endeavor and not mine.  The most I will do in that case is maybe note some grammatical or cosmetic error I see, which in no way affects their content, and often they are grateful for me seeing it because in the course of editing hundreds of pages of script, it is easy to overlook something (I do it all the time in all honesty).  Which is why I want to offer some advice for choosing editors and proofreaders if you are planning on writing a manuscript.

Editing and proofing a manuscript is crucial to writing, especially if publication is a goal.  You want your work to be readable and organized, and therefore you go through it again and again.  Some writers have reached out and gotten outside help for this, such as professional editors and proofreaders, and in doing so there are a few things to keep in mind.  First, make sure you can trust the person who undertakes the task - you don't want someone plagiarizing or stealing your work.  Secondly, choose wisely the person who you want to help edit your work, because you want an editor and not someone who wants to just rewrite everything because they don't like your perspective.  A good editor is not evaluating your opinion or perspective, but rather the way you communicate it - they are there to suggest some improvements to the way it is written maybe, as a sentence may not be clear in what the author wants to communicate and an editor can be valuable to tighten it up a little.  In that case, it makes you sound better, and I think anyone who has written a lot can appreciate that.  Furthermore, grammatical rules change over time, and as an example, I recall that when I was writing papers in high school and even in my undergrad days, it was considered the rule to make two spaces between sentences.  Now, it is one, and that is still a habit I am trying to work on is the spacing after a period. In all honesty, the one space rule does make it look better than the old two-space rule did.  However, editors are not cheap, and if you go with a professional editor for your manuscript, make sure to do your homework, as you will be investing hundreds of dollars into their services if you decide to retain them. And, even after the editing, you still have to check over the published manuscript with alignment, etc.  So, publishing a book is not easy, and it takes a lot of work overall. 

At any rate, the Genesis book is in process now, and hopefully by mid-May I will have it up and going to the publisher.  This discussion today was a bit longer than I anticipated, but overall I think it was also more practical too.  Thanks for joining me, and will see you next time.  

Revisiting Immigration

 Yesterday, at the school I work at, the campus minister announced that he was recruiting students for a protest against ICE, the agency that deals with enforcing immigration law.  ICE has taken a lot of flak for things, and as a result a lot of bad misinformation has been circulated about the agency that is simply ridiculous.  I mentioned the conspiracy theories being promoted even by leadership at certain schools that paint ICE as these predatory thugs who are swarming communities like vultures ready to pick off the first person they note saying "buenos dias" to their friends on the streets.  Thing is, within 5 blocks of where I work, I have yet to even see one ICE vehicle, much less a swarm of them.  This misinformation has created a lot of the violence that law enforcement has faced in many cities over the past year, and there are a few things I wanted to note to dispel a lot of the garbage circulating about who ICE is and what they actually do. 

Let me start with a story.  When I was doing my undergraduate work at Southeastern University in Lakeland, FL, I paid the bills by working for a large Pentecostal megachurch as a security officer.  In order to get a job working security in Florida, you are required to take a 1-week course to earn a license, and often those courses (as mine was) are taught by either police officers or county deputy sheriffs.  So, as a result, you get trained in a lot of police procedures, as essentially security work is a type of law enforcement that is privately contracted.  One part of that training was in traffic direction, and it included practicing directing traffic to park, and how to direct drivers to intersect thoroughfares.  In the classroom though, the deputy sheriff who was teaching the class was telling us how police monitor traffic, and what he told us was actually quite revelatory.  He noted the paranoia that the average driver has when a cop is behind them on a highway, and that often this paranoia is not warranted, and then he explained why.  Most cops, he noted, are just focused on their own safe driving and are not paying attention to normal motorists on the road - the only way you get a cop's attention on a highway is if you do something that actually attracts their attention.  Therefore, he assured us that the random cop who happens to be driving behind you at a stop sign is not randomly running your plates, and they are not even worried about you unless you give them a reason.  What the deputy explained to our security officer training class also applies to other law enforcement agencies as well, and that includes ICE.  Let me explain.

There are many immigrants in America, that is an undisputed fact.  And, many of them are not legally vetted to be here.  However, of those many, the majority just go about their day minding their own business.  So, this mythology of ICE posturing and ready to pounce on such unsuspecting people is just that, mythology.  The only way someone will get ICE's attention is if they are doing something they should not be doing, and then ICE will get them because as law enforcement that is their job.  That is why ICE actually will focus attention on serious criminals such as Islamic terrorists, MS-13 gang members, human traffickers, drug dealers, and other garbage of society who coincidentally may also be illegally in the country too.  If many of the ignorant hotheaded Leftist activists understood that, it would not be a problem.  The problem with the Political Left however is that they love to defend criminals, and they villainize the victims of the crimes, even if the victims are themselves immigrants. That has to stop, but the protests are actually doing other damage as well, which is what I want to discuss now.

The campus minister at the school I work at is a professed Catholic, but in reality he is a Marxist-influenced proponent of what is called "liberation theology," which was condemned by popes over the past two centuries as a heresy.  Because he is involved in this, faith is second-class to "justice" to this guy, and he sounds more like a Marxist in many instances than he does an actual spiritual leader of a school campus.  Just a day or two ago, he announced that he was organizing an anti-ICE protest here in Baltimore, and is trying to recruit both students and faculty to participate in it.  This is NOT a good idea, and I would like now to explain why.

When people start doing these silly protests, it can have dangerous consequences.  As I mentioned above, most immigrants who live here - even if otherwise illegal - are generally peaceful people who want to live their lives and mind their own business.  That being said, they are not doing anything that would warrant surveillance from the designated law enforcement agencies.  And, to be honest, they would probably be happy to obey the process and become legal, but perhaps some financial barriers or something else is preventing them from doing so.  Toward the end of this discussion, I am going to propose a solution, but at this point, these crazy protesters may be doing more harm than good to the people they are supposedly advocating for.  A neighborhood of immigrants, if they are having a spotlight like that shined on them, will automatically garner attention, and that will not be a good situation for them.  People like the very misguide campus minister are painting bulls-eyes on the backs of the people they are supposedly protesting for, and maybe that is their end game - by provoking ICE to react and then making them look like the bad guys, the protesters get the viral footage they crave and they can spend the narrative.  And, that makes our society even more chaotic because the real criminals take advantage of this, and thus they can murder people, traffic drugs, and do all the other junk they do.  And, the American citizen and taxpayer suffers as a result.  There is a better way, and I want to give a proposal for that now.

If people are so interested in advocating for undocumented immigrants, then at least do something constructive.  For instance, instead of protests where hard-working law enforcement officers are assaulted for doing their jobs, why don't some of these "protesters" instead provide ways to help undocumented people actually get documentation?  There are organizations - almost every Catholic diocese in the country has one - that provide aid to undocumented immigrants who really want to secure legal papers, so why isn't that encouraged more?  And, more non-profit organizations could be formed that focus on that aspect too.  Many undocumented immigrants are generally decent people with families who just want to live their lives and mind their own business, and the only thing they are missing is proper documentation.  The process can be expensive, and there are also language barriers, so I don't think it is so much that they don't want to be legal, but many they can't - this is where some outside help would be warranted.  A lot of that category of immigrant consists of people who could be a valuable asset to our society and our specific communities, so I don't think it would be a bad thing to help them make it official.  The problem is that some of the hardest crackdowns on immigration law happened under the Obama administration - I mentioned my friend, Assyrian-American attorney Robert DeKalaita, who was actually indicted by the Obama administration for helping Assyrians who were fleeing ISIS barbarians who were trying to kill them.  Fortunately, Trump pardoned Robert, but if the Left was really all that concerned about immigration, why weren't those people - who wanted to be legal - helped?  Simply, it didn't fit the narrative.  It is the same reason why Clinton was heralded as a hero for attacking Serbia during the Kosovo crisis by the Leftists but now those same Leftists think that the Ayatollah is their hero - what the hell, people??  The Left likes hollering about "justice," but their view of it is very selective - they are not after actual justice, but they are actually constructing a narrative, a very fictional narrative.  It's the same thing with true advocacy for undocumented immigrants - unless there is a ruckus to stir up, they are not interested in constructive solutions because the Left is interested in one thing and one thing only - they want to remake Western civilization in their own warped image.  And, they will do it by any means possible, including violence and showing no care for the people they holler about because that is not even a secondary emphasis for them.  If people had a more common-sense approach like this, it would solve so many problems - but the Left is not interested in solving problems, but rather creating them.  And, that is the fundamental issue.

I am hoping that a more common-sense approach to these issues is necessary, but if certain rabble-rousers have their way, this will be drowned out by emotion-driven activism rather than practical solutions.  Thanks for letting me share, and will see you next time. 

Weighty Decisions and Anticipating the Frontier

 It is now midweek, and thankfully the school I work at has minimal coverage today - all I have to worry about is a gym class later that I just have to sit and monitor a bunch of kids bouncing basketballs around.  I have groused about this ridiculous coverage system we have here before - no other school has this, and it is a bit odd.  But, it is what it is, and thankfully maybe soon I can be done with it.  I am going to sort of fly by the seat of my pants today with this discussion and see where it goes, as I want to write but don't have a concrete topic to discuss.  I suppose I could pick up where I left off last time, the new frontier.

Being on the edge of a new chapter - a new frontier - is something that is both exciting and scary.  By the time you are at the edge of that, you are ready for the change but you are not sure how it is going to play out.  I have been in that situation before in all honesty.  Something also happens in your mind and your body as this new frontier starts to loom more prominently on the horizon, and today I want to talk about that a bit. 

I have talked before about the fact I take dreams seriously, as there are many dimensions to one's dreaming patterns.  Some dreams are a result of spicy food before sleep.  Others have prominent symbolism that maybe carries a message from God to us - God does speak through our dreams as the Old Testament really talks about in many places.  However, there are also some dreams that are simply a coping mechanism - you may be experiencing stress or fatigue, and your dreams can be a source of escape from the craziness that happens in the real world.  A lot of dreams I have been having lately are of that latter variety, and with the stressful situation of my work environment I believe that personal stress has a lot to do with bizarre dreams.  There is nothing particularly symbolic about them, but they have some different imagery - for instance, I had a dream a few nights ago that featured a miniature version of a Filipino spring roll called lumpia on sticks.  The lumpias were about maybe two inches long, and they had sticks at the end like kebab skewers which made them vaguely resemble brown fireworks.  The dream was a bit odd as I don't eat egg rolls or spring rolls, and I have never even had lumpia before despite the fact the special person in my life I am seeing loves them.  This is what coping mechanisms do though - they tend to take random things you observe and don't think much about, and then they are portrayed in our dreams in ways that we never thought of or imagined.  For instance, do micro-lumpias on sticks actually exist?  I doubt it, but they were in the dream.  That leads me to discuss something else in relation to dreams.

The human person is a remarkable creation of God, and the ability to dream is a gift he gave all of us.  Dreams can lead to inspiration for things, and they also provide a nice mental break from the things that burden us in life.  And, because God created our capacity to dream, our dreams are also a channel of communication he has directly with us, as often the imagery in dreams has a deeper meaning.  Now, to be honest, most of the research on dream interpretation has come from one of three sources - Freudian psychiatry, the occult, and hyper-Pentecostal televangelists.  Those three areas often overlap as well, and they tend to be suspect on many levels.  However, dreams are important, and I believe that once you peel off all the garbage that is out there, underneath are some good resources to help us take dreams more seriously.  And, as God used the dreams of people to get messages across in the Bible, there is some substance to understanding dreams as more than just a quirk of the human mind.  They can even prepare us for stepping into that unknown frontier we face.  And, let's talk more about that a little.

When people think of the "unknown frontier," they often picture a 19th-century caravan of settlers crossing the prairies in the American West, and then pausing to take in the massive Rocky Mountains that loom in the distance and grow larger with each step in the journey.  Crossing a mountain like that takes navigational skills and practiced maneuverability, and it often is fraught with challenges.  However, on the other side of that mountain is a broad expanse of green rolling meadows and in the distance the placid waters of the ocean.  This is how I see my life now - I was forced into the rugged wilderness of my own unknown frontier back at the end of 2024, and I am still crossing a range of rugged, wild mountains - except in real life, those mountains look like the Baltimore skyline.  However, I feel that I am soon going to approach a navigable pass that will take me to the fertile plain on the other side, and thus I am pressed to move forward although navigating the mountain pass is daunting.  I feel fatigued, frustrated, and ready to mentally collapse, but I need to press on - my survival depends upon that.  So, that is where I am now.  I can see the navigable pass over the great mountain now though, and where it leads will be worth the effort to get there.  And, thankfully, there are signs along the way which assure me I am heading the right direction - for the first time in a long time, I feel that to the core of my bone marrow. But, I am also older now, and I feel so tired of the struggle - there are days I wish I was where I need to be now in all honesty.  But, then God comes along and through someone or something reminds me to just keep going because I am on the right track.  It is where the stamina to press through comes in. 

The "rest stops" along that journey are dreams and other things God sends us, as God knows too we need to be replenished often because the journey is not always easy.  The dreams and other road signs tell us that something really good awaits us at the destination, and it gives us hope and determination to keep on.  But, if you know wilderness roads, there are dangers too - wild animals attacking, avalanches, weather extremes, etc.  You need to be girded up and protected against those too.  This puts me in mind of Hans Christian Anderson's Snow Queen, one of my favorite stories.

If you recall in that story, Satan created an evil mirror, and it shattered into billions of pieces.  If a piece of that mirror got into the person's eye, it distorted their vision of life - it replaced true beauty with ugliness, true love with selfish narcissism, and empathy with cruelty.  The two young kids, Gerta and Kai, were the central characters of the story.  In the original story, Gerta and Kai were in love, and they loved each other more than anything else.  But, when Kai was blinded by a piece of that evil mirror, it transformed him into something evil and he abandoned Gerta and his entire life in order to chase a false vision fed to him by the notorious Snow Queen, who wanted the mirror for herself to control the world. Gerta, heartbroken, seeks to go after Kai to save him from a dismal fate - the Snow Queen intends to freeze him to death to get that splinter for her own ambitions of reconstructing that evil mirror.  Her journey takes her to three different places - to the house of an old lonely woman who represents Spring, then to the castle of a prince and princess that represent Summer, and finally being kidnapped by a Gypsy girl and her mother who represent Autumn.  Eventually, with the help of all of these, Gerta reaches the ice palace of the Snow Queen in the far north, and she finds Kai.  What finally revives Kai and breaks the spell of the Snow Queen, and thus flushes the mirror fragment from his body, is Gerta's complete love for him.  He then returns home with her, and although Anderson didn't end the story a certain way, you see Gerta and Kai becoming a beautiful couple that live happily ever after.  Do you see the deep theological implication Anderson worked into that story?  Let me show you.

The evil mirror falling to earth represents Satan's fall from grace, and the shattered mirror represents sin and death.  Once one gives into sin, their vision is distorted and they don't see things with the eyes of Christ anymore - that happened to Kai, who is a picture of fallen humanity.  Gerta is like Christ - she loves her soulmate and will go to a great length to save him.  That is how Christ loves us - he gives all he is to save us because we are special to him as his Bride, the Church.  It is Christ's saving grace, given through baptism, that washes away the splinter of sin in both the eye and the heart, and as a result, we are restored to who God created us to be.  To add an apocalyptic twist, think of the shards of the broken mirror also as the mark of the Beast - they distort what God made us to be, and as a result, we can become eternally lost.  Many pieces of classic literature like this were written with a hidden message of redemption in them, and that is what makes classic literature more important to study and understand.  In our own journeys too, we can be blinded by bad desires, and it can alter the course God intended for us unless that nasty concupiscence is either removed or contained.  The means of that happening is supernatural grace, and the more of that we have, the less influence sin and bad desires have over us - they are still there, and we are still a work in progress, but their power diminishes as our faith grows.  That, I believe, is also the message that Anderson wanted to get across in The Snow Queen too. 

The frontier indeed is daunting, and as we travel toward it we face obstacles.  Some of those obstacles are as small as pebble that trips us up a little, but they can also be massive like a mountain range.  We rely on the grace of God to navigate us, and as we do so, we begin to not only progress on the journey, but we can easily spot and avoid those things which would be potential obstacles too.  That is true whether we look at our overall lives, or at specific seasons we come to.  

I think that summarizes my thoughts for today, so I will leave it on that note.  Thanks again for visiting, and will see you next time. 

The Foreboding Frontier

 I am writing this on a Sunday night, and have been watching a channel called "The Farmer's Truth" on YouTube.  This channel is a riveting collection of stories about young kids who have been cast out of either group homes or foster homes, and then they find out they had some curious inheritance that changes their lives.  I am not sure if the stories are based on true-life situations or if they are complete fiction, but they do have an inspirational quality that will keep a person interested.  Watching these made me think of my own situation over the past few years - a divorce, followed by the death of both my parents, and then after completing a doctorate I was thrown out of my house and thrust into inner-city Baltimore although I also landed my first full-time teaching position that paid me the most salary I have ever received.  Although most of the dust of this earlier shifting of my life has settled, I am still sorting out a lot right now and watching those stories sort of connected with me.  Of course, it also made me rely on God a lot more than I used to, as I have learned about how important faith is.  It seems your faith is tested when you are hanging on a precipice, and mine surely was.  Although I believe the worst aspects of the experience are over, there are still things to sort out even now.  For instance, I am rethinking my position at the school I work at now for a variety of reasons, but mostly because I see a wind shift there and feel my season there is about to end.  That means I have other offers to consider, and the lines are set and the hooks are baited - I just have to wait on the big one to bite now.  That fishing analogy made me think of a dream I had a couple of years ago, and I will discuss that now. 

About two and a half years ago, when things were starting to look worrisome in our final year at the old place in Hagerstown, I had a dream one night.  I was fishing in this lake next to a cabin, and I remember catching this huge fish that looked like a muskie or something, and I was so excited about that.  When I talked to some friends and did some research on what a large fish is in a dream, I was told it meant that a big opportunity of some sort was about to happen.  In a way, that kind of did happen when I got the contract and offer to work at this school I am at now.  But, was it the end game, or was it just a bridge?  That is one of many unanswered questions I still have as my life seems to be taking some interesting directions.  Ultimately, it is about doing what God wants me to do and to go where he wants me to go, and I don't think my two years here in Baltimore were an accident - God had me here for a reason.  But, I also feel like it was temporary, as in all honesty I have felt like a proverbial fish out of water since I have been here - there are days this city seems like a foreign country to me, and the workplace even more so at times.  I have had this feeling of urgency telling me it is only a short season here, and what that means remains to be seen in all honesty.  However, I will be documenting what happens here as it unfolds, as at this point I know about as much as anyone else does in all honesty.  That leads me to a few other observations. 

Being on the edge of a new frontier, whether it is literal or in an allegorical sense in life, is both exciting and scary at the same time.  You feel impatient about what is ahead, but also scared - a lot of "what if" questions start to pop up.  Over the years, even as a very young child, I have always been a person who likes to plan ahead, and in all honesty it has helped me to survive this far in life.  I always feel like I need an exit strategy out of a situation if one is needed, and I begin to explore those options.  And, that leads me to discuss something a bit morbid but kind of how I thought as a kid.

I have told my story of growing up poor in Kirby many times, and there are some details I wanted to touch on that shaped how I deal with situations I face.  When I was a kid in Kirby, I was very poor - my mom was single then, she didn't work, and had it not been for a $100 child support check from Dad every month and SNAP benefits, we probably would have starved then.  It was even more complicated in that Mom was a drinker - she began to drink more heavily a year before we moved to Kirby, and it created a situation that was not the best for me.  Mom was never abusive to me at all, so please don't assume that - as a matter of fact, she was often the opposite in that she only got involved in my life only if it was completely necessary.  So, I mostly raised myself in a lot of the time, learning to cook for myself, clean, and do other more self-sufficient things.  And, I also read a lot - I was really good in school then (except for my first experience in 5th grade, where I got a bit apathetic due to the situation i was in then), and a lot of what I read inspired me in some interesting ways.  One of the books I had "inherited" was a hunting encyclopedia that used to belong to my grandfather but Mom had grabbed after she and my grandfather had a falling-out at around the time I was 9 years old.  I found that old hunting encyclopedia (which had been published in the 1960s and was a large green hardbound book) to be fascinating, especially in the construction of duck blinds I read about in there.  While a seasoned hunter saw a duck blind as a rudimentary utilitarian structure used to stalk prized waterfowl, I looked at a structure like that as potential.  Here is where it gets weird now, because I used duck blind schematics in an old hunting encyclopedia as an idea for an exit strategy based on a morbid thing Mom did when she was drinking.  Let me explain.

When Mom got really sloshed, she would talk some crazy stuff - it wasn't bad necessarily, but it was scary for a young kid.  She would say she was going to die, and when she did I would have to go to my dad's, which I really did not want to do.  I had stayed for six months after my 9th birthday with Dad and my stepmother, and to be honest I didn't feel they valued me for who I was (that would be proven right later, but that is a whole other story).  So, I made a plan to leave my house if Mom did die, and secretly bury her somewhere so no one would know, and I was planning on striking out on my own to create a place I would live as a sort of hermit until I came of age.  Of course, at that age, I was not thinking about the importance of school, a career, or anything else - it was bare survival mode in all honesty, and when you are thinking like that, you are not thinking the long-term but rather the immediate need to find safety.  Looking back on that now, it was silly, as Mom was just drunk and passed out then and not dying, and indeed Mom would not pass away until I was 52 years old and definitely an adult with my own life by then.  However, I often think about how I used to think then, and maybe there is something in what I was letting my imagination go wild with then.  Kids don't have imaginations about things like that without a reason behind it, and maybe I need to do something to explore that reason - definitely would need a life coach or something to sort all that out!  These days, my mind works overtime so I don't have the time I would like to really reflect on this stuff, and I want to wax a little philosophical now. 

I have been reading through Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper's seminal book, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, and came across something of interest in it that caught my attention.  What I have been discussing here, as well as all the sorting out of old memories and other things, is what Pieper calls in his book "intellectual labor."  He notes on page 40 of this book that the idea of "intellectual labor" has its origins in three different theses:

1.  The view that all human knowing is accomplished exclusively in the manner of discursive activity.

2.  The view that the effort that goes into thought is the criterion of its truth. 

3. "Intellectual work" vs. "intellectual worker," which he describes further as the dichotomy between work as a contribution to society, and the worker as functionary (albeit a specialist) who is nonetheless bound to the function of his or her work. 

What these miss are something important - "intellectual labor," as Pieper correctly theorizes, reduces imagination and creativity to a marketable commodity, only measured by its value to the "greater society."  This is problematic, as it then radically redefines the individual not in terms of the Imago Dei, but rather as just "more evolved" than someone whom the theoretician sees as having more value than another with "less" creative value.  That is social Darwinism, and thus is heretical, and it turns imagination and creativity into products of subjective value, subjective to those who hold power.  Dr. John Crosby notes in his book The Selfhood of the Human Person on page 106 that exclusivity turned outward to other beings - in this case relating to the idea of "intellectual work" - creates something called "bad transcendance," which essentially elevates the exclusivity of one over everyone else and viewing the exclusivity of others as unimportant and even contemptuous.  This leads to elitism, and is the sin of bigotry against others based on externals.  This is also what spawns evils such as racism and genocide, because if you start to diminish the selfhood of others, it makes it so much easier to treat them as parasites and inconveniences rather than as fellow human beings.  You see this on the political landscape today with the extreme - or "woke" - Left as well as the extreme - or "woke" - Right, the former being encapsulated by David Hogg, Greta Thunberg, and the Antifa crowd, while the latter is espoused by ding-a-lings like Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson.  In reality, both of these "wokes" are one and the same, and I watched a video by Evangelical apologist Melissa Dougherty that showed how similar these two extremes really are, and it is scary.   One thinks that White men are the ultimate evil, and the other thinks Jews are, but both are ultimately equally racist and elitist.  While I didn't mean this to turn into a political analysis, it goes in line with some things I have been listening to and watching this past week.  Also, it was a rabbit trail that now leads back to where I was going.

When one faces a new frontier, you begin to assess the toolbox of things you have accumulated mentally over the years, a process Crosby calls recollection in his book.  Recollection is necessary, and often it can jar us back to the person we should be in the first place, especially as we think about what drove us as kids in our imaginations.  Some of us had very active imaginations as kids, and I would definitely fall into that category.  This is why over the years I have been meticulous in my personal record-keeping - I save obituaries, I have copies of every church bulletin and other documentation I have kept over the years, and I keep journals in which I write down memories I recall, dreams I have, and even daily activities - those journals are the reason these posts exist too.  If someone manages to chronicle my life story in future generations, I plan on having a rich reservoir from which to draw.  There are those times - the "leisure" Pieper and others talk about - when you have to go back and revisit those memories, and often in them you can find an answer you didn't realize you had for yourself.  Some of it will sound crazy - the imaginations of a 10-year-old can be a bit colorful to say the least - but if you know what you are looking for, it will reap its own rewards.  I probably should do that more myself, but we also fall into the trap of the sin of acedia, which is what mere "intellectual work" as a mere "worker" leads to - the act of busyness will become an idol in itself.  I admit I am guilty of that, but not of choice - life and the responsibilities of it make it the quintessential Western vice.  The corporate world in particular has choked life out of people, and a lot of rich creativity has died the death in the puddle of obscurity because of it.  It's a scandal that needs more exposure and societal reform to fix, and in due time that may happen.  But, until it does, we wage a type of spiritual warfare - our unique creative being against the wall of acedia society has built, and we are the laborers who mortar the bricks in that wall without even willing or knowing it.   Any rate, we perhaps need to be less busy and more contemplative, and often it takes facing that "new frontier" to remind us.  God does work in mysterious ways after all.

I know some reading this are going to think I was a somewhat disturbed child due to the thoughts I shared, but here's the thing about that - my imagination, as does that of every other human being on the planet, is shaped by the environment we are in, and that environment is often not of our making but we are in it due to circumstances beyond our control.  Imagination, dreams, and other things serve as coping mechanisms to deal with those situations, as a person could truly go insane otherwise.  As I have said before, adversity stinks like fermenting manure, but it is a rich ground to fertilize greatness too.  Some of the most brilliant minds in history, as well as the most innovative, were birthed out of an adversity that fueled the imagination.   Keeping that in mind, let's not be so quick to dismiss an idea that may sound "crazy," or that odd dream we have on occasion - there may be a nugget in that somewhere. 

I wrote earlier this week than I normally would, as I usually wait until mid-week to share thoughts.  However, this has been sitting on my mind for a few days, and another aspect of imagination is that any idea - even if it is outlandish - deserves to be documented and re-examined at some point.   On that note, thanks again for visiting, and will see you next time. 

On the Stoop of Spring

 As I am writing this, I am covering a group of petulent sophomores due to the fact we have a sloppy coverage system in our school - the concept of a substitute teacher does not exist, so the administration in their infinite wisdom chose to choke other teachers with coverage duties - a "lateral promotion" situation where we do more work without additional compensation.  The idea is not exactly popular with many teachers, as it means we are dealing with students whose names we don't know and it creates an issue for any disciplinary problems that arise because the dean, assistant principal, and principal are all generally unresponsive to requests for assistance if needed.  It is one reason why I am re-evaluating my own career path right now - I will be a teacher probably until I need to retire, but the location where I exercise my vocation needs to change.  As mentioned, I work in inner-city Baltimore, and the demographic of students I teach can have a set of challenges that make me feel a bit overwhelmed at times.  There are many of them who are exceptionally talented students, and those I appreciate as they make this vocation worth it, but a large percentage of them act like at times they simply don't care, and an unsupportive administration doesn't alleviate the issue any.  It is one reason why I am looking into getting out of here soon.  There are other reasons totally unrelated to the institution I teach at though, such as city life in general, but the work environment is definitely prominent.  In the process of this, I have a few observations I wanted to make regarding a day of volunteer service we had last week. 

One requirement of this school - which is a commendable one, I might add - is the obligation for faculty to participate in a "day of service" volunteering at a local non-profit of some nature.  Last year, as well as this year, my organization of choice was the Little Portion Farm located in the nearby community of Ellicott City.  Little Portion Farm is an institution that is operated by the local Franciscan friars, and it is a full farm that grows produce which in turn is used to supply many local shelters and other service organizations in Baltimore with fresh vegetables.  The produce is all sustainably grown and harvested, and our duties this year included harvesting carrots.  Now, farm work is something I am very familiar with, as I grew up in rural West Virginia in an agricultural environment and it was actually somewhat refreshing to do some work like that.  Myself and two other teachers worked together harvesting the carrots, and we actually also had some fun doing it, as finding one was like a sort of treasure hunt.  One of our teachers in particular that was working with us, a 9th-grade Biology teacher, was particularly entertaining as he essentially dubbed himself "Lord of the Carrots" and it made the time pass faster.  While it was exhausting (as well as messy!) work, it also was satisfying although at my age I am not as adept as I used to be at it.  The farm experience was enriching as always, but it was afterward that a concern was raised.

After our service at Little Portion Farm, we returned to the school for a meaningless session of that whole "Spark Brilliance" stuff the school is pushing, and no one really cared to be there as all of us had volunteered and we just wanted to get home, relax, and clean up.  While a group of us - which interestingly consisted of our entire department - were seated at a table in the auditorium, the CFO was sitting with us, and he decided he was going to "suggest" some things to the Theology department (Theology is not an area of his expertise, which will be illustrated shortly) and he proceeded to give his "astute" opinions on Sacraments.   Here is how that went.

The CFO, who I mentioned has no fundamental knowledge of the subject areas of the teachers and really has no leverage at all in the curriculum, was castigating us for not allowing non-Catholics to take Communion in Mass.  The first impression I got of that comment was that this man was either not a Catholic, or he was a bad one.  He failed to understand the basic concepts of Catholic Sacramental theology, and in doing so was asking us to do things that even the Pope himself has no authority to change.  In addition to an outright hostile English teacher here who hates Christianity, I am just gobstopped by the weird inconsistency regarding our school's identity as a Catholic institution, and the outright ignorance on the part of leadership in this school.  It is one reason why I am starting the process of getting out of here by next year, because this is just not normal.  So, at the risk of possibly jeopardizing my current role, I will leave it there.  I wanted to now move onto the Spring season.

Although officially Spring does not start until around the 21st of this month, the weather patterns suggest Spring is around the corner.  Yesterday, for instance, was the first time since October that I have not had to wear a coat or jacket outside, and it was a comfortable 70-ish temperature range.  This is odd considering that just last week we had snow on the ground.  But, that is March in the Northeast.  While a part of me will miss the snow days, I am also glad the weather is warming up.  It signals that this school year is in its final stretch as well, which means that with less than 30 days of actual classroom instruction the year is winding down, and I am ready for that.  While it is definitely possible to have a bit more chilly weather as winter morphs into Spring soon, I think the seasons are transforming.  Also, given that this is the third week of Lent, we are also halfway to Easter as well, and in a couple of weeks we have a much-deserved Spring break coming up that I think teachers and students alike are looking forward to.  After that, the next couple of months will be a flurry of activities which will speed the remainder of the year, and I personally have to squeeze three more chapters of my lesson plans into the context of 30 instruction days.   Fortunately, given I am teaching Morality, I have some leverage to do this, so it won't be as crazy as it sounds.  

After a short break between covering crazy freshmen and sophomores, I am back in another class to cover.  As we were talking about Spring, I wanted to just mention something that got my attention that also has a lot to do with an old pastime from my childhood.  I have mentioned before how as a kid I used to like catching all sorts of wildlife from local ponds and streams, and to be honest it still is a passion that fascinates me although it has been years since I have actually done anything with it.  A young man in Florida named Bobby recently started a YouTube channel in which he goes to various places and rescues a lot of feral aquarium fish that have been released into waterways in Florida, and the stuff he finds is actually astounding.  For a short time between the time I was 10 and 12 I also was interested in aquarium fish as well and imagined having a tank of a variety of fish - I didn't understand that some of the fish I liked were predatory though and would eat the others, but it was a nice idea. I read everything I could learn about tropical fish then, and I was able to absorb a lot.  When I watched this kid Bobby catching all these fish in Florida, it naturally piqued my interest and I have been watching his videos almost nonstop over the past week.  What astounds me is the number of rather exotic aquarium fish this kid is finding in the waterways there, as he is pulling out literally thousands of non-native specimens, including pleco catfish, bettas, and other types of fish.  In looking at the fish he catches, it makes me wonder what was in the streams near my place in Lakeland years ago when I lived there, and I could have had a tankful of very expensive fish for practically nothing.  I did, however, manage to raise some baby turtles during my years there, and wanted to talk about that for a moment. 

The most common water turtle in Florida is the red-eared slider, and they are extremely abundant.  While a full-grown slider can be quite big, most people are able to find are quarter-sized hatchlings that are often found in adjacent yards and roads near bodies of water.  The reason that is common is that turtles will often go a distance away from the water to dig burrows to lay their eggs, and thus it is easy to find hatchlings when mowing lawns or casually walking on the roads.  Back in 1993, I found two sliders that we named Scooter and Daphne, and over the next 6 years they provided us with a lot of joy as low-maintenance pets that we kept in a large tank. They also proved to have their own unique personalities, as often we would feed them live fish and it was a source of amusement to watch Scooter in particular charge after the little fish in the tank.  At one point, they also made short work of a palmetto bug (a HUGE native cockroach in Florida) that fell into the tank.  Although both turtles were roughly the size of a quarter when I originally found them, Scooter in particular had grown quite substantially by the time I eventually released them back into the wild later - he was about 7 inches across at that point.  However, Scooter and Daphne were by no means the only turtles we found, as there was a third one we had as a pet for a short time that Barbara found one day.

Florida is home to a very unique species of turtle called a softshell.  A softshell turtle looks different - it has a leathery, flexible shell and also has a long snout that prominently is featured on their faces.  They are sort of cute to look at, but they are also noted for being somewhat aggressive - a full-grown softshell can weigh up to 25 pounds, and they bite!  While not quite as aggressive as a Florida snapping turtle, they can still be a formidable critter to cross paths with if they are of a large size.   However, like the sliders, they also lay eggs in burrows away from the water, and it is therefore not uncommon to see their babies on roads and in lawns as well - the hatchlings are very small replicas of the adults, being also about the size of a quarter or half-dollar.  One day, when Barbara was walking home from the bus stop, she walked past one of the many lakes that Lakeland was named for, and when she looked down there was a tiny softshell baby.  She rescued it and brought it home, and we named him Corky - he was actually very cute, but as he grew he also began to display aggressive behavior characteristic of his breed.   As a result, we had to release him when he reached a few inches in diameter.  In addition to the sliders and Corky, there were even more fascinating turtles that I found, and these were perhaps some of the most unique of all.

I am thinking that another species of turtle I encountered in those years was the eastern mud turtle.  These turtles are very small, as an adult reaches a maximum length of 4 inches.  As a result of their small size, they also produce small babies, and I had a chance encounter with those as well.   On a sunny late spring day, I was walking the short distance from the university campus to my house, which was a routine walk every day for me.  The walk took me past what is called Lake Bonny, and it was along this stretch of road that I originally found Scooter and Daphne, my two sliders.   When I was looking down, I saw something that looked like a group of large beetles, but as I looked closer, I noted that the legs were not indicative of insects.  On picking one up, I noticed that they were very tiny hatchling turtles - each was about the size of a dime, and I had never seen anything like them before.  I gathered up perhaps 6 of them and took them home, and after some research later I found out that these were baby eastern mud turtles.  I would later find a bigger one, although this one would have a face injury that meant it was not able to live long.    Finding turtles was nothing new, as when I was a kid I had come across several box tortoises and had kept them too over the years.  However, these were some of the first aquatic turtles I had ever owned, and it was an experience.  I honestly would not mind having a turtle again once I get settled into a more larger and permanent place, and maybe I will look into that later. 

Getting back to Bobby, I found out his name is Bobby Botsford, and he is 24 years old.  He lives in south Florida, so he has a lot of abundant range to explore.  Some of the places that kid goes into though amazes me - nasty sewers, abandoned swimming pools, swamps, etc.  However, in almost every place he fishes, he always comes up with buckets of exotics, and he has at his house a pond and tank system to house them all.  He is also fun to watch too, as he gets hyper-excited over a find and also scares easily which also evokes a funny reaction.  That being said, I admire what he does, and he is doing a great service to Florida and also to those fish he rescues.  I will probably be watching more of his material too as it is kind of riveting, and perhaps that will uncover some other fascinating things about my younger self too. 

One ironic part of my fascination with collecting water fauna myself as a kid is that I never learned to swim - as a matter of fact, if water goes above my knees I get very skittish.  Even at my baptism I was a bit scared too, as I had to stand waist-high in water to be baptized then, but thankfully the water was crystal-clear and not murky, as it was also a sacramental act in which I was received into the Christian faith as well as having all my original sin removed.   In a way, my acceptance of baptism helped me to face a fear, and I did well with that.  Now, if only I had remembered to bring a fresh change of undergarments that day!  I forgot to change my undershorts, and it was at the beginning of February in the high hills of West Virginia.  So, I ended up going home with wet drawers, and I caught the flu shortly after.  Although baptism is a one-time sacramental rite, I made a mental note to myself to always be more prepared if I ever had a similar situation.  I perhaps needed to do that with my shoes digging carrots last week too, although I am wearing the same shoes today after washing them up when I got home.  This love/hate relationship with water is one thing that I think makes me have a lot in common with cats too - cats love fish, but hate water.  Maybe that is why I have always been more of a cat person as well.  

After arriving at work today, we had a bit of excitement here as well - an unhinged student was spraying pepper spray all over, and apparently it contaminated the respiratory systems of some other students.  Our particular school has had a discipline issue for a while - despite the fact we are encouraged to write up infractions, they are rarely and inconsistently enforced, and I was told by our vice-principal that essentially it was only to create a paper trail and not really effective otherwise.  As a result, in the past month two very serious incidents happened - a student assaulted a teacher, and now this whole pepper spray incident.  And, that is where I wanted to go to address something fundamental now.

Consistency is a virtue that is often overlooked, especially in broader society, these days.  If you are an employee somewhere - like say a teacher or a cop - you often have demands thrust on you, but then the powers-that-be fail to back you up when you try to actually do your job.  As a matter of fact, often if you actually do your job, you get castigated by your superiors for doing that.  But if you don't, then you are chastised for not doing it.  This is that whole "damned if you do, damned if you don't" mentality.  This seems to be prominent among the public service sector in particular, which should be the most consistent professions on the planet - professions such as nurses, teachers, firefighters, cops, and military.  These types of professions are often the most unappreciated yet the most risky professions out there, and the people who practice these professions are often targets of everyone - their superiors, parents, students, patients, etc.  Politicians try to legally castrate these individuals, and "experts" often are quick to criticize them without understanding the circumstances that surround duties in these professions.  This happened at our school recently, and a situation with a teacher I will not get into here due to professional courtesy really exposed how ineffective some school leadership really is.  When a dean of students, for instance, is more concerned about the polo shirt a kid wears rather than actual disrespectful conduct, it is a scandalous thing.  Also, when a school board or president is more concerned with statistics than they are about the actual success of their students as individuals, that tells where their priorities lie.  The revelatory observations I myself have witnessed not only in the educational sector but in the corporate world as well have forced me to conclude that there is a cancerous rot in our society that seeks to undermine common sense and basic decency.  Companies, schools, and other organizations will spend thousands of dollars on these "seminars" and self-help schlocky programs, but then they ignore the real needs.  Years ago, when I worked at Chase Home Finance in Florida, and I recall they had us do this "life coaching" class in which we attended the thing for a week.  However, when it came down to it, the executives who promoted it didn't follow through with it themselves, and six months later that company ended up laying off about 200 of us.  I see that happening at the school where I currently work at as well, as they are treating this "program" they are into almost with cult-like status, but it actually is not all that popular with either teachers or students in all honesty.   And, the bottom line is a question - are these things good investments?  I would personally say they are a waste, as there are more pressing needs that should be invested in, but often that opinion will be shrugged off as irrelevant to the agenda.  Such is life though.

I think I have pontificated enough today, and in all honesty some of what I have shared is at great risk but it is also my Constitutional right to speak freely with some stipulations.  But, duty calls now, so I need to get onto other life business.  Thanks for visiting, and will see you next time.  

Plans and New Perspectives

 I wasn't planning on writing again this soon this week, but there are some things I want to talk about.  As I am writing this, fortunately I have a good and open CWSP day today - this is the day the kids I specifically teach go to their work-study assignments for the day, and it provides a good break for the teachers to focus on lesson plans (provided administration doesn't choke us with covering other classes and endless meetings - those are the bane of teachers' existences here).  I am doing that, as I do have some grading to catch up on as well as a departmental meeting to plan for next week given I am essentially the acting department chair now here.  I am still praying for a new chapter though - getting out of this particular school now is a goal, as I am missing the area I used to live and I also just need a lot less stress in my life.  In God's timing, that will come though.  However, in the interim, I wanted to just talk about a few things that are coming up soon, as some important developments have happened for me personally.

I mentioned a good friend of mine, Stephen Missick, who has sort of given me a much-needed boot in the jaxie to revisit an old passion I had and in doing so I am formulating a project I want to work on.  Stephen and I both have worked with and advocated for the same people - indigenous Middle Eastern Christian communities - for the better of 40 years now, and in doing so I have gained a sort of unique perspective on things regarding them, how I relate to these communities, and also how to integrate them into other aspects of my own life.  The discovery in my own family tree a few years back of Armenian ancestors has also given me more of a connection with them too, and when I discovered that I was ecstatic.  Unfortunately, in the past 20 or so years life happened, and I had moved away from my earlier enthusiasm of this topic and it got a bit stale for me - not because of the people mind you, but simply because everything else seemed to take priority over it.  I still advocated where I could, and I also have never wavered in my convictions, but it was just not something that was front-and-center in my life for a long time.  I think the defining moment of that was in 1996, when after a trip to California where I had some speaking engagements and a radio interview on KBES, the Assyrian station in Ceres, CA, that is operated by my good friend Dr. Sargon Dadesho, I was hit with what was perhaps the biggest crisis and shift in my life I had experienced up to that point.  During that year, we were the victims of a scam artist who really inflicted some damage on us and almost cost me my marriage then, and I was also on the cusp of finishing college and earning my Bachelor's (which I did in April of that year), and it really sent my life into a talespin at the time - in the years following, I settled into a rather routine life that had very little change until COVID hit in 2020, and then I had to more or less start my life from scratch at that point too.   However, unlike the 1996 crisis, the challenges I faced in 2024-25 forced me to reflect somewhat on my past and I began to slowly awaken to some old convictions I had left dormant for many years, and one of those was thanks to my friend Stephen Missick.  Stephen is a guy I have talked about previously, as we seemed to share parallel paths in our work with Assyrians and others over the years.  Unlike my dormancy though, Stephen has been very busy and productive, authoring several books on the topic as well as taking advantage of the opportunities social media opened up, such as a YouTube podcast.  In recent months, he has been particularly active, and this is what challenged me - that was the proverbial "boot in the jaxie" I was talking about.  As I watched Stephen's podcast and also acquired a couple of his newest books, I began to think more about my own sentiments in this regard:  what am I doing?  A part of me was envious that Stephen was doing everything I always wanted to do, but in a good way - he has done some amazing work, and he has been busy despite a lot of personal things he too is facing.   And, over the past week, that got me thinking - how do I share my own perspectives on this topic?  And, that is where it hit me - maybe I should write a book on my own unique perspective with these communities, and perhaps in doing so I can also make some sort of impact.  And, that began a plan. 

I am no stranger to writing books - I have four of them I have written and published now, as well as my dissertation for my Ph.D., and therefore I have the procedure down to writing a book well.  However, writing a book, especially one as detailed as this topic, is not an overnight thing - a lot of research goes into an endeavor like that, as well as organizing thoughts into something coherent that flows.  Additionally, I don't want to necessarily travel a well-worn trail - Stephen, as well as people like Ron Susek and my dear friend John Booko, have already tackled some aspects of that topic and I want to make something unique that doesn't essentially piggyback or cosign on them.  In other words, it has to be something unique to my own experience too, while still maintaining a level of academic clarity.  Additionally, I want to do something other authors who addressed this have not done - I am coming at it from a more traditional Catholic anagogical perspective, given the aforementioned authors are Evangelical Protestants for the most part and thus I would agree with them on much of it, but I also see a couple of interesting details which would set what I would be doing apart too.  I am going to address those particulars briefly now, as they intersect with other areas of study I have done.

The one area of unique perspective I wanted to utilize in my own work on this topic is the field of eschatology.  This can be one of those hot-potato areas of discussion, as there are perhaps as many views on the last things as there are species of insects in the world, and to tackle this aspect is not only integral, but it takes the navigation of a seasoned sailor at times to chart those turbulent waters.  Being I am a former Pentecostal myself, I am also a former premillennialist who had some dispensationalist inclinations - it was a long and painful process to move past all that in all honesty, and it took me several years even into my Catholic faith to sort stuff out.  However, I could never be a preterist or a cessationist either, and while I am now nominally what is called an Augustinian amillennialist, I am still very futurist in the way I see prophecy and eschatology.  Fortunately, a valuable resource came across my path some years ago that was authored by a capable Catholic theologian (and also now a friend) named Desmond Birch, and it is a lengthy but very resource-rich book entitled Trial, Tribulation, and Triumph, which I think he published in the late 1990s.  When reading Desmond's book, a lot of things started to make more sense than they used to, as it turns out that much of traditional Catholic eschatology was also futurist in scope - there are things he directly references in there about what is called the Great Catholic Monarch, the eventual dissolution of Islam and mass conversions of Muslims to Christ, the foretold conversion of the majority of Jews to Christ, and a new "Era of Peace" that would be instituted for a season where one last epoch of grace would be extended before the eventual rise of the Antichrist and the Second Coming happened.  While technically being both from an Augustinian amillennial position as well as futurist, the sources noted in Desmond's book struck me with my own personal revelation - it wasn't that millennialism is necessarily wrong, but perhaps the dispensationalists and premillennialists had it inverted from its actual order.  If you read the scenario Desmond documents, what many Evangelicals call the Millennium is in reality the same thing as the "Age of Peace," the only real difference is that the latter both precedes the Second Coming, and also it may or may not be an actual one thousand years - it could only be one generation for all we know.  When I started putting that together with some other long-held convictions I had - the "Three Nations" prophecy of Isaiah 19:23-25, for instance, as well as the role of nations such as Ethiopia - they began to make more sense in lieu of the Catholic model than they ever did in a dispensationalist context.  When I actually embark on the book project, I want to delve into that more, because I believe it will cause the pieces of a very complex puzzle to fall into place better.  Having discussed some of this personally with Desmond himself via email, he found my conclusions somewhat intriguing, although he may not agree with my total conclusive views on some of my observations, and that is OK as well.  I will not, nor can I, be completely dogmatic on all this - it is the best scenario I see playing out, but maybe I could be wrong as well.  However, whether it is in relation to specifics of eschatology or not, there is one important fact about this I want to briefly discuss now.

In order to have an orthodox, sound faith as a Christian, it is important to understand things in perspective.  For our faith to make sense, there are three components we must get right on a basic level that is universally accepted by all orthodox Christians of different traditions.  The first is the beginning - while God has no source, it is understood that he is the source of all that is in the universe, and thus our faith must start with the presupposition that God is Creator, and as confessed every Sunday Mass in the Creed, "I believe in God the Father, creator of heaven and earth, and all that is visible and invisible."  The second is the ending, and this means that God's plan is restorative for both humanity and the universe in general - "He shall come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom shall have no end," as well as one of the last parts of the Creed which states "I believe the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come."  These two bookends of our faith must be affirmed in order for the middle to make sense, and what is the middle?  The middle is not an event, but a person, Jesus Christ - his redemptive act for our sins is what makes the beginning and the end make sense, and we have to get all three truths right in order for it to be orthodox.  This means that Jesus Christ came as God the Son in the form of a man, that he suffered, died, was buried, and on the third day resurrected and then ascended to the Father.  This aspect is what is known as Christocentricity, and it is integral to Christian faith.  If we get the beginning wrong then, it means that special creation didn't happen, and thus no point in belief.  If we get the ending wrong, then it means no hope for transformation.  And, if we diminish the middle, then the whole scaffold of faith collapses.  So, on a fundamental level our faith should look like this - God is the source of all things, and because of sin, the universe was corrupted.  Christ though came to restore, and the ultimate act of that restoration is his return.  What prologues that return are four things though, called the "Four Last Things" in classic Catholic eschatology - death, judgment, heaven, and hell.  There are more things that could be said too, as soteriology also plays a big part in classic eschatology, and again it all points back to Christ.  However, what I want to do in the book I want to write is somehow attach this to the restoration of the Assyrian and Coptic nations, as well as the conversion of the majority of Israel to the truth of Christ's redemption.  And, that leads me to a couple of affirmative observations I wanted to note.

None of the prophecies of the Bible are "secret knowledge" at all, and we don't have to resort to esoteric means of understanding these things.  Rather, sometimes the answer is so plain that it would bite us if it was a snake, and perhaps we choose not to see it due to its actual simplicity.  Many "mystery cults" claim "special revelation" about things, and to be honest some of what they teach is so outlandish that it makes a person wonder how on earth people could be so dumb as to follow it.  This was true from the earliest days of the Church even, when perhaps the earliest heresy of them all, gnosticism, was a problem.  Gnostics have this supposed "secret knowledge," but they also decry matter as evil while saying all "good" is spiritual.  This is nothing new, and the same garbage is being recycled even today in both religious and secular settings.  As an example of the latter, look at the concept of transgenderism - it is gnostic at its root because it denies physical reality in order to foster the illusion of a "hidden true self" that is different from the outward, and thus it is delusional.   In religious circles, you see this as well in some hyper-charismatic circles, where that annoying phrase "in the natural" is applied to anything they disagree with (despite the fact that many of their preachers are so greedy that they don't have a problem with real money - they try to "confess" it into existence all the time).  This is why with the more legalistic Evangelical, Fundamentalist, and Pentecostal groups, this false legalism of "modest dress" is enforced because it is a way of trying to slap God in the face for the beauty of his actual creation - imperfect it may be, but God still created the physical world around us, and when we call "evil" what he proclaimed as good, it is frankly insulting to God.  I will say that I believe a lot of people who do this are doing so in ignorance, but still, it not only sounds stupid but it also could be inherently dangerous if it is taken to its full extreme.  This is why it's integral we are careful with what we say. 

This is a fundamental concept that at the outset may seem a bit odd regarding a book about the modern Assyrians and Copts, but I went down that rabbit trail to say this - much of the information I would be sharing is not a huge secret, and you don't have to gain "special knowledge" to understand it either - all it takes is some diligent study to read what is already there, and then use the brain God gave you to come to your own conclusions.  That is essentially what I did - no mystery to it, and it also was not the easiest thing to do either as I had to revise a lot of my own long-held beliefs on things and that can be painful to do.  But, sometimes the things that make the most sense are not hidden, but rather are right in front of our face if we care to pay attention to them.  This is true of passages like Isaiah 19:23-25, but it is also true of more systematic theological concepts such as eschatology.  Perhaps what is needed is actually less mysticism and more common sense, and then you would see it fall into place.  And, we also cannot be completely dogmatic about the minors either, as they are subject to revision too as we learn more.  Keeping that in mind is what I want to do if I tackle a book project like that. 

Doing this book means also a radical re-thinking of passages in Scripture like Ezekiel 38-39 as well, given that many dispensationalists wrongly believe this is in reference to Russia - I came to see many years ago that Russia just does not fit the narrative there, and when you see what conclusions I come to, it makes more sense.  I think instead of constantly vilifying Russia, maybe we need to see the enemy in plain sight in the region, and in all honesty Turkey fits this more than Russia ever did.  I plan on devoting a whole chapter just to that.  Also, what about the role of radical Islamic extremism?  There are things I have seen over the years that suggest that radical Islamism will be a factor in future events, but also a diminishing one.  I know that back during the Iraq wars for instance it was very popular to associate a future Antichrist with an enigmatic figure in Islamic literature called the Mahdi - the Mahdi is seen by extremists as the ultimate Islamic ruler and warlord, and apparently to them he is so powerful that even Jesus will acknowledge him (which is nonsense, but you see where this can go, right?).  My distant cousin Perry Stone as a matter of fact wrote a whole book on that topic, and while the information is compelling, there is no indication that a future Antichrist will be a radical Muslim caliph.  On the contrary, in reading the Catholic visionaries on the topic, Islam will go into decline and many of them will convert en masse to the Church.  With the recent events that happened in Iran, many are starting to examine this topic closer.  That too may require a chapter of its own as well. 

Any rate, those are just some ideas I am floating around, and I actually have a phone call with Stephen tonight and we are going to bounce ideas off each other.  Thanks for joining me today, and will see you next time.  

Biding Time in the Hospital

 Today, I am at Medstar Good Samaritan Hospital in Baltimore, where my ex-spouse and best friend Barbara is having a kidney biopsy done.  I am sitting in the waiting room here at the hospital, as it will be a while before she is out, and after grading a few papers for my students and taking care of some other business, I thought I would utilize the time with a bit of writing today.  The last time I recall being in a hospital waiting room was also for Barbara a few years back, when I was in the waiting room at the hospital in Waynesboro, PA, when she had cataract surgery.  Barbara has had some serious health issues the past few years, and your prayers for her are greatly appreciated.  Anyway, I just had a few observations on some random topics I thought I would share while I wait. 

I am still watching what is happening with Iran, and while it is not official that the corrupt and oppressive Ayatollah regime has fallen yet, I am hopeful as are thousands of Persians throughout the world.  The crown prince, Reza Pahlavi, who is the son of the deposed Shah, has been gathering a great deal of support.  While a co-teacher of mine at the school who is also Persian feels somewhat pessimistic about the Crown Prince, noting that his political experience may lack a bit, I hastened to remind her that the Crown Prince is an intelligent man who knows his limitations, and if he were to take back the throne I would be confident that he would surround himself with capable people who would help him.  So, I have no worries or pretensions about the issue.  Also, it must be noted that a monarchy is not subject to the same rule as a republican government - while a politically capable monarch is a great benefit, it is not a necessity.  The day-to-day affairs of the political apparatus of a government is generally not micromanaged by a monarch anyway in many cases, as in most cases a prime minister or a vizier of some sort handles the administrative duties of state.  The key to Crown Prince Reza's success is choosing a capable deputy to work with him, and if he does that he is guaranteed to have a successful reign.  The same idea is also true in a republican system as well, such as the United States, where the President is not expected to be an expert on everything - that is what he has the cabinet for.  If more people were at least schooled in this fundamental detail of governance, it would also make our voting and electoral processes a more efficient system.  

At this point, the campaign in Iran is still happening, and I don't think it will be truly over until all of the Islamic Republic regime is dealt with and deposed from power.  Whether or not the Iranian people will ultimately welcome the Crown Prince back remains to be seen, as they could opt for something.  

A bit ago, Barbara came out of her procedure - she is a bit groggy but otherwise doing OK.  So, for now I will go but will come back soon.  Thanks for visiting.