HUSBAND: "You are ABCDEFGHIJK."
WIFE: "Huh ???!!!"
HUSBAND: "You are adorable, beautiful, caring, delightful, elegant, fashionable, giving and hot!"
WIFE: "Thanks ! What about 'IJK'?"
HUSBAND: "I'm just kidding !"
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
CONSPIRACY THEORY: Where They Should Have Looked for Debris from Flight 370
In the Summer of 2014, our post-Communist Russian brothers could not stop their Viking blood from boiling, took Sevastopol (but not Chernobyl ! -- too bad !), tried to seize a corridor to Sevastopol down Eastern Ukraine, and accidentally shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in the process with a surface-to-air missile, killing 298. Where the plane went down was very obvious.
In December, 2014, cows in India, and cars in China, the U.S., Europe and Russia continued to so badly accelerate global warming that the world's giant weather cyclones continued to spin wider and wider, and grabbed Air Asia Flight 8501 and thew it into the sea, killing 162. Where the plane went down in the water was obvious.
Which makes us think of Maylasia Airlines Flight 370, again. Whatever happened to the debris? Where are the bodies? Nothing really ever showed up anywhere.
And, there was no news that something bad happened to explain why it went down. The Bermuda Triangle could not have done a better job in making the plane disappear.
But, espionage could have.
There are two ways espionage could have brought down the plane -- (1) murder by poison gas or decompression of all on board except two people wearing oxygen masks, one hiding in the electronics bay and one taking-over the cockpit -- a man in each place really would have been required -- just inside the Ho Chi Minh Flight Information Region on Air Route 765, over the South China Sea, followed by an intentionally-transparent fake diversion by another aircraft to the south and west, to generate confusion by disinformation; or (2) shooting-down the plane just inside the Ho Chi Minh Flight Information Region on Air Route 765, over the South China Sea, followed by an intentionally-transparent fake diversion by another aircraft to the south and west, to generate confusion by disinformation.
Only the US, Russia and China, or possibly the Israelis with US assistance, are advanced enough to pull-off either.
In Scenario (1), the plane would have been taken-over by two operatives, and then landed in a remote place in China (if it was the Chinese) or Australia (if it was us or the Israelis) or some other place (if it was the Russians) to recover something of immense tactical or strategic value in the cargo bay, while a drone or manned aircraft "replaced" Flight 370 in the sky and made sure that it was visible to Malaysian radar, and then faked satellite log-ons-and-transmissions, to employ misdirection to distract attention from the real operation.
In Scenario (2), to assassinate a tactically- or strategically-important passenger, the plane would have been shot-down over the South China Sea just inside the Ho Chi Minh Flight Information Region on Air Route 765, while a drone or manned aircraft "replaced" Flight 370 in the sky and made sure that it was visible to Malaysian radar, and then faked satellite log-ons-and-transmissions, to employ misdirection to distract attention from the real operation.
If it was Scenario (1) and if the operation was "successful" (including the "successful" murder of over 230 passengers and crew), no one will ever find any evidence unless a spy satellite or landsat-type satellite accidentally picks-up the landing place or an operative feels guilty about taking God's law so much into the hands of men, and so 'fesses-up.
If it was Scenario (2), the verification of the information is somewhere on the bottom of the South China Sea.
Interestingly, a New Zealander named Michael McKay working on the Songa-Mercur oil rig off the coast of Viet Nam claims that he actually saw the aircraft crossing the sky at a low altitude to the west of the rig, burning.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/19/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane-ground-witnesses/
While what would have been intelligence agency disinformation had us looking in the wrong place, completely, the two things put together -- McKay's sighting and what would have been fake airplane satellite transponder log-ons -- actually confirm that a very high-power intelligence agency is responsible for the destruction of Flight 370.
Shrapnel from an air-to-air missile explosion from a drone or fighter equipped for extremely long range flying would have punched a hole in a wing fuel tank, similar to the hole generated by debris at the airport which brought down the Concorde in the year 2000 ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MIhd4hVOeE
The fact that what would have been fake airplane satellite transponder log-ons going south toward Diego Garcia suggests, very, very gently, that it wasn't us here in the US who did it -- why generate a diversion that points at the correct suspect? But it's not an acquittal. We're still suspects.
So, there you have it -- as close as anyone is ever going to get to solving the mystery, and the solution isn't very pretty.
In December, 2014, cows in India, and cars in China, the U.S., Europe and Russia continued to so badly accelerate global warming that the world's giant weather cyclones continued to spin wider and wider, and grabbed Air Asia Flight 8501 and thew it into the sea, killing 162. Where the plane went down in the water was obvious.
Which makes us think of Maylasia Airlines Flight 370, again. Whatever happened to the debris? Where are the bodies? Nothing really ever showed up anywhere.
And, there was no news that something bad happened to explain why it went down. The Bermuda Triangle could not have done a better job in making the plane disappear.
But, espionage could have.
There are two ways espionage could have brought down the plane -- (1) murder by poison gas or decompression of all on board except two people wearing oxygen masks, one hiding in the electronics bay and one taking-over the cockpit -- a man in each place really would have been required -- just inside the Ho Chi Minh Flight Information Region on Air Route 765, over the South China Sea, followed by an intentionally-transparent fake diversion by another aircraft to the south and west, to generate confusion by disinformation; or (2) shooting-down the plane just inside the Ho Chi Minh Flight Information Region on Air Route 765, over the South China Sea, followed by an intentionally-transparent fake diversion by another aircraft to the south and west, to generate confusion by disinformation.
Only the US, Russia and China, or possibly the Israelis with US assistance, are advanced enough to pull-off either.
In Scenario (1), the plane would have been taken-over by two operatives, and then landed in a remote place in China (if it was the Chinese) or Australia (if it was us or the Israelis) or some other place (if it was the Russians) to recover something of immense tactical or strategic value in the cargo bay, while a drone or manned aircraft "replaced" Flight 370 in the sky and made sure that it was visible to Malaysian radar, and then faked satellite log-ons-and-transmissions, to employ misdirection to distract attention from the real operation.
In Scenario (2), to assassinate a tactically- or strategically-important passenger, the plane would have been shot-down over the South China Sea just inside the Ho Chi Minh Flight Information Region on Air Route 765, while a drone or manned aircraft "replaced" Flight 370 in the sky and made sure that it was visible to Malaysian radar, and then faked satellite log-ons-and-transmissions, to employ misdirection to distract attention from the real operation.
If it was Scenario (1) and if the operation was "successful" (including the "successful" murder of over 230 passengers and crew), no one will ever find any evidence unless a spy satellite or landsat-type satellite accidentally picks-up the landing place or an operative feels guilty about taking God's law so much into the hands of men, and so 'fesses-up.
If it was Scenario (2), the verification of the information is somewhere on the bottom of the South China Sea.
Interestingly, a New Zealander named Michael McKay working on the Songa-Mercur oil rig off the coast of Viet Nam claims that he actually saw the aircraft crossing the sky at a low altitude to the west of the rig, burning.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/19/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane-ground-witnesses/
While what would have been intelligence agency disinformation had us looking in the wrong place, completely, the two things put together -- McKay's sighting and what would have been fake airplane satellite transponder log-ons -- actually confirm that a very high-power intelligence agency is responsible for the destruction of Flight 370.
Shrapnel from an air-to-air missile explosion from a drone or fighter equipped for extremely long range flying would have punched a hole in a wing fuel tank, similar to the hole generated by debris at the airport which brought down the Concorde in the year 2000 ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MIhd4hVOeE
The fact that what would have been fake airplane satellite transponder log-ons going south toward Diego Garcia suggests, very, very gently, that it wasn't us here in the US who did it -- why generate a diversion that points at the correct suspect? But it's not an acquittal. We're still suspects.
So, there you have it -- as close as anyone is ever going to get to solving the mystery, and the solution isn't very pretty.
Friday, December 26, 2014
SIN IN THE CHURCH: Anti-semitism at Christmas Midnight Mass
In the brief blurb on myself for this website, I say, "I try to be positive."
However, sometimes the administrators of our Church fail so gigantically that we absolutely, positively have to go after them, "hammer and tongs," just for the sake of God's Church.
In the past, I have publicly blasted the bishops and priests on the Church for running a 50-year-long operation in which bishops, with written recommendations, would send priests known to the bishops to be highly promiscuous boy-grabbing gay wolves to unwary parishes where, again and again and again, they would grab and seduce new young male victims and engage in anal and oral copulation with them.
Well, it's time to go after them for something else.
By focusing-in on the sins of Peter, the New Testament prepares us for the fact that the leaders of God's Church would be the same kind of evil morons who end up running everything else.
But sometimes these guys just make you want to scream.
I am Roman Catholic, of course, but my wife is Jewish.
Years ago, before the Church dissolved St. Gregory's Parish in Magnolia, New Jersey, the pastor Msgr. Edward Korda, knowing that I have a Jewish wife, put his hand on my shoulder one Sunday as we prepared for Sunday Mass in the sacristy (where I was his lector) and came close to me and in a furtive manner and with a quiet voice he said something like, "Do you think that the Church can survive with so many damn Jews running so many of our social institutions?"
I was astonished. I thought, "This guy left his brains back in Nazi Germany!"
When the Church is even a little bit anti-semitic, it connects itself to this achievement of the European Christians who went along with the Nazi program ...
I answered, "Monsignor, do you really think that I am going to conspire with you against my Jewish wife, her Jewish family, and the Jewish community? Nope. After Mass, I'm going home and tell her what you just said to me!"
Well, it just happened again.
At midnight Mass on Christmas, 2014, Fr. Mark Cavagnaro, pastor of Our Lady of Hope Church in Blackwood, New Jersey, gave a homily on how the coming of Jesus in the humble context of a manger in the rural outskirts of Bethlehem is analogous to the marvelous Eucharist in the humble appearances of a little wafer of bread and wine.
He introduced that subject with what I call "a two-gift skit." In his little one-man "skit," he had two wrapped "gifts." One was a beautifully wrapped box, that contained only a pencil. The other was a cloth bag, that contained a marvelous gold watch.
Here is how his "skit" began, as best as I can describe it ...
"Look!" he said, "Here are two gifts just given to me, in this box and in this bag! Let me open them, right here, at Mass! First, I have this beautifully-wrapped box. The wrapping paper is wonderful. In fact, I think that the colors of the wrapping paper on the box look like the colors of Hannukah!"
And then he opened the box and what was inside? "A pencil," he said with a disappointed tone of voice as he held up the pencil.
In other words, Jews are cheap, and he got the pencil from a cheap Jew. I and my wife and our children all heard it and apprehended his meaning. I thought, "What???!!! WHAT???!!! Has he flipped???!!! What is he doing, inserting anti-semitism into a Christmas homily???!!!"
Here is the kicker: As Fr. Cavagnaro publicly implicitly reviled Jews to a church packed with about 1,000 Catholics attending Mass, apparently for no good reason except the pleasure it gave him to cultivate hatred for Jews, about 20 yards to his left my Jewish wife was sitting in the church choir, where she had been working as one of Fr. Cavagnaro's singers at Mass for a year.
She has been doing this because she loves God, she loves me, and she loves people.
In addition to singing at Mass once a week, my wife attends choir practice on Monday nights, and practices virtually every other night of the week.
My Jewish wife's Catholic family and a Catholic daughter-in-law were all sitting in the pews, watching proudly as she sang her heart out for Fr. Cavagnaro.
And then they heard Fr. Cavagnaro, like some Nazi supporter, sneeringly implicitly revile her and her Judaism out of the blue!
I felt like saying, "What? Priests aren't emptying the churches out fast enough for you with homosexual assaults on boys? You want to speed up the exodus even faster with anti-semitism?"
God save us and the Church from these morons leading it!
However, sometimes the administrators of our Church fail so gigantically that we absolutely, positively have to go after them, "hammer and tongs," just for the sake of God's Church.
In the past, I have publicly blasted the bishops and priests on the Church for running a 50-year-long operation in which bishops, with written recommendations, would send priests known to the bishops to be highly promiscuous boy-grabbing gay wolves to unwary parishes where, again and again and again, they would grab and seduce new young male victims and engage in anal and oral copulation with them.
Well, it's time to go after them for something else.
By focusing-in on the sins of Peter, the New Testament prepares us for the fact that the leaders of God's Church would be the same kind of evil morons who end up running everything else.
But sometimes these guys just make you want to scream.
I am Roman Catholic, of course, but my wife is Jewish.
Years ago, before the Church dissolved St. Gregory's Parish in Magnolia, New Jersey, the pastor Msgr. Edward Korda, knowing that I have a Jewish wife, put his hand on my shoulder one Sunday as we prepared for Sunday Mass in the sacristy (where I was his lector) and came close to me and in a furtive manner and with a quiet voice he said something like, "Do you think that the Church can survive with so many damn Jews running so many of our social institutions?"
I was astonished. I thought, "This guy left his brains back in Nazi Germany!"
When the Church is even a little bit anti-semitic, it connects itself to this achievement of the European Christians who went along with the Nazi program ...
I answered, "Monsignor, do you really think that I am going to conspire with you against my Jewish wife, her Jewish family, and the Jewish community? Nope. After Mass, I'm going home and tell her what you just said to me!"
Well, it just happened again.
At midnight Mass on Christmas, 2014, Fr. Mark Cavagnaro, pastor of Our Lady of Hope Church in Blackwood, New Jersey, gave a homily on how the coming of Jesus in the humble context of a manger in the rural outskirts of Bethlehem is analogous to the marvelous Eucharist in the humble appearances of a little wafer of bread and wine.
He introduced that subject with what I call "a two-gift skit." In his little one-man "skit," he had two wrapped "gifts." One was a beautifully wrapped box, that contained only a pencil. The other was a cloth bag, that contained a marvelous gold watch.
Here is how his "skit" began, as best as I can describe it ...
"Look!" he said, "Here are two gifts just given to me, in this box and in this bag! Let me open them, right here, at Mass! First, I have this beautifully-wrapped box. The wrapping paper is wonderful. In fact, I think that the colors of the wrapping paper on the box look like the colors of Hannukah!"
And then he opened the box and what was inside? "A pencil," he said with a disappointed tone of voice as he held up the pencil.
In other words, Jews are cheap, and he got the pencil from a cheap Jew. I and my wife and our children all heard it and apprehended his meaning. I thought, "What???!!! WHAT???!!! Has he flipped???!!! What is he doing, inserting anti-semitism into a Christmas homily???!!!"
Here is the kicker: As Fr. Cavagnaro publicly implicitly reviled Jews to a church packed with about 1,000 Catholics attending Mass, apparently for no good reason except the pleasure it gave him to cultivate hatred for Jews, about 20 yards to his left my Jewish wife was sitting in the church choir, where she had been working as one of Fr. Cavagnaro's singers at Mass for a year.
She has been doing this because she loves God, she loves me, and she loves people.
In addition to singing at Mass once a week, my wife attends choir practice on Monday nights, and practices virtually every other night of the week.
My Jewish wife's Catholic family and a Catholic daughter-in-law were all sitting in the pews, watching proudly as she sang her heart out for Fr. Cavagnaro.
And then they heard Fr. Cavagnaro, like some Nazi supporter, sneeringly implicitly revile her and her Judaism out of the blue!
I felt like saying, "What? Priests aren't emptying the churches out fast enough for you with homosexual assaults on boys? You want to speed up the exodus even faster with anti-semitism?"
God save us and the Church from these morons leading it!
Wednesday, December 24, 2014
HUMOR: Comments Between a Literature/Philosophy Major and a Music/Philosophy Major
An actual conversation ...
Music/Philosphy Major: What do you think we'll be doing after graduation?
Literature/Philosophy Major: We'll be flipping burgers at McDonald's, and we'll be saying to customers things like, "Are these really french fries, or just a thought in the mind of God?"
Music/Philosphy Major: What do you think we'll be doing after graduation?
Literature/Philosophy Major: We'll be flipping burgers at McDonald's, and we'll be saying to customers things like, "Are these really french fries, or just a thought in the mind of God?"
Friday, December 19, 2014
HUMOR: For Adults Only, But Funny
I was just over at the supermarket getting some groceries. One of things I was supposed to get was personal lubricant. I searched and searched and searched, but I just couldn't find it. So, I went to the pharmacy section of the supermarket. Behind the counter was a cute Asian girl who looked like she was 18.
"Hi," she cheerfully volunteered. "This is my first time here! Can I help you?"
"I'm looking for personal lubricant," I responded.
"What's that for?" she asked with a puzzled look.
"It's for fixing squeaky doorknobs," I answered.
"Cute," the lady pharmacist in the rear called out. She whispered in the ear of the Asian girl, who turned beet red. "I'm sorry," she apologized to me, smiling nervously.
The pharmacist directed me to one of the aisles. I finally found it. I went back to the pharmacy and said, "If anyone else is looking for it, it's over by the shoe polish."
"Hi," she cheerfully volunteered. "This is my first time here! Can I help you?"
"I'm looking for personal lubricant," I responded.
"What's that for?" she asked with a puzzled look.
"It's for fixing squeaky doorknobs," I answered.
"Cute," the lady pharmacist in the rear called out. She whispered in the ear of the Asian girl, who turned beet red. "I'm sorry," she apologized to me, smiling nervously.
The pharmacist directed me to one of the aisles. I finally found it. I went back to the pharmacy and said, "If anyone else is looking for it, it's over by the shoe polish."
HUMOR: Math That Makes You Hungry
To discover the volume of a round, flat pie having a diameter of 2(Z) inches and a thickness of A inches, multiply pi times the square of the radius times the heighth, or
(pi)(z)(z)(a)
(pi)(z)(z)(a)
Thursday, December 18, 2014
MORALITY: One More Note on the World's Most Interesting Subject ...
No, not sex, but rather "Who is going to Hell?" ...
Last night, at the gym, I saw one of the judges in our county. He was on a stationary bike, reading a paper, so I figured he could talk.
"Your Honor," I smiled warmly as I shook his hand, "How are you doing?"
We talked for a few minutes. We got around to the subject of the article you see below, entitled "A Sacred Enterprise, and a Glimpse of Evil."
He asked, "How do you feel about the brother who denied the sister the grave site she wanted next to her beloved mother, and who kept her gravestone blank?"
I answered, "I cited Proverbs 1:26. In effect it portrays God as laughing at some of the damned as they entered Hell. Perfect justice."
The judge responded with a classic answer: Proverbs is Old Testament. The Old Testament thinking was defective. The New Testament love of Christ perfected the Old Testament mistakes. "What do you think?"
I said, "This is what I think: If you do this to the New Testament salvation paid for by Christ's torture and death" -- and I turned and spat derisively to the floor -- "then you have to face the brutal justice of the Old Testament God."
The judge looked upset, and said, "Listen, I have to get back to my paper." And we parted.
Last night, at the gym, I saw one of the judges in our county. He was on a stationary bike, reading a paper, so I figured he could talk.
"Your Honor," I smiled warmly as I shook his hand, "How are you doing?"
We talked for a few minutes. We got around to the subject of the article you see below, entitled "A Sacred Enterprise, and a Glimpse of Evil."
He asked, "How do you feel about the brother who denied the sister the grave site she wanted next to her beloved mother, and who kept her gravestone blank?"
I answered, "I cited Proverbs 1:26. In effect it portrays God as laughing at some of the damned as they entered Hell. Perfect justice."
The judge responded with a classic answer: Proverbs is Old Testament. The Old Testament thinking was defective. The New Testament love of Christ perfected the Old Testament mistakes. "What do you think?"
I said, "This is what I think: If you do this to the New Testament salvation paid for by Christ's torture and death" -- and I turned and spat derisively to the floor -- "then you have to face the brutal justice of the Old Testament God."
The judge looked upset, and said, "Listen, I have to get back to my paper." And we parted.
MORALITY: I Just Remembered One More Story I Heard About Hell ...
I thought that the following which I heard from a minister friend was a very cute story...
It is the end of time. Mankind is standing before the throne of God, and the General Judgment, in which the unforgiven sins of all are made known to all, has occurred.
God divides the people into two groups, the sheeps and the goats.
God says, "Okay, friends, before I render judgment, one last question. I want to see a show of hands. Who here thinks that the sinful group on my right should be damned by me to eternal Hell fire?"
All hands go up. Literally, everyone's.
God answers, "Okay, here is what I want you to do: Everyone on the left, go to the right. Everyone on the right, go left."
It is the end of time. Mankind is standing before the throne of God, and the General Judgment, in which the unforgiven sins of all are made known to all, has occurred.
God divides the people into two groups, the sheeps and the goats.
God says, "Okay, friends, before I render judgment, one last question. I want to see a show of hands. Who here thinks that the sinful group on my right should be damned by me to eternal Hell fire?"
All hands go up. Literally, everyone's.
God answers, "Okay, here is what I want you to do: Everyone on the left, go to the right. Everyone on the right, go left."
MORALITY: One-Half of 1% Say, "Yes! I Am Hell-Bound!"
The surveys of who thinks that they are going to Heaven and who thinks that they are going to Hell are always very interesting.
Very consistently, about two-thirds of all people say, "Yes! I am going to Heaven!"
Very consistently, about one-half of 1% of of all people say, "Yes! I am going to Hell!"
The figures make sense. Evil is thoroughly self-justifying. That is why it is evil.
Years ago, as I grew up, born-againers became a national religious phenomenon. People would walk up to me and ask, "Do you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior and have a personal relationship with God?"
It occurred to me, after a while, that among other things the question virtually always meant, "I'm saved. Are you?"
I was startled by this thought. "They KNOW that they are 'saved'??? Is it TRUE that that is what they think???"
So, when I was approached and asked the born-againer question, I would respond with a question, "Do you believe that you are saved?"
Every single time, the answer was, "Of course!"
A few added something like, "If you have doubts, that is a sign that you may be in trouble! Watch out!"
The reason why I was startled at the thought is that I had always been a Catholic Bible reader, and I knew that in Jesus' Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, Luke 18:9-14, Jesus makes it clear that the one who is obviously certain that he is Heaven-bound is Hell-bound, and that the one who is obviously pretty sure that he is Hell-bound -- and so on his knees, shaking -- is Heaven-bound.
Read the Parable and judge for yourself. Who, between the two, is going to be the born-againer asking the question?
So, in those national surveys, maybe, just maybe, I'll seek out the company of the one-half of 1% at the end of time!!!
I have a feeling that the way to Heaven isn't just narrow, but low: Only those who are on their knees, shaking with fear, can fit in!!!
Very consistently, about two-thirds of all people say, "Yes! I am going to Heaven!"
Very consistently, about one-half of 1% of of all people say, "Yes! I am going to Hell!"
The figures make sense. Evil is thoroughly self-justifying. That is why it is evil.
Years ago, as I grew up, born-againers became a national religious phenomenon. People would walk up to me and ask, "Do you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior and have a personal relationship with God?"
It occurred to me, after a while, that among other things the question virtually always meant, "I'm saved. Are you?"
I was startled by this thought. "They KNOW that they are 'saved'??? Is it TRUE that that is what they think???"
So, when I was approached and asked the born-againer question, I would respond with a question, "Do you believe that you are saved?"
Every single time, the answer was, "Of course!"
A few added something like, "If you have doubts, that is a sign that you may be in trouble! Watch out!"
The reason why I was startled at the thought is that I had always been a Catholic Bible reader, and I knew that in Jesus' Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, Luke 18:9-14, Jesus makes it clear that the one who is obviously certain that he is Heaven-bound is Hell-bound, and that the one who is obviously pretty sure that he is Hell-bound -- and so on his knees, shaking -- is Heaven-bound.
Read the Parable and judge for yourself. Who, between the two, is going to be the born-againer asking the question?
So, in those national surveys, maybe, just maybe, I'll seek out the company of the one-half of 1% at the end of time!!!
I have a feeling that the way to Heaven isn't just narrow, but low: Only those who are on their knees, shaking with fear, can fit in!!!
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
MORALITY: A Sacred Enterprise, and Then a Glimpse of Evil
For years I had a client who smoked like a chimney. Of course, she got lung cancer. Bad, inoperable lung cancer. I visited her in the hospital and later at the hospice both to do law work for her to prepare her Estate for her death, and also to simply visit her.
Because I am a Catholic, I also try to prepare the soul to see God and be judged by God. So, because the next-of-kin was a brother who hated her and for whom she had great hatred, I said, "You are about to see God. There is one thing, above all other things, which God demands -- you can't go to Him having hatred for anyone. If you can't do that one simple thing, you lose. You're damned. You'll burn.
"So, I urge you to write a letter to him, not forgiving him, but humbly begging him for his forgiveness!" She did so. It was a well-done humble act.
Then I called a Catholic priest, who heard her final confession and gave her last rites.
On May 1, 2008, the hospice taking care of her until she died called and said, "She's dying!"
I rushed over to the hospice and ran to her bedside, only to discover that I had missed the moment of dying by seconds.
Because there were no doctors in attendance and no other visitors -- her friends were freeloaders who had no use for her dead -- the nursing staff asked me to declare her time of death. I checked her pulse on her carotid artery and on her wrist, and noted that she showed no signs of life at all, and declared her dead that day at 11:00 a.m., and that is what was entered on her death certificate -- a sacred enterprise for an old friend.
And what happened with the hate-filled brother?
It is a classic story of evil possessing a soul. I forwarded her letter confessing her fault and begging him for forgiveness to his lawyer, who forwarded it to him.
He responded, in effect, by "pissing on her grave"! He had legal control over the family grave plot. He made sure that she was not buried next to the mother she loved, and that her grave stone was left blank. True story!
If I were God, standing there -- and believe me, God was standing there -- I would have smiled at her brother, and said to him, "All she did is come to you on her knees, confess to you, and beg forgiveness, and you responded by, in a way, abusing her corpse. You may as well have pissed on her grave, as far as I am concerned. Please explain to me why I should not damn you to Hell fire."
At a few points in the Bible, God says some downright shocking things. The fiercest expession in this direction is Proverbs 1:26: "I, in my turn, will laugh at your doom; I will mock you when terror [at your damnation] overtakes you!"
Whew! It is for situations like I just described that God, in His perfect justice, reserves such language!
Because I am a Catholic, I also try to prepare the soul to see God and be judged by God. So, because the next-of-kin was a brother who hated her and for whom she had great hatred, I said, "You are about to see God. There is one thing, above all other things, which God demands -- you can't go to Him having hatred for anyone. If you can't do that one simple thing, you lose. You're damned. You'll burn.
"So, I urge you to write a letter to him, not forgiving him, but humbly begging him for his forgiveness!" She did so. It was a well-done humble act.
Then I called a Catholic priest, who heard her final confession and gave her last rites.
On May 1, 2008, the hospice taking care of her until she died called and said, "She's dying!"
I rushed over to the hospice and ran to her bedside, only to discover that I had missed the moment of dying by seconds.
Because there were no doctors in attendance and no other visitors -- her friends were freeloaders who had no use for her dead -- the nursing staff asked me to declare her time of death. I checked her pulse on her carotid artery and on her wrist, and noted that she showed no signs of life at all, and declared her dead that day at 11:00 a.m., and that is what was entered on her death certificate -- a sacred enterprise for an old friend.
And what happened with the hate-filled brother?
It is a classic story of evil possessing a soul. I forwarded her letter confessing her fault and begging him for forgiveness to his lawyer, who forwarded it to him.
He responded, in effect, by "pissing on her grave"! He had legal control over the family grave plot. He made sure that she was not buried next to the mother she loved, and that her grave stone was left blank. True story!
If I were God, standing there -- and believe me, God was standing there -- I would have smiled at her brother, and said to him, "All she did is come to you on her knees, confess to you, and beg forgiveness, and you responded by, in a way, abusing her corpse. You may as well have pissed on her grave, as far as I am concerned. Please explain to me why I should not damn you to Hell fire."
At a few points in the Bible, God says some downright shocking things. The fiercest expession in this direction is Proverbs 1:26: "I, in my turn, will laugh at your doom; I will mock you when terror [at your damnation] overtakes you!"
Whew! It is for situations like I just described that God, in His perfect justice, reserves such language!
HUMOR: I Like These Two ...
"If airplane black boxes are so indestructible, why don't they make the rest of the airplane out of the same stuff?"
and
"If flying is so safe, why are airports called 'terminals'?"
and
"If flying is so safe, why are airports called 'terminals'?"
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
THEOLOGY: What Does the Feast of the Immaculate Conception Celebrate ? Part 1
The Feast of the Immaculate Conception celebrates the miraculous conception of Jesus in the womb of Mary, right?
Wrong. Dead wrong.
In fact, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, on December 8 of every year, celebrates the miraculous conception of Mary in the womb of her mother, whose name has come down to us as Anna, as a result of the perfectly natural combining of the seed of Anna and that of her father, whose name has come down to us as Joachim (which my son Joshua assures me is correctly pronounced "Wah-KEEM," not "Joe-AH-kim," something which I won't agree with until he agrees with me on a debated point in astronomy). (Some Catholics and Orthodox Christians like to also imagine that Mary was conceived without the perfectly natural sexual desire, grunting, groaning and sweat of really good sex, but it seems to me that the exact opposite should be true, theologically. If Mary was well-conceived, then the marital bed of her parents was a very wonderful place -- because marital sex is ordained by God to be wonderful -- and a fun place, because marital sex is ordained by God to be fun, not a polite, robotic exercise in inconvenient physical activity by grim people who would rather be somewhere else praying.)
But, if the conception of Mary, unlike that of Jesus, was the result of the perfectly-natural marital act of Mary's parents, just like the conception of you and me, why do we say that it was "miraculous"?
Simple (or not-so-simple, depending on one's perspective): Something happened in Anna's womb which was overtly invisible. At the moment that Joachim's sperm and Anna's ovum joyously zinged together in Anna's Fallopian Tubes after a really neat, really wild, very satisfying sexual encounter, for the first time in the history of our species, since our hominid ancestors were ensouled by the ruwach or breath of God, the resulting zygote, or fertilized egg, comprising "Mary daughter of Joachim" was not "innately damnable" -- not stained with the stain of Original Sin -- and, more importantly, neither were the resulting ova in Mary's ovaries, and the womb and body that would hold a fertilized ovum, so that perfect God could later touch Mary's physical reality at the time of Jesus' conception.
To understand what that means, we have to understand "Original Sin."
That is what the Feast of the Immaculate Conception is about -- Original Sin, and Mary being free of it.
And here we crash into a problem. I'll be exaggerating somewhat to get to the point fast, here.
Most devout Christians still think that Original Sin was an event in history -- that it was something very bad, probably having to do with sex, that two perfect, naked people without belly buttons did while they were living in a perfect place in which mosquitoes did not bite them, which a really nasty God responded to by yanking them out of their perfect place and ironically converting them and their 100-billion-or-so lineal descendants into sin-loving dissolutes deserving nothing but Hell fire, so that God, having shot His Own creative efforts in the foot this way, had to engage in emergency saving action by having His Own beloved Son tortured and then murdered horribly.
Everything about that exaggerated-and-therefore-easier-to-comprehend restatement of the Original Sin teaching is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. And that is why so few people understand anything about Original Sin or about Mary's Immaculate Conception.
Before I start discussing what is wrong with that common understanding of Original Sin set forth above, let me attempt to portray, here, what Original Sin actually is.
God is "ineffable." That means that our minds can't get from here, where we are, to "up there," where God is. That makes sense. That is why, contrary to any mistaken impression you may have gotten from Aquinas, God can not be "deduced" with mathematical 1+1=2 - style certainty, so that He has to be "induced" with imperfect, possibly-incorrect reasoning. (Aquinas' own conclusions comprise exceptions to his own logical process -- for example, if order makes it necessary that there be an "orderer," then because order is in-and-of God, He too must have an "orderer," except that He doesn't! That problem, which is innate to each of Aquinas' "proofs" of God, generates good doubts about our ability to "prove" God.)
Because God is "ineffable," we can't quite mentally encompass the perfections of God -- God's perfect Sovereignty, God's perfect Goodness, and God's perfect Justice.
The best way to understand those three things is to view them as "things that are wildly true about God."
It is wildly true that God is "sovereign" -- meaning, He, our One God somehow eternally comprised of three divine Persons, is The Boss in all conceivable ways.
Because He, The Boss, was also overflowing with love, He decided to create us, to love and be loved by Him.
But because He is barred, by His Own sovereignty, from creating co-equal competitor Gods, it was "against God-ness" for us to be God's equal. We are required, by "God-ness," to be less than God.
This status creates what Middle Ages theologians referred to as "the contingency problem." We are not self-causing; we are reliant on God for our continued existence. To put it differently, we who are terrified of destruction and death are reliant on One Who is "not us" to keep us in existence. This causes an insecurity and panic in our beings which we try to fix by making our own rules -- by sin.
So, we are "sin machines."
The problem is profound. It isn't just "bad potential" -- a "probability" that we will sin.
It means that, without grace, we will make "the bad decision" every single time when we are confronted with moral choices. It is hard for us to see this and to believe it, because we have grace affecting us, right now.
This is what Jeremiah 17:9 means (in the King James translation set forth here) when it describes the heart of Man as "deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked."
The world seems bad now, but it's actually very good compared to what it would be without grace. Without grace, we humans would be living in Bedlam.
Without grace, we humans would literally be living in a Hell on Earth.
Soooooooooooooo, because this is what Ungraced Man is like, and because this is what Graced Man is like whenever one of us makes the decision to set aside grace and lick the Lollipop of Life, God, who is perfectly Good, won't touch us.
Now, when He created us, perfectly Sovereign God was fully aware that necessarily-lesser created Man would have this problem innately, in his flesh, and that this made us untouchable and innately unlovable as far as God was concerned.
So, even before our creation God perfectly understood the need for grace. In other words, He was aware that the cake had to be baked with a special ingredient.
But then another problem arises from God being perfectly Just.
In a sense, the perfect Justice within God screams an objection to the prospect of giving Ungraced Man grace. "NO!" it yells. "NO GRACE FOR THESE DISGUSTING PIGS! GRACE WOULD BE 'PENNIES FROM HEAVEN'! A 'FREE LUNCH'! THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A 'FREE LUNCH'! SOMEONE HAS GOT TO PAY FOR THIS GRACE, WHICH AMOUNTS TO A FREE RIGHT TO SHAKE HANDS WITH PERFECT SOVEREIGN GOD!"
And at some point within the Divine Reality, the Person of Almighty God Whom we call "God's only beloved Son" raised-up His hand, and said, "I will! I'll pay the price for grace!"
And God the Father said, "I lovingly accept this loving gift of My beloved Son, and so I offer My Son up to suffer horribly to pay for grace."
And so even before we were created, God envisioned that grace paid for by the horrible torture and death of God's Own beloved Son was the final ingredient.
And that that same grace would make Mary the one chosen to be mother of God the Son immaculate, so that the perfection of God could touch her, join to her flesh, and be carried by her to birth, so that he could be born, and then tortured horribly and murdered, to purchase grace for mankind from God's perfect Justice.
So, when Christ, on the cross gasped, "It is finished," and He died, what did He mean?
What was finished?
Answer: Our creation!
He had paid for, and supplied, the final ingredient, grace, which issued from the cross from that moment into the past, the present and the future.
So, "Original Sin" isn't "something very bad, probably having to do with sex, that two perfect, naked people without belly buttons did while they were living in a perfect place in which mosquitoes did not bite them, which a really nasty God responded to by yanking them out of their perfect place and ironically converting them and their 100-billion-or-so lineal descendants into sin-loving dissolutes deserving nothing but Hell fire, so that God, having shot His Own creative efforts in the foot this way, had to engage in emergency saving action by having His Own beloved Son tortured and then murdered horribly."
Instead, Original Sin is "the sinfulness within our flesh from our origins" -- innate to the flesh of Man who had to be less than and reliant upon perfectly Sovereign God -- so that we innately suffered from alienation from perfectly Good God, so that in His eyes we were innately "desperately wicked" and so unlovable, so that grace was necessary as a final ingredient.
So, what is all of that Adam-and-Eve stuff in the Bible?
It is a Dr.-Seuss-level fictional picture of the complex theological reality of Original Sin generated by God to explain the problem to us.
How many readers of this blog will go to their significant others after reading this, smile, and say, "WAIT TILL I EXPLAIN TO YOU WHAT 'ORIGINAL SIN' IS !!!" ?
Very few.
Instead you'll stick with that story about "something very bad, probably having to do with sex, that two perfect, naked people without belly buttons did while they were living in a perfect place in which mosquitoes did not bite them, which a really nasty God responded to by yanking them out of their perfect place and ironically converting them and their 100-billion-or-so lineal descendants into sin-loving dissolutes deserving nothing but Hell fire, so that God, having shot His Own creative efforts in the foot this way, had to engage in emergency saving action by having His Own beloved Son tortured and then murdered horribly."
The bottom line, here: The Feast of the Immaculate Conception celebrates the special grace of perfection so that Mary was somehow, by grace, preserved even from the risk of setting aside grace and so making herself loathsome to -- and untouchable by -- God, so that God could enter her, touch and join to the ovum from one of her ovaries that became Christ, fertilize it, and then implant in the wall of her uterus, where Mary carried it until Jesus was born in the normal wonderful gooey human fashion, so that He, supremely, was, at all moments in time, both God and also One of Us.
Okay. Time to press the "Publish" button and see if I get into trouble.
A lot of radical Mariologists won't like that "gooey" business.
Wrong. Dead wrong.
In fact, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, on December 8 of every year, celebrates the miraculous conception of Mary in the womb of her mother, whose name has come down to us as Anna, as a result of the perfectly natural combining of the seed of Anna and that of her father, whose name has come down to us as Joachim (which my son Joshua assures me is correctly pronounced "Wah-KEEM," not "Joe-AH-kim," something which I won't agree with until he agrees with me on a debated point in astronomy). (Some Catholics and Orthodox Christians like to also imagine that Mary was conceived without the perfectly natural sexual desire, grunting, groaning and sweat of really good sex, but it seems to me that the exact opposite should be true, theologically. If Mary was well-conceived, then the marital bed of her parents was a very wonderful place -- because marital sex is ordained by God to be wonderful -- and a fun place, because marital sex is ordained by God to be fun, not a polite, robotic exercise in inconvenient physical activity by grim people who would rather be somewhere else praying.)
But, if the conception of Mary, unlike that of Jesus, was the result of the perfectly-natural marital act of Mary's parents, just like the conception of you and me, why do we say that it was "miraculous"?
Simple (or not-so-simple, depending on one's perspective): Something happened in Anna's womb which was overtly invisible. At the moment that Joachim's sperm and Anna's ovum joyously zinged together in Anna's Fallopian Tubes after a really neat, really wild, very satisfying sexual encounter, for the first time in the history of our species, since our hominid ancestors were ensouled by the ruwach or breath of God, the resulting zygote, or fertilized egg, comprising "Mary daughter of Joachim" was not "innately damnable" -- not stained with the stain of Original Sin -- and, more importantly, neither were the resulting ova in Mary's ovaries, and the womb and body that would hold a fertilized ovum, so that perfect God could later touch Mary's physical reality at the time of Jesus' conception.
To understand what that means, we have to understand "Original Sin."
That is what the Feast of the Immaculate Conception is about -- Original Sin, and Mary being free of it.
And here we crash into a problem. I'll be exaggerating somewhat to get to the point fast, here.
Most devout Christians still think that Original Sin was an event in history -- that it was something very bad, probably having to do with sex, that two perfect, naked people without belly buttons did while they were living in a perfect place in which mosquitoes did not bite them, which a really nasty God responded to by yanking them out of their perfect place and ironically converting them and their 100-billion-or-so lineal descendants into sin-loving dissolutes deserving nothing but Hell fire, so that God, having shot His Own creative efforts in the foot this way, had to engage in emergency saving action by having His Own beloved Son tortured and then murdered horribly.
Everything about that exaggerated-and-therefore-easier-to-comprehend restatement of the Original Sin teaching is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. And that is why so few people understand anything about Original Sin or about Mary's Immaculate Conception.
Before I start discussing what is wrong with that common understanding of Original Sin set forth above, let me attempt to portray, here, what Original Sin actually is.
God is "ineffable." That means that our minds can't get from here, where we are, to "up there," where God is. That makes sense. That is why, contrary to any mistaken impression you may have gotten from Aquinas, God can not be "deduced" with mathematical 1+1=2 - style certainty, so that He has to be "induced" with imperfect, possibly-incorrect reasoning. (Aquinas' own conclusions comprise exceptions to his own logical process -- for example, if order makes it necessary that there be an "orderer," then because order is in-and-of God, He too must have an "orderer," except that He doesn't! That problem, which is innate to each of Aquinas' "proofs" of God, generates good doubts about our ability to "prove" God.)
Because God is "ineffable," we can't quite mentally encompass the perfections of God -- God's perfect Sovereignty, God's perfect Goodness, and God's perfect Justice.
The best way to understand those three things is to view them as "things that are wildly true about God."
It is wildly true that God is "sovereign" -- meaning, He, our One God somehow eternally comprised of three divine Persons, is The Boss in all conceivable ways.
Because He, The Boss, was also overflowing with love, He decided to create us, to love and be loved by Him.
But because He is barred, by His Own sovereignty, from creating co-equal competitor Gods, it was "against God-ness" for us to be God's equal. We are required, by "God-ness," to be less than God.
This status creates what Middle Ages theologians referred to as "the contingency problem." We are not self-causing; we are reliant on God for our continued existence. To put it differently, we who are terrified of destruction and death are reliant on One Who is "not us" to keep us in existence. This causes an insecurity and panic in our beings which we try to fix by making our own rules -- by sin.
So, we are "sin machines."
The problem is profound. It isn't just "bad potential" -- a "probability" that we will sin.
It means that, without grace, we will make "the bad decision" every single time when we are confronted with moral choices. It is hard for us to see this and to believe it, because we have grace affecting us, right now.
This is what Jeremiah 17:9 means (in the King James translation set forth here) when it describes the heart of Man as "deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked."
The world seems bad now, but it's actually very good compared to what it would be without grace. Without grace, we humans would be living in Bedlam.
Without grace, we humans would literally be living in a Hell on Earth.
Soooooooooooooo, because this is what Ungraced Man is like, and because this is what Graced Man is like whenever one of us makes the decision to set aside grace and lick the Lollipop of Life, God, who is perfectly Good, won't touch us.
Now, when He created us, perfectly Sovereign God was fully aware that necessarily-lesser created Man would have this problem innately, in his flesh, and that this made us untouchable and innately unlovable as far as God was concerned.
So, even before our creation God perfectly understood the need for grace. In other words, He was aware that the cake had to be baked with a special ingredient.
But then another problem arises from God being perfectly Just.
In a sense, the perfect Justice within God screams an objection to the prospect of giving Ungraced Man grace. "NO!" it yells. "NO GRACE FOR THESE DISGUSTING PIGS! GRACE WOULD BE 'PENNIES FROM HEAVEN'! A 'FREE LUNCH'! THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A 'FREE LUNCH'! SOMEONE HAS GOT TO PAY FOR THIS GRACE, WHICH AMOUNTS TO A FREE RIGHT TO SHAKE HANDS WITH PERFECT SOVEREIGN GOD!"
And at some point within the Divine Reality, the Person of Almighty God Whom we call "God's only beloved Son" raised-up His hand, and said, "I will! I'll pay the price for grace!"
And God the Father said, "I lovingly accept this loving gift of My beloved Son, and so I offer My Son up to suffer horribly to pay for grace."
And so even before we were created, God envisioned that grace paid for by the horrible torture and death of God's Own beloved Son was the final ingredient.
And that that same grace would make Mary the one chosen to be mother of God the Son immaculate, so that the perfection of God could touch her, join to her flesh, and be carried by her to birth, so that he could be born, and then tortured horribly and murdered, to purchase grace for mankind from God's perfect Justice.
So, when Christ, on the cross gasped, "It is finished," and He died, what did He mean?
What was finished?
Answer: Our creation!
He had paid for, and supplied, the final ingredient, grace, which issued from the cross from that moment into the past, the present and the future.
So, "Original Sin" isn't "something very bad, probably having to do with sex, that two perfect, naked people without belly buttons did while they were living in a perfect place in which mosquitoes did not bite them, which a really nasty God responded to by yanking them out of their perfect place and ironically converting them and their 100-billion-or-so lineal descendants into sin-loving dissolutes deserving nothing but Hell fire, so that God, having shot His Own creative efforts in the foot this way, had to engage in emergency saving action by having His Own beloved Son tortured and then murdered horribly."
Instead, Original Sin is "the sinfulness within our flesh from our origins" -- innate to the flesh of Man who had to be less than and reliant upon perfectly Sovereign God -- so that we innately suffered from alienation from perfectly Good God, so that in His eyes we were innately "desperately wicked" and so unlovable, so that grace was necessary as a final ingredient.
So, what is all of that Adam-and-Eve stuff in the Bible?
It is a Dr.-Seuss-level fictional picture of the complex theological reality of Original Sin generated by God to explain the problem to us.
How many readers of this blog will go to their significant others after reading this, smile, and say, "WAIT TILL I EXPLAIN TO YOU WHAT 'ORIGINAL SIN' IS !!!" ?
Very few.
Instead you'll stick with that story about "something very bad, probably having to do with sex, that two perfect, naked people without belly buttons did while they were living in a perfect place in which mosquitoes did not bite them, which a really nasty God responded to by yanking them out of their perfect place and ironically converting them and their 100-billion-or-so lineal descendants into sin-loving dissolutes deserving nothing but Hell fire, so that God, having shot His Own creative efforts in the foot this way, had to engage in emergency saving action by having His Own beloved Son tortured and then murdered horribly."
The bottom line, here: The Feast of the Immaculate Conception celebrates the special grace of perfection so that Mary was somehow, by grace, preserved even from the risk of setting aside grace and so making herself loathsome to -- and untouchable by -- God, so that God could enter her, touch and join to the ovum from one of her ovaries that became Christ, fertilize it, and then implant in the wall of her uterus, where Mary carried it until Jesus was born in the normal wonderful gooey human fashion, so that He, supremely, was, at all moments in time, both God and also One of Us.
Okay. Time to press the "Publish" button and see if I get into trouble.
A lot of radical Mariologists won't like that "gooey" business.
Saturday, December 6, 2014
HUMOR: Friars and Monks
A monastery starts what the English refer to as a "fish and chips store." When the store opens, a client comes in, and asks one of the clerics, "Are you the fish friar?"
"Oh, no," the cleric answers, "I'm the chip monk!"
Thursday, December 4, 2014
PERSONAL EXPERIENCES: My Meeting with Duck Lady
Back in January, 1978, I was in the middle of a one year sabbatical from law school. I took the year off because I was a young man who had a lot of debts, who needed to get them out of my life and off my mind, so that I could pay more attention to law work. I had the opportunity to work two good jobs at once, to pay off my debts within the year. I did so. And I thereafter aced the rest of law school and scored second highest in my class' bar exams.
One of the jobs, during my one year sabbatical, was a second-shift job at what is now called SmithKline Beecham Corporation, at their corporate headquarters at 15th and Spring Garden Streets in Philadelphia. I was a pharmaceutical operator -- a "drug cook" -- engaged in the manufacture of vast quantities of over-the-counter drugs.
On January 15, 1978, it was a cold, wet night as I came home to my apartment from my second shift job at SmithKline. I stopped by the Inquirer building on my way down 15th Street toward Market at 12:30 a.m. and purchased the earliest edition of the following morning's Inquirer off the loading docks in the back of the building, made my way down to the eastbound side of the subway station at 15th and Market Streets, and sat down on a subway station bench, and read my Inquirer as I waited for a train. When I did that, there were about 20 other second shift workers standing or sitting around me, in the station.
Several minutes later, as I sat deeply absorbed in my reading, a wave of the worst kind of smell of human crap and pee filled the space between my newspaper and my face. I thought, "What the heck ???!!!"
I put down my paper, and to my horror, sitting on the bench to my right, was the world famous bag lady, Duck Lady, who was known for walking around the streets of Philadelphia quacking, quacking, quacking like a duck, as she begged. But on this occasion, she was sitting beside me, and I was smelling her smell of crap and pee. It made me feel like I was standing in a toilet bowl after someone used it but didn't flush it.
At first I looked around in a panic for a means of escape. I saw that everyone who had been standing around us on the subway platform several minutes before had retreated to the opposite end of the subway platform, and they were all down there, staring up at us, to see what I would do.
That woke me up. That abandonment of Duck Lady as a monster all should run from, by those people on the subway platform, shocked me. I thought to myself, "I am not going to subject this lady to the indignity of treating her like a monster!" So, I forced myself to sit there and breathe her smell of crap and pee.
As I did so, I saw that in that freezing cold wet subway platform, Duck Lady was only wearing a thin damp nightie and slippers, as she convulsed involuntarily on the bench beside me -- undoubtedly due to Tourette's Syndrome -- quacking, quacking, quacking.
Did I think of taking off my warm winter coat and giving it to her?
No.
As she quacked, Duck Lady took off one of her slippers and held it out toward me. I saw some crumpled dollar bills in it. I thought, "It's her 'bank'! She's begging!"
I took out my wallet and gave her the cash that was in it. I placed it in her cold, wet slipper. Big deal, right?
And how did Duck Lady respond?
In her personal cloud of crap and pee smell, she stopped quacking for a few seconds, and said a prayer for me. She said, "May our Blessed Mother watch over you!"
Then, as she relaxed and put her slipper back on her foot, she resumed her relentless quacking, quacking, quacking.
At that moment, a train came along, and I was happy to escape to it. As the doors closed, I saw her in her wet nightie, and I thought, "Why didn't I give her my coat?"
Answer: Because I preferred myself too much.
Lesson to my Catholic brethren: Give them the coat off your back.
One of the jobs, during my one year sabbatical, was a second-shift job at what is now called SmithKline Beecham Corporation, at their corporate headquarters at 15th and Spring Garden Streets in Philadelphia. I was a pharmaceutical operator -- a "drug cook" -- engaged in the manufacture of vast quantities of over-the-counter drugs.
On January 15, 1978, it was a cold, wet night as I came home to my apartment from my second shift job at SmithKline. I stopped by the Inquirer building on my way down 15th Street toward Market at 12:30 a.m. and purchased the earliest edition of the following morning's Inquirer off the loading docks in the back of the building, made my way down to the eastbound side of the subway station at 15th and Market Streets, and sat down on a subway station bench, and read my Inquirer as I waited for a train. When I did that, there were about 20 other second shift workers standing or sitting around me, in the station.
Several minutes later, as I sat deeply absorbed in my reading, a wave of the worst kind of smell of human crap and pee filled the space between my newspaper and my face. I thought, "What the heck ???!!!"
I put down my paper, and to my horror, sitting on the bench to my right, was the world famous bag lady, Duck Lady, who was known for walking around the streets of Philadelphia quacking, quacking, quacking like a duck, as she begged. But on this occasion, she was sitting beside me, and I was smelling her smell of crap and pee. It made me feel like I was standing in a toilet bowl after someone used it but didn't flush it.
At first I looked around in a panic for a means of escape. I saw that everyone who had been standing around us on the subway platform several minutes before had retreated to the opposite end of the subway platform, and they were all down there, staring up at us, to see what I would do.
That woke me up. That abandonment of Duck Lady as a monster all should run from, by those people on the subway platform, shocked me. I thought to myself, "I am not going to subject this lady to the indignity of treating her like a monster!" So, I forced myself to sit there and breathe her smell of crap and pee.
As I did so, I saw that in that freezing cold wet subway platform, Duck Lady was only wearing a thin damp nightie and slippers, as she convulsed involuntarily on the bench beside me -- undoubtedly due to Tourette's Syndrome -- quacking, quacking, quacking.
Did I think of taking off my warm winter coat and giving it to her?
No.
As she quacked, Duck Lady took off one of her slippers and held it out toward me. I saw some crumpled dollar bills in it. I thought, "It's her 'bank'! She's begging!"
I took out my wallet and gave her the cash that was in it. I placed it in her cold, wet slipper. Big deal, right?
And how did Duck Lady respond?
In her personal cloud of crap and pee smell, she stopped quacking for a few seconds, and said a prayer for me. She said, "May our Blessed Mother watch over you!"
Then, as she relaxed and put her slipper back on her foot, she resumed her relentless quacking, quacking, quacking.
At that moment, a train came along, and I was happy to escape to it. As the doors closed, I saw her in her wet nightie, and I thought, "Why didn't I give her my coat?"
Answer: Because I preferred myself too much.
Lesson to my Catholic brethren: Give them the coat off your back.
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
Be a Deus Ex Machina
In Shakespearean times, an employee of the company putting on the plays, working in the catwalks above the stage, would sometimes trip and fall 20 feet or so -- plop ! -- smack into the middle of the play being watched by the audience. If no bones were broken, he would stand up and quickly pretend to be an angel or a god from above, delivering a message or rendering unexpected aid.
This practice mutated into a figure of speech -- a "deus ex machina," or "the god from the machinery" -- referring to the person who inserts himself unexpectedly into the time of troubles of another person and renders aid.
Look for the opportunity to be a "deus ex machina" in your life. I've known a few. I had a friend in high school named John Lazauskas. His father was an ordinary guy -- a little man who raised his little family in a little row home in the Frankford section of Philadelphia.
We all went down to the Frankford and Pratt bus terminal on workday mornings to catch a bus or trolley or the Frankford elevated train to school or our job. Every day, thousands of people saw the homeless Smelly Bag Lady crawling around between nooks, looking for opportunities to beg, pee or sleep.
One day, as hundreds of people were looking on, John Lazauskas' father astonished the universe, the angels and the demons by bringing the homeless Smelly Bag Lady a wonderful breakfast on a tray, while the rest of us stood puzzled, and numbed by the programming of our age and by our own internal laziness, fear and inertia into watching one of God's precious children suffer horribly.
Mr. Lazauskas did this day after day, until the homeless Smelly Bag Lady made headlines by being hit and crushed by a bus.
When Mr. Lazauskas did what he did, nonetheless, he permitted the invincible love and power of the almighty creator and destroyer God of the Universe to enter and suffuse his flesh and mind, so that he became God's most powerful tool on Earth at that place and time, to the astonishment and applause and cheering of the angels, and the astonishment and anger of the demons.
Be one of the good guys. Astonish the universe. Be a deus ex machina.
This practice mutated into a figure of speech -- a "deus ex machina," or "the god from the machinery" -- referring to the person who inserts himself unexpectedly into the time of troubles of another person and renders aid.
Look for the opportunity to be a "deus ex machina" in your life. I've known a few. I had a friend in high school named John Lazauskas. His father was an ordinary guy -- a little man who raised his little family in a little row home in the Frankford section of Philadelphia.
We all went down to the Frankford and Pratt bus terminal on workday mornings to catch a bus or trolley or the Frankford elevated train to school or our job. Every day, thousands of people saw the homeless Smelly Bag Lady crawling around between nooks, looking for opportunities to beg, pee or sleep.
One day, as hundreds of people were looking on, John Lazauskas' father astonished the universe, the angels and the demons by bringing the homeless Smelly Bag Lady a wonderful breakfast on a tray, while the rest of us stood puzzled, and numbed by the programming of our age and by our own internal laziness, fear and inertia into watching one of God's precious children suffer horribly.
Mr. Lazauskas did this day after day, until the homeless Smelly Bag Lady made headlines by being hit and crushed by a bus.
When Mr. Lazauskas did what he did, nonetheless, he permitted the invincible love and power of the almighty creator and destroyer God of the Universe to enter and suffuse his flesh and mind, so that he became God's most powerful tool on Earth at that place and time, to the astonishment and applause and cheering of the angels, and the astonishment and anger of the demons.
Be one of the good guys. Astonish the universe. Be a deus ex machina.
Sunday, November 30, 2014
My Near Death Experience in 1978
In 1978, at age 25, I had a minor stroke. I was sound asleep in the middle of the night, enjoying a very pleasant dream, when all of a sudden the dream mutated into a horrible, black nightmare. It got worse and worse, until something forced "me" out of my body. I found myself in perfect health in a place of subdued light. It was extremely comfortable, except that in the background I heard what I came to refer to, later, as "a schizophrenic orchestra" playing disordered "music" in the background.
I looked to my right, and saw a tunnel going up at about a 30 degree angle. The tunnel was about 100 yards wide. It seemed to go up for miles.
I began to rise into the tunnel, as I heard the "music" of the "schizophrenic orchestra" retreating into the background.
As I rose, I flew "eyeballs first." That's about as well as I can describe it. I think that I was naked, but I couldn't have cared less. Though aware that I was dead, I was completely unafraid, and perfectly comfortable. I was only intent on what lay ahead, as I flew up at maybe 50 mph. I went up, up, up, until at a particular point I saw a brilliant light source in the distance. I thought, "Huh!" I stared hard at the light source, trying to discern detail.
As I came within 100 yards of it, my velocity upwards slowed. I was deeply shocked to see that the light source was brilliant background light behind an ordinary rectangular door-shaped opening. The shape of the doorway is what struck me. I thought, "Huh! They have that shape doorway up here ???"
I continued slowing to a few miles per hour.
Then, something happened. Something wiped-out my memory of what happened during the next few minutes. I believe that it was intentional. I deduce from where the memory picks-up next that I was told something. I have this vague, vague memory that "guys in cowls" -- monks ? -- talked to me, but I don't know for sure if that is my imagination being over-active.
My memory of the event picks-up where I am still floating in the tunnel, but I am very, very slowly starting to float back down, feet first. I am thinking to myself, "I have too much to DO !!! I have too much to DO !!! I have too much to DO !!! I have too much to DO !!! I have too much to DO !!! I have too much to DO !!! " I couldn't care less that I am rushing down the tunnel, faster and faster and faster, feet first, at what was maybe hundreds of miles per hour. I only want to get back to my body.
At the bottom of the tunnel, I zzzzzzzzzziiiiiiiiiipppppppppp back into my body with a kind of a "thump," which forces me to wake-up in my body, in my bed. From this point on, my Near Death Experience has ended. I could immediately tell that something had gone seriously wrong in my brain. I tried to think, with words, "What is wrong with my brain?" But the words got all jumbled-up. I tried to say something like, "Will my brain get better" outloud in the bedroom, but my tongue articulated the words all jumbled-up, with remarkable efficiency. The effect on me of being able to jumble-up words with my brain and my tongue with wonderful dexterity caught me so much by surprise that I was really amused. I tried to say other things out loud, and jumbled them up with the same amazing efficiency. I was pleased.
But then I got serious. I abandoned the use of words in my thinking, and I began to "apprehend" full ideas, without words. I apprehended that I probably had a stroke, that it was probably a small one, and that I might recover. I apprehended without words that the first thing I should do is finish my night's sleep. I laid down and went to sleep.
The following morning, when I awakened, I could immediately tell that I was still "struck dumb." I began thinking by that "apprehending" of things without words. Thinking without words was very interesting, and extremely efficient. My thoughts galloped like a race horse.
I went downstairs to the kitchen. In the presence of the rest of the family, I felt deep, deep shame at being struck dumb, I don't know why. When anyone asked me a question, I just answered "HRRRRMMMMPH !!!" They concluded that I was angry at something.
Later, when the family was out of the house, I took a trolley up to the offices of the family doctor on Castor Avenue just south of Cottman in Northeast Philadelphia. The doctor drove me to Nazareth Hospital, where they diagnosed my condition as "an ischemic attack." He sent me home with a prescription which I never filled.
I avoided everyone for two weeks, waiting for my ability to speak to come back. And come back it did.
Lest anyone think that I am implying here that I was "Heaven-bound" in 1978, I should add that in the case of the thousands of other people who have had similar experiences, but who went farther, they discover that on the other side of that doorway, one goes to judgment !!! The person is asked, "What did you do with the time I gave you on Earth?"
And, I should add, I am a sinner. My wife Rise` observed that during the blacked-out period I was told that I have more to do just to avoid being damned to Hell.
I think that she is right.
And I think that I still have more to do.
A final note: Law was the best experience of my life. I got to open the clock and see what makes it tick, so to speak. One of my friends in the course of that learning process was Medford, New Jersey attorney Ed Hogan. I told him about my near death experience. He responded with silence.
A few years ago, I tried to refer a case to him. Ed said, "Pete, I can't take it. I'm quitting law. I had a pretty bad stroke. I'm glad that it is you calling -- I had essentially the same experience you did. I went up the tunnel. I made it through the door. They told me that it wasn't time for me -- that I had to go back to Earth for a time. So, here I am."
To any skeptics who don't believe what I have written here, I can only say, God damn my soul to Hell fire forever if I am lying, here. I believe that telling the story is a sacred enterprise.
Anyway, friends, be good. Don't screw it up. Say a prayer for me.
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