Made me Happy, Though

I know everyone thinks the space heater miracle is stupid, so I’ll make things worse.

Until February 12, I’ll be putting in an hour of prayer every day, in the middle of the afternoon. Today when I went in to get started, I noticed that MY NEW SPACE HEATER WAS NOT WORKING. I moved it to another outlet and fiddled with it. No dice.

I could have gone to the hardware store and held hostages until they got me a new heater, but I reminded myself that there is always a reward for doing the right thing, and I got down to prayer. Eventually, I got around to the heater. I prayed that I would be able to get it to work.

And before I finished praying, I heard a little sound like “ting,” and I turned the heater on, and it ran.

I’m not kidding. And it gets weirder. After a while, the heater started to go WAAAAHHHHWAHWAHWAH for some unknown reason, and since the prayer session was still underway, I prayed that I would be able to fix it. And while I was lying there, I reached over and moved it a little bit, and it quit making the noise.

By now I figured I could get anything I asked for. But I managed to restrain myself and ask for things my family and I actually needed and which I figured would please God. Otherwise I might be typing this from inside a Bentley, with Aisha Tyler in the passenger seat.

The heater made a little more noise later on, but I believe I have it figured out, and anyway, it works.

I thought it might be silly to tell this story, because there probably is such a thing as meaningless coincidence, but then I thought it would be worse to have a prayer answered and not give credit. We’re supposed to pray about little unimportant things as well as major items, so why shouldn’t God answer?

Dinner was excellent. I made a pizza with two thirds divine Costco mozzarella and one third extra sharp cheddar. I think 20% cheddar would be perfect, but this was very good. The cheddar threw off a little more fat than I really wanted, and it made the pie slightly more acidic than it should have been, but other than that, it was great. Reducing the amount should fix it. Making the cheese more acidic, by adding cheddar, may allow me to cut back on the vinegar in the sauce.

I can’t get over that amazing Costco cheese. I’ve used Grande, which has no bad points, but I honestly think Costco is better. I believe I paid $2.15 per pound. Grande is over four bucks per pound online, plus shipping. One of these days I’ll find a way to beat Stanislaus sauce with supermarket ingredients, and they’ll have to put me away to keep me from eating pizza nine times a day.

I think I’ve settled on a crust formula. I’m omitting the fat INSIDE the dough and applying oil OUTSIDE while it rises. That way, the crust doesn’t crack and tear while you toss it, but you don’t get the flavor of rancid oil. It seems like nearly all olive oil has a slightly rancid taste, which is exacerbated when you use it inside bread dough. Maybe I’m wrong.

The crust was much better than the last one I made. I used this:

1 cup bread flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 rounded teaspoon dry yeast
~4 ounces water

I ran it through the food processor earlier in the day, and then I oiled it and stuck it in a Pyrex dish in the fridge until I needed it. I think lowering the yeast from a tablespoon was a good move, and I think the time in the fridge did the dough some good. It tossed perfectly, except for a pinhole which was easily fixed. When you keep oil out of the dough, the bread flavor really comes through.

If you’re not putting pepper in your dough, you’re missing out. It doesn’t taste like pepper when you bake it. It tastes more like cherries. You have to try it to understand. I leave it out of garlic rolls, but it’s a must in pizza dough.

I cook so well these days I don’t really have much motivation to make anything new. I guess cooking is like that. There are only so many dishes a person wants to make well. It’s not like music, where you could write a new piece every day and never be satisfied.

I Can Hook You Up

I managed to get a space heater today. I can’t believe it.

Yesterday I was told nobody in Miami had space heaters. A tour of the local stores indicated this was true. Northern Tool, Costco, Best Buy, Target, KMart, Home Depot, Bed Bath & Beyond…no luck. I figured I would have to get used to a 65-degree bedroom.

I went to Costco today to get mozzarella, and on the way home, I prayed for success in finding a heater. I decided to run by the local mom-and-pop hardware store. I asked a stock boy if they had heaters, assuming he would say no. He said that if I went to the back register, they had about thirty of them.

THIRTY.

Apparently, I got there right after the delivery arrived. If I understood them correctly, they bought a pallet of heaters from the Home Shopping Network, and I happened to be on the scene before they disappeared. People were calling their relatives, asking if they needed heaters. Others were calling the store, bribing the workers to hold heaters for them. Incredible.

I called my dad to make sure he didn’t need one, and then I handed over my American Express and made the buy. I told them I felt like I was buying crack. I had to go to the parking lot and get a box off the pallet; they weren’t even in the store yet.

So much for reverse-cycle air conditioning. It’s better than nothing, but not much better.

Does God answer prayers about things like space heaters? I got my heater. You decide.

No; That Would be Crazy

This week at my prayer group’s Saturday meeting, I learned that our leader had suggested we keep journals. This is pretty funny, in my case. I’ve been blogging since late 2002. If you bound my Internet writing, it would be thousands of pages.

Nonetheless, it makes sense to keep a private journal. I would have a lot more freedom.

He said we should write down three goals every day. One for our church and two for other reasons which I forget. Because I didn’t write them down. Couldn’t find my pen, which was jammed down in the corner of the pocket of my George Bush chore coat. I have to email him and get him to repeat it.

Lists are great. You get things done when you make lists, provided you make an effort to do the things you write down. Three goals…that’s a list.

Back when I was Piano-Obsession Man, at the end of every day, as I lay in bed, I listed the musical accomplishments I had achieved that day. It was a great way to maintain motivation. Unfortunately, I eventually realized I could not remember piano pieces the way I used to remember pieces for guitar, banjo, and mandolin. I quit playing. It seemed pointless. Learn a piece, learn another piece, and forget the first piece, because I wasn’t practicing it. I had a two-tune repertoire because I couldn’t hold the pieces in my mind. I figured it was senility.

A while back, my second cousin (married to one of the finest classical trombonists) suggested I learn to sight-read, in order to compensate for the memory problems. Recently, I decided to give it a shot. I’m making progress. I think this is one of the things I could write about in the journal. It would be nice to be able to compare one week’s entries to those of an earlier week. I feel like I’m getting nowhere, but I know that’s because I haven’t documented the improvements.

Practice is strange. It breaks down into note reading and timing practice. Note practice is extremely tedious. I’m just figuring out which key to hit. I have to be at a keyboard for this, because I have to move my hands around. Timing practice is very different. I just have to hit one note, over and over, at the correct times. I don’t really need an instrument to do it. If I were pressed, I could do it in my head, holding the book in front of me while sitting in a chair.

Timing practice is less tedious, because the beat pulls me through it. I think it’s also the most important part of the venture. Timing is extremely complicated, and you have to be able to do it instantaneously. Notes…there are only nine on a staff. Surely note reading has to come together faster.

Today I realized I can now imagine musical measures in my head and hear the timing. Very odd. Maybe I can eventually practice my timing without piano or music. My head will be like the Matrix. More than it already is.

I have to figure out how to keep a journal in Microsoft Word, without losing my mind. Imagine keeping track of 365 documents per year.

Beware of Imitations

This weather is cracking me up. People like me are only now finding out whether the 3s in the tens columns on their digital thermometers will display. Last night on the way home from church, my truck’s gauge read 39. The last time it read below 40, it was probably being driven onto a truck at the plant where it was manufactured.

I feel great this morning. The illness is lifting. I can breathe. And I probably slept ten hours, which doesn’t hurt. Viruses affect your brain chemistry. I’m sure of it. Sometimes I get depressed or tense when I have a virus. When they go away, you get a natural lift. Your normal state returns, and it seems like euphoria.

I was able to go to church last night. On the way, I started feeling God’s presence again, the way I did before I got sick. I felt him moving during the service and afterward, too. Man, I missed that. What an incredible gift. It amazes me that God saw fit to let me have that, because what I deserved was to be abandoned.

These days I spend half an hour praying in the Spirit before I get out of bed, and I have to admit, I sometimes turn on the tube for a few minutes while I’m doing it. Today I saw a popular preacher in a giant stadium, preaching about self-love. He said you should never insult yourself, because to do so is to insult God’s creation. You know the spiel.

I don’t disagree with messages involving positive thinking and behavioral change. My own pastor talks about these things a lot. But I wouldn’t stay in a church where that was the main thrust. It’s not what Christianity is about, and we aren’t the people to go to for this kind of instruction. Frankly, the Scientologists are probably the masters of positive thinking. If that’s all you want, go to the best.

As for self-love…I am not a fan. We now know that men in prison tend to have very high self-esteem. What does that tell you? It tells you self-esteem is not where growth comes from. In fact, it can prevent growth and cause you to become more evil. If you think you’re just dandy the second you pop out of the womb, why would you want to change?

Look at the Bible. Do we see example after example of God telling people, “Hey, stop beating yourself up. You’re WONDERFUL, just the way you are!” Of course not. Over and over, he knocks people to the ground and tells them to remember their place. Job. Paul. Various kings. Nebuchadnezzar. How long a list do you want? What was the first sin? Eating a piece of fruit? No, it was pride. Inappropriate self-love. Satan committed it.

If you’re a person with good values and good intentions, low self-esteem can be an obstacle. You should not hate yourself. You should not be crippled by the projection of your own self-loathing onto other people. But a certain amount of shame is essential. It’s the warning mechanism God built into your soul’s immune system. It tells you something is wrong. It brings people to altars. It causes us to change course when we’re headed for trouble. It keeps people humble.

The Bible makes it clear, and Christians teach, that God works best though humble people who seek his help constantly and give him credit. Moses and Jesus were humble, and God repeatedly reminds us that he is humble. What better role model could you want? How can anyone question the wisdom of aspiring to have a character trait possessed by God himself? If criticizing yourself is criticizing God’s work, criticizing humility is criticizing God.

What is humility? It’s an attitudinal expression of the knowledge that you are not perfect. What does “perfect” really mean? It didn’t originally mean “flawless.” It meant “complete” or “finished.” If you know you’re not a finished work, you will continue improving yourself. Isn’t that what we’re here for?

Paul had problems with pride, so what did God do? He allowed Paul to have an unpleasant disease (or some other painful problem) Paul referred to as a thorn in his flesh. I don’t enjoy being chastised with misfortune. If I can avoid it by criticizing myself and changing, I will do so, every time. With deep gratitude. I think I’ve been hammered and hindered for crediting myself too much. I don’t want that to continue until I’m 80, because I’m too thick-headed to get the message.

The self-love message is just one example of worldly thinking which can be useful, but which should not be part of Christianity’s primary emphasis. You don’t have to be a Christian to learn worldly wisdom. A Buddhist or a Mormon can teach you about discipline, organization, exercise, eating right…all the worldly wisdom you can imagine. Only a Christian can show you how to humble yourself, obtain eternal life, and receive the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. Those are the important things. This is a supernatural faith. The changes God makes in us are, essentially, magical. We have to learn worldly wisdom, too, but it can’t come first. It can’t save you, any more than your own righteousness can get you into heaven.

The Bible tells us we receive power when we are baptized with the Holy Spirit. It says the Holy Spirit does two things for us. It changes our character by giving us the fruit of the Spirit. It changes our abilities by giving us the gifts of the Spirit. These are the things that make us like God. These are the things that make us powerful. This is what Jesus died for. He himself said it was better that he should die, so we could receive this. This is more important than looking in the mirror every day and giving yourself a Stuart Smalley talk. Positive thinking is a human effort. The power of the Holy Spirit is the work of God, in you. It’s better. That’s all there is to it.

This is what “grace” means. It means we receive things directly from God, and that they are things we can’t and don’t deserve. Salvation is the first gift. Then the other stuff comes along, if you know how to receive it.

Grace is the reason I’m not doomed to be a fat person any more. I was instantly delivered from overeating. It wasn’t even on my mind when it happened. God made the decision, and it happened without warning. Other people have been delivered from drug addiction, anger, covetousness…you name it. And it happens supernaturally; it’s not the result of hard work. If God took this deliverance away from me, I’d be as fat as ever in two months.

I think what happened to me may be an example of the fruit of the Spirit. One of the fruit is self-discipline. When it came to food, I never had any. Or at least I didn’t have enough. I always gave out after a certain amount of time, and then the fat came back. Now it just stays off. I picked up a couple of pounds while I was ill, because I was inactive and I spoiled myself and I had two holiday meals. But that weight is gone, as of today. I have a closetful of smaller pants I expect to be wearing in March.

The other day, reader Ed sent me a testimony from Norm Miller, the Chairman of the Board of Interstate Batteries. This man is an alcoholic. One morning, after he had been an alcoholic for a long time, he realized he needed God’s help. Here’s an excerpt:

At the very instant I realized I had become an alcoholic, I blurted out in a half-yell of desperation, “God, help me! I can’t handle it!” I’ll never forget those words, because He took the compulsion to drink away completely. It was over right then. I realize it doesn’t happen that way for everyone, but it did for me, and I’m eternally thankful. The weird thing is that if you’d asked me the day before if I believed in God, I would have told you that I didn’t know—that I hadn’t given much thought to it.

It’s wonderful if you can complete a 12-step program and force yourself to stay clean until you die. But what Norm Miller got is better, and he’s not the only one. This is what God wants us to have. It beats being a drunk with lots of self-esteem.

Worldly people have no faith in their ability to improve, so often, their answer is to tell you that you should be happy as you are. Fat is beautiful! Homosexuality is diversity! Having your genitals hacked off because of sexual confusion is a glorious breakthrough! A little screaming in a marriage is healthy! Falling off the wagon twice a year and losing your job is no big deal!

That’s no way to live. Never accept defeat. Don’t call surrender victory. If God is God, there is a way out, and it’s not something you achieve by trying hard. Look at the people Jesus healed. Did he tell the lady with the issue of blood to try real hard to stop bleeding? Did he tell the dead girl he raised she could get up if she just believed in herself? Please. Elijah didn’t incinerate any bulls, and Moses didn’t part the Red Sea. God did. When things are as they should be, God does the work.

I’m not saying you’ll overcome every problem you have (or that you won’t). But God’s supernatural power is for everyone. We are supposed to have it and use it. It will allow you to beat things you could never handle on your own.

I don’t need to go to church to hear about self-love and positive thinking. I can get that from any bookstore. It’s great stuff. But it’s not what Jesus died for. It’s not God’s great gift. It’s not the pearl of great price.

More and more, I feel myself changing. I see old problems melting away. The overeating thing happened instantly. Other things improve slowly but steadily. I could think positive all day and never have this happen to me. I knew all about positive thinking fifteen years ago. I can tell you which books work. Only God was able to put me on a permanent positive trend. The other stuff was like Band-Aids for hemophilia.

I’ll point out one other thing. God gives you favor, and he fights your supernatural and natural enemies. Will Scientology do that? Will Tony Robbins do that? Of course not. These things happen outside of you; changing your attitude has no effect on them. You need supernatural beings out there working to change things. God supplies them. He sent ravens to feed Elijah. Think positive right now and see how many ravens you can conjure up. He sent an army of angels to fight on David’s side. Tell yourself you’re beautiful and successful for a while, and see how many angels show up to kill your enemies. Probably not many.

Pray in the Spirit, pray with your understanding, fast, and walk by faith. That’s where the power is at. This other stuff has fleeting value. If you put your faith in it, it will only misdirect you and slow you down.

I Venture Outdoors

My viral symptoms have decreased greatly. Last night I got all excited and texted the leader of my Saturday prayer group, saying I would be there if it didn’t rain. Then I got up this morning, and it was about 50 degrees out and drizzling. This never happens in Miami. We get rain. We get cold weather. We get them three months apart. We don’t get them on the same day.

I considered the prospect of having a relapse and having to lie around doing nothing for another week. Then I thought about the prospect of missing another prayer group. And I pictured myself all bundled up in the spacious, toasty cab of my giant diesel pickup. And I got my fat behind in the shower and got ready to leave.

Two missed meetings are enough. I can’t sit around for another week, missing out. I had to take the chance.

I could not believe the experience I had driving to Hallandale and back (that’s where we meet). On the way up, the truck’s exterior temperature gauge read 44. On the way down, it sunk to 41! Am I on Mars, or what? This can’t happen here.

I don’t care. It was well worth it. Seven of us met at Denny’s, and we talked about our goals and testimonies, and we all got on the same page. I needed that. If all you do is sit in a service for 90 minutes a week, you’re barely getting a toe in the water. The fight is on, all day, every day. Your enemy doesn’t take time off. You need all the support you can get.

Appropriately, we talked about warfare today. That’s what Christian life is. We often make that comparison, saying we are like soldiers and that our lives are like war. But that’s backward. Earthly soldiers are like Christians and angels and demons. Earthly war is like the battle in the heavens. The real war–the first war–is the one that started when Lucifer rebelled. All the wars we’ve seen here are pale imitations. We mistake the copies for the original. The spiritual war is more important. The stakes are higher. The injuries are greater. And only the spiritual war can cause death. Earthly war can kill your body, but spiritual war can cause the permanent destruction of your soul. That’s the only true death there is.

Our group leader, John, went back to something he discussed with us three weeks ago. He had a book called A Warrior Culture, by Donny Prater. In that book, Prater compares Satan to a lion, and he describes the way lions hunt. They carefully evaluate their prey so they can focus on the weakest individuals. They stalk the chosen victims patiently, for hours. They gang up. And the best defense is unity.

I thought that was interesting, because it reminded me of the things I’ve read about snipers. The greatest American sniper was a man named Carlos Hathcock, and I read his biography. I learned that snipers like to wound careless, exposed people from cover and then leave them alive, screaming in pain. Why? So their buddies will come out from concealment in order to save them. Then the sniper shoots them as well. That way, he can turn one wounded soldier into a pile of bodies.

This kind of thing is happening in my family. One person is more vulnerable than the others, so that person is the primary object of attack. The enemy is able to make that person behave in ways that are extremely exasperating. What happens when a family is attacked in this way? It can give rise to unforgiveness and anger in the other family members. It may make them question God, because it seems as if he’s not helping. It may make them drink or take drugs to relieve the stress. It makes it a challenge to focus on compassion. It’s Satan’s way of jimmying their temple doors open, so he can attack them with the same force. He wounds one of us, and he uses that person to snare the rest of us.

It’s an interesting strategy, and it’s not always easy to know what to do. Jesus himself told the disciples that if the people of a town would not listen to them, they were to shake that town’s dust off their shoes and leave. Paul abandoned a perverted Christian to the destruction of the flesh, that his suffering might turn him back to God. Longsuffering–even God’s–has limits. On the other hand, you have to be sure you show enough patience and understanding. It’s wrong to turn to harsh tactics too early. It can be self-righteous and judgmental.

I suppose the test is to examine your intentions and the likely outcome of your actions. If they pass inspection, you must be doing the right thing.

Christians aren’t the only ones who have to perform this balancing act. Over and over, both testaments refer simultaneously to mercy and judgment. God is just, and God is merciful. At the same time. He can do that without error or contradiction, but I know I make mistakes. I wish I were smart enough to know when I’m going too far in either direction.

Satan always has a trite response, if you screw up. If you’re too soft, you’re condemned as an enabler. If you’re too hard, you’re selfish and uncaring. Funny thing about Satan: unlike God, he’s pretty predictable. He’s not as smart as God, he does not know the future, and he’s always playing catch-up. He uses the same worn-out tricks, over and over. God, on the other hand, has an endless well of new ideas to trip him up and make a fool of him. God gave us the last book of the Bible about two millennia ago, and thanks to his brilliance and the revelation power of the Holy Spirit, we are still finding new truths in it, catching Satan flatfooted. He never knows where the next punch is coming from.

This is why prophecy is so hard to understand. It’s not to keep men in the dark. It’s to humiliate the enemy and prove God’s sovereignty. The truth is in front of Satan and has been for ages, and he can’t discern it, but a ten-year-old kid full of the Holy Spirit can see it when God is ready to let it be known. Look at the second psalm. It lays out the plan of the crucifixion, but Satan wasn’t bright enough to figure it out. When he got Jesus cruficied, he thought he had won, but he was actually shooting himself in the belly! He destroyed his own kingdom on that day, and he gloated while he was doing it. He’s very smart, but his intelligence is limited.

It’s a mistake to underestimate Satan, but it’s a mistake to overestimate him, too. Most of the time, there is no subtext to what he’s doing, and defeating him is generally not that hard. His tactics become more and more foreseeable as you grow; you improve, but he does not. He can’t grow. He can’t adapt. His nature was fixed before the earth existed. The numbers and powers of his army were fixed. The numbers and power of God’s people will increase until the end of creation. No wonder he hates us. His development is over. His time has an end. We will improve and grow stronger forever.

Sometimes he wins a battle in spite of everything you do. But far more often, he loses. Maybe that’s because his resources are limited. If he had an unlimited supply of extremely powerful spirits to pit against us, maybe it would be a different story. As it stands, it appears that he has to allot them carefully, because we win many, many battles.

One of the things I pray for is that God will use me and my family to break Satan’s heart the way he breaks the hearts of human beings. I want to be used to blight Satan’s crops and crush his plans. I even want the church to have better music than the secular world, because music was Satan’s special gift. I want him to see himself forgotten and outdone and frustrated, before we assemble to watch him burn. He already hates me. I’m sure he’s doing all he can to destroy me and my family. I want to return the favor while I live. If you want to make a malicious person hurt, you just have to prevent him from doing harm. If I can hinder Satan the way he hinders human beings, I will consider my life well spent.

Help us Out

My family has a problem that has to be confronted. For some time, my father and I have been working on it, making preparations. Barring unforeseen hindrances, today is the day we will put the plan into effect.

I wish I could tell you details, but I don’t think it’s appropriate. I can say this: the problem is extremely severe, and it has been with us for nearly thirty years. In the process of arriving at a strategy to fix it, I have seen God’s hand very clearly, and I think he is helping us, and I believe our approach will work. At the very least, it will put an end to one aspect of the problem, which is that it bleeds outward from the affected person and harms others very badly. I credit God with fixing that, and boy, am I grateful. In reality, the people suffering as collateral damage are already assured of freedom. The only real issue is whether the person at the center of the storm will benefit, and that will come down to free will.

If anyone feels like praying that we will be guided and protected and led to success, I would be extremely grateful. I’m sorry to say that I probably won’t be able to come back later and thank you while providing an explanation. That’s just the nature of the problem.

We are going to need strength, unity, and God’s favor in this fight. I am confident that he will be beside us, and that we will get the best results possible.

Best Pizza in Town, for Pennies, ON DEMAND

The Prefab Pizza Project is going well. I have three dough portions in the freezer, two on the counter, and two in the food processor. I kept one aside so I can have pizza for lunch.

I couldn’t find shredded white cheddar for the cheese test, so I bought orange cheddar. I don’t see what difference it makes. I got the sharpest shredded cheddar they had.

Olive oil was on sale for not too much more than the Costco price. Hard to complain about that.

This is going to make life so much easier, and boy, is it cheap. One cup of flour, two tablespoons of oil, two ounces of sauce concentrate, and eight ounces of $2.50/pound cheese per 12″ pie. It’s virtually FREE. And so much better than any pizza I can buy.

No single human being should have this much power.

This morning I got an earful of negativity and unbelief over the phone. It depressed me for a while, because I was already (in my opinion) under attack. I was concerned about it. I thought maybe I should fast for a day. But the good Lord cleared it up before I could do anything. I found new resolve and new joy, out of nowhere. I am not going to allow myself to be offended by two weeks of illness and the bad attitude of one other Christian. I have been given the strength to rebound, and I am accepting it with gratitude and relief.

Have you ever been in a position where you had to tell another Christian, “Shut up and go home. I’m going on without you”? Ultimately, every one of us is alone with God and the angels. Never rely on another human being unless you have no choice. It’s too easy for the enemy to take them down or turn them against you. Working with others and accepting their help is essential, but it’s dangerous to be dependent on them.

I guess the new batch of yeast is ready. Back to the Cuisinart.

Eventually They Have to Let me Up

I have a question. How long do you have to be on Nyquil before it stops being medicine and starts being heroin in a bottle? I’ve gone through two jugs of Nyquil and one bottle of disgusting Tylenol warming cold stuff, and I’m now on Nyquil jug three. If my sinuses were clear, I’d probably dry it and snort it. I can tell I’m developing a tolerance. It takes one and a half of those little cups to get me to sleep now. Soon I’ll be making Nyquil daiquiris and sucking them through a straw.

I’m like 92% cured, but the remaining 8% is very frustrating. I would describe the symptoms, but they would ruin your breakfast.

It’s amazing how being ill interferes with prayer and other aspects of my relationship with God. I don’t get up early any more, because sleeping longer seems to damage the illness, so my whole morning prayer routine is on hiatus. And I feel like the distance between me and God is greater. Concentration is part of prayer, and illness ruins it.

Perry Stone says hindering spirits come our way when we make progress for God. I’ve seen spirits, and I know people who have seen or perceived them in other ways. I have no doubt that he’s right. I feel like I’ve been shoved onto the sidelines for two weeks, and things were going great before I got sick. This is one of those times when a wife could be handy, to take up the slack. Very often, when you fall, you can pick yourself up. But it’s better to have someone else help you. If any of you want to remember me the next time you talk to God, I would appreciate it. I have my weekly prayer group on Saturday, but that’s two days off.

I know I sound kooky when I talk about the spiritual realm, but I have been drawn into it my entire life. When I was three and four years old, I used to wake up and see hideous creatures crawling up and down the walls and across the ceiling and bed. Night after night, I dreamed the same white-skinned, grinning demon was after me. One night I felt something put its hands on me while I was in bed. I think these things happen to kids more than adults, because the enemy knows no one listens to kids. When you get older, you will doubt what you saw. We can talk ourselves into disbelieving what we know to be true.

We, ourselves, are spirits attached to flesh. Why should we find it hard to believe that other spirits exist? It’s crazy, if you think about it. Even if you’re not a Christian, you probably don’t believe you’ll cease to exist when your body dies. If you can exist without a body, why can’t God? Why can’t a demon? Seems like no one ever asks this obvious question publicly.

People choose to believe that God and other spirits don’t exist, because if you accept their existence, you have to accept the notion of sin, and that means giving up your dirty movie channels, weed, drunkenness, greed, pride, and casual sex, among other things. It means you have to admit you didn’t generate your own wealth and accomplishments. If you choose not to believe, you can convince yourself you’re not going to be held responsible for what you do or don’t do. You’ll be wrong, but it will ease your mind and help you avoid change, and avoiding change is one of our biggest motivations.

In that sense, every human being is an addict. We enjoy things we know or suspect are bad for us, and we know that if we admit they’re bad for us, we’ll have to give them up, so we cover our eyes and ears and persist in defeating God’s efforts to help us realize our potential. We’re afraid to take the red pill. I certainly am. When I turned to God, I knew I was giving up friends and opportunities in exchange for a bundle of unrealized promises. I have to renew that decision all the time, and it’s not always easy. I think this is one of the purposes of communion. Which I haven’t taken in several days.

Christianity means emptying your hands of pretty, shiny garbage so God can fill them with lasting treasures. To get the treasures, you have to be willing to suffer with empty hands for a time. Generally, you’re not going to get the good while you’re holding onto the bad, because God requires us to have faith, and if you never lack, you never have a chance to use faith.

Something very good is waiting at the end of this illness. All I have to do is keep breathing until it’s over.

Warding Off the Prince of Persia

I am trying to figure out what to do for the next 40 days.

Every year my church has a 40-day thing. You can fast for 40 days or make some other sacrifice during this time. You’re supposed to sign up. I was sick all week, so I forgot about it until I went to church on Sunday. They had a form to fill out, and there was no way I was going to come up with something during the service, so I held onto the form. I guess I can turn it in this weekend.

I decided to spend one hour in prayer every afternoon until February 12. That’s a good one. This illness has wrecked my prayer routine, and I am desperate to get it back in shape. Mid-day prayer is very powerful. But that still leaves the question of fasting.

I considered doing a “Daniel fast.” This means you cut out bread, flour, rice, meat, wine, sweets, and all beverages other than water, for 21 days. It was tempting at first, but the more I think about it, the more it sounds like a giant bummer. And I don’t have a lot of faith in partial fasts. I got fantastic results with a water-only fast this summer. I was relieved of some self-control issues, including a lifelong tendency to overeat. But would I get that kind of payback from a Daniel fast? Not sure.

I already have regular fasts built into the month. Maybe I should add one day a week.

Fasting with no particular goal seems like a dubious practice.

Maybe the prayer-hour thing is enough. You can make yourself crazy with unnecessary asceticism.

In my opinion, this stuff means nothing unless accompanied by prayer. Perry Stone seems to agree. He says that when you fast, you’re not supposed to lie around watching TV, waiting for the day to end. The point of the exercise is to enhance your communication with God, so I guess it should be obvious that the prayer part is more important than the fasting part.

Now that my illness is fading, I’m going to get back on track. I’ll be able to get up earlier and resume my morning prayer routine. That will set me up great for the afternoons.

My Fein Multimaster arrived. I have no idea what to do with it. It was really just a way of avoiding letting credit-card points expire. I should find an excuse to plunge-cut some holes in something.

I guess it was a reasonably smart buy. There is no way I would have spent actual money on this thing, so this is the only way I would ever have gotten one.

I’m taking a break from sight-reading practice. I think I finally figured out how to practice correctly. I should have listened to my piano teacher. He said he would open books of sheet music at random and just play. I tried software and sight-reading books instead. For the timing, the programs and books are fine, but they don’t work for note-reading. Why? Because they’re repetitious. Sight-reading is playing music at sight, which means “not by memory.” If you play a sight-reading exercise twice, the third time, your memory kicks in. That renders the exercise useless. You need a continuous supply of unmemorized material. That’s why random sheet music is better.

Boy, was I stupid. I didn’t understand the importance of what he was telling me. I don’t think he did, either. When you’ve always done something right, maybe it’s hard to guide people who do it wrong.

Memory doesn’t seem to interfere with timing practice. I guess it’s easier to memorize pitch patterns than time patterns.

If this works, I won’t have to break the piano up for kindling. I’ll be able to use it. That would be a dream come true. I am hoping God will help me become a competent musician so I can make use of my gifts. Wasted potential is an ugly thing. It would be a thrill to compose some decent songs. I’d love to be able to write music fluently instead of one note every five minutes.

I was insanely gifted at languages when I was a kid. I barely worked, but I won prizes. My college French instructor asked if I had lived in France. Then I got old and my memory weakened, and memory is a big part of it. If I can get my memory working halfway right again, I should regain a lot of my ability to learn symbolic systems. And music is a symbolic system, very much like a language. Maybe ability will trump old age to some extent. I seem to be picking sight-reading up pretty quickly now. Tonight I found myself skipping pieces because they were too simple. These were really easy pieces, but still.

I’m hitting the B1 and sleeping long hours and losing weight. I memorize psalms every day. I can’t think of anything else that might help, except for gingko biloba, and I’m afraid to take it because I have no idea what it does.

You can’t cry about lost opportunities. You have to strengthen what remains and keep moving. I managed to do a good job of maximizing my writing ability. That’s worth something. A lot of people would be happy to do one thing well. Maybe some day I can find a young person who is wasting his talents, and I can kick him in the rear end until he realizes what he has. If you can’t be a success, you can be a warning to others.

I make a great cheesecake. When I question my self-worth, I can always remember that. And maybe music will still pay off.

Salvation Through the Side Door

Day 12 of the mystery illness portends to be the beginning of an uptrend. I don’t feel as weak as I did yesterday, and I can breathe nearly normally, and the things that go on in my sinuses are considerably less frightening.

I went back to the doctor yesterday because I wanted to be totally sure I didn’t have strep throat. He said he did not think I had strep, and he essentially told me to go home and man up.

This is what I get for buying health insurance. Before I had it, I used to avoid doctors, because I never knew what a visit would cost. I figured it was better to die suddenly with money than to he healthy and broke. Now that I’m shelling out tons of cash every month and my expenses have a ceiling, I feel obligated to go in whenever I have a problem. A forty-dollar copay…that’s cheaper than dinner and a movie. It’s not just medical care. It’s affordable light entertainment.

I found out the doctor isn’t an MD. He’s a DO, which means “Doctor of Osteopathy.” I had to look that up. I was afraid I had wasted my money on a glorified chiropractor. I have no respect for chiropractors. Any medical school you can complete in six months has to be a con job.

It turns out osteopaths are real doctors. They’re just weird. I guess he can handle swollen tonsils. If I get a brain tumor, I’ll probably want a specialist.

This morning I’m reading up on John Hagee, the popular televangelist. He has a strange theory that Jews can go to heaven without accepting Jesus. Many Christian authorities, notably Jesus, disagree. I’ve been trying to find out what Hagee’s reasoning is without actually buying one of his books, but most of the sites I’ve found spend more time reviling and insulting Hagee than explaining his odd new doctrine.

Hell exists, and you can only avoid it by accepting salvation. When it comes to hell, that’s about all I’m sure of. The Bible describes hell as eternal, but it’s not clear to me whether that means hell will exist for eternity or that unbelievers will be tormented for eternity. The Jews don’t believe in eternal punishment because it seems wasteful. On top of that, eternity is a really long time, so no matter how evil you are, you would eventually suffer infinity times the amount of suffering you caused, which certainly seems unfair. After a trillion years on the rotisserie, even Stalin would have a legitimate gripe. After a trillion trillion to the trillion-trillionth power years, well, it would be even worse.

The Bible says Satan and his bunch will be incinerated in the Lake of Fire. I have no problem with that. These guys are really evil, and I their unsuitability for rehabilitation is pretty obvious, and incineration is humane and fleeting, compared to the misery they’ve caused. And no one will miss them; it will be a great relief to see them burn. I also have no problem with the permanent destruction of incorrigible human beings; there is no point in keeping them around. But eternal torment? Seems inconsistent with the nature of God.

I don’t claim it doesn’t exist. Scripture seems to suggest it does (although it isn’t as clear as people claim). But I would not be surprised to learn that it does not.

Whatever hell is like, I know it exists, and the New Testament is not ambiguous about the only means of avoiding it. If you accept Christianity as valid, it makes no sense to say some people don’t need Jesus. Christianity is exclusive in its nature. Certain exceptions are obvious: people who have never heard of Jesus, people who are disabled and incapable of understanding the Gospel, people who died before they could make a decision, people who died before Jesus was crucified…you can’t very well expect these people to be held to the same standard as everyone else. But people who knowingly reject Jesus are in trouble.

I’ve read silly claims that everyone who ever lived has somehow been made aware of Jesus. That’s just idiotic. Some Christians claim that even if you were born in a rain forest and never met a Westerner, God has somehow made it clear to you, deep in your heart, that you need Jesus. So if you don’t accept him, you go to hell. Please. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. It’s facially stupid; there should be no need to explain why it’s wrong. If it were true, there would be no need for missionaries. They’d show up in the jungle, and the natives would say, “We already know about that guy, but we still want the mirrors and beads.” In fact, they’d be sending missionaries to us. That doesn’t happen. There are a few weird stories about remote people having strange revelations, but the general rule is, unless a missionary shows up, no one has a clue. It’s amazing that myths this stupid ever gain credence among people who can read and write. This is one of the outrageous beliefs that make Christians seem dumb. It is not helpful.

The Apostle Paul was flogged repeatedly and also stoned because he insisted on preaching to Jews. And it wasn’t his idea; he wanted to preach to heathens. God sent him to the Jews. If they didn’t need the message, what was the point? God moves in strange and mysterious ways, but he isn’t crazy.

I don’t know what John Hagee is thinking. It’s bizarre for a prominent Christian to make a claim that contradicts the most fundamental and essential tenet of Christianity. If he had said Mary wasn’t a virgin, it would not be a big deal. If he had said there was no rapture, it could be overlooked. The Bible doesn’t say you have to believe in Mary’s virginity or the rapture to be saved. But forgiveness after rejecting the Gospel? No; that won’t work.

Hagee is affiliated with Larry Huch, author of The Torah Blessing. I wrote about this book a while back. It’s pure Judaizing and legalism. Huch says we’re supposed to worship on Saturday (unlike the early church under the Apostles) and that we have to wear prayer shawls and light sabbath candles. These guys are both wrong, and badly so, and you don’t have to be a scholar to know it. The scriptures themselves make it clear.

It’s funny; Huch wants us to do too much, and Hagee would ask Jews to do too little. There’s plenty of error for everyone. Pick the path you like best.

I have much more respect for a rational Orthodox Jew than a Christian who blatantly contradicts his own faith.

How can error this obvious still be a problem in 2010? I guess that’s a dumb question, given that Mormonism and the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Scientologists are thriving. Human beings can swallow absolutely any story. It’s tempting to think of people as rational–as though they had a baseline level of common sense–but they don’t. Remember Jonestown? Actually, you don’t have to look that far back. Just think about the people who believed the real estate bubble was going to last forever. You could disprove it in fifteen seconds with sixth-grade math, but executives at big investing firms still invested their careers in it.

Here’s another question: how can Christians still support John Hagee? Sure, the rest of his stuff may be great, but that little thing about denying the core belief of all Christians…isn’t that problematic? When a preacher says you can go to heaven WITHOUT Jesus, shouldn’t a little bell go off in your head? Isn’t that pretty much the one thing no preacher should ever say?

I’d love to believe it. I’d also love to find out that fornication and gay sex were acceptable, so I could approve of everything other people do, and I’d love to know that God will bless me no matter what I do. But I don’t make the rules. I want everyone to be happy and healthy and rich and have washboard abs and a weekly orgy and a Ferrari, but I’m not in charge. Near as I can tell, it’s Jesus’s way or the highway.

Must be the Hash Browns

I feel wonderful today, but I can’t figure out why. Is it because I’m getting over the virus that has slowed me down for a week? Is it one of those mysterious Christian things? Or is it the fact that I just had a MAGNIFICENT MCDONALD’S BREAKFAST WITH REAL COFFEE INSTEAD OF DECAF????

Cynics will move directly to the third option.

This virus is extremely odd. It makes one part of my body sick. Then that part of my body gets well. Then another part gets sick. It’s as if every part of my body has to develop its own resistance. I know that makes no sense. It started out in the upper part of my throat, and then that went away, and night before last, it went to the lower part of my throat. Now that’s breaking loose. It spent some time in my nose and sinuses, too. Where will it go next?

When I was in law school I had a bug like this, and when it got done with the rest of me, it made stuff come out of my eyes. I mean, come on. Give up, already. You lost. Get out. This is starting to seem like pettiness.

When I was a kid, my mother passed on a helpful tip from my great-grandmother. Her remedy for colds and the flu was to wrap up in quilts and sit by the fireplace, roasting her feet. I think this probably works, although I have dismissed other old Kentucky remedies, such as drinking sheep manure tea to make chickenpox pustules break. For several days, upon waking up, I’ve been cranking up the heat in the electric mattress pad and lying there until I get uncomfortably warm. Seems to make for a much better day. This is as close as I can get to roasting my feet by a fireplace. Maybe I could roast my feet by the plasma cutter.

I feel better today, but the improvement is mostly emotional, not physical. My symptoms have improved a lot, but I would not call myself well.

Whatever it is, I’ll take it. It’s better to feel happy than well.

I have to get off my butt and go to church today. I missed all sorts of stuff this week. I could have spent two days looking after a big-time Christian musical act while they visited the church. That would have been great. I missed the New Year’s services. I missed my prayer group this morning; I wanted to go, but it was 50° outside, and I was afraid I would be inviting a relapse by getting up too early and driving to Hallandale with wet hair. And I figured I’d give the bug to the other guys in the group, as well as the nice waitress who takes care of us. Then she’d be dead, and we’d be banned from Denny’s.

I considered going to the doctor today just to make sure what’s happening to me is normal and harmless. Then I remembered something. I saw a mezuzah in his office. Do I really want to see a Jewish doctor on Saturday? Wouldn’t I be contributing to the delinquency of a backslider, or something? The last time I saw him, it was on Saturday, and I didn’t even think about this.

I want to DO something today. I wonder how active I can be without inviting death. I could put the VFD on my drill press. I could try to fix the questionable ergonomics in the garage. Sooner or later, I am going to have to bite the bullet and part with my workbench. I have to get a dust collector, and I don’t need the bench any more, because my table saw provides me with, like, thirty square feet of horizontal surface.

AUUUGHHH I feel liquid running down inside my ear! Is this the virus’s latest attack?

Wait. It’s water from the shower.

Never mind.

Not Everyone Was Miserable

Last night while attempting to gain control of my radioactive doro wat roti with sour cream, I watched a little TV. I noticed people were whining about 2009. What an awful year! They were thrilled it was over.

I didn’t get that at all! Last year was great for me. I joined a fantastic church. I met wonderful people. I got delivered from an overeating problem I had had all my life. I developed a somewhat more normal relationship with my sister. I made real progress on some family problems. I got a lot of garbage out of my life. And I got a lot of neat tools.

Last year was rotten for a lot of people. I will try to remember that, and I will not be smug, because my efforts are not the reason my year was pleasant. But I truly believe that anyone who was willing to give up and draw closer to God could have had a great year.

I was invited to a New Year’s party, but I declined. Had I felt well enough, I would have gone to church, but I developed a cough, so I stayed home.

I don’t miss the parties. This is the lamest holiday of the year, including Groundhog Day. I don’t like staying up late. I don’t get drunk any more. I have never been very excited about dancing. I don’t want to pick up women. It’s considerate of people to invite me out, but I’d rather have my sleep.

I like Christmas; the childhood memories will always guarantee that. I like Thanksgiving because there is food. I like the Fourth of July because there is food. After that, my favorite holiday is the day when we set our clocks back an hour. Or the day after I file my tax return.

Halloween used to be pretty good, but now that I’m all religious, I have nowhere to go.

Getting drunk and staying up late the night before January 1st is like having a bachelor party with strippers on the night before you get married. It gets you off to the worst start possible. I’d like New Year’s parties better if they ended at nine. Why do we have to jump up and down and scream at midnight? It’s not like we’re all getting healed of cancer when the clock strikes twelve. It doesn’t really change anything. Why wait up for it? I say smoke some ribs, have some potato salad, fire a few rockets, and go home early. I went to bed at a reasonable hour, and when I got up, it was 2010 for me, just like it was for all the people who got drunk and ruined their sleep patterns. I didn’t miss a thing.

Maybe next year I’ll have a New Year’s Eve Afternoon barbecue, for other people who are tired of waking up in flowerbeds.

Here’s some things to celebrate. I didn’t hug a dirty toilet last night. I didn’t have to refuse a breath test. I don’t have a headache. I knew where I was when I woke up. I’m not wondering if anyone is pregnant or whether I have an STD.

Any holiday people can’t celebrate with their kids ought to be questioned.

People never seem happy on January 1st. Is that just my imagination? They’re quiet. They seem to feel sheepish. Nothing is moving outside. I feel like The Omega Man.

I got up fairly early, cleaned myself up, and got back in bed to sweat the remaining viruses out. That gave me time for a lot of prayer, which is good, because whenever I get sick, my prayer routine suffers. Now the day and the year have a solid foundation under them. That sure beats waking up in a tuxedo, with a mop bucket next to the bed.

I think the need for wild celebrations is a symptom of dissatisfaction with the rest of your life. When I was in college, I was miserable, and I looked forward to getting extremely drunk twice a week. Drunkenness was the best part of my life. These days, I would be upset by the prospect of getting drunk. It would be a chore and an inconvenience. And being around people who are drinking can be like babysitting.

This is going to be a great year, and 2011 will be even better. I base that prediction on the assumption that I am given the grace to stay on the path I’ve chosen; only God can bring it to pass. I expect things to get better and better, even if I die. I don’t need to get drunk to be optimistic and excited.

Thank you, Lord, for an excellent year. Thanks for a positive trend that will continue even after my life is over.

Ancient Ailment has Only One Cure

I just read about Rush Limbaugh’s health problems. I think he needs to get his personal life in order, but I doubt he has sufficient incentive.

Imagine the celebrating, if he dies. Only a few Republicans danced in the streets when Ted Kennedy died. Fringe nuts and kids, generally. But disrespect, cruelty, and schadenfreude are three of the pillars of leftism, so if Rush died, the situation would be very different. We’ve seen what happens when prominent conservatives die; the remarks from the left could not be more despicable were they written by demons.

Monetary success can be a poison. It’s an especially effective poison, because it convinces you everything is fine, and it makes you dread its own antidote. I was thinking about this today, in connection with addiction. The one thing that will beat any effort to help an addict is money. An addict with money can afford to refrain from working. He can afford to alienate his friends and family. He can buy everything he needs to maintain his necrotic lifestyle. He can pay attorneys to fight anyone who tries to help him.

One of the best things you can do for an addict in your family is to write a will and cut him out. It sounds cruel, but it’s not. Most people don’t have inherited money, and they survive. Refraining from giving someone unearned money is not the same as forcing him to live in poverty. And Uncle Sam is always there to catch him if he falls.

To get back to Rush, he does not seem like a happy individual. He spends his workday criticizing people, and then he goes home to an empty house. His fulfilling hobbies: golf and cigars. I’ve been a curmudgeon and a critic, and I think it leads to dissipation and regret.

My pastor talks about money a lot, and he says the reason he does so is that every time he talks about money, he is crucifying the god of this world. I think that’s true. In the physics of human relations, money is analagous to energy. It’s a protean substance which can be transmuted into nearly anything. Sex. A convincing imitation of love. Shelter. Food. Blessings for your friends. Harm to your enemies. It’s the closest thing we have to pure power. We trust it more than we trust God, because it’s faster-acting and requires no faith or virtue to put it in action. It’s a little bit like the dark side of the fictional Star Wars force. It will get you quick results, but later on, you may find that the benefits it appeared to confer were actually curses.

Money is like the tongue. The Bible says life and death are in the power of the tongue, and that no man can tame it. The things you say and write can do great harm, or they can do great good, and it’s extremely difficult to control your words in order to maximize the good and minimize the bad. The money you spend (or retain) can do great good or harm, and unless you’re fit to have money–unless you have enough character to use it correctly–harm is more likely. Developing that control is a great challenge. I believe it’s impossible without the help of the Holy Spirit.

I belong to a branch of Christianity which promotes the idea that failure and lack are curses. It says we are not supposed to be poor. I think that’s correct. Some of the Apostles had employees. Jesus’s father was a skilled tradesman who had at least six children, and Jesus himself was part of the family business. With regard to wealthy people living in God’s will, Jesus said that with God, “all things are possible.” The Old Testament is full of passages that clearly indicate that God rewards people with prosperity and good health.

I believe in prosperity, but I also believe God doesn’t give us scissors and sharp sticks until we promise not to run with them. In other words, I don’t think God would proactively assist a person financially if he knew the money would be spent stupidly or sinfully, toward the person’s own destruction. I don’t think he would give it to a person who would respond by becoming arrogant or overly independent. We are told that if we ask for good things, God won’t give us serpents and scorpions. Money may seem like a good thing, but to some people, serpents and scorpions would very literally be less harmful than cash. Venomous animals can hurt your body, but they can’t do much to your soul.

If all this is true, I guess you have to ask who gives people monetary blessings that later turn out to be damaging. Is it God? Probably not. Not unless God has a purpose in the damage.

I think some charismatics worry too much about blessings and not enough about becoming worthy of blessings. A blessing is not a blessing if you turn it into a stumbling block. Every blessing comes with obligation and responsibility, and the supernatural improvement in character that makes good stewardship possible is a greater blessing than the blessing of which you are the steward. A material benefit is fleeting. An internal improvement is permanent and continues paying dividends forever. The weirdest thing about all this is that God himself will make the internal improvements, even though he later gives you the credit. It’s a pretty good deal.

Bedeviled by Sean Connery’s Catchy Mantra

Here’s a near-paradox. I love sleep, but I hate rest.

I felt pretty cruddy when I got up today, so I decided to do two things: rest, and stay warm. I think it was a mistake to be active yesterday. And the hotter I get, the better I feel. Except for smelling and sticking to things.

What do you do when you rest? I hate lying around watching TV. I don’t have enough character to do something productive while I rest. This is one of those times when the Internet is actually good for something.

What can I blog about? Here’s something fun. I never, ever redeem my credit card points, and they keep expiring. The stuff you can buy with them is usually not very interesting, so I forget to redeem them, and I lose them.

This year I decided to redeem them for a Sears gift certificate and see what I could find. I decided to get a Fein Multimaster.

This is one of those tools no amateur buys for himself, because they’re insanely expensive for what you get. But when you have a pile of old credit card points and nothing else to do with them, putting them toward the price of a Multimaster seems almost justifiable. It beats not using the points at all.

I have no use for it, as far as I know. Detail sanding, I guess. Cutting things in awkward spaces. That’s about it. I think it’s one of those tools that come into play at random moments, when nothing else works. Like a Dremel.

Maybe I should go lie on my back and listen to religious CDs. I actually enjoy that. If you’ve never had an experience you considered supernatural, this kind of thing can be boring or silly, but when you’ve seen a few kooky things, it’s comforting to hear other people talk about their own manifestations.

What else can I do? No cooking. I’ve gained two pounds. Was it the holidays? Partly. Mainly, I’ve been eating too much because I feel sorry for myself. If I can’t do anything or go anywhere, I should at least be able to eat ice cream, right? That was my line of reasoning. But I am not willing to gain weight, so I had to quit.

I could practice sight-reading, which is like studying Harry Reid speeches while eating liver and waiting in line to have your driver’s license renewed. I’ve decided I’m going to do one of two things: learn to sight-read and give keyboards another chance, or give up the whole keyboard dream. A cousin of mine is married to a famous trombone virtuoso, and she suggested sight-reading as a way of compensating for my deteriorating musical memory. Can’t hurt to try. If I can make myself do it, I might at least be able to compose efficiently, even if I never become a good pianist. Composing was my original goal.

I’m working on improving my memory. I memorize scripture and I am fanatical in my efforts to get enough sleep. And I’m losing weight. I have this idea that being fat is bad for the brain. I’m also taking B1 again.

God gave me a big pile of gifts, and so far, my biggest achievement has been creating the world’s best cheesecake. I realize that’s a major feat which, on its own legs, justifies my elevation to sainthood. But I can’t help thinking I should be accomplishing more. “Cheesecake” makes for a short resume. I hear such beautiful music in my head; surely I was intended to write some of it down.

Christian music was great for a few years, but it seems to be in a slump. Some of the songs they play at my church are so monotonous, you wonder why anyone bothered paying for the copyright registration. If I wrote a song like that, I’d delete it from my hard drive without telling anyone. Christians ought to have quality music again. We don’t want to spend eternity busing performers in from hell whenever we have a party.

I could practice. Or I could go look at YTMND.com for six hours.

Plus Boring Virus Whining

I guess people think I’m dead because of the gap in my blogging. Sorry to disappoint you. The virus has left me in a strange mental state in which I sort of drift around like a cloud. I just don’t feel like doing anything.

I’m not complaining. The soreness went out of my throat yesterday, and I haven’t had chills or aches since Saturday night. I’m caught up in a dreamy state in which I lack motivation. And I don’t feel like exerting myself mentally. This must be how liberals feel every day.

I’m so happy I can swallow and breathe, I don’t care much about anything else. I can almost taste food.

My doctor says about 4% of sore throats are strep throat, and the remainder are mostly viral. I tested negative for strep, so I guess I’m in the majority. I had both flu shots, and I haven’t had a high fever, so it’s probably not the flu.

The medicine I use causes much of my suffering. I loaded up on Afrin night before last, and after I got up in the morning, I had the notorious rebound effect, so until about nine p.m., I felt like I had rudder-box packing stuffed up each nostril. I also had problems with 12-hour Sudafed waking me up at three in the morning.

I decided to try guaifenesin. It’s supposed to loosen things up. Seem to work, but not all that well.

The guy who runs security at my church sent an email to everyone who works with him. An organization that trains security people will be having a two-day seminar in Fort Lauderdale in January. I think it would be great, but the $300 price is a bummer.

I think our church needs to have a few members packing heat at all times. We’re in the ghetto, and we collect cash offerings. Besides, being unarmed is almost never a good idea. Remember Jeanne Assam. Better yet, remember the people who were killed before the gunman ran into his first armed Christian.

Whenever I go into the building, I have to leave my carry piece in my truck, where it can be stolen by crackheads. I’m unarmed, the church has one less potential defender, and the crackheads have a chance to steal a nice pistol. This is not a good situation for anybody, except the crackheads. Plus, it’s a pain.

On the subject of guns, allow me to bring you good news. Federal FMJ 9mm ammunition is back down to $9.95 per box, where it should be. What a relief. You can find it at Outdoormarksman.com. They also have Wolf 7.62mm x 39 for $200/thousand. That’s helpful, if you need to sweep your church’s parking lot with a Vz 58. That will learn the heathens respect.

If I can make myself stand up long enough, I may finish my Saiga 12 conversion today. I would be really embarrassed if a burglar showed up before it was finished and all I had to offer him was a 1911.

I try to be a thoughtful host.