While Waiting to Whack Satan

Last week, I made the best pizza I had ever eaten. Then a couple of days later, I made the best pizza I had ever eaten. Today, just to mix it up and avoid monotony, I did the following: I made the best pizza I have ever eaten.

I’m actually freaked out, it’s so good. Not only is this the best pizza I have ever eaten; I did not realize it was possible for pizza to be this good. I know I sound like a nut when I say this, but I am genuinely shaken.

Funniest part: the pizza was mangled. I was lazy when I detached it from the pan to put it on the stone, and I put a hole in it. Then when I took it off the stone, an entire side tore off. I stuck all the pieces on my serving pan and ate it anyway. The torn-up, crusty pieces may have been the best parts.

The crust…

I am trying to describe it. Airy. Hot. Yeasty. Crisp on the edges. Crunchy on the bottom. Perfectly browned. Full of the buttery taste of cheap olive oil.

It got a tiny bit soggy under the cheese, and that actually made it BETTER.

I altered my usual cheese bill a little. What a change. My cheese is now unbelievably stretchy. Just sour enough to be interesting. Bland enough to work with the sauce instead of fighting it. Highly resistant to browning, but nicely crunchy at the very edges.

The sauce…I got lazy and used the Cento San Marzano tomatoes suggested by reader HTRN, all by themselves. I drained off the puree to make the flavor stronger. I was afraid they would be too weak, but the buttery cheese and yeasty crust combined perfectly with the comparatively mild sauce. I’m sure Stanislaus would have been just as good, in its own way, but this was shocking.

Let’s see. A pie has 12 ounces of cheese in it. That’s about $1.75, at Costco prices. That is not excessive. I can put that in a pizza for two people and charge enough to cover the cost. Not only would people line up to buy this stuff; they would trade their children for it. I would. Trade other people’s children for this pizza, I mean. But then I would also trade them for a glass of water.

It’s so good, I am worried about posting the changes I made. No one will use them anyway, and they are suddenly starting to look like trade secrets.

Pizza is a wonderful thing. If you open an ordinary restaurant, you don’t have to make good food, but you have to do a lot of other things. You have to pick a good location. You have to be nice to customers. You have to have great service. With pizza, quality is all that matters. If it’s good, people will do whatever it takes to get it. They’ll rappel up a cliff, to the worst location on earth. You can slap them when they order and make them pay with Burmese currency. They won’t care.

I thought I would go crazy and eat the whole pie, but I quit. When food is this amazing, you have a burning desire to eat it, but once you have a reasonable amount, you’re so satisfied, you don’t have to keep cramming it in.

This has to be from God. HAS to be. I could not do this.

Now I have to go put Shout on my shirt.

I Live the Dream

I have this pizza thing totally figured out.

Today I made a pie, and I made adjustments to make sure the crust was cooked correctly. It worked great, although I didn’t time it quite right.

Here’s what I made. First the whole pie.

Now the crust. Those indentations are from my fingers. I made them intentionally.

I made the sauce with a 50/50 mix of Stanislaus Saporito and Cento San Marzano tomatoes (no puree included), and it was excellent, but truthfully, I think either product is better alone than with the other. You gain some of each product’s strengths, but you also lose some.

As for the crust, I rotated the pan once while it was cooking on the bottom rack. I had a hot stone on an upper rack. After nine minutes, I moved the stone to the lower rack (turned out to be unnecessary) and put the pie on it. I left the pie there for two minutes and yanked it. The crust was crisper than a crust finished in the pan, and it was darker.

Oddly, pizza crust always looks more done in photos than it is in real life. This crust was just barely darker than I would have liked; I should have pulled it after one minute on the stone. But it wasn’t brown, the way it looks in the pictures.

You don’t really need a pan with steep sides to do this. The edges that rested against the pan are good, but the edge that stood on its own was also good, in a different way.

If you do this, make sure the stone is hot before you put the pie in the oven.

The reason I moved the stone to the lower rack is that I was afraid it would cool when the pizza hit it, and I wanted it over the heat. But the stone held more than enough heat to get the job done.

By the grace of the good Lord, I have utterly defeated Sicilian pizza. Now I have to find something to do with the rest of my life.

Someone Slipped Up

In pentecostal or charismatic Christianity, there is a thing called “walking by faith.” A famous verse says, “we walk by faith, not by sight.” We also refer to “the sword of the Spirit.” And we say that when we receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit, it leads to God writing his law on our hearts, so we will obey him in a very direct way, instead of relying chiefly on our interpretation of written law. We also believe the Holy Spirit makes the Bible comprehensible to us, as God permits (he doesn’t want the entire mystery to be revealed yet, so some things are withheld). A person who doesn’t have the Holy Spirit whispering revelation into his ear might as well be blind, when he tries to understand scripture. Your mind won’t get you there, because the Bible was written to be impenetrable to earthly reasoning. It doesn’t matter how smart you are or how hard you try.

Nobody outside the church understands any of this stuff. It’s like Chinese to them (unless they’re Chinese), because you have to live it to understand it. You can’t explain sunlight to someone who lives in a mine.

The Book of Eli appears to have been written by a person who understands these things. Either he’s a Christian, or God handed him this understanding for some divine purpose. Sometimes the Holy Spirit acts through unbelievers or people who are at odds with God, as he did through Caiaphas, the high priest during the time of Jesus. Caiaphas prophesied, even as he was persecuting the Messiah.

The problem with writing about the movie is that I can’t tell you much about it without ruining it for you. This is a movie which is very sensitive to spoilers.

I can say this much: it’s about a post-apocalyptic world, in which only one copy of the Bible is known to exist. A man finds the Bible, and he believes God has assigned him to carry it through a hostile world, to a chosen destination. He encounters a villain who wants the Bible, because the villain knows it can be used to control people. If you can convince people a command came from God, you can make them obey it.

While I watched, my impression was that God had authored this movie in order to reach out to people, to bring about revival. But I’m not sure that’s right. If you’re not a Spirit-baptized believer, you can’t identify with the truths the movie presents. It won’t resonate with you the way it did me. Or if it does, it will be for a different reason. If it doesn’t resonate, it won’t draw you to God, so it won’t be much of an evangelizing tool.

I’m certain of this: it will strengthen anyone who knows what it means to walk by faith. It will confirm what you think God has been telling you. You’ll look at this Hollywood-made movie, created by worldly people in order to turn a profit, and you’ll realize it could only have happened if God had brought it about.

Throughout the Bible, God tells us he will order our steps. He will light our paths. He will give us assignments, and if we take them up and try to carry them out, he will see to it that we get where he wants us to go. He will make us succeed, even when it looks like we’ve failed. He cannot be stopped, no matter how bad things may look.

It also gives a glimpse of what life in the Tribulation may be like, when nearly all believers and Jews are gone, and there is little to restrain Satan’s hatred or God’s wrath. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah tells us God withholds judgment because of the prayers of the faithful. What happens when those aren’t in place? Look at Burma for your answer.

If you’re a Spirit-filled believer, you’ll love this movie. You will see God’s hand and hear his voice in it. If you’re not a believer, you’ll still enjoy the violence and the interesting story.

There is some foul language in the film. That’s about the worst thing I can say about it. Other than that, it’s pretty safe. I highly recommend it. It will restore your faith that God is in charge of this increasingly secular world.

One Performed & One in the Works

I just saw The Book of Eli with my prayer group. I was shaken when I left. No movie has ever affected me so much. I can’t recall seeing another movie that demonstrated an insider’s understanding of Spirit-filled Christianity. Movies generally prove that the people who made them know virtually nothing about Jesus and Christians. It’s like watching Amos and Andy to learn about black people.

I don’t know if the screenwriter is a Christian, but however that script materialized, it is as though a very serious charismatic wrote it.

Unfortunately, I have not eaten today, so I can’t write about the movie until I make what I expect to be the finest pizza in the universe. I’m going to mix San Marzano tomatoes with Stanislaus sauce, and I’m going to put the pie on a hot stone for a minute or two after it bakes. If my understanding of the physics is right, this will be a pizza that has no equal. Hope it works.

The Summit is in Sight

The Sicilian I made was beyond description, and it was STILL flawed. I don’t know what to make of it.

I tried Cento San Marzano tomatoes on one half and Stanislaus Saporito on the other. I used a heavy dose of Costco cheese (13 ounces on 9 x 12). I baked it on my cheap, thin GFS cookie sheet, on the bottom rack.

This time, instead of forcing the tomatoes to stand on their own, I added sugar and white vinegar, just as I do to my regular sauce. Last time, with the fake San Marzanos, I held back the sugar and vinegar, because the tomatoes were touted as superior and fit to be served with only salt, pepper, and oregano.

This pie is now the best pizza I’ve ever eaten, beating the mark set by a pie I made earlier in the week. The heavy cheese, more than the sauce, made the difference. That Costco cheese is pure magic. I think elves make it. It brings out the best in the sauce and crust. It melts beautifully. It’s stretchy. It’s a pretty, uniform white. Can’t beat it.

The tomatoes were surprisingly good. If I am tasting what I’m supposed to be tasting, San Marzanos have a strange and satisfying aftertaste that goes perfectly with cheese and pizza crust. It adds a dimension to the pizza. Still, they’re a little weak. If I were making this again, I’d just use the tomatoes and dump the puree that comes in the can with them. As it was, I used very little of it. I suppose a real psycho would reduce the sauce.

The extra punch of the Saporito makes it better than the San Marzanos, but I would be very content to save the driving distance and use Cento tomatoes instead of driving all the way to Gordon Food Service. If I had to put a number on it, I’d say Stanislaus Saporito is 15% better.

I learned something new about baking Sicilian. You need to rotate the pie, just like they do in pizzerias. Until now, they’ve been pretty uniform on the bottom, but this one was a little off. From now on, I’ll give them 10 minutes, with a turn at 5. No, 7. The first two minutes probably don’t do anything.

Another thing I did to make it brown better: before I slid it in, I opened the oven door and let it cool until the bottom element turned on. I waited until it was red hot to put the pizza in. That way, I was sure I’d get a lot of radiant heat on the bottom of the pan.

I’m positive a disposable aluminum pan is the best thing you can use for Sicilian, but I don’t plan to try it any time soon. I’m thinking I might start using a flat aluminum cookie sheet. Aluminum carries and distributes heat better than steel, and tonight I noticed that the unsupported side of the pizza, in the middle of the pan, was very good. It didn’t have the fried nature of the sides that were supported, but it was browned more. That’s acceptable. To make good Sicilian at 550° in a home oven without a lot of aggravation and tricks, you need a pan that will get hot really fast and spread the heat well.

If there is better pizza than this anywhere on earth, I have yet to encounter it. I am astonished by it. I guess I could let the dough poof up a little more, or I could make a sourdough or something, but there is such a thing as gilding the lily.

I think I’m done making thin pizza. I love it, but it can’t compare to this stuff.

I’ll give you the sauce recipe.

INGREDIENTS

4 ounces Cento San Marzano tomatoes (real ones), beaten to a puree
1 teaspoon light olive oil
1/2 teaspoon sugar
generous sprinkle of salt
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon dry oregano
1/2-1 teaspoon white vinegar

That’s all you need to know.

Now I have to throw out half the pie. I should be arrested for defacing art.

I’m convinced God gives me recipes for a reason. Food this good, cooked by someone as ignorant as I am, can’t be a pointless accident. But what’s the purpose?

Joseph was Better at This

I had the funniest dream this morning, not long before I got up.

I was in an old house that had been converted into a school. A little girl was in a room on the second floor. She was a demon-worshiper. She believed it was possible to be a Christian and worship other “gods” and benefit from all of it.

She was giving a presentation to her class, about the ways she worshiped this “god” and that one. She had colorful costumes, and she wore a different one for each demon. Each one required different rituals, and she demonstrated them, throwing things into bowls and so on.

Her teacher and I were downstairs, and we were pretty disturbed. We noticed that the ceiling was bulging down toward us, from the classroom above. Something extremely heavy was in that room. The pressure of its weight made a circular bulge in the ceiling. It was some sort of spirit, sitting in the room among the kids. They couldn’t see it.

We went up the stairs to help this girl. A black man was with us. I guess he worked with the teacher. We were going to make this kid understand that you can’t be a Christian AND a demon-worshiper. If you have even one other god, you’re not a Christian. Or you’re a Christian, but you’re going to have terrible problems.

When we got in the room, everyone was gone except the girl. She was dressed normally. She was unconscious, but she was standing in a far corner, facing the wall.

While we were there, food was served. It was chicken that had been fried in breading and then covered with sauce. There was rice under it. Someone asked me how it was, and I said it was okay, but the rice was a little overcooked.

When I woke up, I tried to figure out whether this dream meant anything. I prayed for an answer. I have never had a dream that turned out to be a message from God, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.

Here is what I came up with. The room is Haiti. The girl represents Haitians who worship demons yet think they’re also Catholic or other types of Christians. The problem with the ceiling is a problem with the rock under the island. It’s the reason they have earthquakes. The presence of the demons–their spiritual “weight”–causes it.

People who go to Haiti to provide spiritual guidance will have their physical needs met in abundance. That’s the food. There was nothing in the dream that I could apply to humanitarian aid.

Is this right? I can’t even guess. Maybe I just dreamed about a confused little girl.

The teacher was attractive. I don’t know her in real life. I don’t know the black man. He didn’t seem like a Haitian, although many Haitian-Americans have no accent.

I can only recall one instance of a dream that had application to the future. My friend Ivette gave me a Cohiba Esplendido, from Cuba. That part had already happened, for real. In the dream, I smoked it, and it had a wonderful flavor like cloves. Later, when I smoked the actual cigar, it had that same flavor, only with much less intensity. That was extremely odd. I had never had a cigar that tasted anything like cloves, but some Cubans have that flavor.

That was a pretty stupid dream, I admit. But it came true. And it’s all I have to offer.

My cornet arrived last night. It’s incredible. It’s a professional-quality horn, and it’s essentially new, even though it was made the year I was born. It has had a couple of minor dents repaired, and the seller thought they probably came from being bounced around in the case, but that’s it. Other than that, there isn’t a scratch on it. You could put this thing in a store and claim it was made last month, and no one would know the difference.

It’s too bad pianos aren’t like brass instruments. You can pick up the brass equivalent of a nearly new Steinway for under $500, because so many people buy horns and quit using them almost immediately. I paid $150. I’m sure this thing would cost at least a grand, new.

Now, if only I could play it.

I have practiced my embouchure for two days. I can go about fifteen minutes without fainting or losing my mind. I figure that’s enough. When you’re working a muscle and building a callus, it does no good to overdo it. That’s what I tell myself, because fifteen minutes are all I can stand at this point. I can make the mouthpiece do a few things, but the horn sounds like a cow with the scours.

My dad says I ought to be able to make a sound that isn’t horrifying within a week or so.

That’s all I have for now. I’m just enjoying my coffee and relaxing.

Smell That Fresh Air!

This is an amazing day.

Steady readers will recall the post I put up at the end of August, announcing that after a fast, I found that I had been supernaturally delivered from compulsive overeating. It had been a problem for me all my life. It wasn’t one of the issues to which the fast was dedicated, but afterward, I found I didn’t feel the overpowering urge to stuff myself. I lost 20 pounds, pretty effortlessly.

That has stayed with me over time. The holidays worried me, and after that I got sick, and I spoiled myself. The illness dragged on interminably, and I was afraid that when it was over, I’d be huge. I still have little traces of symptoms. But today I got on the scale, and my gigantic weight gain amounts to 1.5 pounds. And now that the symptoms are virtually gone, I’m back on my routine, so I expect progress to continue.

I still can’t believe God would do something this nice for me. This is just as miraculous as being healed of cancer, even if it’s not as dramatic. I feel like I’ve been freed from a slavemaster. And in my opinion, I have. Either God increased my discipline throught the Holy Spirit, or he drove off something evil that was goading me.

No one cares. I know. No one wants to hear about a guy whose big miracle is a drop from a 36″ waist to 33″. But if you’re fat, and this happens to you, believe me, you’ll be as amazed and grateful as I am. You won’t think it’s a small thing. You ought to listen to me and see if you can get the same kind of deliverance. Maybe your problem isn’t food. Maybe it’s cocaine or booze or women. I don’t think it makes any difference; it’s not like one thing is a bigger challenge to God than another. And he wants everyone to be free.

When I got freed from gluttony, I also found I had better self-control in a couple of other areas. I was less crabby, which was a big blessing. Being annoyed requires energy, and it’s an unpleasant state in which to live. After I got my miracle, I felt peaceful. My mind was quieter.

Unfortunately, the food thing lasted, and the peace did not. I eventually found that some of the irritability had returned. Maybe that was because of some sin I committed. I don’t know. I can’t see the supernatural world. I can’t hear God’s voice or the voices of the angels. I can only guess.

Today during my morning prayers I felt anxious for no good reason, and I took it before God, and I kept praying about it, hard. I exerted my faith. I prayed in the Spirit. I stuck to my guns. I felt as if something foreign was pressing into me, in the region of my sinuses. I know that sounds nutty. But I’ve felt that many times. It’s an oppressive, annoying sensation. I think it’s something that has been with me for decades, and I suspect that it’s a supernatural being.

After I had been at it for forty-five minutes or an hour, I felt that this thing had been pushed back. The anxiety left me. I felt peaceful. There was no hostility or irritability in me. I felt as if something was holding it back, like a bodyguard fending off an autograph hound. The peace I found back in August returned. I felt like I had been released from a stuffy room. And to make it even stranger, my breathing had improved. I generally get some nasal congestion in the early morning, and last night was no exception, but suddenly, everything was wide open.

As I went about my morning routine, over and over, the magnitude of the change came home to me. As it hit me, I would grab things for support and hold on. It’s like I’ve been released from prison. It’s incredible.

I hope I don’t do anything to mess it up. I don’t know what I did wrong last time, but I’m going to watch it. This is a tremendous gift. When you’re under psychological oppression, and it leaves, you resume your normal state, and in comparison, it almost seems euphoric. The difference is wonderful.

It may be that giving in to hostility, out of habit, caused me to lose my freedom. I will try to keep that in mind.

Here’s what I think. Over time, prayer in the Spirit fills you with something that overpowers and displaces hostile beings that affect your life. It fills you with something that “binds the strong man” so his house–you–can be spoiled by God.

Every person on earth has demons assigned to him; it’s not just people who bend steel bars and live naked in graveyards. These creatures warp our judgment. They cause diseases. They prevent our blessings from getting to us. They compel us to do evil. They addict us. They give us depression and other mental illnesses. They even cause wars.

These ancient things are far more powerful than unaided human beings. We can’t get rid of them in our own strength. For that matter, our own flesh can be more powerful than we are. It can be impossible to control. The answer is God. He “grows” us, like mustard seeds, to be more powerful than our enemies. He increases our faith. He improves our character so we do more good and less evil, which leads to fewer chastisements and more blessings. He gives us the gifts of the Spirit to fight the enemy supernaturally. And in the Bible, he provides the Sword of the Spirit: his promises, which we can cite, whether in defense or offense. God gives us the tools to get free.

I think we’re going to see a lot more teaching in this vein over the coming years. This is what Satan is afraid of. It’s why he worked so hard to get the church to deny and even ban the manifestations of the Holy Spirit. The best way to get rid of God’s servants is to get religious people to crucify them and excommunicate them and burn them alive, and that’s what Satan got the church to do. He even got the church to ban possession of the Bible, which was the Satanic equivalent of gun control (unless gun control is the Satanic equivalent of gun control). But he can’t repress God’s work forever. He’s the weak, limited one, after all.

I don’t know if anyone will believe me, but I got something great, so even if I’m alone here, I have cause to celebrate.

And When I Die With Them, I Keep Them

Last night I watched Jazz with Marv and Maynard, and I enjoyed some Knob Creek and a Coke chaser. Then I went to bed, and while I was getting ready to sleep, I started thanking God for all the little pleasures in my life.

It was quite a list. It seems like the more mature I get, the better I am able to enjoy things. I eat less than I used to. I drink less. I quit smoking cigars. I try to curb my baser appetites, and I try to be more responsible. And I believe God works in me, making these things happen. As excess disappears from my life, the things I enjoy stand out more, perhaps because they’re not lost in the background noise of constant overindulgence.

Let’s see. I enjoy squeezing my pets and conversing with them. I enjoy the food I cook. I enjoy working on my musical skills. I love listening to good jazz and classical music. I love shooting and reloading. I look forward to having breakfast with my dad once a week. I love using my tools. I smile every time I see the ridiculous diesel pickup I bought. Every time I walk into my church, I feel like a kid running through the gate at Disneyland; I always know something good is going to happen.

The time I set apart for prayer and study is wonderful. Every session is a miniature Sabbath. It’s a sanctuary no one can intrude on, and more often than not, I sense God’s presence, and I feel like I’ve gotten a breakthrough.

You can have too much stuff in your life. You can have so much going on, you can’t appreciate any of it or do any one thing well. That’s very natural for me, as anyone who reads my blog knows, so I’m very glad God is adjusting me. Who knows? One day I might actually sell one of my motorcycles or even my flamenco guitar.

I’m keeping the milling machine and the Powermatic 66, however.

Covetousness. That was my problem. It’s not so much that I wanted what other people had; it’s that I wanted things that wouldn’t really bring me satisfaction. I used to buy stuff and then fail to enjoy it, because I thought too much about the things and not enough about the effort and time involved in deriving pleasure from them, so they sat and rotted. I still like to get toys, but now I get good use out of them, and I think that is because God is changing me and guiding me. It’s pretty unusual for me to regret spending money or time these days. I generally get a good return.

Somewhere in the Bible, it says something about how sad it is when a man has something he can’t enjoy. That’s what life without God is all about. You get rich, but you end up in rehab. You become famous, only to find that the thing you want most is privacy. Things like that happen. We don’t know which way we should go or what we should do, so we turn up blind alleys and end up with things that don’t bring us happiness. On the other hand, God promises us that if we’ll listen, he’ll guide us. He says, “I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye. Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee.”

We don’t know what we need or what we want. We can’t know. The world is too complicated, and we’re not smart enough to see all the angles. Only God can know. So he gave us a system in which we obey him and listen to him, and he gives us what we should have. He gives us things that are truly satisfying, and which have lasting value. And at the end of our time, we don’t stand before God poor and blind and naked, which is what happens to people who amass the wrong kind of wealth. The stuff we take wrongly, we lose. We only keep that which we were intended to have.

I wish I could go back in time to about 1971 and slap myself. But like the relatives of the rich man in the parable about hell, I would not have listened.

Long ago, when I thought I was about to have a comic strip syndicated, I cut photos of sportfishing yachts out of magazines, and I taped them to walls and so on, to give me motivation to work. That seems funny now. What if I had succeeded? I’d be a big, fat, conceited (more than I am now) lout who thought he made it without God’s help. I’d have shallow friends who drank all the time and never set foot in a church. I’d have no relationship with God, because I’d think I didn’t need one. The yachting crowd is coarse and venal; I know them. I would have gotten sick of them in two seasons. I’m much better off with the folks who attend church on Saturday night.

I thought I knew what I needed, but I wasn’t even close.

I don’t know where I’m going, and I admit, I wish God would hurry up, but I know that things are better than they used to be, and the trend is positive, and it’s a trend I can trust. I’m not building on sand.

I don’t know if buying a cornet was a good idea, but it will be fun for at least two months, and it will cost very little. I actually prayed about it, and I really felt like I should try it. Weird.

I feel like a piece of rough lumber somebody is jointing and planing and sanding into shape. Life gets more enjoyable all the time. I even appreciate the problems and setbacks. Now they seem to have meaning, and every one ends up blessing me. It’s hard to harm someone who walks with God, because God takes everything you throw at him and makes it a help to him.

All that stuff Jesus said; it looks like it’s actually TRUE. That’s wild. I never thought he was lying, but it’s still impressive when I see his words confirmed.

Woe to Thee, O Land, When Thy King is a Child

Are we finally reaching the point where gravity catches up with us and we have to admit we can’t finance the future by eating it?

The Dow is down over eighty points, and we just had two days that were even worse. Sooner or later, before we can have a real recovery, somebody somewhere has to make some money–has to create some wealth–and given our unemployment figures, that doesn’t seem to be happening. And we still have a gigantic glut of foreclosed homes the banks are sitting on. They can’t hold them forever. Eventually, they’re going to be put on the market or bulldozed. It will be interesting to see what happens to home loans and property values.

Because we borrowed an astronomical amount of money to finance the recovery, in the future, we have to make more money than usual in order to have the same prosperity we had in the past. It’s just like a student loan; you borrow money when you’re 20, and by the time you pay it off, every pizza you ate in college cost $50. What happens when you graduate with debt and then can’t get a job? That’s America’s situation.

Where is the evidence that we’re going to do better in 2015 than we did in 2005? Why would anyone think that was possible, let alone likely? And if we try to solve the problem by inflating the currency, we’ll just end up with larger numbers of smaller dollars. We’ll all be millionaires, and nobody will have a second pair of shoes. It’s still poverty, no matter how you look at it. We may be able to cheat the Chinese via inflation, but we’ll also be burning our cash reserves.

I don’t know why God provided me with silver coins, but it looks like I should be happy about it. I inherited a bunch of circulated silver coins from my grandfather. He snapped them up after Johnson turned our money into steel slugs. Seemed crazy at the time, but if we have a depression, I’ll be able to buy bread.

People think silver coins are worthless. They’re ignorant. The coins are 90% silver.

I just looked it up. My nickels are worth a dollar each. The dimes are worth over a dollar. The quarters are worth over three dollars. Wish I had enough of them to keep me alive for a year or two. Maybe I should buy some.

Gold is fine, but in a depression, it would be hard to spend. Owning gold would be like carrying thousand-dollar bills. A piece the size of a sesame seed would buy a dozen eggs. That’s useless. They don’t make coins that small. And what are you going to do, if you own it? Run a smelter in your kitchen? Forget it. Even if you could cut your gold into small pieces, no one would trust it. This is why mints exist. The purpose of a mint isn’t to make coins. It’s to make coins people can trust. Otherwise, private enterprises would be making gold coins diluted with copper and brass.

A silver coin, unlike a gold coin, will have a useful value. One of my dimes is worth a dozen eggs. Spending gold will be very difficult, but handing over a dime and grabbing a dozen eggs will be simple. Gold will only be useful if you’re buying a car or real estate. Or you’ll be able to trade it for silver, at a loss.

People say you don’t have to have precious metal in your possession in order to use it. You can trade it electronically. Good luck with that. If things get weird, I don’t want my money in the vault of some metals dealer three thousand miles away, waiting for him to declare bankruptcy and disappear. Savings accounts are insured by the government. Gold? No. When it’s gone, it’s gone. You can have private insurance, but would you trust it? Look at AIG. And the insurance wouldn’t compensate you in gold. You’d get worthless paper dollars. Better to stuff a few bags of silver in a deposit box at a local bank. If the bank fails, money will vanish, but goods in deposit boxes will remain.

If Obama and the Fed manage to eat our savings by printing money, what will we have left? Subsistence agriculture and bread lines. People in cities will starve. It may be especially bad in Florida, where we are suffering an unprecedented wave of blights and exotic pests. Oranges are probably going to get very scarce over the next five years because citrus greening is incurable. We may lose our bananas. Growing tomatoes here is already very hard; without chemicals, it can’t be done.

What do you do when you live in Miami and times get hard? The fish and peacocks and ducks would disappear in two months. Squirrels and pigeons would follow. You can’t grow enough fruit to live on, if you have a typical lot. It’s hard to grow vegetables here, and most lots are small anyway. Many homes here have topsoil six inches deep. Under that, it’s pure coral.

I never pray for God to fix things for us. Not exactly. I pray that we will turn to him and submit to him because of our problems, and that he’ll give us recovery only after that happens. We won’t learn anything from an unconditional handout. It would be a false kindness, and God doesn’t deal in those. I actually pray he will maintain the recession until we have revival. Otherwise, the suffering will be in vain. I also ask that he end the recession for those who have turned to him already.

Obama thinks a chicken can make a living by eating its own eggs. Everything he tells us goes against common sense, history, and basic economics. Borrowing only leads to prosperity when you reasonably anticipate that the borrowed money will enable you to make enough money to repay it. Otherwise, the result is bankruptcy. Can a nation declare bankruptcy? I guess so, but it won’t protect us from harsh consequences. We may weasel out of our debts by devaluing the currency, but we’ll all become poorer, and we’ll have to pay higher interest to China the next time they lend to us. This is how bad credit works. Everything costs more. But it’s worth it, so we can have essential government services, such as the subsidy of multimillion-dollar studies to tell us why trout can’t fly.

I think we’re going to have labor pains for a while. Things will get better and then worse, over and over, until the big collapse comes. The fluctuations will warn people and help those who are teachable to make preparations. Hopefully I’ll be ready. Life isn’t perfect when you’re in good standing with God, but it’s a whole lot better.

I am Now Self-Actualized

I think I have the pizza-pan situation figured out. I need thin steel, not cast iron. And I need three sizes. First, 12 x 18, to serve more than one person. Then 12 x 12, for a serious meal for one person or a small meal for two. Then 9 x 9, for a normal meal for one. Cast iron is out. Steel works, so there is no need to look for another answer.

I don’t know what to do with all this power. I pretty much have pizza under my thumb, so I can’t continue eating it every day with research as my excuse. I guess the smart move is to bag and freeze the cheese and sauce and have pizza maybe twice a week.

I’ve reached a point where it’s hard to think of anything new I want to learn to cook. I guess cheese poori and certain Indian appetizers and entrees would be good, but I can get a good cookbook for that; I don’t need to be original. Same for Chinese.

It’s unbelievable, now that I think about it. I can make the best pizza in Miami. I can make the best cheesecake anywhere, as far as I know. My barbecue is the best I can find anywhere near me. Prime rib is a joke. Aged steaks are simple. I can cook everything I really care about. God has really blessed me.

If only I could eat this stuff every day.

I guess now I should focus on small, healthy meals that are easy to fix. To me, that means meat or fish, plus non-starchy vegetables. Dull, but cheap and fast.

My dinner menu is embarrassing. Here’s the kind of thing I fix: two tiny pork chops fried in olive oil with no breading, half a can of greens, and Brussels sprouts with salt and butter. I really can’t eat more than that without fattening up. My current routine (admittedly derailed by pizza research) is one serving of oatmeal at breakfast, a sandwich and some pickles at lunch, and a little-bitty dinner. I’m changing that now; the small, sad-looking dinner, which is the largest meal, will come in the middle of the day.

I like vegetables, so eating things like greens and sprouts is not a problem. As far as I know, all Southerners like vegetables. I don’t know why. I always hear about people who won’t eat vegetables. They hate broccoli. They hate spinach. I don’t get it. No one in my family is like that. One of the best Southern meals is hot cornbread, soup beans, and fresh, raw vegetables. Southerners aren’t fat because they don’t eat vegetables. They’re fat because they also eat Moon Pies and chili-cheese-slaw dogs.

I’ve been watching Ken Burns’s Jazz for a few days. I love this documentary. I own a copy. Sometimes the BS can be hard to take; I don’t know why so many successful young black men talk crap, when their achievements stand for themselves. But generally, it focuses on the music, with a surprisingly fair approach to race relations.

Actually, I do know why so many successful young black men talk crap. It’s because Martin Luther King died and Jesse Jackson lived. They pattern themselves after the sideshow act, instead of the greater man who preceded him and died without leaving a substantial video or audio record. King didn’t live long enough to make the kind of impression Jackson has. That’s truly unfortunate. Slogans and chants and doggerel and transparent sophistry are no substitute for character, brains, and dignity.

Now that I think about it, Malcolm X was about fifty times the man Jesse Jackson is, and he died young, too. He had a weakness for slogans, though.

Anyway, I keep watching these videos and marveling at the music. Louis Armstrong is astonishing. He’s like Mozart. He was so good, it didn’t even make sense. Greatest jazz instrumentalist who ever lived. Arguably the greatest vocalist, although you would never know it from garbage like What a Wonderful World. I think THC had pickled his brain by then. They say he smoked every day. Some defend his later work, but far as I can tell, he said all he had to say before he hit middle age.

And people say dope won’t hurt you.

I’m glad I never cared for drugs enough to stick with them. I have never understood the appeal of pot. Sometimes I think other people smoke dope to be more like people like me. Some people have no sense of humor and no creativity and no ability to relax unless they’re high. If you have those things naturally, maybe dope seems pointless. People take drugs to compensate for shortcomings, so my theory makes sense to me. I admit, I’d love to have natural self-confidence comparable to what stimulants provide.

To get back to jazz, Bix Beiderbecke was another superhuman talent. Seems like he could do absolutely anything except quit drinking. He didn’t consider himself a pianist; his instrument was the cornet. But I have a couple of his piano recordings–stuff he played on the spur of the moment, almost as a lark–and the things he did are like nothing anyone else was playing at that time. It’s like a fusion of Debussy and Thelonious Monk.

He was never able to get it together, and he drank himself to death before he turned thirty. Maybe some people are too talented and too creative to lead happy, successful lives. Maybe the human body can’t contain them.

As I listened and watched, I wondered why Christian music couldn’t have this kind of quality and creativity. It’s not as if musical creativity didn’t exist before jazz. Stuffy classical musicians killed it, out of ignorance and misplaced worship. In the times of Mozart and Beethoven and Chopin, a classical musician was required to improvise. It’s virtually forbidden now, but the greats used to sit and make up melody lines on the spot, just like jazz musicians do now. Liszt could take sheet music for an orchestra and play it on the piano, at sight, while making suggestions and criticisms as they occurred to him.

American popular music was pretty weak (Turkey in the Straw, heaven protect us) before jazz and the blues, and improvisation in classical music was essentially banned, so it’s no wonder most popular music, including the Christian variety, is second-rate. Why can’t a Christian pianist sit and improvise brilliantly during a worship service? No reason at all. They used to do it. Maybe blue notes and certain jazz rhythms would be somewhat out of place, but those things aren’t essential to spontaneous music.

I keep banging away at sight-reading. Yesterday I amazed myself by playing a triplet correctly, while staying in time. I don’t know if I’ve ever done that before. I used to break measures into twelve beats and practice slowly, I think. I need to start journaling my progress, so I don’t get discouraged. I still can’t play anything, but I’m making substantial headway.

I should thaw out some tiny pork chops. I hate to miss out on a fine feed like that.

Haiti and Kentucky

Two prayer requests.

First, RE Haiti:

Hi Steve,

The babies from the abandoned baby unit need prayers, They are missing! Pray they are found safe.
Susie Krabacher was on CNN this morning and the url is a link to the interview.
http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2010/01/20/intv.krabacher.orphan.aid.cnn

Made “tiny” if the link is broke.
http://tinyurl.com/ye58z5b

Missing babies are the part that just breaks my heart.

Thanks,
Cindy

Second, from Kentucky, Heather is asking for help:

Hi Friends,
Just had my appointment with the high risk OB and they believe that the baby has a tumor of some sort on it’s spine. I know I depend on you for prayer for my mom and everything else in my life, but could you please ask the Lord to heal this?
They believe the tumor is non-cancerous, but would require surgery after the birth, which can be so dangerous and I would love to be able to avoid that if possible.
I am scheduled for an MRI on Friday so they can have a better look. That is the same day as mom’s oncologist appointment, and I know that I had already asked you all to pray for a good result with that.
Thank you and God Bless.
Love,
Heather

Have at it.

I Judge You for Judging, Even When You Didn’t

I got some glib, condescending comments about Pat Robertson today. I started to respond, but then I deleted them. I make an effort to check the things I write, and people show up and post judgmental comments that are obviously not supported by a scintilla of research, and they expect me to post them and take the time to respond thoughtfully. They expect me to work much harder than they do, and I get tired of it. If you’re going to argue with me about the Bible, read it first. If you’re going to argue with something I said, make sure I said it. WordPress’s comment page has a Trash link for good reason.

If you didn’t watch the Robertson video, and you didn’t read my blog posts carefully, and you don’t read the Bible, you will not read and consider my comment responses. I am not stupid enough to waste my time researching and writing for people who have proven they won’t benefit from it.

The irony of the Robertson situation is amazing. The people who are condemning him are doing exactly what they falsely accuse him of doing. They don’t watch the video. They have no idea what he said. Still, they condemn him and post lies. Because, in their own minds, they’re better Christians than he. If judging other people’s sins is bad, how bad is it to judge other people for judging, when they never did?

Robertson did not say Haitians deserved what they got. He didn’t even say they brought it on themselves. He did not express happiness over the earthquake. He sent them (and is still sending them) millions of dollars. He prays for them. He shows compassion. He is doing more for Haiti than anyone who is criticizing him, and when he pointed out that idolatry causes problems, he was doing them a kindness, as a Bible-reading Christian should already know: “Let the righteous smite me; it shall be a kindness. And let him reprove me; it shall be an excellent oil which shall not break my head.”

I guess I should point out that I’m quoting the Bible, so the uber-holy folks who don’t actually read the Bible won’t show up in my comments to tell me how stupid the above passage is.

The only thing Pat Robertson can be accused of in good faith is a breach of tact, committed out of love. I wouldn’t even go that far. If my house fell on me and I were worshiping demons, and an evangelist came to dig me out, and while he was doing it, he said, “You’ll be better off if you give up astrology and Santeria,” I’d thank him for the advice. At least I hope I would. I search the Bible and books and sermons for correction, because I know I need it. I am very concerned about the changes I need to make. What’s wrong with a little advice? I mean GOOD advice, not platitudes offered by people who write by reflex.

The left’s bizarre, unbiblical, unchristian, humanist obsession with denying the existence of sin has leached into Christianity, and now Christians think it came from God. Look, sin is bad. It causes problems. Exposing it is a good deed.

Pat Robertson didn’t kill anyone. He didn’t drive anyone to suicide. No one will have to have counseling because of what he said. BUTCH UP already. How did we end up with such stupid priorities? Bodies are rotting under fallen buildings, and people are up in arms over a few words an old man uttered in compassion. Who knows how many Haitians will hear his words, consider them, and be blessed?

I can’t believe I have to defend this guy. I am no fan, but it’s disgusting to see other Christians lie about him like this. Whatever else may be true of him, he gave his life to God, and he has brought millions of people to Christ, and when we get to paradise, they’ll all be there. How many of his ignorant, lying critics have a record like that? You people would have a Bentley crushed because of a scratch on the fender.

Stop telling lies about this man. Give it a rest and focus on helping the Haitians.

I’m not taking comments on this post. Experience has shown that it would be pointless.

Perfect, Mind-Blowing Sicilian Pizza

This is incredible. I can make Sicilian pizza. More than that, I can make the best Sicilian pizza on earth.

I made a pie today, figuring it would only be a good baseline effort. Somewhere to start. But it’s magnificent. If I had only cooked it longer and gone a little heavier on the sauce and cheese, it would have been the finest Sicilian pie imaginable. As it was, it shocked me. The smell that’s lingering in the house is still driving me crazy.

When this happens to me–and it happens a lot–is it luck, or does it mean God cares about good food? There has to be a reason he has given me so many good recipes.

I’ll tell you how to do it.

My local GFS didn’t have Super Dolce sauce, so I used Saporito. I added a little sugar to make it as sweet as Super Dolce. Other than that, I did everything the same. This is for a 12 x 18 rectangle.

INGREDIENTS

4 cups King Arthur bread flour (or any bread flour)
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons pepper
4 rounded teaspoons dry yeast
1 pint water

Activate the yeast in the water. Put the other stuff in a really big food processor. Mine almost died when I did this. You may as well break your dough into two portions and process them separately.

Mix the dry stuff. Start dribbling the water and yeast in. When the dough forms a coherent glob, stop adding water and process for one minute. You want it a little sticky, but you should be able to handle it. Seems like you want as much water in it as you can manage, without ending up with something so loose you can’t make it into a pie.

Form the dough into a smooth glob, oil it heavily, and put it in an oiled dish to rise. Probably best to use a dish that somehow resembles the pizza pan. In other words, round for a round pan, and so on. It will make it easier to make the dough fit the pan.

Punch the dough down when it rises. Let it poof back up a little. The more time it has to rise, the better the flavor will be.

Dump it in an oiled steel pan and mash it until it fits. Make the borders slightly higher than the middle. Don’t overdo it, because you can end up with a pie that’s so tall around the edges, the cheese runs into the middle.

Make sure the top of the dough is oily (light olive oil, not green), and let the dough rise some more. I let mine get up to about 3/4″ in height. You should flip the dough once while you’re making it fit, because this will make the bottom of it lumpy. That will give you wrinkles and air spaces that will give you different degrees of doneness on the bottom of the pie. This is a very good thing.

SAUCE INGREDIENTS

8 oz. Stanislaus Saporito or Super Dolce sauce
2 level teaspoons sugar (Super Dolce) or 3 (Saporito)
1/2 – 1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon white vinegar

Man, this was good.

1 teaspoon olive oil
2 teaspoons dry oregano – get something decent, not Badia
enough water to make the sauce loose – maybe a cup

I used 3/4 this much sauce, and it wasn’t enough. It might be wise to add a little more oil to the sauce. It got a little dry in the exposed areas, but that may have been because I spread it too thin.

Smear the cheese on top of the pie. Add 16 ounces Costco mozzarella. Cut it with good provolone if you want. I used half provolone on one side of the pie, and it was very good.

Mike was right on the money with the lighter olive oil. I am never using green olive oil on pizza again.

Bake in a 550° preheated oven. I rested my pan on a stone. I gave it 8 minutes, but I should have gone ten. The pan was on the middle rack.

This will be better if you can get the pie to come out so you can give it a couple of minutes on the bare stone, but my stone is too small for that. This dough is sticky, so make sure you use a pan that really works.

I need a smaller pan. The skillet idea comes to mind.

I can’t get over this.

Pizza is a a Lifelong Pursuit

My church is going crazy these days. Unlike the major news outlets, which will be gone from Haiti in a week, we are engaged in a long-term effort, and because of the earthquake, it’s going to be ramped up. All sorts of stuff is happening. They even have me writing copy for them.

Trinity Broadcasting is all over this, and our church is going to be their main resource in the Haiti campaign. I suppose that makes sense, since most of the people who attend are Haitian. On top of that, our pastor has hooked up with Friend Ships Unlimited, and they have a boat on the way from Lake Charles. It’s going to dock in the Port of Miami and go back and forth between Miami and Port au Prince. The people making this stuff happen are working late hours and going without sleep. It’s pretty impressive.

The services this weekend were largely aimed at Haiti. The Saturday service was converted to a time of prayer, and we heard a lot about the crisis in the other services. Attendance was heavy.

One of the church’s pastors–an older gentleman of Haitian descent–was in Port au Prince when the earthquake came. He spoke to us. He said the ground shook for four or five minutes. Ordinarily, he would have been some distance out of town–he only goes to Port au Prince when he’s on the way back to Miami–but on this occasion he was in Port au Prince a day earlier than usual.

He said he was in a hotel, on the second story, when it hit. The ground moved vertically as well as horizontally. He had to hold onto a doorframe. When it was over, he went out in the short street where the hotel was located, and six people were already dead. One was a little girl whose head had been severed. He also found a woman whose hand had been amputated when her fallen ceiling pinned her wrist against her refrigerator door. She was trapped for six hours like that. The hand was severed, but the arm was still trapped. She had to stand and wait while rescuers freed her.

The neighborhood was white with concrete dust. It must have been like 911.

When the quake was over, no one at church knew whether this man was alive or dead. He managed to hitch a ride to Miami on a military flight, and he arrived in the sanctuary without notice, much to everyone’s relief.

We work with Mission of Hope. They have a big campus outside Port au Prince. It was far enough to be spared significant damage. I suppose now it will be bursting with people who need help.

I don’t know all that much about our involvement, because I have never participated in it. I guess that will change. I don’t know what they’ll want me to do.

There are tons of good charities working on this. I doubt it matters which one you help, as long as they check out. If you want to find out about our organization, you can find it at this link.

I still don’t know what’s going on with their plan to put me to work in their cafe. I hope they follow through on their plan to get a pizza oven. I don’t know if it’s practical, though. I rarely eat anything more complicated than cheese pizza, but most people want a lot of toppings, and that makes the whole business much more complex and bothersome.

My flour education never stops. This weekend, I learned some people use flour made from durum wheat, which is the same stuff used to make coarse semolina. You can’t get fine semolina flour around here, as far as I know. Whole Foods doesn’t have it. I’d like to try it. I’ve also learned that Gordon Food Supply sells a brand of flour that’s very high in gluten. That would be fun to try, although if I don’t like it, I’m stuck with a huge bag of useless flour. I’m sure it would be great, but these days, I tend to lean toward low-gluten flour, and by that I mean 3 grams per “serving,” as defined on the label.

I had read that Caputo 00 flour was low in gluten, and I repeated it, but this weekend I found an “expert” website bearing a claim that 00 flour is actually high in gluten. I don’t know what to believe. I guess I could look for a Caputo label, online.

Man, I love the Internet. Apparently, it’s 11.5% gluten, which is high.

I had read that it was low in gluten, and that the things that made it special were its purity and the fineness of the grind, but apparently I was deceived. I don’t like it in pizza, so it doesn’t matter, but I don’t like being wrong, either.

You can get flour that’s 14% gluten. That must be interesting. Sometimes when I make pizza, I add gluten with a spoon, so it’s not like you’re limited to what you get in the bag. Gluten is easy to buy, and it beats working yourself to death trying to find the ultimate flour.

Costco cheese continues to exceed expectations. I have learned that a lot of the things I do to make pizza work are actually necessary only to compensate for bad cheese.

I put white vinegar in my sauce. It turns out the reason I need that is that most cheese has no flavor. With Costco cheese, I can reduce it or omit it. I also add olive oil to my sauce. I didn’t think it had much effect on the cheese, but it does. If I go over a tablespoon in two ounces (weighed as it comes from the can) of Super Dolce sauce, the oil rises up into the cheese and makes the pie too oily. This doesn’t happen with Gordon Food Supply Primo Gusto cheese, but it’s a problem with Costco mozzarella, so I have to drop the olive oil down to a teaspoon or two. It’s good to be able to reduce the olive oil, because the oil I have degrades the taste of the sauce a little. Oil oxidizes in the bottle before you buy it, and I think that gives the sauce a slight cardboard taste. Mike says the answer is lighter, cheaper olive oil, but if the olive oil is reduced, I don’t have to worry about it.

Someone advised me to add cheddar to my cheese. This pumps up the fat content and adds sourness, which you need. Works great with Primo Gusto, but there is no need to do it with Costco cheese. It might be nice to cut it with a good provolone or scamorza, however.

Mike advised me to underlay the mozzarella with grated Romano. Again, it depends on the mozzarella.

I’ve noticed that Costco cheese has a smoky smell. I was afraid I had gotten something on the bag, but it turns out the smell comes from the cheese. I guess it has a fragrance because it’s quality cheese.

I have read that Gordon Food Service will special-order Grande Cheese, but you have to buy a whole 30-pound case. I don’t think it’s worth it. I know it’s fantastic cheese, but things are going so well now, what’s the point?

I may run up to GFS and get more sauce to freeze. I plan to make more frozen dough portions. They don’t save time, because it takes a couple of hours to turn frozen dough into a pie. But they do minimize the mess and the work. If you can plan a meal three hours ahead, frozen dough will work for you. If you have to have pizza faster than that, because you can’t anticipate the need, forget it.

You’re better off planning ahead and freezing dough or refrigerating it for a day, because the flavor and texture will improve a little as the dough sits. If I could manage to make sourdough portions, I’d be in paradise. You can’t do that on the spur of the moment. Freezing and sourdough crust go together naturally. I should order some starter.

I could also freeze dough for garlic rolls, although I don’t know if I’d ever use it. A small pizza is a reasonable meal. It won’t make you fat. Add two garlic rolls, and you’re way over budget. Maybe on rare occasions I could fix myself three or four rolls, but it’s risky.

Freezing entire pizzas would be great, but you need a very big vacuum sealer. I don’t see it happening.

The major breakthrough that made all this possible was the decision to use the food processor to knead dough. If I had to use my hands or a mixer, I would never have been willing to make pizza often enough to learn anything. The food processor turns it into a three-minute job, from kneading the dough to putting the food processor parts in the dishwasher. The actual kneading is a little over a minute, and the dough is perfect.

Sooner or later I need to get my Sicilian working. I never found a steel pan I liked. Maybe the best thing is to use a big cast iron skillet. If I dedicate one to pizza, I’ll be able to develop a finish that will assure stick-free crusts. I can make excellent thick-crust pizzas just by using more dough in my regular recipe, but I like the pan-baked crusts they make in New York. They’re a little oily and very crunchy on the outside. My thick crusts are plain old pizza crusts. Wonderful, but not Sicilian. Ordinary pizza crust is like baked bread, which must be why you have to use a stone. A stone lets the crust dry as it bakes. Sicilian is sort of fried on the bottom.

This stuff never ends. But it’s okay. I remember a time when my pizza was disgusting. Now it’s always great; the only issue is whether it has the precise characteristics I imagine before I make it.

The Future is Ours

I had to skip piano practice on Friday because I was busy working on Haiti stuff for my church, but last night, I got back to work. I took out my book of Bach sinfonias and inventions and worked on sight-reading. It was remarkable. I went maybe an hour and a half, and it was not particularly tedious, and it got easier and easier as time passed. I did not make music by any stretch of the imagination, but I felt like something had broken loose and I was finally on my way.

This happens when you try to develop skills. I remember reaching a point in my physics studies where things started to flow. The variables seemed to move around on their own, instead of requiring me to push them. And when I used to play the guitar, I got to a point where my hands sometimes took off by themselves.

The only other skill in which I have this feeling is writing, and the breakthrough has become permanent, because I stuck with it. I write effortlessly now. I don’t think about it. It just appears on the screen. If I could get to the point where I could compose like that, it would be as great a gift as I could ask for. Writing is great, but it’s an extremely difficult skill to market, and unless you hit it big, you don’t touch many people or accomplish anything worthwhile. I’d get more satisfaction out of creating music. I can get words out of my head just fine. The music is still stuck in there.

I screwed up when I was studying physics, even though I had reached the point where I was working pretty fluently. I got burned out after several years of accelerated study, and I couldn’t catch myself no matter what I did. The people at the University of Texas could not have cared less. They didn’t want a troubled student inconveniencing them, so they gave me no help, and they waited for me to give up. I’m sure they were relieved when I quit.

I think I would have been fine had I listened to my own mind. I had found that the way to solve problems was to stop thinking and wait for the solutions to appear through creativity, not analysis. That was the most reliable thing I had going for me. Stop thinking, and wait. But I couldn’t make myself rely on it. It was too weird.

I’m wrong; that wasn’t the real answer. Ultimately, the problem was that I was away from God, so I had plenty of enemies but no help. I prayed, but I didn’t try to change my life fundamentally. So nothing happened. It was as though the ceiling were made of brass and the prayers bounced off of it.

What an idiot. I was in Texas; there were probably great churches all around me. But it didn’t occur to me that I needed to go in and recommit myself to God and get the help I needed.

God will let you flounder and suffer. Under some circumstances, he will let you die while you wander in confusion. You can’t always expect him to wipe your nose for you. I was in a mess because I had done something stupid. I knew better. I had no right to expect to be rescued.

People let me down, too. I’m sure there were people who were supposed to pray for me and reach out to me, but they blew it off. Fixing the world is our responsibility, even though God gives us the power to do it. Bad things happen because there aren’t enough of us on the job.

When I left my church in Miami before taking up physics, I didn’t get persistent calls, asking if I was okay. People didn’t come to see about me. The friends I had made didn’t bang on my door and ask to pray for me. Now that church doesn’t exist. No surprise. Church isn’t primarily about getting miracles and prosperity and growing a giant congregation and getting on TV. I think those are things too many charismatic churches focus on, and that was definitely the case when I was involved twenty years ago. Church is about seeking God’s face and doing what is right. My church wasn’t there for people who needed help, and God wasn’t there for my church. He let it dry up and vanish.

I blew it. My pastor blew it. The other members of the church blew it. I ended up wasting about eighteen years, and during that time, my mother got lung cancer, and my sister continued the smoking habit that eventually gave her lung cancer, and things went badly for my family.

I don’t condemn anyone. It seems like the body of Christ has been burdened with ignorance for about 1900 years–blinded like Samson–and things are still being restored. I know the people in my old church would have done the right things, had they been better informed. I sure would have. I can’t condemn them, when my own performance has been so bad.

Unity is important. Predators usually won’t plunge into cohesive herds. They look for animals that wander off on their own. It’s stupid to think the mission of a church is to build a big facility and get lots of video coverage for a fast-talking pastor who hawks dubious DVDs with his leering, comb-overed photo on the boxes. You look after the members first, and you try to do God’s will. A church is made of members, not bricks. Let Satan get at the members, and the church will fall.

The church I go to now does a better job of binding its members together. There are lots of prayer groups. There are activities and outreaches that get people together. It could be better (and I know it will be), but it beats what I’ve seen in the past.

Piano practice is going well. Lots of things are going well. I think things that have been taken from me in the past will be restored as time goes by. Maybe not everything, but many things. Then when my life is over, I’ll be free from the struggle forever. The vicious, parasitic spirits that torment us like horseflies seem powerful now, but they will be like ticks and worms compared to us, and they won’t be able to follow us where we’re going.

It’s a good deal. Freedom from persecution, and public execution for our enemies. You can’t beat that. We’ll be like Mordecai and Esther, living in safety and peace while Haman and his dead sons were publicly impaled on high poles.