Take by Ear, Twice Daily

I listened to Brooke Fraser today. I have to say I enjoyed the experience.

As much as I love music, I have neglected it in connection with my faith. Music is not a luxury or a distraction for Christians. It’s a must, like prayer or Bible reading. The Bible makes it very clear that we are obligated to support our faith with music.

Perry Stone says that when he stays in a strange place, he likes to play Christian music, even when he’s not in the room. For example, he might leave a recording on in his hotel room while he’s off teaching. The belief is that it exerts a purifying influence, which is probably a good idea, considering what people do in hotels. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Google “ultraviolet light” and “hotel bedspreads.”

Don’t do that. You really don’t want to know. I’ll tell you what you need to know. You should always take your own pillow and blanket when you sleep in a hotel.

When good, effective Christian music plays, even in the background, it changes the atmosphere of a room. And it doesn’t seem to matter all that much what the music sounds like. Even fairly noisy music which resembles rock to some degree seems to work, when the people behind it have the right spirit. So I don’t think it’s a matter of emotion, leading people to think God is among them. I think it’s a supernatural thing. If it were just emotion, you would expect it to happen only when certain types of music were played.

I wanted to get some music to listen to in the mornings, when I study and pray. Music has power. It helps connect us with God. I want that edge.

Sadly, this is nearly the only thing I have. I have come to the reluctant conclusion that Mahalia Jackson is not for me. I have the Stanley Brothers, but they seem to miss the mark a little bit. That leaves Brooke Fraser, until I can find more for my collection. I better get on Itunes, before I hear this music 92 times and it drives me insane.

I am Done

I got all of my pre-Christmas-Eve errands done. At one point, I found myself at PetCo, evaluating toys for my sister’s dog. She felt it was imperative that our pets exchange gifts.

Either my heart has grown three sizes this year, or my brain has done the reverse.

I now possess a decent-looking rib roast. That should be enjoyable. I’m making potatoes au gratin with it. When I was a kid, my Uncle Jim used to cook Christmas Eve dinner for the family, and he always had some nice beef and a giant bowl of potatoes au gratin with mushrooms and lots of pepper. The mushrooms I can take or leave, but other than that, I miss those potatoes. And Jim. And being together with the family.

I have my own recipe, which is very much like my recipe for macaroni and cheese. Tell you what. I’ll paste it below. Maybe you can find a better way to brown the potatoes. I suggest increasing the cheese.

Potatoes au Gratin

Here’s the recipe for potatoes au gratin. You might want to pimp it out with bacon or mushrooms or something, but it’s great as is.

INGREDIENTS:
3 cups half and half
1 tsp. salt
3 tbsp. butter
3 tbsp. flour
1/2 cup minced onions
2 cloves garlic
4 tsp. pepper
3 egg yolks
12 oz. shredded Cheddar + extra for topping
dash hot sauce
3-4 big russet potatoes

Peel the potatoes and cut in slices less than a quarter of an inch thick. Arrange the slices on a cookie sheet in a single layer. Salt and pepper them and brush them with butter (both sides). Brown them under a broiler (I gave them 5 minutes per side at a distance of 6 inches, but your broiler may be different). When you remove them, lower the heat to 350.

Melt the butter in a saucepan on medium heat. Saute the onions in the butter. Add the flour and stir it in. Cook for a few minutes, until the flour is no longer raw.

Divide the half and half in two equal portions. Beat the egg yolks into one portion and set it aside. Pour the other portion into the flour, butter, and onion mixture. Cook while stirring, until the mixture bubbles. Now you have cheese sauce.

Use a whisk to mix the rest of the half and half into the contents of the saucepan. Get it bubbling. Add the cheese, salt, pepper, garlic, and hot sauce and mix it all in.

Butter the bottom of a casserole dish. I suppose a 2-quart Pyrex job would be ideal. Add a layer of potatoes. Cover them with cheese sauce. Repeat until the dish is full, and make sure the top layer of potatoes has sauce on it. Bury the dish in shredded Cheddar and pepper it generously. Cook at 350 until nicely browned. At least 30 minutes.

Soon I’ll be headed off to lunch with my sister and my father. Right now I’m listening to a Brooke Fraser CD that arrived today. I think it’s important to have some good Christian music on hand.

Wewease…Wodewick!

Longtime readers may be wondering why I’m not readying for a Noche Buena pig roast at Val Prieto’s house. Val has explained it all here. Val and his family have had a tough year, and the economy isn’t helping things any. When I found out the feast was cancelled, I offered to host it myself, but unfortunately it was too late to work it out.

I hope you will keep Val and his bunch in your prayers. Especially his brother-in-law, who has been diagnosed with cancer.

I keep telling how God seems to guide my life these days. Here is another example. This will be the first Christmas Eve without a pig roast in several years. “Coincidentally,” my sister and I are getting along now, and today is my father’s birthday, and we will be taking him to one of his favorite restaurants. Tomorrow I’m fixing prime rib for Christmas dinner, and soon we’ll all be headed up to Frostproof to visit my great aunt Gladys and her family. I wish we were doing Noche Buena this year, and I am deeply sorry Val and Maggie are having a tough time, but it looks like I won’t be idle.

If any of you are alone this week, let me remind you of one of God’s promises. The Bible says he sets the solitary in families. From Psalm 68:

Sing unto God, sing praises to his name: extol him that rideth upon the heavens by his name JAH, and rejoice before him.

A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is God in his holy habitation.

God setteth the solitary in families: he bringeth out those which are bound with chains: but the rebellious dwell in a dry land.

Maybe that will be of help to someone.

I have to run errands and do things now, but before I go, I want to take time to thank everyone who comes here regularly and enriches my life with comments and emails. Merry Christmas to all of you!

Here are some scenes from better times. First, last year’s pig:

Second, the 2004 pig (bottom left, for you wise guys):

Third, my dad in 2004, doing quality control.

Talk to you later.

Quarter-Century Hiatus not Good

I have good news about a fellow blogger. Fausta is now writing regularly for Realclearpolitics! They have a site called Realclearworld, and she’s blogging Latin America. Here is her first post!

Always nice to see good people do well.

Today I am thinking about the way my life has changed.

I used to write about the way I felt when I took off for Israel to work on a kibbutz; I had a lot of obstacles to overcome in order to get there, and when I made it to Israel, there were still uncertainty and problems, but it seemed like God held me by the hand the entire time, and I got to where I didn’t worry much. Things always worked out. And I have to say, I wasn’t the greatest possible Christian at that time. I enjoyed getting drunk. I thought sex outside of marriage wasn’t that big a deal. I was very disrespectful to people to whom I should have shown deference. I had a filthy mouth. And I didn’t do much for other people. Nonetheless, it seemed that God guided me through the trip, as though there were a reason for it.

When I returned home, things didn’t work so well; maybe God had a purpose for the trip, and he put up with me because of that purpose and because of my faith, and once I was home, he felt it was time to let me reap some of the rewards of my bad attitude and behavior. I don’t know. The confusing thing is that he would lead me and watch over me in Israel. I completely understand why he would withdraw once I got home; the good that he did me is harder to explain. I think sometimes God does good things for you before you turn to him, in anticipation of things you’ll do later. In any case, I always missed the sensation of having my steps ordered from above.

That sensation has returned to my life. Things are falling into place. My family is being restored. The persistent sins and failings of which I could not rid myself are disappearing. Things I don’t understand are happening, and I have the sense that they are happening for reasons that will become clear later. I am less worried than I used to be. I am less discouraged. I feel as if the ground of my life has been weeded and cultivated and fertilized, and that now my life can be fruitful.

I feel like my life ended when I returned from Israel and started up again just recently.

I still can’t figure out this tool business. How did I end up with a giant table saw? I really didn’t want to buy it, but there is such a thing as having a hook put in your jaw. The saw was too perfect. The price was too low. It made too much sense, the way it would fit into my garage. Then I bought the thing, and immediately, I got an email inviting me and my father to Frostproof, to see my great aunt Gladys. The lady with the giant workshop and house full of beautiful homemade furniture. The only person I know who would have any appreciation whatsoever for this saw. There has to be some purpose in this. It’s just too weird.

I think about the story of Jonah. Actually, I have thought about it for years, because I knew I was not serving my purpose in life. Jonah was appointed to do a job, and he refused. He was thrown into the sea and swallowed by a fish. Some preachers believe he died. For three days, he prayed for relief. From hell, according to his own words. In the end, the fish spat him out on the beach, closer to Nineveh than he was when he was thrown in the ocean. All that time, the plan seemed to be derailed, but he was on his way to Nineveh and didn’t realize it.

Now that I think about it, the Bible is full of this kind of stuff. Rebecca was waiting at the well, to be chosen for Isaac. A donkey was waiting to be used in Jesus’s ride into Jerusalem. Moses happened to float by Pharaoh’s daughter. Joseph was sold to Egyptians, and he was imprisoned wrongly, and as a result he became a powerful official who was ready to help his brothers when famine came. Mary the sister of Martha happened to have costly perfume on hand to put on Jesus’s feet, and it turned out to be preparation for his burial.

I’m also grateful that I seem to sense my positive emotions better than I used to. Every so often, I have a moment when I understand the significance of something that has happened, and it brings me close to tears. Often the thing that moves me will be something that would have blown right by me, back when I was constantly working to suppress feelings which I believed would cause me problems.

As for the saw, I have to figure out a way to put a router table in it. You can buy premade inserts, but I’m sure they’re expensive, and the whole point of all this effort is to learn to use tools, so I’d rather make one. I’m thinking I should get a piece of 3/4″ MDF and cut it to a suitable width. Then I can rout a hole in it for my router lift, run hardwood braces across the bottom of the MDF, and screw it to the saw rails. It should work.

I’m having a hard time deciding how long the rails should be. People are trying to discourage me from cutting them down, but a 98″ long object is not something you want in a crowded garage. I am thinking I’ll set the saw up and decide how big a router insert I need and then cut the rails based on that measurement. I hate to do it, but let’s be serious. How often do you need rails that go 50″ beyond a table saw’s edge? I have a video where Kelly Mehler cuts a four-by-eight sheet of plywood without any of that junk. If I’m wrong, I’m sure I can remedy the mistake for $300 somewhere down the road.

Prayer Request

I just got an email from reader Alan. He says his mother has lung cancer and is not expected to live more than two weeks. He would appreciate some prayer to help her with her suffering. He says she is a good Christian, and that she is prepared to go. I hope you’ll take a minute to help out.

Also, I have a friend who is despondent over job problems. I mean, while you’re already praying, why not?

I, Too, Know how to Abuse an SUV

Here is good information to have. It is entirely possible to put a Powermatic 66 power saw into a Ford Explorer without help.

I shot up to Jupiter today and took a look at the saw. The seller was less helpful than expected. He turned out to have a back problem, so he could do nothing whatsoever to help with the lifting and pushing. He got a little snippy when I asked if I could take a wing off the saw to get an idea how hard the disassembly would be, although he apologized later.

He clearly didn’t know a whole lot about mechanical things. Although he did carpentry for a living, he didn’t know how to take the saw apart, and he didn’t think I could do it and get it into the truck. But when I gave him the money, he was only too happy to clear out and give me time to work, and he told me where I could find Mexicans if I needed one to help me lift.

He was amazed by my Panasonic impact driver. I don’t blame him. It amazes me, too.

I was terrified, but it seemed certain it had to be doable. I didn’t want to leave half the saw up there and go back to Miami for a bigger vehicle. I got out the tools and got to work.

Here is the saw at first (seller’s photo):

Here it is a few minutes after I got to work, with the extension, fence, and rails off.

Here it is with the top and motor removed.

Here it is going up the clever little ramp I made.

Getting it apart took some time, but there was nothing hard about it. I put the parts in the Explorer as they came off. Once I had it in pieces, I was ready to drive to the labor pool and choose a brawny immigrant to help me. But I kept looking at the saw and tilting it by hand and thinking how light it felt. And there was a huge stack of two-by-fours in the corner of the storage unit. And the storage unit was two inches higher than the surrounding pavement, so I knew I could brace the wood against the concrete…

I backed the Explorer up to the unit, got the wood in place, draped a quilt over it, and lowered the saw cabinet onto it. And I gave it a yank. It moved! I couldn’t believe it. I decided to go for broke. I yanked and pushed, going from one side of the cabinet to the other, until it was in the Explorer. All I had to do was tidy up, put the rails in the car, and hit the road! There wasn’t a scratch on the saw. Not a new one, anyway.

Sadly, when I took the top off, six shims came with it, and I have no idea where they were. The information I gathered said there should be no alignment issues, so I was not expecting shims. I may have to call Powermatic.

I also got about a dozen blades. I thought I might leave them behind; they were for Corian, and I didn’t know if they were right for wood, and I thought the seller might want to put them on Craigslist by themselves. But he said they were great for wood. Something about “triple chipped” carbide points. He said they would last forever on wood. So they came with me.

I took a shot of the saw in the car, but I guess I forgot to save it.

I don’t think the Biesemeyer fence is 64″ long. It looks like 48″ to me, which is considerably more reasonable. The rails are very long, though. I think I’ll have to put them on the dry cut saw and reduce them to a length that makes sense. I don’t know what else to do.

This thing should be fantastic. I can put wheels on it and park it by a wall. With the router on it, it will be a great convenience. I thought I might spruce it up and paint it, but after lugging it around, I am not all that enthusiastic.

I don’t think this guy was a big fan of dust collection. It seemed like five pounds of wood and corian dust came out of this saw. It needs a good cleaning.

I have to get a guard for it. That will be a project in and of itself.

All in all, I can’t believe my luck. I paid roughly a third of what it’s worth, and the blades are a big asset.

I have the funniest feeling about all these tools. I feel as if there is some purpose in them. I really didn’t want this thing when I saw it, but things kept coming together, and I just went with the flow. I said a lot of prayers during this process, including one over the saw itself.

Coincidentally–ANOTHER coincidence, among those associated with this saw–my aunt Gladys wants me and my father to visit. If you don’t recall, she’s the 92-year-old great aunt in Frostproof, who has a complete woodworking shop and a house full of homemade furniture. She’ll love these photos.

Now I have to go lie down.

Prayer Solicited

Leah Friedman had a blood clot recently, and she has had pneumonia, and she has sustained some damage to her heart. Now Mish Weiss says Leah has received some “bad news.”

I don’t know what could be considered “bad” after all that, but I know prayers would be welcomed.

Low Prices Sometimes Result from Pain

I appreciate all the helpful tips on the table saw. I hope it works out. I believe the main reasons for the good price are that nobody around here wants a big saw, and very few people have a circuit which will run a 5-horsepower motor. I guess the good Lord had something on his mind when I went crazy and put three 220 circuits in the garage.

I don’t want to miss the more important issue here. The seller no longer needs the saw, because his business went under. That is a very sad reason for a bargain. And he is not alone in these tough times. The other day I learned that a family I know has been under great financial strain.

In the past, when I prayed for people, I just prayed that God would fix their problems. I now think that’s wrong. Aaron informed me that one of the Jewish words for prayer really means something more like “self-examination.” Problems are often the result of the way we live. Virtually everyone has something in his or her life that needs to be made right. These days, I pray that God will help people with their adversities, but I also pray that he will help them search themselves and change and come to serve and know him better.

Maybe you could join me in praying for those things today, for the guy with the saw, and for my friends.

Today my sister and I are going to Wayne Cochran’s church. She’s disappointed because they’re putting on a Christmas play. She wanted to hear him speak. Oh, well. It sure beats what we were doing on the Sunday before Christmas last year.

Now This is a Church

I gave up trying to write music; I’ll pick it back up tomorrow. Software issues aggravated me for so long, I didn’t really have time to write anything. My computer’s audio circuits must have had corrupted drivers or something; I had to go to Asus’s infuriating site and download things. I think it’s okay now.

I got the birds out and listened to a disk I got in the mail. It came from Wayne Cochran. He and his crew are good about communicating with people who visit their church. They send emails and snail mail.

The thrust of the sermon was that we needed to set aside more time to spend with God. And he also talked about a couple other things that surprised me. He mentioned the book of Enoch, which I’ve been writing about, and which I bought recently. It seems like a lot of Christians are taking an interest in it these days. And–I think this may be the best part–he talked about pork. I am not kidding.

Toward the end of the sermon, he started talking about the kind of food he liked. He said some of the best eating he had ever had was cheap food. He mentioned fatback and biscuits and red eye gravy. You think I’m bad? He said he used to eat fatback and biscuits with Karo syrup. I loved hearing that stuff. My sister is anxious to visit his church again, and she has given up pork, and she wants me to give it up. I guess she has a surprise in store.

He also said he had a .357 by his bed and a Chinese assault rifle. And he has a motorcycle.

I don’t know if Wayne Cochran has the best doctrine, but I know this: as long as he keeps his accent and talks about pork and guns, I’ll be comfortable sitting in his church.

You Can Help

Yesterday, I somehow came upon a commercial blog (owned by the Chicago Sun-Times) written by a newspaper reporter and Baptist minister. The man’s name is Lacy Banks. I don’t know him from Adam, but I read what he wrote, and he says he has a brain tumor and prostate cancer. The brain tumor is benign, and the prostate cancer is in remission, but the treatment is unpleasant, and he is worn out. I forgot to mention, he also has congestive heart failure. He hasn’t been able to get a transplant because of the cancer issues.

When I started writing about God, I learned I had a large number of Christian readers who were always happy to learn of a chance to do someone a good turn. Maybe you would like to read what Mr. Banks wrote and offer up a holiday prayer for him.

His determination is inspiring; he is bent on serving God until the final second of his life. So many of us give up on God as soon as the wind changes. It gives me strength to see someone who can hold on while dealing with life-threatening disease in the autumn of his life.

While you’re at it, Mish and Leah can always use a mention. Mish is still battling her way back from a bone marrow transplant, and Leah–as if she hasn’t had enough problems–is fighting pneumonia.

Back to Finale

A few years back, when I first got interesting in writing music, I got a program called Allegro, which was the wimpy version of a program called Finale, which was a piece of composing software. I could not make heads or tails of it. Everyone on the web said Sibelius was the way to go, so I tried that, and it was not fun. When I sat down with the computer keyboard, the MIDI keyboard, and the manual, I was able to use it, but it was counterintuitive, and after a certain amount of time away, I forgot everything I had learned.

Today I decided to check out another Finale product: Finale Songwriter 2007. They have a fully functional demo you can try. It takes a month to download, but once it’s set up, it seems to work extremely well. It appears to be a very easy-to-use notation scratchpad, with MIDI playback and printing. Hard to complain about that. I have seen comments about it, saying it’s hard to do musically sophisticated things with it, but if you can print with it, presumably you can then scan the music into a more complex program.

Seems like a good choice so far.

Sibelius = Ulcers

I am totally determined to write some music. I have never been able to make much sense of Sibelius, but then I didn’t really try all that hard. I have moved it back to this computer, and I’m going to give it another shot. I’ll have to get the manual out. It’s like 9000 pages long.

I was probably stupid to buy Sibelius. The reviews said “Intuitive!”, and I believed them. There is nothing intuitive about it. Computer users don’t start with notation software. They start with word processors. Therefore the people who write notation software should fix their programs so they work like Word. Things like cut and paste should be available, and you should be able to put a cursor wherever you want and enter a note or a rest. Sibelius isn’t like that. It won’t let you copy notes at random and paste them where you want them; you can only put them where Sibelius thinks they fit. You can’t put more notes in a measure than it will hold, with the intention of removing the extra notes later. You can’t easily copy a measure and paste the copy where you want. You have to learn a bunch of weird rules that are hard to remember because they go against common sense.

I’m sure that if I used Sibelius every day for eight hours, at the end of a week, I’d be able to use it, but the pain of the first two or three days is pretty bad.

I used to have a cheap program called Rhapsody, and it was easy to use. As I recall, you could pretty much put notes where you wanted them. There must be something else like that out there. I used Rhapsody to create this soon-to-be-Grammy-nominated piece of music:

loobner4

I realize this is the most annoying non-Kenny-G. song ever written, but I had a reason for writing variations on it.

If I could write music that simple and add lyrics, I’d be thrilled. Maybe Sibelius is too big. I think you can use it to create orchestral scores.

I’m going to root around on the web and make sure there’s no better software out there, and then I’m going to get to work. I can’t take this any more. I have to make this work before my head explodes.

Deus, Yes; Ex Machina, No

I went to the mall with my sister to buy stuff for Christmas and my dad’s birthday. If you think God doesn’t work miracles, the fact that we manage to shop together without bloodshed is proof that you’re wrong.

Like most men, I go to stores mainly when I realize I need something. Usually I know which store has it, and which aisle it’s in, and I can often tell you which shelf it’s on. I walk in, I grab it, I pay, and I leave. Once in a while I walk around and look at stuff I want but will not buy, but that takes five minutes, tops. My sister, on the other hand, enjoys being in stores and needs no other reason to enter one. I have to keep telling her, “There will still be stuff here next week.”

We accomplished our mission, and my old man has some good stuff headed his way. Now I am exhausted, and I have missed my bedtime for the third day in a row.

I got a call from Mike today. He wants to collaborate on The Armageddon Cookbook. He figures the US is tanking, much as I do, and he is really enjoying maxing out the power of his food dollars by shopping at Costco. His new thing is baking bread. Everyone should be doing this. It’s ridiculously easy, and you get a great loaf of bread for something like fifty cents. He just bought a fifty-pound bag of flour. He already gave a lecture to some lady he knows, who has to buy bread for five kids every week.

I honestly think I could feed myself very well for ten bucks a day, without even growing food. Maybe five bucks. I might get bored after a while, though. You can only cook beans and rice so many ways, and even pizza gets monotonous after about three months.

Okay, six.

Mike is really glad I’ve become more religious, and he wanted to talk about it. That’s fantastic. No one ever listens when I try to share what I’ve found. No one who hasn’t already found the same thing. Mike is a Christian, but he doesn’t go to church, and he wants to get more serious. I suggested he tag along to church the next time he’s here, and he was all for it.

When we were kids, he lived on the southwest corner of a busy intersection, and I lived on the northeast corner. Our neighborhood was full of successful professional people with extremely messed-up families. No one we knew attended church seriously. My mother dragged me and my sister to church sometimes, but you need a father to get that job done consistently. And she could never settle on a denomination. Depending on the month, we might be Baptist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or Catholic. My mother was always drawn to Catholicism by the pageantry, and like a lot of women, she was mesmerized by the Pope, as if he had all the answers.

Mike says his family attended church on Easter.

Most people think God is smart. That’s obvious, but what I see in God’s work is more like talent than intelligence. When a talented person starts a creative project, it may not be clear what his plan is. He himself may not be sure. But something inside him remembers where all the loose ends are, and somehow, they wrap themselves up. I believe God always knows what he’s doing, but other than that, watching him work is very like watching a person engaged in the creative process.

Mike disappeared from my life. I thought he was gone. Now he’s back, and he has an interest in God, and it just so happens that I’m a few steps ahead of him in the same direction. When we got back together, I think we were both surprised how much we had in common. I had written a cookbook. Mike had become an amazing cook, and he fixed the same kinds of things I did. When we were kids, Mike got me interested in motorcycles, including Moto Guzzis. When we got back in touch, I had a Harley and a Moto Guzzi in my garage. Mike missed shooting. I had guns. Mike lived in New Hampshire, but he happened to have a new company with an office an hour away from me, guaranteeing he would get to come down and visit fairly often. On a couple of his visits, we talked about God, and each of us learned that the other had had supernatural experiences. Now we’re probably going to go to church together.

My sister and I were estranged. There was no way we could ever hope to get along. It just could not happen. It was not a possibility. That’s what I thought. But one day she saw a copy of God’s Smuggler on my table, and we started talking, and I found she had gone to a church two years earlier for baptism, and she was earnestly seeking God. Now we visit churches together and talk about our faith. And we pray our father will eventually join in.

There has to be a reason for all this. For the way the loose ends are coming together. I have to wonder. How many other people from my past will be brought back into my life, and what will the reasons be?

I guess before I go to bed I should share an experience I had today. I was trying to find more stuff to give my sister for Christmas, and I remembered that she said she really liked a Christian band called Third Day. While we were at a bookstore, the proprietor recommended their Christmas CD to her. I got on the web today to see if they had any more stuff she might like. Was I surprised! These guys are shockingly good. They’re not just good by Christian standards; they’re good by any standard. I can’t think of any country or Southern rock group currently working, which approaches their level. While I was checking out their music, I came across Brooke Fraser. Have you heard this woman? She’s so good, people who have no interest in God whatsoever buy her music.

It made me wish I could master Sibelius. I would give my eye teeth to write and publish really excellent Christian music. What better thing could you do with your life? Isn’t that better than being a lawyer or teaching people to overeat? Even with the dramatic improvement we’ve seen in Christian music, a lot of the stuff they play during worship is just not good. And it could be sublime.

In the past, I’ve always been able to write musical variations at will, but I’ve always had a hard time writing original melodies. I don’t know why; it’s really the same skill. Recently, though, I’ve been hearing the most wonderful tunes in my head, and I know I need to transcribe them. Maybe some of them have value. I shouldn’t let them disappear. I’ve always had a tough time writing lyrics, but maybe that will change, too.

I try to remember that I am now part of a plan, and that my life is being guided. I am sure I’m going to begin harvesting things God has been waiting for me to be ready to accept. Things are going to work out. That is what I believe. And the seemingly random or pointless or wasted events and experiences in my life will turn out to be meaningful and useful. God knows where all the bodies are buried, and he also knows how to bring them back to life.

I think that is true, and I try to keep it in my mind when things don’t seem to make sense. To me, more than a far-off promise of eternal life, this is the real magic of belief in God.

I Love a Nice Hypodermic in the Gums

Today I go back to the dentist. What a lucky, lucky man I am. He is going to pry out one of my Nixon-era fillings and replace it with something which, hopefully, contains a little less mercury and arsenic and plutonium. I can’t complain. Thirty-plus years on a filling is a good long run. And the mercury vapor has been most enjoyable.

After that, I suspect I will be shopping with my sister. My dad’s birthday is practically on Christmas Day, so every year, I have to come up with two bang-up gifts at once, and this year, it has been hard. I came up with one idea: pricey German waterproof panniers for his bike. But it looks like he may be getting clothes to make up the deficit.

In the past, buying for him was not hard. Cigars and expensive liquor. But I feel a little funny buying booze for him these days, and cigars, while appreciated, are in a moral grey area for me.

I also have to come up with his gift for my sister. I sort of wonder if he has ever bought a gift in his life. He always asks someone else to do it. Actually, that’s not totally correct. When we were small, and he went on business trips, he always brought each of us a gift when he came back. We got so we felt entitled to that stuff. That was a long time ago. Things have certainly changed. It has probably been three years since my sister has been involved in our Christmas.

I can write about his Christmas and birthday gifts all day without worrying that I’m spoiling the surprise. I am positive he couldn’t tell me the name of my blog if I asked.

I can’t help being full of hope these days. There has been a miraculous transformation in my relationship with my sister. It wasn’t just a matter of being touchy-feely and having a California-style group hug and making a decision to try to get along. It didn’t come from Oprah or Dr. Phil. It came from God, as an answer to prayer. It was impossible–not hard, but impossible–for us to get along in the past. You would have to have seen it to understand. You may not believe it, but I have always been an easy person to get along with, and I just could not make it work, and I eventually gave up, except for prayer. We got along so badly, family members didn’t want to be around us. Sometimes they visited Miami and didn’t tell my sister.

Fast-forward to today, when I look forward to hearing from her, and I enjoy spending time with her. We sit in church together. We talk about how God is repairing the family. We exchange thoughts on religion. We do things for each other.

It’s so strange, how different things are when you make peace with a person. Before you make peace, that person is a source of misery. They drain your strength. They fill you with dread. You wish they would disappear from your life. If you lack maturity and character, you may seek to harm them. After the change, that person becomes a source of strength. An asset. Someone you value. It’s like turning rat poison into penicillin.

I’ve reconciled with people before, but never with someone for whom I had so little hope. It gives me faith that there is almost no one I can’t make peace with.

I suppose shlepping around a mall while my sister looks at Christmas ornaments and overpriced dog toys is a small price to pay.

Unexpected Gift

A week or so back, I received an unexpected package. It was from the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, and it contained a plate. In the center of the plate was the text “My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.”

I didn’t know about these plates. They put a new one out every year. They always feature quotations from the Old Testament. And unlike a lot of religious decorations, they look very nice.

I am not a collector-plate kind of guy. Not many men are. But this one touched my heart, and I plan to put it on the wall. I have a surprising number of reasons.

For one thing, it reminds me that I was chosen to be included in something wonderful: a history-making, prophecy-fulfilling organization that is forming a remarkable bond between religious Jews and Christians. We used to be brought together by things like disputations and pogroms. Now we are confounding unbelievers by working together to build and protect the nation of Israel. Many Christians are actively seeking religious instruction from Jews, in order to understand our own faith better. American Christian support of Jewry has grown to the point where it angers some people, especially those who want to slice Israel up and feed her to her enemies as a futile peace offering. It’s exciting to be part of that. How can you not be excited, when you see yourself mentioned in the book of Isaiah?

It also reminds me that God has helped me to look outside myself and consider the needs of others. I will never publicly say what I have done for ministries and charities; I believe that is wrong. But I can tell you that the small amount of giving I have done has blessed me more than anyone who received any of it. I am not referring to God’s promises to look out for the generous; I mean that giving brings emotional healing to the giver and helps him feel a closer bond with God. It helps clear away the hard layers of cynicism which, in this modern world, can accumulate so quickly on a person’s heart. To a great degree, innocence and faith can be restored, and giving is a powerful tool to achieve that end.

Another nice thing about the plate is that it opened my eyes to the importance of surrounding yourself with reminders of your faith. I’m going to put it over my monitor. It’s easy to get away from God while you sit at a computer; the ways are too numerous to name. It can’t be anything but helpful to have an object by your screen that constantly reminds you what you are and how you are supposed to behave.

Incidentally, I have been reading about poverty in Israel, and it’s very bad. I knew it existed, but I didn’t understand the extent of it. One statistic cited by the IFCJ: 29 percent of Israeli families live in poverty, and the figures for children are worse. Capable, industrious Israelis are making the desert bloom, but it hasn’t been a picnic. And Jews in the former USSR and Ethiopia are in dire straits.

Israel’s population keeps exploding. It must be very crowded compared to the time when I was there. I guess it’s a challenge, trying to find jobs for the constant flow of immigrants.

I might pick up one or two other items to remind me of my faith. It’s surprising, how few choices there are. I just assumed there would be an endless variety, but the list isn’t that long, and a lot of the things I’ve seen aren’t very tempting. Someone should make a line of unobtrusive and tasteful plates, plaques, and dishes with Bible verses on them.

Some of the things I’ve seen aren’t too bad. One small plaque quotes Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord… plans to give you hope and a future.” Another quotes Joshua 24:15: “Choose this day whom you will serve… but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

I’m glad they sent that plate. On my own, I would never have realized how helpful items like that can be.

Plus Random Ruminations

My sister and I attended Calvary Chapel of Kendall today. She heard about it from a friend. I got on the web and looked it up. Evidently, there is a body of something like a thousand churches under the Calvary Chapel umbrella. They are charismatics, but they are a bit fed up with charismatic excesses, such as barking and holy-rolling. They don’t permit speakers to speak in tongues while teaching. They also deny the authenticity of the phenomenon of being “slain in the spirit.” This is something believers claim happens when the Holy Spirit is present in such intensity that it causes their knees to buckle. I’m inclined to believe it happens. I think the Bible mentions people feeling weak in the presence of God, but I’m too lazy to look it up. As I have written before, I have had unexpected moments of mild dizziness in church.

I don’t think it’s a big enough deal to drive your church of choice. I’m always surprised to see Christians fall out over things that seem fairly trivial. Is the Rapture before the Tribulation or after? Do the dead go to heaven or merely sleep until the Resurrection? Who cares? I don’t think the little things matter.

The musicians were spectacular today. In particular, a singer/guitarist and a man who played the electric guitar. I’m not fond of high-distortion rock-and-roll-style guitar in church, but whether or not it’s a good idea, he did it extremely well.

The pastor was very good. He told about the birth of Christ.

They didn’t harp about money. They don’t take a collection. They have boxes at the rear of the church, and you can also donate online. I liked that. I get tired of hearing preachers pray over offerings, asking that they be “multiplied back” over and over. It’s as if they’re trying to assure the congregation that donating isn’t a stupid thing to do, because the money comes back. I think it does come back, in one form or another, but you should give because it’s right, not because you’re counting on God to make you rich.

I can’t say I felt much of that familiar “God’s presence” sensation, except at the end, when the pastor made an altar call. That was when he really shined. Or shone.

According to web sources, some people have criticized the Calvary Chapel bunch for insisting that members feel more joyful than they really do, and for being somewhat fanatical. I don’t know if these things are true. They seemed fairly tame compared to the other two churches I’ve been to recently.

I got home and felt like watching Perry Stone. He’s unbelievable. I am not endorsing him; he talks so fast, it’s impossible (for a lazy person like me) to keep up and check his scriptural references and make sure everything is kosher. But my instincts tell me he’s the real thing.

Charismatics believe in something called “the word of knowledge,” which simply means they believe God tells people things. I have gotten into it with my sister for saying God had never told me anything. When I say that, I don’t mean I don’t get urgings and so on. I mean I have never had an explicit message from God, delivered supernaturally. I have never heard a voice giving me news. I have never seen letters floating in the air, spelling out a message. To me, that’s the kind of thing you should hold out for before you confidently state “God told me something.” If you haven’t had an experience like that, you should say, “I THINK God is telling me…” This could save the church a lot of embarrassment. Didn’t some big-name preacher claim God told him McCain was going to win? I’m not sure, but I think that’s correct. God didn’t tell him that.

Perry Stone says he got a word of knowledge once, and it was in April of 1998. He awoke from sleep, and as he was waking, a voice told him the governor of Texas was going to be the next President. He told a few friends, and later that year, he happened to be leading a tour at the Western Wall when he ran into George Bush, and he encouraged Bush to run. Stone claims he has this chance meeting on video. Supposedly, Bush has said he decided to run a few days later.

I found that interesting, because he said he heard the voice as he was waking up. I have had a couple of very strange experiences as I was waking. One was unquestionably supernatural. The other, I have never been sure about. I always figured that if you were a prophet and you had a vision, you would probably have it while you were wide awake, because that would distinguish it from a dream. However Aaron recently told me that the vast majority of prophets received their information in dreams. And that information has turned out to be sound. I suppose I was wrong. I know of a lot of prophetic dreams in the Bible, but I didn’t realize they represented the standard method.

I’ve written about the first experience. I was trying to sleep, and I kept feeling a beam of energy playing over my body, like an invisible spotlight. Wherever it touched me, I felt loved and optimistic and at peace. Seriously. When it touched my foot, my foot felt these things. I was convinced it was the presence of Jesus. Sounds crazy. I was completely awake, but I fell asleep while this was going on. You would think I would have been too freaked out to fall asleep, but I was used to having supernatural experiences, and I didn’t know what to make of this one, and I guess I was sleepy. I awoke with both hands in the air, and I heard a crackling sound, and I felt energy arcing into my palms. Eventually it stopped.

I assume it was a supernatural experience, because the things that preceded it happened while I was still awake, and because it seemed to continue even after it woke me up.

I have never figured out what it meant.

The experience that made the deepest impression on me–this is not the second experience I mentioned above–took place while I was awake and the sun was shining. I was sitting on the couch, and I happened to look at the wall. And up near the corner of the room, I saw a creature. I’d say it was about five inches long. It seemed similar to a cockroach in its general shape. It was a long oval shape, with a line across it near one end. The line appeared to define a head. That was the only feature it had. You could draw it perfectly in ten seconds with a pencil. It had no color. It was clear. I can’t describe it well; it didn’t look like glass, because it was not in this world and it didn’t look like things that belong to this world. The outlines were not clearly focused. It was as though I were seeing it through the distorting effect of the physical universe. You might think of the creature in the movie Predator, or maybe one of those clear network logos at the bottom of a TV screen.

This thing was about four inches from the ceiling, clinging to the wall. Its head faced away from the corner. Its body was parallel to the ceiling. It was just sitting there. I had no trouble seeing it. It was as obvious as a table lamp, and I got a good, long look at it.

I kept staring at it, because…well, who wouldn’t? Eventually, it appeared to realize I could see it. I don’t think it liked this. It detached from the wall and floated away from it, and as it did, a line appeared down its back, defining two wings which parted and peeled up toward the head. The wings then began spinning around the head like a propeller, except that they seemed to merge into a smooth disk perpendicular to the axis of the body. As this happened, it began to rise, and it rose toward the ceiling. When it reached the ceiling, it passed through it and disappeared.

The smoothness of the motion was beyond anything I have ever seen in the physical realm. It had an idealized quality to it, as though its spiritual nature permitted it to be simpler and more elegant than a physical object.

This was a spirit. That much, I’m sure of. But was it a good spirit or a bad one? My guess: bad. It took off when I spotted it, which is not what you would expect a benign spirit serving God to do. It acted guilty.

It made me think of phrases like “lord of the flies” and “prince of the air.” Some people say there are foul spirits that are like flies, flying around from place to place to cause trouble. And I also thought about Christians who claim foul spirits inhabit houses and have to be commanded to leave. Truthfully, though, I am not sure of its exact nature. Sometimes I wonder if it was here to bring a specific type of trouble to the house, like bugs, which it resembled.

I used to keep the story to myself. I’m not sure why. These days, I don’t care who knows it. So here it is. Maybe someone else out there has seen something like it, and they’ll be relieved to know they’re not alone.

Today the pastor mentioned something remarkable, and I also heard it on a Perry Stone video. They talked about the 400 years the Jews spent without hearing from a prophet. The pastor called it “radio silence” and compared it to hearing a favorite station go off the air. I thought it was kind of scary. Imagine having prophet after prophet and then four hundred years of silence. How did the Jews cope? And how did they find the strength to continue trusting in God?

People make fun of Christians for believing Jesus will return after 2000 years. But the Jews have been waiting…what year is it? I believe it’s 5769 to them. They don’t believe Jesus was a prophet, so to them, the prophetic dry spell has been running since Malachi. It has been going on for 2400 years. I don’t know when they began believing a messiah was coming, but it was at least that long ago. So they’ve been waiting considerably longer than we have. Talk about perseverance. It’s amazing that they’ve held out this long. No temple, no state until 1948, no priests, no king, no sacrifices, and still, there are observant Jews.

Maybe I’m getting this wrong. I know they believe there were miracles after Malachi. Anyway, it is remarkable that any of them still believe. That is a special kind of faith.

I have heard that Perry Stone thinks God is shaking up America right now, trying to drive us to repent. I hope that’s true, because my own take is that we are finished as the preeminent nation on earth. He believes the prophesied outpouring of the Holy Spirit is upon us, and that after it reaches its fullness, Jesus will return. He certainly knows more than I do.

Interesting stuff. But at the end of the day, the thing that really matters is trying to lead a life that pleases God. All this other business will become clear eventually.