Scattered Bricks

My dad and I are working to get my sister’s cancer treatment going, and to put some order into her life. It is not easy. The situation is considerably worse than we feared, so my sister can’t afford to waste a minute, and we are experiencing a fair amount of discord. Prayer would be appreciated.

Speaking of prayer, I had a funny experience last night. As I’ve noted earlier, I pray when I lose things. When I put things down, I don’t realize it, so I generally don’t know where they are. The solution is to have predesignated places for things, but I only have a few things I have managed to nail down to specified locations. Lately, when I say such prayers, they are often answered before I can finish them. It has been a little shocking at times.

I wanted to hear a certain CD last night, and I didn’t know where it was. I checked the two most likely rooms and came up dry. I was standing next to the dining table when I decided to pray; there is always a certain amount of junk down at one end of it. I hesitated for a minute. I thought about the amazing streak I had been having, finding things so quickly. I was worried I’d ruin it. I might pray about this thing and then be unable to find it. I realized how stupid that thought was, and I started to pray. As I began, I picked something up from the table, and while I lifted it, I saw the CD.

There was no reason for it to be there. It’s not where I would ordinarily put it. Of course, I was freaked out.

The CD was one of Perry Stone’s. He talked about the importance of giving, in order to have prosperity. He’s not a flashy “God wants us all to be rich” type. You know the kind of person I’m talking about. “God has given me a special anointing to get people prosperity, so send me money, and God will send you ten times as much.” They beg and beg and beg, and they never tell you what they do with the money. Because they’re spending it on mink toilet seat covers and orange Bentleys and really big black velvet paintings of Elvis and Jesus riding their Harleys together. You know about common white trash and easy money; it does not have to be explained. Perry Stone doesn’t beg, and he explained why. It’s because he doesn’t particularly like doing TV, and it wouldn’t bother him a great deal if he couldn’t afford to do it.

I got very fed up with the “God wants us all to be rich” movement back around 1990, but I do believe blessings, including financial well-being, are linked to generosity, and the Bible repeats that message over and over. The hitch, I believe, is that you have to give correctly. You have to support your own church as well as well-vetted charities and ministries. You can’t just hand it over to the Christian equivalent of Billy Mays. If you do, you’re rewarding a rotten person for doing evil. You can’t expect God to get behind that. And you have to handle your own money in a way that isn’t sinful. I don’t think God is willing to give us rope with which to hang ourselves.

It seems like we are supposed to imitate God, and God is generous. To a large degree, he is to us as we are to others. It’s not an all-or-nothing thing; life will never be free from problems. But I believe we are supposed to make the most of his general willingness to treat us as we treat others.

He started talking about our need to be familiar with the Bible, and how we build “line upon line, precept upon precept.” That struck me as interesting. To get anything out of the Bible, you have to be familiar with as much of it as possible, because different parts of the Bible explain each other. You have to read different parts in pari materia, harmonizing them to avoid idiotic results. For example, we are taught that God will do what we ask in Jesus’s name. Well, go outside and ask God, in Jesus’s name, to drop a billion dollars in gold bars on your lawn. It’s not going to happen. Your silly prayer goes against other ideas expressed in the Bible. We are not supposed to covet. We are not to be greedy. We are to seek his kingdom and his righteousness first.

For a long time, I’ve been aware that faith can’t be explained in a linear manner. You can’t lay out propositions and conclusions in order, in a single column, to explain Christianity. It’s multidimensional. The Talmud reflects this. You take one piece of the Torah, and from that page, commentaries shoot out in all different directions. They work in parallel, not in series. Like a matrix, not a sequence. Trying to explain God using ideas linked in series is like trying to get all three stooges through one doorway at once.

It’s impossible to present everything you need to know in a single-file progression of ideas. And even if it were, the Bible is not written that way. The only way to make sense of it is to get it into your unconscious mind–your memory–where ideas roll around and collide and interact like clothes in a dryer. Some Christians call this area of consciousness the spirit, and maybe it is. This is where the synthesis occurs. It’s like building a coherent wall from bricks found in random locations.

Jesus and the Apostles took this approach. Look at the annotations in the Bible. They quoted the Old Testament over and over, and they followed the Jewish practice of quoting one line as a quick way to refer to the part of the Bible in which that line was found. The more scripture you know, the more like them you are. You’re supposed to be armed with the sword of the spirit, and that means you should be able to quote enough scripture to have it handy when you’re in trouble and you can’t get to a Bible. This is how Jesus defeated Satan after the 40-day fast.

Interesting stuff.

It also explains why nonbelievers find Christianity so hard to absorb. They like debate, which is a totally worthless way of looking for the truth. Debate only establishes the identity of the best debater; this is why good lawyers win bad cases. To understand Christianity, you have to listen for a good long while, as seemingly unrelated ideas are imparted. You have to shut up and hold your objections until you’ve heard enough to know what’s going on. A lot of people who don’t believe are not willing to do that. They will settle on some part of Christianity that doesn’t make sense to them and use it to invalidate the whole religion. They’ll say, “There is suffering, so there is no God.” Or, “Fossils prove Genesis is a lie, so there is no God.” Or, “Verse x contradicts verse y, so there is no God.” They can’t see the sweater; just what they perceive to be loose threads. They’re like the jurors who concluded OJ was innocent because one or two pieces of nonessential evidence were excluded.

The more I learn, the more I realize how obligated we are. You have to submit and obey and be productive, and you can’t demand that God help you while conforming to your guidelines for his nature and behavior. You can get God to do great things for you here on earth–better things than you can comprehend–but you have to live his way.

I have to get up and get some things done. I don’t know how much blogging I’ll be able to do this week.

Some Prefer Machine Tools

I guess a lot of people already think I’m a kook, so it can’t hurt me to post this.

Last night, I tried to make myself some T nuts from 12L14 round stock. I enjoyed it tremendously. I had to figure out how to position round stock in the vise. I had to decide which cuts to make first and which cutter to use. I had to use the DRO, which is fantastic. I can see why no machinist should be without one.

I used the lathe to cute a short piece of 12L14, and I put it on parallels in the vise, and I started cutting. I took shallow cuts, because the bar was round and smooth, so I was afraid big cuts would apply so much torque it would turn in the vise. I made a flat side, and then I cut two shoulders down from it, and then I flipped the metal in the vise and flattened the bottom of what would eventually be two T nuts.

It worked like a charm. The surfaces were beautiful, and they even had wonderful patterns in them, like woven silk.

I was going to leave the metal in the vise and call it a day, but I couldn’t resist taking it out so I could play with it. Here’s what I have so far.

While I was looking at it, I discovered a surprising and pleasing feature which would force me to scrap the part. How can something good render a part useless? See if you can guess.

Can you believe that? How can I throw that away? I had to play with the Photoshop controls to bring it out, but when you see the actual part, it’s much more obvious. There is an ichthus in the steel. The tail doesn’t show up well in the photo, but it’s there. The ichthus must have been put there by the saw the metal dealer used. I would have ruined it had I continued with the project.

Don’t email me for tickets. I’m not opening a tourist attraction. And so far, it hasn’t healed me or anything. I don’t expect it to start weeping blood, and it hasn’t uttered any prophecies. But it was still a nice surprise, and I would never assume a thing like this happened by chance.

Isn’t that just like God? Present in everything, but you have to know where to look, and you have to want to see.

Incidentally, I just learned that we are coming into the Days of Teshuvah. This is a 40-day period preceding Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. On that day, and that day only, the high priest used to enter the Holy of Holies and perform actions that covered the sins of the Jewish people.

Teshuvah (that’s the spelling that seems to be preferred, if Google means anything) means “repentance.” Aaron posted a comment recently, explaining it in more detail.

A crescendo of the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services is the three-word phrase: “Tshuva [return/repentence], tefilah [prayer], u-tzedaka [and charity] avert the evil decree”.

http://www.ou.org/about/judaism/tw.htm : Repentance, or return to G-d or the G-dly way of life; modifying one’s behavior by the following four steps: stopping the sinful behavior, confession before G-d, regret over past actions, and commitment to changed behavior in the future. If done out of fear of Divine punishment, Teshuvah turns past deliberate sins into “accidental” sins; if done out of love of G-d, Teshuvah has the power to transform deliberate sins into “good deeds.”

This refers to personal sins between man and God. Wronging another requires compensating damage and gaining forgiveness from the wronged party. One can’t steal from another and confess to a third party and expect to be forgiven. Judaism teaches that God won’t forgive sins committed against those made in His image. In cases where it isn’t possible (not merely inconvenient or uncomfortable) to make amends and ask for forgiveness, a competent clergyman might suggest a suitable action to compensate the community. A vandal might devote years to reversing the damages of vandalism in his town. A corporate polluter that harmed the rivers in a community might work in environmentalism.

Obviously, no Christian assumes the Jews are right about everything, but they knew God during tens of centuries during which my ancestors were worshiping trees and eating each other, so when they talk, I listen. I haven’t read anything expressly explaining the purpose of the Days of Teshuvah, but I suppose anyone can see that it is better to arrive on the day of atonement with repentance well under day. It shows respect and gratitude, and it shows you don’t expect to do whatever you want 364 days a year and then show up so God can change your diaper.

Whenever I think of the metaphor of washing our robes in blood, I think of parents changing diapers. I am positive God was trying to tell us something when he arranged for babies to take two years to be toilet-trained. I think this whole life is a lot like a diaper. We soil it and discard it and move on to better things.

The Days of Teshuvah are coming. “Coincidentally,” last night, my pastor preached about lukewarm Christians. That type of teaching necessarily involves repentance. There is no other way to fix the problem. He mentioned Revelation 3:19 and 3:20. I’ll tack 3:21 on, since it makes the message even more pleasant.

19 As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.

20 Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.

21 To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.

This family is facing a special need at the moment, and we will be dealing with it throughout the 40 Days of Teshuvah, which start on August 21. Knowing the significance of this time period will surely be helpful to us. I think God alerted me to this, and the series my church is teaching, which is all about turning up the intensity of your walk, is very supportive.

Maybe I’ll give that piece of metal to my sister when I pick her up at the airport today. It’s too small to glue to my car.

Last night, I listened to Perry Stone. He did a series of teachings in the obscure town where I was born, and I bought the CDs out of curiosity. In the session I listened to last night, he talked about the frustration he has experienced, leading his own son into a strong relationship with God. He told his son he only needed to “get zapped” by God once. He needed to see something miraculous, whether it was a manifestation of God’s presence or a miracle. He thought that would fix him. That may be true of his son, but I am apparently not that smart. God physically entered my car, when I was on the highway in 1985. He made another appearance a year or so later. He gave me a healing. He showed me two spirits. But I left the church twenty years ago, with those memories still in my mind! How do you do something that stupid? I don’t understand how I pulled it off. Where would I be today, had I paid attention? People go their whole lives without receiving treasures like that. You can’t buy them. They are more precious than anything any billionaire has. Still, I treated them as though they were unimportant. The Jews may recognize 40 days of teshuvah, but for the especially dense and spoiled, it can take years.

My sister and I need to take full advantage of this time. The warnings are not subtle. I don’t know how it could be any clearer.

Get the Brillo and Lysol

Yesterday, I went to a dealership and drove an F150 with an eight-foot bed. I was pleasantly surprised. The truck was slow compared to the Thunderbird, which is not a big shock, but the ride was very pleasant. Not like a truck at all. I instinctively slowed down for the speed bumps in the parking lot, being used to the Thunderbird (bottoming out), motorcycles (jumping in the air), and Explorer (jumping then rocking), but when I hit the bumps, nothing happened. The length of the truck doesn’t seem to be a problem. It’s 18″ longer than the next size down. That’s not a real burden when you drive, but it would be a big help at Home Depot. They had extended-cab versions that were the same length, but you lose some payload.

This truck was an XLT which means “cheap but not scary-cheap.” It had cloth seats and power windows. I thought it was fairly luxurious for a truck. In the showroom, they had a $43,000 truck that had rain-sensing windshield wipers and–you may think I’m kidding–motorized running boards that extend when you touch the door handles. I like nice stuff. No doubt about it. But when you’re too lame to turn on the windshield wipers or get into a truck without a boost, you need to be euthanized. It would be humiliating to be seen getting into that atrocity.

The guts of the truck seemed very good. The base V8 plus the towing stuff. This means a better suspension and more cooling capacity. That might mean the air conditioner works better, now that I think about it. I guess it depends on whether the radiator limits the air conditioner’s cooling capacity. I assume that is not the case, since cars don’t run hot in Miami with the air conditioning on. The air conditioner worked very well, and if it cooled on August 7 in Miami, with no clouds, it will cool in hell.

The truck was not much to look at. I didn’t realize it from the photos, but white pickups are somewhat better looking than silver ones. I don’t like these “colors,” but anything else will be a heat magnet.

The dealership was empty. Do not believe the Cash for Clunkers PR storm. There were maybe two other customers there. Ford sales have increased 2%, which means they are still in the process of going out of business.

They had a funny sales setup. The first Internet sales contact was a man. Then they palmed me off to a Latin girl with lots of cleavage and tight pants. When I showed up, she came out to greet me. All I can say is, I doubt she was hired for her LSAT score. Very spicy addition to the showroom decor. I don’t think she was Cuban. She seemed South American. Cubans will be mad when I say this, but South American girls tend to run a little hotter. But she handed me off to a third guy, who was a regular floor salesman. So it’s not the same deal I got when I got the Thunderbird. The other dealership, owned by the same conglomerate, had a separate Internet crowd, and they were much nicer to do business with. I think I’m going to contact them. They may be able to get me this same truck. I hate to do that to the guy who rode with me today, but his boss was very pushy, and he added $1500 to the price they quoted me, so they’ve had their chance. His behavior was not respectful. I realize they’re supposed to try to make money, but I’ve done some negotiating myself, and I know something he doesn’t: being obnoxious doesn’t help. You can be polite and take someone to the cleaners.

My dad has finally concluded he doesn’t want to go the Obama route, so I don’t have that option to worry me now.

I think I finally…FINALLY…have a viable milling project. Enco wants $15 for a proper set of nuts and studs to mount my vise. I used stuff from my clamping set, but I would rather have a separate setup. Today I realized I had enough stuff to make my own T nuts and studs. I don’t think I can make a flange nut, but life isn’t perfect.

I figured I would make a bar shaped like a T nut and bore and tap holes in it and then slice it into nuts. Then I realized I didn’t need to slice it. I can make a single bar a little wider than the vise and put a hole in each end. A T nut can be a hundred feet long and still work. There is no reason you do it this way, and it would save time.

A guy on the Chaski forum made an incredible ball cutter for his lathe. The ones you see for sale are very simple. U-shaped tool holders that pivot on steel bases. This baby has a table on ball bearings. Totally unnecessary, I’m sure, but who cares? He’s selling plans. I might take a whack at it. I would probably end up spending fifty bucks on materials, but a premade cutter would cost something in that neighborhood anyway.

I don’t have a lot to say about other matters that are going on in my life; don’t expect to read much about that in the near future.

Two things:

1. Dan Howell’s sister is not doing well, so keep her in your prayers:

Steve, will be Praying for your sister. God is control of everything and we just have to let him have His way. We need to let go and let God work. My sister, Mary Ellen has been put back into Hospice House and is her last days of the beast, cancer. Thank you for your Prayers on her behalf, we will miss her, but I will not judge God for not healing her in my way. She will be Healed and we will see each other again when I am healed of this world. Touch her now God and make Steve’s sister whole.

2. Heather’s mom is in the hospital.

Praying for your sister.
My mom was admitted to the hospital last night.

Uselessness is Not a Virtue

I hope people will not fault me for returning to blogging as usual. Things will continue to go on behind the scenes, whether or not I write about them.

I guess I can mention one thing. It’s something I’ve written about before. In 1987, I received a miraculous healing, and last night my sister asked me how I got it. I tend to assume all Christians know these things, but I guess that’s dumb. I’ll go back over it. Maybe it will help someone.

I decided I had to find a church. When I started looking, I became ill. I thought I had a cold, but it would not go away. It wasn’t like an allergy; I know the difference. It persisted for weeks. It drove me nuts.

I had been watching a number of TV preachers. Somewhere–maybe it was from Kenneth Copeland–I heard that if you wanted to be healed, you had to “confess” your healing orally and stick to it, no matter what. You prayed for healing, then you announced aloud that God had healed you, and you continued to do that, without waivering, until your healing came. I gave it a try. I was sick for days after that, but I never once permitted myself to say I was not healed.

One day I was standing in my dad’s kitchen, and I looked in the freezer. While the door was open, I saw a dark transparent shape travel from me into the freezer, and then it made a turn and went out through the back door of the house, which was closed. I was instantly healed. My mother and father were in the next room. They didn’t see what happened, but they both saw that I was healed when I came out of the kitchen. My father forgot it. My mother never did. Oddly, my father has forgotten it several times, and so has my sister. I’ve had to tell them more than once. I’ve told my sister at least twice this year, and there is nothing wrong with her memory.

It wasn’t a leg growing back. It wasn’t cancer. But it was a miracle anyway, and it was a big relief to me.

Today I would do more. I’d add fasting and repentance and offerings and prayer. But what I did in 1987 worked. I think sometimes God does more for a new believer than he would for someone who knows the ropes. Just a guess.

I don’t endorse Kenneth Copeland, but no evangelist is wrong all the time. Maybe this story will help someone.

Back to normal life.

As time passes, I am more and more inclined to get a pickup and sell the T-bird. I was sitting in church the other day, thinking what I always think: “I wish I were of more use to these people.” I have all these tools now, and I have time. But I drive a car with two seats and a trunk the size of a lunchbox. The trunk is amazing; it may well be the reason this car was not popular. You can get two suitcases in it, and that’s it. Period. I would guess that it’s impossible to put anything more than 14″ tall in there. If I take this car to the gun range, I have to put my range box in the passenger seat.

It’s starting to look like we’re going into a deceptive plateau in the decline of the United States. That means cars will start selling, and prices will go up. I’m thinking I should snap up a truck before the dealers develop a false sense of confidence. Then I can hold onto the convertible for a few months to see if the used-car market gets a boost. If not, I unload it. Or I drive it occasionally. The only problem with that scenario is clutter. The positive side would be that I would not have to drive a huge vehicle all the time. I find that when I drive a big vehicle, every once in a while, I really miss driving small cars I can turn and park easily.

The picture is complicated because my father unexpectedly announced that he might want to take advantage of the Obama handout. I can’t blame him. The IRS treated him like a slush fund all his life. He will never break even. He’s thinking of getting rid of his old Explorer. The best truck he can extract from Obama’s udder is a Toyota Tacoma. It’s smaller than I would like, but it will work. I can’t put extremely heavy objects in the bed, but it will pull a rented trailer just fine. You can’t rent a trailer if you have an Explorer. Uhaul’s attorneys have seen to that. And the Explorer’s odometer died at 109K, so I wouldn’t trust it with a trailer now.

He has an idea about getting a travel trailer; I don’t know if that’s a great idea, but the Tacoma will pull it. It’s not the best choice, but it can be done. If he gets a Tacoma, I’ll be a good son and borrow it constantly. No need for an F150.

Either truck would be a good move. I would like to have something practical. When I got the T-bird, I didn’t need a utility vehicle, because I could always borrow the Explorer. Now the Explorer is old, and it’s not an ideal vehicle for hauling things, and I have more reason to haul. Maybe I’ll run up to the Ford dealership and take a look at the F150 I have my eye on.

I was practicing law when I got the T-bird. I thought it would be fun to have a car with a little style, and I am addicted to ragtops. You don’t need a big car when your payload consists of a briefcase and a laptop, and it wasn’t a bad car for a single man to have. You know how women are. But I am shedding the upscale trappings I started to accumulate in law school. I wish I could burn my suits. I wear sneakers and cargo shorts all the time. I have given up on expensive sunglasses. The people in the better men’s shops used to know me by sight. Those days are long gone. And the women I am likely to meet now are not going to have a lot of interest in flash. A woman who will not let you take her out in a pickup is going to be trouble eventually. Like a man who expects his wife to give him an itinerary whenever she leaves the house. Or a guy who drives with no shirt on. I am convinced they always make bad husbands. It’s a hunch.

If I have a truck, I’ll be better able to pursue my own hobbies, and I’ll be in a position to make myself useful to others. If the church needs a sliding miter saw or a table saw, I’ll be able to pop it in the bed and get on the road. I won’t have to sit in the congregation feeling like a doofus because I drive a self-indulgent roadster.

If they know I have tools and a truck, won’t they bother me all the time, asking for favors? Probably. That’s what I’m hoping for.

I should go look at that thing. I dread meeting a salesperson. I’d rather have a snake thrown on me. But I guess there is no other way.

Trust

Here’s an update, although it won’t be very informative. I am not ready to say anything about my sister’s condition, but I will reiterate–I can’t remember if I’ve said this already–that I think it’s remarkable that she went in for treatment of a fungus and ended up learning she had a more serious and unrelated problem, which may well have been caught at the earliest possible stage.

God is unfathomable. Sometimes he blesses us by preventing misfortune. Sometimes he blesses us by ameliorating misfortune. Sometimes the misfortune is not remedied, yet it carries tremendous collateral blessings. Believers who suffer disease or injury will point to the good things that came afterward, as proof of God’s love. Nonbelievers will ask why God allows disease and injury to happen in the first place. One of the hardest lessons in the Bible is the teaching that we must always continue to trust. Job lost his fortune, his children, and his health, but he said this of God: “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.” His mistake was in following that up with a declaration that he would convince God he had earned a better fate. Nonetheless, in the end, his trust was rewarded.

My hope is that we will find out that the fungus was a gift, because it brought the cancer to light early enough to allow it to be cured. But I am not going to make a prediction.

I think sometimes you can pray a person well, and sometimes you can’t, and maybe it all hinges on that person’s relationship with God. It is probably easier to get healing for yourself than anyone else, because while you ask, you can also search your heart candidly and turn from anything that might stand between you and God’s power. That would seem to make sense.

Sometimes people get angry with me when I suggest our behavior can cause our misfortunes, but I apply the same principle to myself, so I have no reason to apologize. I am very aware that I fall short, and whenever something goes wrong, I look at my own actions and attitudes to see if I can find a cause. How can that ever be the wrong approach? You can’t cure unless you diagnose. Self-criticism is essential to growth. If I treat myself this way, and I profit from it, shouldn’t I encourage others to do the same thing? Maybe my sins aren’t always the cause of my problems. So what? I profit anyway, do I not?

I do not understand the objections. Perhaps it seems cruel to suggest that a person who is already suffering search himself to see if anything about him is not pleasing God. But it’s better than telling them everything is fine, when a little introspection might turn things around. You wouldn’t give a diabetic pound cake. When did enabling ever help anyone?

Sometimes you pray for someone to get a certain outcome, and it doesn’t happen. When that happens, there has to be a reason, and it can’t be God’s fault. Maybe it’s their sins. Maybe it’s your faith or their faith. Still, you have to trust. Whatever suffering you may experience while serving and trusting God, you will be infinitely better off than a person who abandons him.

The more I suffer, and the more my family and the people I care about suffer, the closer I will draw to God. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. That’s the only way to win.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to write about this from here on out. With that in mind, I am going to try to move on and write about life the way I always do. I hope that doesn’t offend anyone. I will still be grateful for everything you have done.

Sorry

I don’t have any news about my sister yet. The doctor said he would talk to her this morning, and it is 1:43 p.m. where she is.

I’ll post something as soon as I know what’s happening.

More

I just spoke with my sister. The biopsy is positive. I don’t want to say any more than that, out of respect for her privacy. Hopefully, I’ll be able to write more about this challenge in the weeks to come. Thank you again for your help.

Fateful Day

This is the day my sister gets her diagnosis. On Tuesday, she was told there was a high probability that she had some type of non-Hodgkins lymphoma, but it was not a firm diagnosis. My prayer has been that upon further analysis, it would turn out to be something other than cancer.

Last night I went to church, to get prayer for her. My church only has one Wednesday service a month. They call it “Breakthrough Wednesday.” Last night was my first time.

I thought it was excellent. On Sundays, we show up, and there is music, and then there’s a sermon, and from time to time during the service there are prayers, and then there is a blessing, and we go home. Nothing wrong with that. But on Wednesdays, the music is more intense, and there is a bigger focus on entering God’s presence. Before the speaker starts, altar workers go to the front, and people are encouraged to go to them and receive prayer. They also have a table at the front where people can take communion. I would say this lasts around half an hour. I am assuming it’s like this every Wednesday; I’ve only gone once.

It seems like a very good arrangement. The congregation is more involved. All over the church, people are praying and so on. By the time the speaker shows up, a lot has been accomplished, and the congregation is in a very receptive state.

I went up to the front and explained my sister’s situation to an altar worker, and we prayed for her. It’s wonderful to know another believer is with you. This is probably the primary reason God encourages us to marry.

The speaker was Bishop Harry Jackson, from Washington, DC. I had been planning to go to this service before I got the news about my sister, so I could check this man out and see if I could recommend him to Mike, who lives in the DC area.

As it turns out, he is a cancer survivor. He had a tumor in his esophagus. He talked about it last night. He said the survival rate with conventional treatment was low, but that he had undergone a potentially lethal new treatment with a higher cure rate. And as a result, he was in remission or cured.

It was a horrendous story. They removed the part of his esophagus that joins the stomach, and then they put him on a chemotherapy regimen that combined two harsh drugs. At one point, he had a stroke and lost control over the right side of his body. But he made it. Now he’s strong and healthy, and he’s busy making a name for himself as an opponent of gay marriage. He’s getting death threats from the patient, enlightened people who disagree with him. Last night he pointed out that it’s hard to scare a man who has survived cancer.

His sermon was a little strange. It meandered a lot, and although he had talking points, it wasn’t always clear what he was getting at. Nonetheless, he imparted some valuable teaching. I think sometimes the Holy Spirit will permit a speaker to have failings yet will still see to it that he teaches a valuable message.

He made an interesting point about gays. He said no matter how wonderful sex is, it takes up a small part of your day, and it is therefore odd to define yourself by the type of sex you have. He said gays defined themselves by their sin, which is interesting. It’s a little like calling yourself a bank robber. Or a player.

I remember someone telling me that a gay acquaintance of his had made the same complaint. I can’t recall who it was. He said gays were boring because their whole lives were centered on being gay. I guess that makes sense. That would be true of any person who only has one interest. Even bowling. Actually, it can make religious people a little taxing, now that I think about it. Even Noah had a hobby.

I’m going to call Mike and tell him my impressions. I think this guy is worth a look.

I’m starting to wonder; will I ever go to this church without encountering a strange “coincidence”? Mike is looking for a church in DC, and my sister is in the midst of a cancer scare, and look who shows up.

Thanks again for all the help.

Vigil Starts

I want to thank everyone who is praying for my sister. I take it very seriously. Elijah prayed, and God sent fire from heaven which completely consumed a slaughtered bull, the wood it lay on, and the water that had been poured around it. A negative result on a biopsy is a much smaller order, and I know your prayers and mine can get it done. Human efforts, on the other hand, can’t accomplish it.

Ordinarily I think it’s wrong to let people know when I fast, but on this unusual occasion, I think there is some benefit to be had by acknowledging it here. I know of three things I used to fail to take notice of when I needed an answer to prayer. One is the need for repentance, the second is fasting, and the third is the wisdom of making an offering when you receive what you need. I never pray for anyone to be healed, without praying that they will examine themselves and turn from anything that could impede their recovery, and recently I learned that it is good practice to follow up with some kind of offering or alms, when a prayer is granted. This is good information to have, so I’m presenting it. I’ll be fasting until the lab results come in.

I don’t know what else to do. I’ll be going to church tonight, and I’ll get them involved. I’ll pray on my own. Other than that, I guess I’ll go on with life as usual.

Two Days

I just received some shocking news.

My sister developed a problem in her lung, and she was afraid to have it treated locally. There was a small possibility that it could be cancer, and she was afraid a clumsy biopsy would cause it to spread. So she went to the Mayo Clinic to have it done. The overwhelming likelihood was that it was a fungal infection, but she did not want to take a chance.

She has been gone since Friday. As part of her diagnostic treatment, they biopsied a lymph node in her shoulder. While it appears that her lung problem is a relatively harmless and completely curable fungus, the doctors now believe she probably has lymphoma. She had no symptoms whatsoever, and it does not appear to be related to her lung issue. She is devastated. You have to imagine how this worked. She went to her doctor today to get a report on a fungal infection, and instead, he told her she probably has cancer. The oddest thing about it is that she has smoked heavily since she was a teenager, and our family has a history of lung cancer, yet she may have a cancer which is not in her lung and which is unrelated to smoking.

I am not doing too badly right now, but I was reeling a while ago. This is my only sibling, and we have been trying to build a relationship in middle age. Now this happens.

There is still a possibility the biopsy will ultimately come up negative. We won’t know until Thursday. Obviously, that is what I’ll be praying for.

The negative side of this is very obvious. But the positive side can’t be ignored. She had no symptoms. She had no reason to think she might have cancer. But she took extraordinary measures to have a minor problem treated, and as a result of what could reasonably be called irrational behavior, this problem was discovered. Think how much worse it would have been, had she done things differently. Months or years from now, she might have developed symptoms, and she might have been diagnosed with a late-stage cancer. It’s remarkable, when you think about it. You can’t say she has been lucky overall, but finding this problem now was a real blessing, and it was highly, highly unlikely.

I do not ask why God “lets” things happen to me or my family. I refuse to question him. This is a time to draw closer to him and gain his assistance and look for solutions. I am not going to ruin that by reacting like a spoiled child.

I would appreciate it if people would pray for her. I am going to pray that the biopsy result will be negative. I’ll get people at my church to pray. I’ll be fasting. We should have the answer on Thursday.

It’s funny, but during my prayers today, I felt positively enveloped by the presence of God, and I did not understand why. At the moment, I feel an inexplicable sense of warmth and comfort, and it disturbs me a little, because I was so upset earlier, and it doesn’t seem right to feel better. I hope what I’m feeling is God’s hand and not the result of some deficiency in my makeup.

Thanks in advance. I know a lot of you will come through with prayer, and it will mean more to me than a stack of gold bars.

Liar, Spendthrift, or Both?

The Obama birth mess never seems to die out completely.

Yesterday, I read about the newly discovered Kenyan birth certificate which says Obama was born in Mombasa. Attorney Orly Taitz is using a copy as evidence to try to convince a federal court to get the Kenyans to release the original. I am not a “birther,” and I don’t have a lot of confidence in this document, but I noted that it would be pretty odd for an attorney to present a court with a faked document, in a situation where the truth was virtually certain to come out eventually, and where the attorney’s enemies would do their best to use the submission of the faked document as a basis to ruin her career.

In a comment, Aaron pointed out that Jon Stewart’s staff produced a newspaper birth announcement from Hawaii, printed in 1961, indicating that Obama had been born there on August 4th of that year. I thought that was pretty powerful evidence that Obama had been born in the US. But that’s not the end of it. Mrs. Taitz appeared on TV recently, and she pointed out that it was possible for Obama’s mother to get the announcement published without proof that Obama was born here. She also noted that Mrs. Obama would have been highly motivated to do this, because it would have avoided a lot of aggravation, dealing with the immigration people.

So the newspaper announcement is nearly worthless. IF Mrs. Taitz is correct.

There is a new wrinkle, however. According to Wikipedia (sorry), Mombasa was in Zanzibar when Obama was born. It was not part of Kenya until 1963. If that is true, how can the birth certificate be legitimate? On top of that, we still don’t know how hard it was to get the certificate issued. For all I know, it may be even easier than getting a Hawaiian newspaper to print a birth announcement.

Apart from all this, we still have no explanation for the huge stonewalling effort Obama has made. Accounts say he has spent nearly a million dollars, when he could simply have had his Hawaiian birth certificate (the original, which supposedly still exists) released. Is this his own money? What kind of nut would harm his children’s financial legacy by blowing a million dollars for no clear reason? Is it money from supporters? What kind of nut would donate money, when Obama could solve the problem by writing a note or making a phone call?

If Obama can prove he was born here, he must be out of his mind, spending all this money. Of course, he’s pretty good at wasting huge sums of money, so maybe the lawsuit cost is merely more evidence of an underlying character deficiency.

Speaking of deficiencies, I am trying to figure out what items of tooling I need to make my milling machine useful. Yesterday, I decided it was time to try to get moving on my plan to make quick release tool holders for my lathe. These will have 60° dovetails on them. So I’ll need a dovetail cutter. On the suggestion of a reader, I decided it would be fun to make my own one-flute cutter with an indexed carbide insert.

The cutter would be a cylinder of steel with a 60° cone machined from the bottom of it, big side down. You put the insert on one side of the cone, in a notch.

Problem: the notch has to be an equilateral triangle, with the vertical side tilted 30° from the axis of the cutter, to rest against the side of the insert. This means cutting a big chunk out of the cone part, with the mill table traveling at an angle to the axis. Generally, you would use a rotary table or a dividing head to do this, although you can clamp stuff to the table and align it with a protractor, which is not very precise and likely to lead to insert alignment problems.

So I’m looking at rotary tables and dividing heads. A dividing head is likely to be cheaper and lighter and easier to use. But–I am pretty sure–you can’t cut arcs with it. It clicks from angular position to angular position, in discrete jumps, and you machine with the work at rest. Perhaps I’m mistaken. With a rotary table, you can turn the work while the mill runs. But you will not be able to move it quickly in desired increments, unless you buy extra parts. Say you want to drill six holes around a disk, at equally spaced intervals. With a dividing head, you move the work five times, pretty quickly. With a rotary table, you turn it gradually from point to point, and you line up the angular graduations, which takes time.

Complicating things further, a rotary table may be purely horizontal, horizontal and vertical, or tilting. I assume “tilting” means you can position it anywhere between horizontal and vertical. As you might guess, the price goes up as you go from purely horizontal to tilting.

So once more, I am completely at sea. On top of that, I’ve been informed that one-flute dovetail cutters are stupid, because they cut very slowly. And making a multiple-flute cutter is nearly impossible, because the inserts won’t line up. And anyway, when you make three or four notches for inserts, you weaken the cutter a lot.

I checked out Enco, trying to find a dovetail cutter which would be appropriate for making BXA tool holders. It’s very hard to figure out. The height of the cutter has to be right, and so does the width, and it has to work well with whatever diameter cutter you use to make the slots you turn into dovetails, so you have to have the right size shank.

My head hurts.

I can make cubic and rectangular pieces of metal, and I can drill holes and mill slots in them. So far, that’s about it.

Using the mill is a blast, regardless. I stare at it, like I would stare if I just found out I was married to Jessica Biel. I can’t believe it’s here. So far, my efforts have been limited to tramming the mill and facing a metal disk with a fly cutter, but that’s pretty exciting compared to having no milling machine.

I think new machinists probably tend to look like Christians, because the lathe throws oil on us, making vertical stripes on our shirts, and the mill throws oil horizontally, and when it’s all over, you end up with a big cross.

I’m going to make something, starting today, even if I only turn my disk into a rectangular block.

The facing went okay. The work seems to rise when I tighten the vise, which is disturbing, but I have been beating it with a soft hammer while I crank the handle, and it appears to do away with the problem. I faced the disk on both sides, and the thickness, measured at four points, was within two thousandths of an inch. That’s okay for now.

Yesterday I learned that this particular mill has a table which is supposed to be somewhat higher in front than in back. How much higher? That’s the question they don’t answer. They say it may be 0.005″. “May.” So maybe I need to tram the mill again. What fun.

Sooner or later, something useful will be made in my garage. I will notify you when it happens, and on that day, it will be such a big story, no one will care where Barack Obama was born.

But You CAN Win

Baldilocks has been giving her take on what “lucky” and “unlucky” mean. I agree with her when she says she doesn’t like describing life in terms of luck. God exists. So does Satan. So does free will. And then there are the countless spirits that affect our lives for good or evil.

I see life in terms of blessings and curses. The curses are more controversial than the blessings. A lot of people–even Christians–get mad if you say misfortune is sometimes caused by sin, or that God sometimes punishes people severely. There is a bizarre movement these days to portray God as Santa Claus. All blessings, no punishment. And of course, that’s silly and utterly wrong. God and his angels killed thousands upon thousands of people in the stories of the Old Testament. The Holy Spirit–yes, the Holy Spirit–killed Ananias and Sapphira dead as hammers, and that was in the New Testament. God gave people tumors, leprosy, blindness…he drowned the entire population of the world, except for eight people, and if memory serves, seven of the eight were spared only because of God’s regard for Noah. He drowned the Egyptian army. He burned the people of Sodom and Gomorrah to death, and that includes women and kids. He caused terrible problems for his entire nation, because David took a census. Go ahead and tell me God wouldn’t give you VD or cancer or bankruptcy or whatever you want to name. That may be what Oprah believes. The Bible says otherwise. And like Ralph Richardson said in Time Bandits, God is “the nice one.” Bad behavior leaves you open to attack from less-friendly beings.

I believe your spiritual health consists of a certain number of blessings and a certain number of curses, and a lot of it can be traced to the things you or your ancestors have done in the past. Some people succeed at most things they do, even if they make a poor effort. Others can do everything right and fail time after time. Some highly disciplined people are fat. Lots of irresponsible, weak people are skinny. You can do a lot of things right and fail, and you can do almost everything wrong and succeed, depending on what you have in the spiritual bank. That’s what the Bible tells us, and it’s true. So you should always make investments in the bank. Pray, do alms, try to behave, tithe, find out what sins are closely associated with your family and repent of them, and so on. Sooner or later, the seeds will have to bear fruit. And presumably, the bad seeds you’ve planted in the past will eventually peter out and stop sprouting.

I sometimes find I’m doing bad things my parents or grandparents did, even though these are things of which I disapprove. They sneak up on me; they may take forms I don’t immediately recognize. I am doing my best to drop these practices as soon as I discover them. I don’t want this stuff bearing fruit five years from now.

I suspect that when the Bible says “charity shall cover the multitude of sins,” it means that charity can prevent many of your bad seeds from sprouting. Maybe you can spare yourself some punishment here on earth. Take a look at the 41st psalm and see what you think. The Greek word translated as “charity” is “agape,” which means a benevolent, selfless sort of love, so presumably, what we call charity qualifies. If the 41st psalm is correct, by helping the needy, you can literally make yourself lucky. This is what “he shall be blessed upon the earth means.”

Most Christians worry about going to hell, but they don’t think a lot about leading a blessed life. That’s unfortunate, because it means we end up accepting God and then going on with our lives almost as if he didn’t exist. Missing out on the blessings we were intended to have right here on earth.

Oddly, many of us think God owes us a good time. Most of us don’t tithe or pray regularly or try to avoid sin. Most of us do little for charity, which is remarkable, given the endless opportunity; I don’t understand why I did so little in the past. We do whatever we please, and then when bad things happen, we think God has cheated us, and we ask, “why me?” It would make more sense to look at the good times we haven’t earned and say, “why not me?” A lot of people refuse to believe in God, because they think life would be perfect if he existed. It’s amazing how many of us think we deserve perfect lives, just because God could spare us all unhappiness if he wanted. Apparently God is supposed to be a genie who does whatever we tell him, without requiring us to grow up. And if you love your kids, you’ll let them eat banana splits for breakfast, and you won’t make them go to school. Same thing.

I am trying to make myself more “lucky,” and it’s working. And I do not believe in Oprah Claus.

Brief

Couple of things.

1. My sister is on her way to a hospital in another state, to have her lung looked at. She may have some kind of fungus. It’s not cancer; don’t get excited. If you would like to pray that she makes the trip safely and gets her problem fixed, I would appreciate it.

2. Reader Ed pointed me to another blog. The proprietor has a friend named Donna, and Donna has a “serious health issue.” Prayer is requested. Not sure what’s happening, but I trust Ed’s judgment.

Mike and I are about to hit Gordon Food Supply. I hope we survive.

Help

George Moneo says his father-in-law Gil is having skin cancer surgery tomorrow. Please say a prayer.

Obama Roars; God Snickers

Jews in Israel are finally rallying against Obama. From Dani Dayan, leader of the Council of Jewish Communities of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip:

David Ben-Gurion founded Israel in spite of American pressure… Menachem Begin destroyed Osirak in spite of American opposition, and Yitzhak Shamir rejected American demands to stop construction.

Amen! When America’s President is an anti-Christian, anti-Semitic Chicago machine veteran who spent 20 years warming a pew in a non-church where hostility to the Jews was preached openly, Israel owes it to herself to stand up to him.

Look at the reward Jews got for backing this cohort of Nation of Islam bigots. Will they learn? Some seem to be getting the picture. I can’t believe they got fooled in the first place.

When has currying favor paid off for the Jews? Liberalism is never going to make them popular. If you want to make good policy, forget the Democrats. Remember God and the M.S. St. Louis.

Let’s see. Who has Obama stabbed in the back, to date? The UAW. Doctors. Jews. The police unions. His own grandmother. Why would anyone trust this man? His record of promise-breaking is reminiscent of Hitler’s.

Build in the West Bank! If God is with you, who cares what Obama thinks? God is eternal. Obama is a Cabbage Patch Doll wrapped in a hula hoop. His term will be over before you know it.

Note: while I was writing this entry, I learned that the proper name for the ship I mentioned is “M.S. St. Louis,” not “S.S. St. Louis.” Something to do with the diesel engines.

Unusual Combination

I have to catch up on a few things.

Og’s friend Ken has cancer. It has invaded his femur. He stumbled the other day, and the femur broke. Send up some prayers.

A guy who refers to himself as “Gorak” just popped up on the Chaski forum. He says:

I live in a suburb of Vancouver, British Columbia. Professionally, I work for a large consumer electronics company at an R&D facility managing all of the test laboratories. Outside of work, I am an avid sea kayaker, woodworker and wood turner and am in the planning stages of building an 18′ cedar strip sea kayak. My current hobby time however is severely limited as I also act as primary caregiver for my wife who is fighting an advanced terminal cancer.

Couldn’t hurt to pray.

Longtime reader Ruth has started a blog. You must begin reading it immediately.

Back to business. Sort of. Sondra has blogged my blogging of her excursion to church. So if you want, you can go over and leave a comment. I don’t know if she realized how many of her readers were Christians, but she definitely knows now.

I feel like I am partly responsible for helping Sondra decide to go to church. But who helped me? I have tended to think my own prayers made the difference in my life, but I now understand that that’s wrong. I was not the only one praying. Looking at Sondra’s blog comments, I have to wonder how many of my readers prayed for me all these years, trying to straighten me out. Keep it up. It obviously works. And thanks.

I think I’ve found the solution to my metric threading problem. I considered buying dies, but that would be a limited answer. I would have to buy a die for each thread I planned to cut, and I would have no choice about the diameters of the stock I threaded. I don’t know if there is any point in putting a thread on a rod of unusual diameter, but why give up the option? I also considered getting a 7 x 14 lathe and setting it up for metric threading. This would be great, but it’s one more machine. Someone on the Chaski forum suggested I look into a new idea: the electronic lead screw (ELS). I checked it out, and I think it’s the way to go.

Here’s how it works. You buy a stepper motor and a little digital controller, and you connect the motor to your lead screw. You also put a sensor on your spindle to tell the control box how fast the lathe is turning. Now you can move the carriage back and forth at any ratio you want. I assume there is some error, but it would be insignificant. This works so well, people who use ELS boxes commonly thread at 500 RPM. I have no idea why they would want to do this, but they do.

You can also wire it up to your cross slide to get a cheap version of CNC. This means you can cut tapers without a taper attachment. That’s a great thing. A used Clausing taper attachment would cost a grand. I can make one, but it would be a pain in the butt to store when not in use, and I’d have to put it on and take it off.

There are lots of other ways to get metric on my lathe. You can buy a 30-piece metric attachment, if you’re lucky enough to find one. They pop up about once a year. This lathe requires a metric quadrant and a bunch of other stuff, so you can’t just stick a gear in there and hope for the best. Getting a metric attachment is totally unrealistic. The ELS, on the other hand, goes on with a few bolts. And when you don’t need it, it disconnects. It won’t ruin the lathe, either. If I hate it, I can take it off and throw it in the trash.

It sounds very sweet, not to mention relatively cheap. I would have to find a way to couple the motor to the screw; that’s the only challenge. The screw on my lathe is completely covered at the right end, except for the end surface. I would have to machine into that surface to make a way to put a pulley on the screw. I guess it can be done. It’s supposed to be pretty hard to machine a square hole into a flat surface, so that probably won’t work. A tapped hole won’t work, because the screw needs to reverse, and that will make the threads come undone. Maybe I could bore a hole and put a set screw in from the side, with the screw sunk into the side of the screw, so it wouldn’t interfere with the thing the end of the screw spins in. Then I could make a shaft with a flat on one side and stick it in there. I have to make sure the screw hole would not have any ill effects on the lubrication. I suppose if it did, I could fill it with epoxy or something.

Funny, I had no idea how to do this, and then this idea came to me while I blogged it.

How do I bore a hole in the end of a lead screw with no lead screw in the lathe? Angle attachment on the mill? Arrghh.

Wait, I don’t need a lead screw. I use the ram on the tailstock.

I feel better now. That was a close one. I’ll bet the steel in that screw will eat drill bits like candy. But I have a carbide end mill I can use.

The milling machine should be at the rigger’s RIGHT NOW. Can you believe it? I feel faint. I am dying to crank that thing up.

Go visit Sondra. I mean it.