Approaching my 57th Year

It is Halloween, meaning October has ended. That means November will commence in less than four hours from when I am writing this now. I am feeling exhausted at this point, having taken a mental and emotional beating over some challenges I am currently facing. I won't get into those here, as it is not my intention to do the whole HeeHaw routine of "Gloom, despair and agony on me." At some point, I will share a little bit about all that in retrospect, but my objective is to ford the rapids and get across the Rubicon first. So, this week's thoughts are extremely extemporaneous and I may take a day or two to complete the thoughts.

Writing in a sort of desert at the present time is not easy, as most days seem to run into each other with similar routines and such. I kept focused by engaging in some writing projects and taking care of some other things that have been laying dormant for some time. I find it somewhat satisfying to see some things that have been sort of dormant for years come to life.  This year alone, I have taken a lot of my ideas and turned them into seven published books, including two fiction stories. Those seven, plus the other four, brings my total published work to eleven volumes now. It was not really difficult to do most of them, as the books sort of wrote themselves on my blogs over the past 16 years. However, it is a great accomplishment to see things actually in print now, and that is a good feeling. I am planning on at least two more published books over the next couple of years. One will be a sort of big band history book that will encompass the fruit of my music collection. The second is a book that will be a synthesis of my work with Armenians, Assyrians, Copts, Maronites, and other Middle Eastern peoples, as well as my own evolving views of the role of Israel in eschatology, and how it all fits with things like the Great Catholic Monarch, the how the more military/warfare aspect of the faith comes into the picture - this is integral, given the sort of faux pacifism hawked by the current Pope and other Vatican talking-heads.  Those two books will be extensive, and they will require a number of resources I don't currently have yet as my entire original library was almost completely lost. That leads me to reiterate some future plans coming up too.

As I am approaching 57 now, it means I am allowing myself three more years to keep posting blog content. I have actually been quite prolific over the past few years, as I have been averaging between 90 and 100 pieces in one year, which is far beyond the original twelve per year I planned on posting originally when I started these blog pages. All of the years have been preserved as bound volumes, and i have essentially cut and pasted everything up to now in the new book to go to press in a couple of months. I feel personally that by the time I reach 60, I will probably more or less have everything published I need to say, and I want to focus then more on two things. First, the master life story project. That is a multi-volume, unabridged history of my family, my life in stages, and a few lessons learned over half a century of existence. I have actually already handwritten most of that out in notebooks, and just update each current year in a new book I have out and ready to work on in December.  Working on updating information every year is the reason why my blogging and journal entries slow down in December, because it generally takes me about two weeks to recap an entire year, but the details will be so meticulous that anyone reading it in posterity will not have a problem following my life from the time I was very young until I turn 60. However, I am not going to just stop at the life story - I plan on taking things to the next level at that point by maybe instituting a podcast or something to give a more multimedia dimension to my work. I may even start that sooner if perhaps I get a decent place to settle in where I have the space and facilities to work on it. And, that leads to a couple of other ideas that have surfaced over the past few days I want to explore.

I am not a huge fan of AI, and believe me, when I do utilize it I spend a lot of time cussing it out because it tends to flub details and other things when you employ it. However, despite its imperfections, AI has potential as a valuable tool if used responsibly. Over the past couple of weeks I have actually been using it to generate a self-analysis of my own writing, as well as comparing it with some of my peers. In the process, an idea came that got my attention - the possibility of an "academy" to practice teaching others. As part of the application process for seeking jobs as an adjunct instructor, one of the things I have done is to hypothetically do a sample course syllabus, and after doing one, I did some others, and I frankly like what I saw. Again, AI makes goofs, and I have to cull back over what it generates to straighten out details, but the idea is good. I am thinking about looking into the possibility of doing that, and maybe getting a sort of incorporation so I can turn it into something solid. It would be one way to generate some real-world teaching experience, and may even be a source of a little bit of extra income. One of my objectives after the first of the year then is to look into this more.  

Now, as par for the course when I am writing this stuff, I have something to soapbox about. A couple of weeks ago, the Catholic parish we used to go to, Saints Philip and James, has gone more off the deep end. Although it is supposedly a more "orthodox" parish, I found out quickly that the Dominican friars of the parish - in particular Father Michael and Father JoseMaria - are about as off-kilter as the former campus minister at the school I just finished teaching at. Despite many more pressing issues that are going on in both this city and the world in general - crime, urban blight, the slaughter of Christians in Jordan and Ethiopia, etc. - Father Michael as the "pastor" of the parish chose instead to focus his attention elsewhere. I already talked about the SSPX issue he blew up unnecessarily, but there are other things. In the wake of the Jordanian and Ethiopian Christians being slaughtered, Fr. Michael was strangely silent in the church bulletin. Instead, he focused on the fact that Pete Hegseth, who is the Secretary of War now, is scheduling the public execution of an Islamic terrorist that shot up a military base in Texas a few weeks ago.  Using Pope "Leo the Liberal's" faux justification for opposing capital punishment, Fr. Michael went off on Hegseth, Trump, and everyone else, and it was if he was defending the terrorist being executed. Looking back to when this happened in the parish bulletins, Fr. Michael didn't say a damn word about the families of the military personnel that were murdered by this Islamic psychopath, and I didn't even see anything offering prayers for their families. I also did not hear a damn thing about praying for the victims of these slaughters in Ethiopia and Jordan, and even less about the thousands being targeted in Nigeria right now, who are his Christian brothers! To be honest, it sickens me as to the sheer inconsistency and hypocrisy of Fr. Michael and so many others of these nominal shepherds, and it is one reason now why I am pretty much resolute about pursuing being received into the Armenian Church instead - I belong there anyway.  Until a cleansing takes place in the Western Church, I don't want anything else to do with it. It is time for a radical change, and that change comes now. 

I was having an online conversation with a dear friend, Catholic theologian Desmond Birch.  Desmond wrote what is perhaps one of the best resources I have ever utilized called Trial, Tribulation, and Triumph, and I have had my own copy of that for over 25 years. At any rate, when he, I, and a few other people were having an online discussion, Desmond made a very unexpected statement - he believes we are now either in, or on the threshold of, the Minor Chastisement that many Catholic saints and visionaries talked about. One aspect of that prophecy noted a couple of integral things that seem to be playing out. First, a schism is supposed to happen in the Roman Church at some point, due to the apostasy of many of its leaders.  It looks like the Church is on that trajectory now, as Leo has continued his predecessor Francis's campaign of persecuting faithful Catholics while elevating heretics. There are more things about this I could get into, but we'll save that for another time. Secondly, there is to be some sort of mass conversion of the Jews to the truth of the Gospel, and there is a stage set for that as well. Third, Islam will also experience a decline, as more and more Muslims leave that oppressive system and either seek out Catholic or Orthodox Christianity, which would actually be a return, another "grafting in" if you will, of lost sheep. My friend Stephen Missick has been saying this is happening on a greater scale than we realize, and his observations may have some merit as some recent things I read suggest that Iran is no longer a Muslim-majority nation. That sort of makes perfect sense regarding Iran, because unlike other nations surrounding it which were forcibly Arabized or Turkified, the Persian people of Iran have kept their unique heritage, and they are seeing how Islam tried to rob them and they are sick of it. If Islam declines, it will be a literal game-changer for the world map, as it means then the entire Middle East will be transformed into something resembling what it did prior to the seventh century. That future book project I mentioned is going to be addressing this more in the future, and by the time I have a working draft ready to publish of it, things could change dramatically over there.  I really do pray for that day to come, when millions of people enslaved under the demonic doctrines of Mohammed will finally be free, and then the light of Christ can reach them, reclaiming many of their families that were lost through forced conversions over centuries. It is truly an exciting time we live in. 

I think that should be enough insights for the week, so we'll see you next time.