THERE WILL BE DRAGONS

Came across a draft letter I had planned on sending to Rev. Owen Stepp, the pastor of Clairmont Presbyterian Church Decatur, Georgia after the first of two sermons I attended in a row.  The first Sunday morning service was the 3rd Easter Sunday, "Is God Personal Enough".  The second one was Mother's Day, "Once Was Blind But Now I See".  Both of these sermons were about, "CAN I GET A WITNESS?"

Instead, I sent him and Rev. Dr. Alice Rogers of  Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church located on the campus of Emory University, a secular Methodist University who's president happens to be Presbyterian,  a series of other emails instead.

Now this Sunday's sermon, to be given this morning in a couple of hours actually, "What Makes You Think God Is Human,"  had me reworking his draft all night until it became what it is today; posted to my blog.

I'm not so sure God isn't human; theirs anyway.   Just DOPE ON A ROPE; a form of manipulation and deception eliminating the possiblity of con$ent...that's legal as apposed to my addiction...crytal meths or "tina" as we in the gay community refer to it cause "SHE'S A BITCH!"...which is illegal.  Do not mistake us!
We do not glorify our addictions.  Although it may seem that way with some of our addictions.

Had to beat Rev. Stepps with my answer to this question before his sermon.

Then I will compare.

But they may not let me into their church this time because of my previous emails.

CAN I GET A WITNESS?

3rd Sunday of Easter

"But the hour is coming , and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him."

John 4: 23-24

Dear Rev. Stepp,

Sorry I hardly responded back to you when reaching out to me as I quickly passed you by as you were chatting with the gentleman who had been sitting next to me during your church service this past Sunday. Was anxiously trying to catch up with the female half of the young couple who introduced themselves to me after service. She had invited me to join the rest of them for donuts, but I tried returning the auditory aid first.

The reason I was anxious catching up with her was because of her invitation coming right after the topic of our conversation being one I chose.

As it turned out, the young man was familiar with me after all, having seen the FOX NEWS story where Bob Gary, Sr. ThD and I were interviewed by Justin Gray regarding the signs in my yard;  me hauling right off into explaining the monkeys hanging by nooses off a large cross and the meaning of "Tragic Vision of Humankind." I didn't need asking his opinion of this story and me; already knew it to be an inaccurate one.

 Then this young woman, me only assuming these two were married, hears me apply these monkeys to the increased control women have over the direction their lives took this day and age our western countries and it effect on America's ability to govern itself; the marriages of these women being part of the problem contributing to the fierce partisan politic 50/50 down the middle and the resulting Congressional stalemate.

Liberal more likely to marry Liberals and Conservatives more likely to marry Conservatives!

With roughly 80% of America's population already considered to be Christians... 

how would 100% make any difference?

Although she didn't seem too pleased hearing how I explained my radical atheism, zero as opposed to no god and "getting the god we have instead of the one we choose";  it was her displeasure being display only at the very end when I finished with the punch line...as if I had invaded her personal space.  

All I said, 

"Between your "1" god and my "0" god, the only god between me and you is yours.  Why complicate things by dragging one of my own into this?"  

Then immediately being surprised by an invitation joining the rest of them for donuts; and she turns and the two to them began walking down the center aisle.  

Wanting to believe she would not have done this had I not made too much sense.  Intellectuals within a church able genuine discussions without any use of language restraints; discussions able leading to genuinely honest outcomes would have been the answer to a prayer, or even a miracle?

But I had to return the Hearing -Enhancement System I had been using....first.  

And I did it quickly. 

But this young man with her stopped to chat with a group of other guys halfway down the aisle. And it seemed he was making no attempt acknowledging me when I  returned nor was I able getting by them fast enough.  

COCK BLOCKED?

I get enough of this from within my own community/tribe!

Then getting lost in a maze of hallways. Then asking an older man how to get to this donuts session I had been invited to join. Then hearing the donut session took place earlier that morning.

COCK BLOCKED, 

AGAIN...?!

At this point, I just gave up and left. 

But it was interesting how it came be; me sitting through that first sermon I've heard in a long time; not since  graduating high school and stopped going to church once leaving home for college.

The sign out front of your church the whole week leading up to that sermon asked a question: 

IS GOD BIG ENOUGH?

That was the answer I was seeking.  

My answer would have been and always has been:  

"It was my understanding he was huge.

SO HUGE IN FACT, 

you couldn't lose him if you wanted to!"

But the sermon, instead, ended up being about the Samaritan woman at the well and...

"IS GOD PERSONAL ENOUGH?"

Not the same thing!

And here is why?

Bastiat Blogger: Muga-Mushin, Part 2: Machiavelli's Flood, Two-Factor Theory of Emotions, Bi-Strategic Controllers, Theory of Critical Moments: Unfortunately, the situation seems to be getting much worse: average scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) screen have been steadily increasing over time (bi-strategic control tendencies are highly correlated with narcissism) and there is significant evidence that popular social networking sites can end up rewarding the core skills of the narcissist (aggressive self-promotion; tightly edited and lavishly photojournaled lifestyle descriptions designed to depict achievement, travel, wealth, popularity, and excitement; demanding a self-centered audience-performer relationship within the social network).

An equally troubling finding is that a disproportionate share of the increase in narcissism is concentrated in young girls. I am not a sociologist and tend to favor the reductionist and static view of human nature that is offered by evolutionary psychology, but I have to concede that there does appear to be a significant learned or cultural component to narcissism and that it is shaped by positive and negative feedback loops.

Findings are inconclusive and the research is very controversial, but for

argument's sake we can say this: if there is indeed a strong gender-biased

aspect to the overall trend of increasing narcissism, then this will have very

serious long-term social ramifications in regards to dating norms, divorce rates

(which will increase dramatically, thus creating an expectation of divorce among

those who are considering marriage), and rates of childbirth.

Rational men, once informed about the data, will react with misogynistic expectations:

the anticipation of narcissistic/entitlement trend tendencies among females

(which could, among other things, cause women to underestimate the probability

of divorce) could combine with the biological fact that the genders have very

different reproductive windows to create interesting, extremely cynical game

theoretical results where optimal male mating strategies are concerned.

In any case, we can safely say that having to deal with emotionally manipulative

and self-absorbed bi-strategic controllers in either a childhood or adulthood

setting can lead to terrible psychological and physiological costs in the

long-run. Remember that aggression triggered by threats to status or

self-preservation is associated with a different neural circuit than is the type

of aggression triggered by predatory instincts, with the RAGE circuit (reaction

to threats) being experienced as emotionally unpleasant while the SEEKING circuits (reaction to a hunting situation)

 is 

experienced as emotionally pleasant.

Besides being insulated

against SCARF attacks by having fall-back positions in each category, the social

operator who must navigate an emotionally treacherous world may decide to

acquire skills of offense as well as defense. The trick to dealing with certain

types of unavoidable/recurring conflict may be to be able to emotionally

reclassify the other party as a prey item rather than a threat, thus creating an

emotional landscape of pleasurable hunting and sensation-seeking rather than

competition and anger. I believe that this is best handled by what negotiation

analysts and decision theorists at Harvard have termed "BATNA dominance"

("BATNA" means "best alternative to a negotiated agreement")in several likely

conflict dimensions, but I will leave this for the next post.

Wasn't Jesus at the well first when this woman came to fetch water; a chore I'm sure having a predictable pattern for women of her time...?

And this is what I'm assuming his disciples were for.  What did Jesus know about this woman everyone else in her village didn't already know?   This woman too easily the "prey item" for someone having

 the empathy 

of 

Jesus of Nazareth.

I even explained to this young woman why I was there that morning and asked her if they heard the answer to whether "GOD WAS BIG ENOUGH"; maybe I just missed it because of my hearing impairment?  

She turns to her male companion half and asked him if he heard Rev. Stepp answered this question at any point during the service?  To which he then stands there a few quiet seconds looking as if he was giving it some thought before answering with: 

"No, don't believe he did." 

 

Of course you did.  But this isn't my job to tell them this...?  

What a witness this woman provided! What an impact her witness had on an entire village! Her message and method were dramatically different than those of the Apostle Paul in Athens but the impact was immense in the lives of the people in her village. She told them that the Messiah was personal. He knows everything! And that is the surprising good word for us today as well. He knows everything about me! Not all of us can come with the philosophical nuanced witness that Paul gave, but any of of who have met the Lord at some point came to the stunning realization that “He knows everything about me!” It is a strange moment of terror and relief isn’t it? When you realize that the jig is up? Ever since the garden of Eden humans have been trying to hide their business from God. Remember when Adam and Eve sinned what did they do? They hid themselves from God. We do the same thing in our lives. We hide because of our sin but the real question becomes “Who do we think we are hiding from?” Do we think that if we don’t confess our sin that God just won’t know about it? It is the Good News when we realize that He does know everything and that He really loves us. The real, authentic, messy, imperfect us. 

So instead, I asked this young woman, "How would you answer this question....

IS GOD BIG ENOUGH...?"

Her answer in agreement was,

"He's HUGE."

But...

 she said it with sarcasm and I took it with a smile.   

He continued standing there...lost?

I can of mine own self do nothing

{as I hear(?)see, I judge} 

 7th birthday 1969

I am not out to take their music away.  

This...

 does not have to change!

Why did the chicken cross the road?

El Spotro 

+ 

First United Methodist Church

 =

Prescott, Arkansas

Birthplace of me and my father,

Charles Densen Avery, M.D.

!They don't have to work~(6!9)~ They ha(d)ve to work!

SO DO I! Eventually!

If those wearing white (carnation) shirts are deceased 

(figuratively my mother counts too with her learned helplessness); 

what's left...

blue shirt + yellow/white striped shirt = green(?)upper half

black with white heart = black(?)lower half

"Who CARES what "Y" equals!"

"THAT "D" IN MATH!"

FUCKED! FUCKED! FUCKED!

One 1/2 gets their man; other 1/2 stops working!

LOOK AT THE RED TAIL LIGHTS!

Like a deer caught in the headlights...?

Maroon (woman?bleeding) Bell Mountains 

with

Methodist Wesley Foundation 

between

Prescott High School and University of Ark.

Summer of 1980

 

 

and my judgment is just; 

because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.

John 30:5

Under a fig tree. Star Magnolia to the left.

Spring.

 Nathanael is introduced as a friend of Philip. He is described as initially being skeptical about the Messiah coming from Nazareth, saying: "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?", but nonetheless, follows Philip's invitation. Jesus immediately appraises him as "Here is a man in whom there is no deception." Some scholars hold that Jesus' quote "Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you", is based on a Jewish figure of speech referring to studying the Torah. Nathanael recognizes Jesus as "the Son of God" and "the King of Israel". He reappears at the end of John's gospel^[21:2] as one of the disciples to whom Jesus appeared at the Sea of Galilee after the Resurrection.

The 6th-century writer in Constantinople, Theodorus Lector, averred that in about 507 Emperor Anastasius gave the body of Bartholomew to the city of Dura-Europos, which he had recently re-founded.^[12] The existence of relics at Lipari, a small island off the coast of Sicily, in the part of Italy controlled from Constantinople, was explained by Gregory of Tours^[13] by his body having miraculously washed up there: a large piece of his skin and many bones that were kept in the Cathedral of St Bartholomew the Apostle, Lipari, were translated to Beneventum in 803, and to Rome in 983 by Holy Roman Emperor Otto II, conserved at the basilica of San Bartolomeo all'Isola. In time, the church there inherited an old pagan medical centre. This association with medicine in course of time caused Bartholomew's name to become associated with medicine and hospitals.

And if there is a lesson to be learned from Apostle Paul in Athens according to Acts 17: 

I believe it would have to be "listening/heariing anything contradictory should not be a sin...?"

"Curiosity has it's own reasons for existing."

~(Albert Einstein)~

Not if we are supposed to be reasonable creatures.

"Coincidence is just God's way of remaining anonymous."
~(Albert Einstein)~

***

"The condition for a miracle is difficulty; a great miracle, impossibility."

~(Movie:FAITH LIKE POTATOES)~

As "great miracle" is an oxymoron;

difficulty then, 

is not a condition for a miracle... if possible.

Which then leaves us with this question needing to be asked:

"What, then, was the miracle if believing one to have happened or been witnessed...in other words, 

possible?

Either everything is a miracle, or nothing is a miracle.

~(Albert Einstein)~

As 

life begets death; death begets life...

then

life is the closest to a miracle the human kind will ever witness.

That we were even able, HOWEVER BRIEFLY ABEL, a witness to the mystery of it all.

Then...

 god and time ceases to exit without an observer of the human kind.

But...

 this is not the same as saying LIFE has ended altogether.

Life goes on...

Even if it be the universe itself...

a great reclaimer of it's resources.  

We definitely need to be spending less time praising God for the miracle as he not going anywhere, (if anything- the only constant in an extremely complicated mathematical equation) and more time spent on what it means to be human?  

Only then will we be able defining morality in any way making sense.

All I was ABEL witnessing in your church...

so far...

BIAS BOTH CONFIRMATION AND/OR SURVIVORS.

Clairmont Presbyterian Church

Mothers' Day

End of Sunday's Service

"What are you thankful for?"

~(Female half of middle aged couple)~  

"life...?"

~(Simply Jim)~

"OH! 

THAT'S... AH ... GOOD ... ONE!  

DON'T YOU AGREE?!"

~(Female half of middle aged couple)~

"...if her husband answered...

 didn't hear or see him try..."

~(Simply Jim)~