I am Relaxed

I think we are going to win this one.

John McCain is ahead of Obama in Zogby’s latest poll. Republicans almost always do better than the polls suggest. Republican turnout will be great, because we are more afraid of Obama than Democrats are of John McCain. And I can’t believe God would give us a socialist President who has announced his willingness to divide up Jerusalem. And the pride and smugness we’re seeing from Obama and those in the media who unethically supported him and smeared McCain and Palin…is it even possible that God would reward these people with victory? Such things happen, but to me, it looks like a humbling moment in the making.

I have been feeling relaxed about the election for quite some time. It’s strange, considering how I felt in 2000 and 2004. And it doesn’t mean I’m sure McCain will win. I generally have more serenity in my life these days, and I guess the effect applies to politics. That makes sense. After all, security and prosperity come to each individual from God, not from Uncle Sam or from the individual’s own efforts. So I am not afraid that my life will be difficult if Obama wins.

Obama is really exposing his inner socialist these days. First there was the Joe the Plumber moment. Now he’s calling people who want reasonable taxes “selfish.” Unbelievable. As Mike Huckabee says, wanting to spend your own money on your family is not selfish. It’s normal and healthy and righteous. It’s what human beings are supposed to do. Socialism, on the other hand, is clearly evil and cannot be implemented without a move toward totalitarianism.

When a government decides to take wealth from productive people and pass it around, it has to give itself new, unnatural powers in order to get the job done. It has to be able to locate wealth, and it has to be able to identify what it perceives as need, and it has to decide who deserves the money it has forcibly confiscated from working people. A small, limited government can’t do those things. To get those things done, the government will have to diminish our privacy and our property rights, and it will have to employ a lot of bureaucrats to stick their nose in our business and decide who gets what. A socialist America (truly socialist, I mean) will be like Cuba or any other socialist state. There will be boards and agencies manned by cronies of the chief executive, and they will funnel loot and power to their buddies before thinking about the public good. That’s how socialism works. Jesse Jackson has a history of going to meet CEOs and saying, “We have to get rid of this meritocracy.” That is literally the way he says it; no paraphrasing. Under socialism, government bureaucrats by the tens of thousands will be paid to say the same thing, as policy. When merit no longer determines compensation, other measures have to be used. And that means empowering bureaucrats to decide what the measures are, and to do the measuring. That’s the Obama plan.

I know these things already happen in our government, which is somewhat socialist in its present form. But it can get much, much worse.

By the way, let’s not forget: prior to 2005, Obama and his America-bashing, handler-muzzled wife gave less than one percent of their income to charity. When he got a ridiculous advance for the race-baiting book Bill Ayres probably wrote for him, they went up to between five and six percent. And those figures are deceptively favorable to Obama; they include donations to his church, which are not charitable at all. Church donations and charitable donations are different things.

When it comes to giving, observant Jews and Bible-believing Christians typically START at ten percent; that’s a baseline. And they make up a big portion of the “selfish” hordes that support John McCain. Obama doesn’t begin to measure up. Joe Biden is also incredibly stingy in this regard. So was Gore. So was Clinton. Then there’s Dick Cheney, who gives a colossal, multimillion-dollar portion of his income to charity. Bad, evil Dick Cheney. Giving more per month than the Obamas, Bidens, Clintons, and Gores do, combined, in a decade. Once again, I have to ask: isn’t he supposed to be greedy and full of hate? If he is, how come Al Gore’s giving amounts to a tiny fraction of one percent of Cheney’s? Pope Prius I is not living up to expectations.

We all know conservatives give more than liberals, as a general rule, even as we complain about high taxes. We’re not complaining because we want to hoard our money. We’re just asking for the right to decide whom to give it to, instead of putting the decision in the hands of godless bureaucrats who reward laziness, perversion, dishonesty, and other evil traits. We know that private citizens do a better job of just about everything, and that includes giving.

Call me crazy, but to me, it seems like selfishness when you vote for a candidate because you want him to take other people’s money and give it to you. Am I missing something?

I think every conservative should learn to give. There have been years when I’ve been a real miser, and I am ashamed of it. Federal Express’s Fred Smith used to say no company got a union unless it deserved it. Countries are probably the same way. If we don’t give on our own, maybe we’ll be punished with a government that does it for us.

Anyway, I am optimistic and relaxed.

Don’t forget to vote, and make your friends vote, too.

And Stay Off my Grass

Today is Halloween. Hooray, hooray. My plans? Business as usual.

I used to think that Christians who refused to participate in Halloween traditions were going way overboard. Now I’m not so sure.

Halloween got its start as a pagan holiday. A Catholic Pope moved a Catholic holy day, All Hallows’ Eve, to October 31, and that’s where we get the term “Halloween,” but October 31 was already sacred to people who worshipped vile spirits. And it still is. They claim it as their most “sacred sabbath.” And they are especially active on that day, even now.

On Halloween, we encourage our kids to commit vandalism. We don’t tell them to do it, but we laugh about our own stupid childhood acts, as if we approve, and kids hear, and they imitate us. A single egg can damage a car to the tune of a thousand dollars. It can take weeks to get toilet paper off of your trees or house and out of your yard. I am personally familiar with the nasty job of cleaning up splattered jack-o-lanterns. Yet the vandalism tradition continues. In some places, they even refer to the night before Halloween as “Mischief Night,” and young idiots are expected to go out and commit arson.

As for dressing up, we tend to dress as evil supernatural beings, which is surely not a good idea. A big percentage of girls and women dress as sluts, and they often live up to the appearance.

Here in Miami, there is a publicly owned mansion called Vizcaya. They have a Halloween party there every year. Most people who go are between 21 and 30. Everyone gets good and drunk, and you will see a lot of exposed female flesh if you go. I’ve seen women wearing nothing but body paint from the waist up. After the party, people drive home drunk. Liquor companies put up tables and serve their products.

In Key West, they’ll put on a festival they call Fantasy Fest tonight. If you want to see nude, painted gay men walking down a major thoroughfare, this is where you need to be.

Every year, I have to make sure my car isn’t outdoors, because of the vandalism. That ought to tell you all you need to know about the wholesomeness of Halloween.

This year I’m not getting involved. No pumpkin. No candy. Trick-or-treating is nearly dead in Miami anyway, because people think their neighbors will poison the candy. Maybe the best thing is to help the tradition die. If it were just costumes, I would be thrilled to join in. But the pagan connection and the crime and the sex and the drunkenness and drug abuse put it over the top. People point to pagan influences on Christmas and Easter, but no objective person would draw a serious comparison. Let me know when someone eggs your house on Christmas. Whatever it used to be, it is now a Christian holiday. As for Easter, it has never been much of an event for me, and given what I know now, I would rather celebrate it on Passover and call it by its right name.

Some churches sponsor Christian Halloween activities. To me, that’s sort of like Christian heavy metal. You imitate something negative, and by doing that, you maintain your connection to it and keep the door open for more of the associated negativity to enter your life. People eventually become what they imitate.

Anyway, no candy tonight. And hopefully, no vandalism. I have done a lot of hard work in the yard, and I don’t want punks ruining it.

It Will Pay

Man, do I have stuff to do today. I have to spray things with copper to kill fungus. I have to make some effort to get started on the soffit. And I have to kill an electric eye on a garage door.

I have had lots of problems with this electric eye. Its purpose is to detect objects in the path of the door and stop the door so it won’t close on them. That’s its ostensible purpose. Its actual purpose is to protect the garage-door-opener company from lawyers.

You would have to be brain-damaged to let yourself be injured by a garage door. And the door has a second sensor which stops it when it hits stuff, so the electric eye is superfluous even for the brain-damaged. Obviously, somebody has sued over this, because there is no other explanation for all this safety junk.

I am wondering if I can fool the electric eye by putting foil over it, so the foil reflects the light back into the sensor. If the door crushes me and I die, I will take full responsibility.

I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me to disable it sooner. Maybe I’m brain-damaged, and I need the sensor to save me.

I put arsenic on some of my St. Augustine grass yesterday. Still waiting to see if it dies. I sure hope it does. I love that fluffy, bug-free, weed-free Bermuda grass.

Over the last two days, I have gotten so much done, it’s hard to believe. Yesterday I filled the trash heap with an enormous pile of hibiscus and other limbs. I gave a new hedge its first trim. I’ve been moving my old tomato pots off the patio and dumping the dirt in areas that need it.

I feel full of hope these days. Am I the only Republican who can say that at this time? I’m sure I’m not, although I doubt there are many non-Christian Republicans who feel this way.

Amen, Bubba

I feel like God and gardening are all I write about these days. I guess it’s monotonous for a lot of people. Can’t seem to do anything about it, however.

I think the physical condition of a house reflects the spiritual condition of the people in it. If you have filth and crud around your doors and on your walls, for example, I think it means malevolent spiritual beings go in and out freely and hang out inside and on the grounds. Just as the blood on the doorway of a Hebrew home during the Passover was a sign that a hostile spirit was not to enter, mildew and rust and mold and bug cocoons are signs that say, “Everybody come in and party; you will be welcomed here.” I can’t say I know of a biblical justification for this idea, but it still makes sense to me. So I can’t help thinking that the compulsion I feel to correct the neglect and decay on this property comes from God and reflects the turnaround I have made.

My mother was a realtor. In addition to selling property, she found tenants for condominiums. I used to paint empty condos for her, and sometimes I helped clean them.

In Miami, the presence of drug dealers and the necessity of doing business with them are facts of life. And it was worse back when my mother was alive. It was not unusual for her to rent properties to people she felt sure sold or transported cocaine or other drugs. I was often disgusted by the things I saw when I entered the places they had vacated. Very often I could smell the roach feces as I opened the front door.

Many of these people were involved in Santeria and other occult practices. Sometimes they left big black candles behind, which had become fastened to counters by wax that had melted. They had revolting shrines. If I recall correctly, sometimes they had photos of their children around the areas where they kept their religious items. Innocent-looking school photos framed in construction-paper borders. Imagine involving your child in Santeria. Why not just inject him with AIDS while you’re at it? Looking at those photos was like looking at photos on milk cartons. No hope for those kids.

The tenants kept liquor around, ostensibly to be used in worship. And they had so many roaches, their cabinets were littered with tiny brown pellets of reeking manure. For some reason, they had German roaches, which are much filthier than the bigger and scarier American roaches. German roaches are unusual in a clean home in Miami; it has been years since I have seen one. Avoiding American roaches is impossible, because they live in the trees and don’t need filth to survive.

I remember sponging out those cabinets and throwing out that disgusting Santeria trash. I wondered how anyone could be foolish enough to worship demons in their own home. Of course, this stuff still goes on here, and it’s not just among drug dealers. But with drug dealers, you can pretty much count on it.

These people welcomed demons into their lives; they spent money and worked hard to attract them. And their homes were like neglected animal pens. They stank. If you were to buy one of these condos, the only way to make them right would be to install new cabinets and replace the carpeting and blinds. The filth works its way into the particle board and fibers.

Santeria, spiritism, and voodoo are among the reasons I want to get out of Miami. These evil religions are the reason life in countries to the south of us are so miserable. In a country where Santeria is popular, no one should be surprised when a communist revolution erupts. You should expect things like that to happen; it’s the logical result. When you worship demons, a punishment like the Castro regime should be considered mild. And Haiti, where voodoo is practiced, is worse than India.

And here we are in the US, flirting with socialism, at a time when sick religions are more popular than ever. Coincidence?

I keep thinking about getting a truck. At first, I wanted one because I realized it was impossible to pursue my interest in tools without a decent vehicle that would hold things like dirt, bricks, scrap metal, and sheets of plywood. But lately, I have begun to think that every responsible person should have a truck these days. At least those that don’t live in cities. Hard times may be on the way; when they arrive, practical things will be a blessing, and Bentleys and Porsches will lose a lot of their appeal. And a person who has a truck can do things for other people, which can’t be done with a roadster.

Today I have to put poison on my mamey tree, which has termites. I have to trim a hedge. I should trim a tree that is getting a little close to telephone and electrical wires. Sooner or later I have to get real and fix the soffit where the bees were removed. I also need to remove a dead strangler fig from a cabbage palm.

Before too long, things will look presentable. I may celebrate by barbecuing every day for a week.

It’s Freezing

Mish Weiss has an infection. According to her blog, this is normal, after a bone marrow transplant. It happens because marrow recipients endure a period during which they do not produce white blood cells. Still, it’s upsetting to read about. Her fever was over 103 today.

Keep praying.

Also, don’t forget to check out Agent Bedhead’s blog. As stated yesterday, John Malkovich mentioned her in Esquire magazine! Bloggers are the new media! Resistance is futile!

It’s a beautiful day, at least compared to the mess we’ve been having lately. It’s BELOW 70 DEGREES! That will probably change in the next half hour, but it’s still encouraging. I’m very tempted to get a second Key lime tree and plant it.

Key limes are essential, if you live in Florida. In fact, if you have room to grow them indoors, they are probably great to have, no matter where you live. They bear fruit practically all the time, and the fruit is very useful. And if you make pies, you can go through a whole lot of limes. I think Persian limes are better for many jobs, but store limes tend to be dry and unripe.

Persian limes are supposed to bear fruit about ten months out of the year, but that has not been my experience.

Blogger Pal Rivals Hedda Hopper

First off, Agent Bedhead is now famous. In a recent interview with Esquire magazine, John Malkovich mentioned her blog. I won’t spoil it by quoting him here; go read. And because this is a crummy Sunday link, I will mention it again tomorrow.

I’ll bet Orson Bean is jealous.

In other news, George Moneo of Babalublog had a car accident yesterday. You may want to do him a favor and pray that things will work out with minimal conflict, and that everyone involved will be physically healed. As of yesterday, George and a person from the other car were having neck pains.

Mish Weiss is still recovering from her bone marrow transplant, so don’t forget her, either. If you’re wondering how Leah Friedman is doing, she is apparently strong enough to deal with a home full of kids. That’s more than can be said of me at my best.

It’s funny; prayer is like tending a garden. Every day you get up and you tend to this person or that one, just as you would go from tree to tree in your yard.

I am making a determined effort to find a decent church. I’ve really enjoyed Perry Stone’s work, so I looked up his denomination. Turns out it’s the Church of God. Hard to argue with a name like that.

Made an interesting score at Costco yesterday. I bought a bag of pummelos. These are like grapefruit, except a small one weighs maybe four pounds. The big ones are like volleyballs. I can’t remember the last time I had one, but I believe they are dryer and less bitter than grapefruit. Guess I’ll find out this morning.

I remember these because when I was picking grapefruit on a kibbutz, there was talk of switching over to pummelos. Europeans were excited about having pummelos for breakfast, so Israelis were eager to grow them. Not sure how to pronounce it. On the kibbutz, they said “puh MELL oh.” But wouldn’t that imply “tan JELL oh,” which is wrong? Tangelo rhymes with Angelo.

I am thinking I need to keep putting in fruit trees. I like the idea of having them all around the place. Some people down here don’t like putting fruit trees in their front yards; that seems silly to me. They look just as good as ornamental trees, plus–hey–fruit! I’d love to have a pummelo tree, if I could find one.

The neighbors would steal all the fruit, I suppose. That’s Miami for you.

Time for a pummelo.

“Banana” has to be Code for SOMETHING

I hope everyone is having as good a day as I am. I’m a fat, healthy American with a roof over my head, good food, good clothing, tons of tools, and a blog. How can life get any better than that?

I am having a hard time concentrating, because a conversation is going on.

Marv: Can I rub your snout?

Me: No.

Marv: What do you think of that?

Me: I don’t know…I think it’s a travesty.

I am cheerful in spite of the hideous weather. Once again, the sky is the color of dirty gym socks. It was like this all day yesterday, but it refused to rain. Today the chance of precipitation is 90%, but I haven’t seen any action yet. Oh, wait. The forecast has changed. Now the figure is 80%. We’re saved.

I attribute my frame of mind to my spiritual improvements. One nice thing about Christianity is that it relieves a lot of your anxiety. For example, I am not eating my liver over the possibility that we may elect Barack Obama President. I trust God to protect me when the country falls apart and goes communist. Maybe there is a reason I’ve been buying guns and learning how to grow food!

It’s good that the election is not driving me crazy, because it will keep me out of trouble. As we all know, all criticism (and even some types of praise) directed at Obama is vile and racist. So the less the race (AHA! “RACE!”) disturbs me, the less likely I am to write about it and expose my horrific bigotry.

Last night I learned that “socialist” is a “code word” for “black.” I had no idea. I thought it was a code word for “Democrat.” And there’s more. It turns out “Ayers” means “watermelon,” and “McCain” is actually secret code for the mighty N-word itself. So now the networks will have to quit running McCain ads, especially if they refer to terrorist nutcase Bill Ayers.

I think the Democrats should have gone even further, in squashing debate. They should have told us “Obama” was a black word. You know. “That’s our word. You can’t say that word.” Then conservative and moderate commentators would have had to sit out the whole campaign. And we could call this the Blackness Doctrine. Or something.

When I think of socialists, I don’t think of black people. I think of spoiled white people who hate their parents and want other people’s money. I’m fairly sure the “code word” thing was invented this month. Correct me if I’m wrong.

I guess I can’t fix the soffit today. That is tragic.

I checked the yard this morning. I have this peculiar feeling that it’s a good thing to walk around your property early every day. It looks like my newest banana tree is doing great. I can’t figure that out. It was a pup at the base of one of my Orinocos. I hacked it off with a shovel, and when I was done, it had no roots. I jammed it in a place formerly occupied by a papaya tree, and I kept the ground wet, and that was days ago, and it looks great. One day my bananas and plantains will start coming in again, and I’ll have to harvest them with a bulldozer.

I think I may give up on my fatalii pepper plant. It looks awful, and the peppers aren’t worth the effort. They’re about like white habaneros, which means they are incredibly hot and have a flavor reminiscent of the smell of sulfuric acid.

Everything else either looks good or appears to be improving.

Maybe I’ll put in a couple more citrus trees. You can’t have too many eating oranges or Key limes.

Be Awake Before Your Enemies Get Set Up

Life continues to improve here.

As mentioned in an earlier post, my sister told me about an evangelist named Perry Stone, and she said one of his teachings was that Communion was something that could, and should, be celebrated privately as well as publicly. I read his book, The Meal That Heals, and I heard my sister’s testimony about the transforming effects, so I decided to give it a shot. I have kept it up ever since. I have also started getting up at 6:30 to spend the first hour or ninety minutes of the day with God. I’ve tried to do that in the past, but until now, I found it impossible.

For some reason, evil things are most active at night. So it’s probably smart to get to bed early and to get up and start preparing your defense (and offense) while it is still dark. To undo whatever traps have been set for you.

I have been using grape juice. The thought of drinking wine in the morning is just too much for me. And from what I’ve read, I’m satisfied that grape juice will get the job done. I started out with Streit’s lightly salted matzos, but I have since switched to Manischewitz whole wheat. It’s probably more like the stuff they used 2,000 years ago, and it’s not a big dose of refined carbs.

I don’t use a tiny amount of these things; I pour a 12-ounce glass of juice, and I use a whole matzo. I would feel funny playing around with tiny slivers of matzo and a glass the size of a thimble. The first Communion was part of a meal; I figure I might as well do what people do at meals and consume normal amounts. One problem: I really like grape juice. I have to be careful not to drink it during the day, because then I won’t have it when I need it.

When I take Communion, I make a serious effort to search my heart for things that will invalidate the effort. I try to remember whether I’ve wronged anyone and whether there is anyone I haven’t forgiven. And I pray about those things.

When it’s over, I have time for study and prayer, and after that, I fix up the birds and go outside and look over my trees and plants. That right there is a great reward. Although the climate here is not quite like the climate in Israel, the foliage is very similar. Walking around in the dew with the citrus around me, I feel as though I have been transported back to the Jezreel. I remember hopping off the wagon after my ride to the grapefruit fields and finding my ladder and the three wooden boxes that had been placed there by IDF General Eli, who managed the grove when he wasn’t commanding tanks. I remember climbing out of the Jeep and stepping onto the rich brown dirt of the almond fields and waiting for Zev and Avshi and Kalman to tell me what we would be doing.

Fortunately, the yard doesn’t remind me of the day I spent working in the chicken house. Don’t get me started.

Because of the way my schedule has changed, the day seem longer, and I get more done, and when bedtime comes, I am ready to sleep. It’s just a better way to live. If it happens after ten p.m., odds are, you are better off missing out on it. Seems like that principle applies to a lot of things. If it’s on a pay channel, you are better off not watching it. If it’s network-TV entertainment, you are better off not seeing it.

Here’s a funny example. Now that I carry a gun all the time, I can’t go into bars. It’s the law. Hmm…isn’t that a win-win situation? Seriously, is there anything that happens in a bar that makes the visit worth the down side?

Life is changing. I am discarding the objects and practices that invite attack and corruption. It’s like debriding a wound and removing the dead, infected crud the bacteria use as a base. I didn’t realize it until this morning, but Communion is part of that. You can’t just do it. You have to prepare yourself and clean up your soul. Holding hatred and vengeance and other bad things in your heart is about like keeping a Ouija board in your closet.

It’s all about t’shuvah; turning back to God. That’s where the power comes from. Think of God as the sun and yourself as a solar panel.

According to the Talmud (says Aaron), Jewish tradition teaches that today (beginning last night) is the Yom Kippur of the Gentiles. Fine with me. Two days of atonement have to be better than one. One day for the olive tree, and another day for the grafted branches. Can’t complain about that.

This morning, I will be driving my sister to Fort Lauderdale, to some sort of a garden center. How about that? I couldn’t have predicted that two months ago.

I have to thank everyone who offered guidance. Of course, I have to thank all the readers who quietly kept me in their prayers. And above all, God.

Time for breakfast.

Not all Junk Mail is Junk

Today I looked over an annual report from one of my favorite charities, World Relief. Ordinarily I am tempted to throw this stuff out because I can’t imagine how the contents could be information I don’t already have, and I can’t see how it would change my mind about anything. But I felt I should take a look.

It’s remarkable. Two things struck me. First, the abject misery of many of the people they help. Second, the amazing things very small amounts of money are doing for these people.

As an example, let me point to their loan program in Burundi. They call the program Turame. The average first loan is $47, and subsequent loans range from $80 to $160. The report says 1% of these loans are considered at risk of default. Maybe they should be running Fannie Mae.

Loan recipients sometimes use the money to bulk up their small businesses, such as shops. One lady mentioned in the report added flour and soft drinks to her inventory, so now her earnings are up. And she supports five kids. That’s a great return on such a small investment. And it’s not even a donation; the money is going to come back to World Relief.

They have another program in Rwanda, where many of the men have been killed by genocide. World Relief has rounded up 200 widows, and they’re growing flowers for the essential-oil market. Being a widow is tough anywhere. In Rwanda, it must be a hellish existence. But these ladies are getting help.

In Mozambique, World Relief is improving irrigation and teaching people to grow things like papayas and mangoes. And they’re learning how to manage the soil so they have a future.

The report says 89% of their assistance goes to women. They cite several reasons. Women are more likely to be exploited in prostitution or human trafficking. Women have less access to banks and so on. But there’s another reason at which the report only hints. Many African families are fatherless. Fathers die in war and from AIDS, and there is also a serious problem with African fathers abandoning their families. It’s not PC to say it, but it’s true; Africans themselves complain about it.

Fathers are important. To people who say you can raise fine children without a father present, let me respond: you can also lead a long, fulfilling life with no legs. That doesn’t mean it’s how people should live. Some people grow up and prosper in spite of absent or inadequate fathers. On the other hand, many do very poorly.

Reading the stories and looking at the photos, you can see how little hope these people have when left to their own devices, and how much it means to them when someone shows up and enables them to help themselves.

The world is a peculiar place. One of the worst kinds of evil is to do someone else great harm in order to reap a small benefit. To pull an example out of thin air, think of a wealthy man who drives a family off of a small property in order to take the land and add a tiny percentage to his own income. On the other hand, sometimes you can do someone else a great deal of good by doing something that has a trivial cost to you. Forty-eight bucks? That’s dinner for two at Outback.

The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews is also doing great work. They put $2 million into the restoration of 32 bomb shelters in rocket-plagued Sderot. They’re flying Jews to Israel from all sorts of miserable places. They send workers to help poor Jews in the former USSR, including elderly Jews who are alone and live in utter squalor. They’re helping West Bank settlers who apparently have more faith in God’s promises than in their government’s hopes of appeasing Israel’s hostile neighbors.

I had no idea how big their budget was. They took in around $78 million last year! And almost all of it came from American Christians who were thrilled to donate. It’s too bad the IFCJ can’t attract more money from Jews. Even the Israeli government acknowledges the IFCJ’s gigantic impact. They’ve made Rabbi Eckstein (the IFCJ’s leader) their goodwill ambassador to evangelicals in Latin America, which has traditionally been a hotbed of anti-Semitism. Now Christians down there can hear him on the radio, and they are sending support.

Here’s something weird: Rabbi Eckstein has a bona fide ministry…to Christians! He puts out DVDs explaining Christianity’s Jewish roots. They’re very good. What a strange time we live in.

Socialism, with its oppression, totalitarianism, and hatred of God, comes to those who deserve it. These days, when I criticize the government for taking our money and using it to addict the undeserving poor to vote-buying handouts, I am careful to remember that unless private charity steps up to the plate, Americans will look very bad, complaining about entitlements. In the past I haven’t done what I should. I’m glad there are so many opportunities to correct that.

What a Deal!

Isn’t there something fundamentally wrong with buying excrement?

Think about it. Money is a reward for time spent working. So whatever your money is worth is also what your time is worth. What does it mean if you take your money and buy excrement for it and consider it a good deal?

I just bought 150 pounds of excrement. My grandfather, who raised cattle, would be turning over in his grave.

The guy I bought my plantain and banana trees from said compost was important for plantains. He said horse manure was the way to go. Darn the luck. My horse is constipated. No, it’s even worse than that. I don’t even have a horse. Unless you count my motorcycle apparel, cordovan shoes, and A-2 jacket. I checked Marv’s and Maynard’s cages. They do what they can, but I just don’t have that kind of time.

The guy said cow manure was okay, too, so today I went and bought three bags, and I just distributed them under my trees. Not just the plantains. Bananas, too. They’re nearly the same thing, so I figured it could not hurt.

I wore my Israeli commando boots. I was looking sharp out there. I didn’t want to experience the all-too-familiar sensation of noxious gardening substances falling in the gaps between my socks and tennis shoes.

While I was at the store, I noticed they had MAGNESIUM SULFATE! It’s supposed to cure yellowing leaves, which can be a problem here. I thought I might try it. Only eight bucks for about a pint and a half! Wow!

Wait. Isn’t magnesium sulfate epsom salt?

I’m fairly sure you can get a half gallon of epsom salt for about a dollar. Good for your plants, and I guess it could also help with the situation I mentioned above. If you’re not shy. Maybe the drugstore is the better option.

I guess I could get tons of free manure for nothing, if I knew where to find it. We have race tracks, but they’re not close by.

I continue to be fiercely envious of the banana guy’s life. Not just the room and the greenery and the peace. I envy him, having a business which is so morally neutral. It’s tough to practice law without damaging society, and writing has its temptations. It would be fantastic to grow plants, put up a website, and sell them. You would never have to ask yourself, “Gee, was it right to sell that guy the musella lasiocarpa?” I suppose every person who works has moral issues to worry about, but some jobs are less troubling than others. I’d sleep better growing alfalfa or running a hardware store than doing plastic surgery or practicing tort law.

I hope this work pays off. My plants have many problems, and I am tired of watching them languish.

I still want to kill those squirrels.

Rough Night

Mish Weiss had her bone marrow “mini transplant” yesterday, and the radiation and chemo have made her very sick. Please keep her in your prayers. They specifically asked people to pray for strength.

As I understand it, a mini transplant is a limited transplant suitable for a person who is not well enough for the real deal. She explains it on her blog. The hope is that the new stuff will defeat the old stuff, more or less.

Not Sure I Care

I have been working on my new site. What a mess.

I had a huge number of posts before I moved. Not all have been republished. The last six months are up, and there is some 2003 stuff. That’s about it.

I don’t know when, if ever, I’ll get the other stuff working. It’s a tremendous amount of work, and to be honest, there are a lot of old posts I just don’t care enough about to republish. And there are old posts that seem inappropriate in view of the changes in my life and outlook.

Sorry the Haloscan comments are gone. I don’t think they’re necessary any more. I needed them because of spam problems on the old site, and I’m hoping the same issues won’t arise here.

Phin graciously volunteered to send me a new theme to make the site look better. It will have three columns, a lot like the old site. I don’t know when it will arrive. The nice thing about WordPress is that it will go up instantly, once I upload it.

Aaron says there are ways to make WP more secure, so I’ll be implementing those. When he tells me what they are.

I appreciate all the comments on Communion. Based on what I’ve read, I’m inclined to think there is no reason it can only be done in a church.

I saw something interesting in a video last night. One of the items my sister brought me was a Perry Stone DVD about cleansing your house. As you probably know, in Christianity, “house” can refer to your home, or to your body. Some Christians believe that the presence of certain objects in your home can prevent you from having peace and prosperity and safety. I agree with that. I suppose everyone is familiar with the story of Joshua’s army losing the battle because of stolen treasures.

Oddly, I had been thinking about this idea the day before I watched the video.

Stone mentioned an interesting story. I can’t recall whether it was in the DVD or not. I also watched a couple of his Youtubes. He said he toured Jericho. They’ve been doing a lot of excavating there. His guide showed him a part of the wall, and in the wall, there was an embedded clay jar that had been cut open. The guide told him a baby’s remains had been found in it. He said the early inhabitants of Jericho used to sacrifice their children, and–if I recall correctly–this one had been placed in the wall to make the pagan gods bless the wall and keep it strong. Something like that.

Preachers lie a lot, I am sorry to say. They make things up, to make their sermons and teachings more entertaining. I decided to check this story out, because it sounded a little too neat.

It turns out Stone was right. You can Google “jar-burial” and find out. The ancient Canaanites used to kill their children and put them in jars. I’m sure you can guess which children were most often victimized. The eldest sons. And one item I found suggested that at least one excavated victim died at about ten years of age. Most were newborns, but that was not a hard and fast rule.

Think of that.

These days, we sacrifice the unborn to the god of pleasure and irresponsibility. But we kill them while they’re out of the parents’ sight, and we kill them as young as possible. That makes it easier, not just medically, but psychologically. If women had to see their unborn babies killed in front of them, abortion would be much rarer (and less lucrative). At least I hope it would.

The Canaanites were apparently more “advanced” and “progressive.” They were so cold, they could raise their children and name them and get to know them. And THEN slaughter them and have their bodies sealed up in their homes or other structures.

I think Stone was claiming that the walls of Jericho were, themselves, cursed by the presence of accursed objects, and that that’s why they were destroyed.

We don’t build walls or houses on the corpses of babies any more. But we do build careers and marriages on them. Have an abortion so you can go to school and get a good job. Have an abortion so you’ll have a better chance of landing a husband. That’s the thinking. You have to wonder how safe a life is, when it’s built on a foundation of abortion.

It’s peculiar; the near-sacrifice of Isaac and the actual sacrifice it presaged seem to be righteous parodies of the actions of the ancient pagans. God wanted a servant as devoted to him as the pagans were to their idols, but he didn’t want to permit the sacrifice. Instead, he intended to sacrifice his own eldest son. This underscores the difference between false gods and the real thing. False gods take, but the real God gives. You can give to God, but you can’t outgive him.

A number of times in my life, I have gotten rid of things that I thought were obstacles. I threw out the book Naked Lunch because it was so vile and disgusting I didn’t want it near me. I bought a Koran and started reading it, but after I learned that the Muslims considered it a physical embodiment of God, it seemed like an idol to me, so I dumped that, too. Last night I tossed some DVDs that made me uncomfortable. And a big pile of drawings from art classes I had taken. Maybe forty pounds.

I had been wanting to get rid of the drawings for a long time. I created them back in the days when I hoped to get a comic strip published or to become an animator. I took classes to sharpen my skills. The vast majority were quick, vague sketches of nude models; you couldn’t make anything out, because they were just a few strokes of charcoal. A few were more detailed. I got rid of everything, except for some items that were clearly harmless. Copies of masterpieces and so on.

The art world is seriously screwed up. I took a class from a guy at Florida International University, and I remember two things about him. First, he often gushed about total crap, but he sometimes insulted people with real talent. Second, he seemed completely consumed with lust. You could feel it when he came in the room. I think some people become artists largely because it makes it easier to get other people’s clothes off. Maybe this is how this guy got started. I don’t know. Generally, he was a good instructor. But something there was not right.

I took some classes at Parsons, in New York, and I remember a creepy incident. A nude model failed to show up, so the instructor in charge of rounding up models took her place. He stripped from the waist down, and then the model showed up, and there was some kind of confusion, and he had to do some paperwork. He stood at the front of the room for maybe five minutes, working on his papers and talking to students, wearing only a golf shirt. It was obvious he was reluctant to pull his pants back on. So odd.

I’ll tell you something which ought to be obvious. You can learn to draw very well, without studying naked models. In fact, the way cloth stretches and folds and drapes over the human form teaches you a lot about how figures should be drawn. But I don’t run the schools.

I also tossed some Kevin Smith DVDs. He has gotten so gross, and he was so offensive in Dogma, I prefer not to have that material displayed in my living room. In what appears to be desperation, he just made a revolting, nudity-filled comedy about the filming of a low-budget porno. I don’t think that was a smart move. He says he’s a serious Christian, and I have no reason to doubt him, but I think he’s way off track with his strange conviction that filth and blasphemy mesh smoothly into a valid Christian lifestyle.

When I was getting my last book ready for publication, I worked to remove things that I considered problematic, but I didn’t do a great job. I hope I’ll get a chance to revise it.

It occurred to me today that losing so many old blog entries might be a therapeutic purge. I try not to worry about losing old material; holding onto the old is crippling for a creative person. More often than not, the best way to improve an essay is to delete it and start over. Maybe a life is the same way. Strip down and rebuild.

One more interesting thing before I go.

I’m not big on eschatology, because it’s a mistake to try to predict the end of time. It’s better to try to live right and not worry about the tribulation and the rapture and so on. I remember 1984, when a whole bunch of people were convinced the world was about to end. Didn’t happen. Still, I can’t help getting drawn into the subject, and last night, I succumbed.

Perry Stone was talking about signs and wonders. He thinks we have been living in an age ruled by Gentiles, and that it’s the last age before the end of the world. He’s convinced that living believers will be raptured, and that there will then be a seven-year tribulation here on earth. And he says we are seeing signs. For example, he talked about roaring waves and so on. And here we are, in the post-tsunami, post-Katrina era. Post-Nargis.

Do you know what “Katrina” means? He said it meant “cleansing,” but that’s a little misleading. It’s a form of “Catherine,” which comes from the same Greek word that gives us “catharsis.” It means “pure.” Spooky.

He also referred to the passage that says that at the end of time, it will be as it was at the time of Noah. Well, Noah lived before the extermination of a human race absorbed by evil. Aaron says the Jews believe that one of the last straws, before the flood, was the creation of marriage contracts between humans and animals. I had never really thought about the passage relating Noah to the end of the world, but it has to be a reference to evil, because that is what distinguished Noah’s era.

Stone also mentioned Comet Hale-Bopp, which appeared recently, and which last appeared at about the time Noah was commanded to build the ark. I looked it up, and it’s true. And he noted that Comet Shoemaker-Levy, which broke in pieces, began hitting the planet Jupiter on Tisha B’Av, 1994. The most ominous day in the Jewish calendar. The day both temples fell.

Jupiter is the same person as Zeus. People who worshipped Zeus use to sacrifice pigs. A couple of centuries before Christ, a Roman emperor put a statue of Zeus in the temple and used the altar to sacrifice pigs. This was part of the struggle between Jewish ways and Hellenism, which continues today. Only today, the world fights to absorb and defuse Christianity as well as Judaism.

Non sequitur, I guess. Also, Stone claims the reason a herd of pigs was present when Jesus expelled the demons from the Gadarene demoniac was that pigs were raised so Zeus-worshipers could sacrifice them. Zeus was worshiped in the Middle East as Ba’al-Shamayim, the Babylonian sun god.

Fascinating stuff. But like I said, I am not going to waste time trying to pinpoint the end of history, so I can have my credit cards maxed out on that day.

That’s it. I got things to do.

Book Says Yes

Hope everyone is having a fine Sabbath. If you’re Jewish, pardon me for being a day late. It’s a magnificent day here. Sunny and bright, even though we have a high chance of rain. The best sunlight comes from inside, but the regular kind isn’t bad, either, especially during an unusually rainy October. Usually, June and September are the rainiest months here, and we get some relief in the fall. You wouldn’t know it from the way it has been coming down all month.

As mentioned in an earlier post, my sister surprised me by giving me a book and some sort of home Communion kit. I know how weird this is, given the the bitter nature of our relationship over the last decade; I don’t want to go back over that. I’m just glad to see the burden of our estrangement lifting, and I hope things continue to improve.

Anyway, she also gave me a book by a minister named Perry Stone. The book is called The Meal that Heals. I haven’t finished it, but I know enough to tell you that the premise of the book is that communion is something Christians are supposed to experience privately as well as in church. I know many of my readers are Christians, and I thought I’d throw it out for discussion, to see if anyone knows anything about it.

Stone is a Charismatic. That can be good or bad, in my opinion. The Holy Spirit has been systematically excluded from Christians’ lives over the centuries, and I am fairly sure private prayer in tongues is legitimate, and that it builds a believer’s strength. I’m a hundred percent positive the fruit and gifts of the Spirit are real, regardless of whether I’m right about each one of them. On the other hand, Charismatics and other Protestants are subject to horrendous doctrinal deviations and excesses, and sometimes we swallow utter nonsense, to our great detriment. I have been there.

I am also confident that I am right when I say the traditional churches, for all their strengths, have done a wonderful job of putting God behind a wall of glass, as though lay people were not qualified to approach him. For example, they have provided scriptures and services in languages believers can’t understand. They have also put clergymen in charge of actions ordinary believers should be performing for themselves. We should all pray every day. We should all share our knowledge with other believers. We should read the Bible for ourselves. And so on. You can’t expect to know God when you rely on middlemen to perform your religious obligations. That should be obvious. The ancient Jews relied on priests to do a lot of the work for them, but the Temple no longer exists, and Christianity is not ancient Judaism, as the events in the Upper Room demonstrate. The New Testament is full of believers who approached and worked with God one-on-one, in addition to the activities they performed at gatherings.

I think what I said in the last paragraph is true, but that doesn’t mean we should be taking Communion on our own. But I can’t dismiss the possibility.

Look at the way churches have gotten away from the truth. Take baptism. It began as a Jewish purification ritual. Jews immersed themselves in ritual baths (“mikvahs”), or in running streams. Somehow, some churches ended up replacing immersion with a few drops of water on the forehead. Does that make sense? How is that equivalent to sitting in a mikvah or being dunked in a river? It’s not even remotely similar. Some churches did away with baptism altogether, which is even stranger. The importance of baptism is indisputable. If it’s meaningless, how can you explain the career of John the Baptist, or the continued emphasis of baptism after Christ’s assumption into heaven? Remember the eunuch who insisted on being baptized? That wasn’t in the Gospels. It came later. And the eunuch was traveling in a dry country; surely he had a container of water with him. Yet he did not ask to be baptized until he saw a substantial body of water in which he could be immersed. He didn’t try to get by with a sprinkle. And Peter pointed out that the Genesis flood was symbolic of baptism. The flood was more than a few drops.

If baptism is messed up, and it definitely is, maybe Communion is messed up, too.

Stone believes private Communion somehow increases the power of God in your life, and that it may bring benefits such as healing.

We get the Communion concept from the Gospels. I just looked it over. The descriptions are not identical, but it’s clear that the Last Supper was a Passover seder, and that what we now call Communion occurred during the course of the meal. And the 11th chapter of 1 Corinthians tells more, suggesting that early Christians celebrated Communion as a meal, as well as a ritual. So the tiny crackers and the sip of wine we see today seem inadequate to me. It seems clear that it wasn’t a typical meal, because Paul cautioned people who were truly hungry to eat at home. But the sense I get is that these people “broke bread” together in the usual sense of the term, which means they sat down and shared some food and drink.

If that is true, is it something you would only do at church? That would be a little odd. I wouldn’t want people eating and drinking while a pastor tried to teach. It would be chaos. Is it possible that Jesus was just telling the disciples, who were Jews and therefore obligated to observe Passover, to think of him during future seders and understand the significance of the wine and matzah?

I don’t know what the answer is, but it seems that we are now in the process of re-learning things about our Jewish past, and it only makes sense that some of our traditions are going to be shattered and corrected.

I Googled Stone to see what kind of person he is. I can’t find any scandal or any meaningful criticism. I see no record of private jets or mistresses or fur-lined Bentleys. Maybe he’s okay. There are some sites that criticize him, but they are…odd…to put it kindly.

Let me know what you think. It’s an interesting issue.

Make a Splash With the Rest of the Trash

I just realized Columbus Day is almost here. What an unfortunate coincidence. Right now, the financial markets are dissolving, it’s Yom Kippur, we have a pivotal election coming up, and–call me a religious nut–I think we ought to be on our best behavior. Instead, boatloads of Miamians are going to go out on the water this weekend, strip naked in open view, and have sex in front of crowds of gaping strangers. It’s part of our annual Columbus Day Regatta celebration. People go out in the bay, raft up their boats, and do whatever their animal instincts tell them to do. And most of them could never be made to understand that what they do is wrong and harmful. It would be like trying to explain calculus to a cockroach.

I’ve written about it before. Can you imagine a bigger disgrace? It makes Mardi Gras seem refined.

Yom Kippur is Upon Us

Today is Yom Kippur. The Jewish day of atonement. It is the last in a contiguous series of holidays, beginning with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. During these days, Jews are supposed to reflect and repent. They are to acknowledge their sins and resolve to do better. I wonder if this is where we get the New Year’s resolution concept.

I got up this morning, fully aware that it was Yom Kippur, and I looked at the TV (I use the Weather Channel as an alarm), and what did I see? A flood warning. For real. Don’t tell me God doesn’t have a sense of humor. For the atheists and the forgetful, let me point out that the Biblical flood was a punishment for an unrepentant world.

The sky isn’t the only place where clouds gather and storms threaten. Look at Wall Street. Look at Iran, North Korea, Russia, Cuba, and Venezuela. We are perched on the edge of a cliff.

The truth is, we’re always perched on the edge of a cliff. It’s just not obvious. We look at our possessions and our armies and our abilities, and we think our lives are completely secure. Of course, they’re not. You can be rich and powerful and die from a fall in your bathtub. The things you cling to for security can be taken away in an instant. You can be taken down overnight. Look at Kim Jong Il. Earlier this year, he was one of the most powerful and dangerous men alive. He’s probably wearing a diaper right now.

The Bible is full of examples of people who partied their way into the abyss. People who became powerful, misattributed their success to themselves or to pagan gods, and then suffered catastrophes.

I believe that if you want God to look out for you, you always have to be careful about giving Him credit for your success, and you have to be careful about how you get what you have. Americans are falling short. Pride is now considered a virtue. And we have become drunk on a steady flow of quick money. My sense of the moment is not that God is judging us. It seems to me that He’s just slapping us awake. This is not a Depression, and we have not been conquered, and there is no famine, and there is no plague. But we’re being reminded that we can lose what we have. To some, that is incentive to continue living it up, while the good times last. To the wise, it is incentive to shape up.

I’m reading up on Yom Kippur. Here’s something interesting. Jewish holidays are connected to Christian holidays. For example, Jesus was sacrificed during the week of Passover, and the disciples received the baptism of the Holy Spirit on Shavuot. Some Christians believe Yom Kippur foreshadows the final day of judgment. That sounds reasonable to me. It has to have some meaning to us; it would be unlike God to create a holiday as important as this, without giving it some significance to Christians.

Here is something else: Jews are expected to confess their sins, apologize for wrongs, and forgive others on this day. That makes sense. God generally expects us to treat others the way we hope He will treat us.

I don’t know how much hope there is for the US, but there is always hope for the individual. I am thinking about the significance of Yom Kippur today, and I am trying to take advantage. I hope you’ll consider doing the same. We may be about to endorse socialism (a substitute for God and righteousness) and humanism by putting a far-left liberal in the White House. Our country may be headed for a decline, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be dragged along in the current.

Yom Kippur is winding down in Jerusalem. Mish Weiss says she has forgiven everyone who did her wrong during the last year. I wonder if that means she forgave me for yammering at her to consume animal products! You might drop by her blog and say a prayer for her, and for Leah Friedman, who is still recovering from surgery.