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.

I am easily the coolest person in the universe. Cooler than even Zaphod Beeblebrox. I sort of finished my wiring project.

I put a new cover on an outdoor socket. I rewired a floodlight and sensor. I moved the circuit they were on, off of a 60-amp fuse for a 220 circuit. I ran the circuit into the garage, where I created an outlet. I ran it on into the air handler closet, where I created a 4-plug outlet. I ran conduit to a hardwired wall fixture, and now I have lights in the garage. I converted a dangerous 220 circuit which was just hanging in the closet (bare-ended) to a 110 circuit, and I used it to power the whole mess, and I put a new breaker in at the panel.

I probably should have turned the juice off at the panel before changing the breaker, but I was drunk with power. The kind in your head, not the kind that comes from the power company.

Here’s my impressive Christian story for the day. I had to screw a couple of wires into the back of a pair of receptacles today, and the receptacles were already cluttered. A reader got me all excited by pointing out that there are “stab through” connections in the backs of these things; you just strip a wire, shove it in there, and tighten the screw. Come to find out, these receptacles didn’t have the…blasted…things. And I was counting on them.

I had to put eyes on the wires and stack them on screws that already had eye connectors on them. If you’ve ever done this, you know how hard it is to get the…darn…screws to catch. It’s nearly impossible. And I had to do this with both hands over my head, in a dim closet. I have been trying to remember to pray before doing ANYTHING, especially challenging things, and for some reason, I remembered this time. And all three of the screws I had to deal with went right in! I could not believe it. Be an atheist and attribute it to chance if you want. I was extremely happy, and I say my prayers were answered. I suffered like you wouldn’t believe, trying to do the same thing yesterday. On the same receptacles.

Maybe this will impress you more. When I got home from my daily trip to Home Depot, I found my sister here with an orchid, a pot full of small dragonfruit plants, a Perry Stone book, and some sort of home communion kit. I am completely serious. I don’t know what to think. The Bible says God will give you the desires of your heart, and that is apparently true. Of course, you have to get your desires right. That’s the catch. But it’s a catch I don’t mind.

I think I’ll go stare at the closet some more. I still can’t get over it.

I Know How You Enjoy It

It has been hours since last I blogged about how great I am, so I feel I am way overdue.

Today I have been distracted by web issues, but I am about to get back to work on my electrical project. At last mention, I had fixed the outdoor portion of the job and installed one square box (with outlets) in the garage. Last night I made myself go in and install the other box. Now the job gets easier. Instead of working in a tiny steaming space with poor visibility, I get to work in a tiny cool space with poor visibility. I have to yank the wires from the second box into the garage, attach the second box, install two banks of lights, run stuff to the lights, and attach the whole mess to the outlet box I put in the closet a few days back.

The closet will still be an eyesore. Years of rot from a leaky bath area on the other side of the closet wall have taken their toll. But at least I’ll be able to see when I’m in there.

I have a truly nutty idea. there is a water pipe in there. I plumbed the condensate line on the AC air handler so I could hook it up to a hose and flush the crud out with water. What if I cut into the water pipe and installed a faucet to which a hose could be attached? Man, I’d have the air handler closet from hell. When the crud backs up, you turn two valves, wait thirty seconds, and turn them the other way. No more snaking a hose through the house to a utility sink.

I realize you are all in awe of me. That’s perfectly understandable.

I Can Only Guess at Your Joy

Welcome to the new Hog on Ice. I know it’s pretty spare, but I like it. It’s a new start. MT is great if you’re a code genius with no life, and it handles photos much better than WordPress, but other than that, WordPress is king, in my questionable opinion.

I hate to toss all the great free work Phin and Sadie did for me, but there was no way to move it to WP. Phin says he may have a nice three-column theme lying around, so I can make my site look a little better. As you can tell, I created this site using the same theme I used for my other WP blogs. I made a new theme, but the php was straight from Mars, and I couldn’t figure out how to insert images in it.

I imported six months of old entries. It’s incredibly hard to import big blogs to WP, and Hog on Ice is extremely big, because I cannot shut up. I don’t know if I’ll import the old stuff wholesale or not. I’m thinking I should go through it item by item and only republish stuff people are likely to care to see again. I’ll bet my traffic plummets now; the links to the old crap won’t work any more.

I managed to save my blogroll, so at least I don’t have to sweat about that.

Haloscan comments are history, for the time being. I’ll see how well WP and Akismet work. If I have no problems, I’ll continue using WP’s commenting system.

To get back to the kind of BS I usually write about, let me inform you that I tried a McGriddle today. I had no idea what to expect. I can’t be bothered to read the little descriptions on the drive-thru thing.

It turns out a McGriddle is an Egg McMuffin with Sausage, made with small thick pancakes instead of muffins. And they have somehow injected maple syrup flavor in there.

I don’t think they’re for me. It’s just a little too weird. And the syrup conflicts with ketchup. Still, it beats the daylights out of the scary breakfast deals they serve at Wendy’s.

Usual Suspects

I think this blog will be here until Monday, so: say a prayer for Mish Weiss, who is supposed to have a bone marrow transplant on Sunday. She is really grateful for your prayers.

And don’t forget Leah Friedman, who is recovering from some sort of horrendous chest surgery.

I’m Still Here

My website changes are not taking effect yet, so I’m still here. May as well blog.

Here is interesting news. My sister called, and she was asking my advice on religious charities that benefit Jews. In fact, she was all excited about helping Jews get out of Sudan. I told her what I knew about the IFCJ, and I told her my readers had mentioned some other group that flies Jews to Israel, without the ban on proselytizing.

How did this happen? This is not the person I used to know. Do I see a complete change? No, but I see what appears to be a valid beginning, which is more than I hoped for. Even though I prayed for it every day.

She seems more willing to trust televangelists than I am. She recommends a guy named Perry Stone. I watched one of his shows on Youtube tonight. Not bad. He acknowledges our debt to Judaism. Doesn’t seem obsessed with collecting money.

A while back, I said I was going to start memorizing the psalms. I thought I should follow up. It’s working very well. I’m up to 6. I’ve memorized 1, 2, 4, 23, 63, and 101. The power of the psalms is impressive. I have to repeat them to memorize them, and as I do, the hidden meanings of the words become clear, and I realize how much I have in common with the psalmists. Their experiences and concerns are so much like mine.

Here’s something wild. I often wake up in the night, because I have rude neighbors. I hate to waste time. Ordinarily I use times like this for prayer. Recently I started using them to work on memorization, repeating the psalms to myself over and over. And the results are nothing short of amazing. I fall asleep every time, within a couple of minutes. Without fail. And it’s not because I’m bored. There is nothing boring about it.

Some Christians claim praying in tongues will cure insomnia. That has not been my experience. But the psalms work consistently and quickly. Which, to me, indicates that the real source of my sleep problems is supernatural. Regardless of how my neighbors behave.

It’s funny, the psalms seem cryptic and even meaningless, if you don’t have God to illuminate them for you. So much of Christianity is like that. It’s no wonder people who know nothing about the Holy Spirit think we’re idiots.

One Shot

Here’s a little tool-time tip. Never install two new square boxes, a run of conduit, and a new socket in a corner of your garage in which you have already parked a giant compressor.

And if you do, never squeeze in behind the compressor before you have made a complete list of the items you’ll need and put them within reach.

Man, what a time I’ve had, standing in a tiny, bent space in which I couldn’t stand up, sit down, or straighten my knees. I think this is how the Vietnamese used to break people.

I managed to get one box and the socket installed, but I still have to do the other one. When I came in here to have a drink and take a break, I threw my shirt on the floor, and it made that familiar “WHOP” sound. It’s amazing how much you can sweat while standing still.

Thank God I bought a tubing bender. That will save me twenty minutes of grief, trying to cut tubes to fit and slop it all together and screw it to the wall. Instead, I’ll bend one tube, make two quick cuts, pop it into place, and screw in the support things.

I can’t wait to get the garage part of this done. It’s about 84 degrees in there, with 70% humidity. As soon as I’m done, I’ll be able to work in the air handler closet. Which is small and uncomfortable, but cool.

When this is all over with, I plan to stand in the closet and flip the lights on over and over, for about an hour. Just so I can say I won.

Prepare for Separation Anxiety

I’m making some changes to the site. For one thing, I’m moving to WordPress. I know it’s easier to hack, but no one cares enough about me to hack my site any more, and WordPress is very easy to work with.

The site may vanish for a day. Friday is the perfect time to do it. Don’t be upset. Your old buddy Steve has not quit blogging; life will go on. My older posts may go all funny. It will probably take a long time to fix that.

Not sure how long my email will be down.

I’ll continue to update the <a href=’http://walkenlog.com’target=’_blank’>Walken blog,</a> and none of my other sites will be affected.

Tree Rats are on my Turf

Tonight I called the cops and asked their permission to kill every squirrel I see. I got some PR guy who didn’t really know the law, but he asked everyone in the office, and they were pretty sure it was illegal. So I found the municipal code online, and I noticed two things.

1. There was no reference to squirrels.

2. It turns out it’s legal to shoot an air rifle in Coral Gables, if you have the property owner’s permission. I think that can be arranged.

I have had it with squirrels eating my mangoes. And considering all the fruit they eat, they should fry up nice.

More great news: Christopher Walken and I have come to an understanding, regarding Hershey’s syrup.

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.

Click This Link

As you may be aware, Sondra K. is now a kickboxer. For that reason, I am posting the following link:

LINK. When you get to that link, you are to vote for Soldier’s Angels, a fine charity which Sondra likes. Apparently, the charity with the most votes gets a big wad of cash.

She asked me to post that a few days ago, and I completely forgot. Hopefully I have spared myself a kickboxing lesson.

Oops

Looks like they called this thing off early! No point in voting now.

I have to go hide from Sondra.

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.

We are All Racists Now

Has everyone noticed how the Obama campaign and its surrogates are openly accusing their opponents of racism? Any criticism of Obama or his cronies, no matter how legitimate, can now be characterized as racist. It’s disgusting and shameful, but that’s how leftists play. Here’s a wake-up call to the swing voters: if Obama and his pals are crying “victim” now, what do you think they’re going to do after he’s elected? For four solid years, anyone who disagrees with the President will risk public accusations of racism. And because that threat will be hanging over the head of every pundit in the world, they will hesitate to warn us when Obama screws up, just as they chickened out when Frank Raines (black) looted Fannie Mae and caused the economic crisis.

You think you’ve seen Teflon? You’re fooling yourself. Reagan was called the Teflon President because liberal smears didn’t stick. Obama goes one step further. He aborts criticism in the womb. Prior restraint, without the Constitutional issues. It’s a thing of beauty.

And after he’s gone, historians will face the same fear. No matter what this man does to us, he’ll be remembered by historians as a messiah.

Does that mean we should never elect black politicians to high office? Of course not. The Bush administration gave us Condi Rice and Colin Powell, and pundits have been very willing to criticize them, because Rice and Powell don’t whimper about racism. They would fail if they tried. The Republican deck doesn’t come with a race card. The press removes it as soon as a black conservative takes office.

The lesson here is this: never elect a minority politician who makes bogus racism allegations during his campaign. Not unless you want to cope with the same tactics for the remainder of his public existence.

Here’s an unintentionally funny quote from a New York Observer piece:

And Kevin Parker, a New York state senator from Brooklyn, said, “If you have to remind people that Barack Obama is African-American, you have reached the bottom.”

Looks like Obama and his surrogates reached the bottom quite some time ago.

Approaching Perfection

Mike and I collaborated on a pizza the other day. I was anxious to watch his tossing technique, because he is completely fearless with the dough, whereas I feel like I’m juggling a greased baby over a terrazzo floor.

We used 2 cups of flour to make a 14″ pie. I made the dough, and he plopped it on the glass stove surface (my tossing area) with no worries at all. It stuck, but he was still able to get it loose and work it. Weird.

He stretched it on the stove, pressing his hands down into it and out. It somehow worked, even though the dough should have welded itself to the surface. He tore it once, but when he does that, he just pinches the edges together and pulls them up into a flap, which he folds over onto the pie.

It’s always scary, moving the crust onto the screen. I wanted to see how he handled it. It turns out he usually tosses dough that has been in the fridge, so it’s not as fragile. He was worried about handling the warm dough I made. And he said the warmth made it more likely to get stuck in the screen. That has been a concern of mine; I didn’t know he was using cool dough. My solution has been to spread the sauce with my fingers, which lets me use very little pressure. The more pressure you use, the more likely the dough is to bond with the screen.

I’ve been making insanely thin crusts lately. Usually, there are areas you can see through. So you can imagine how easy it would be to make them stick to the screen. But it works. I used this technique on the pie I made.

The pizza was amazing.

It seems like the pies are better if you let them rise really high, mash them down, and let them rise again. Also, I’m considering putting a tiny amount of olive oil in the dough. I like a tough crust with a little fight in it, so I usually use oil only on the outside.

It’s remarkable how cheap pizza is. Between the Costco cheese and the virtually free sauce, it’s ridiculous. You could make big cheese pizzas every day for a week for something like twenty bucks.

I believe I’ll have one now.

More Power!

I’m a pretty awesome guy. I realize that, and I admit it, because it saves time.

Today I managed to install a 4-plug 20-amp socket inside my air handler closet. I also yanked an ancient light socket that went nowhere, capped the wires, shoved them back in the wall, and filled the void with Great Stuff so I’ll have a base on which to pile the patching stuff later.

I only worked about two hours, but I am wiped out. The air handler takes up almost the entire closet, and I was working in spaces about 15″ wide. Sometimes I had to back out and go back in to change tools. Exasperating.

At the outset, all I had was about eight feet of Romex going into the closet and attached to a 220-volt, 40-amp breaker at the panel. I had to remove the breaker, put in a 20-amp 120-volt breaker, cap the excess wires, rearrange everything so the colors were appropriate, attach hangy things to the wall in the closet to make the Romex to a square box, attach the square box to the wall, wire up two receptacles, attach the house wiring to the receptacles, and put the box together.

Because I plan to continue the circuit past the box (for some lights and the outdoor stuff), I decided to make the receptacle wiring super anal retentive. I used crimp-on eye connectors and extra wire to connect the receptacles to each other. Then I put eyes on the house wiring. I attached the receptacles to the face plate (which required me to come up with my own bolts), and then I put the whole mess together. If you know anything about the way electricians usually crap this stuff up, you will understand how weird my method was. But it’s incredibly clean, neat, and organized, and it will be much easier to run the additional stuff because I was so meticulous.

I removed a considerable amount of garbage the electricians and AC guys had left. By that, I don’t mean trash. I mean stupid things that needed to be corrected. The AC guy needed power to run a doodad connected to the handler. Did he put in a circuit? No, he drilled a hole into the garage wall, took an extension cord, and ran it out to one of my precious garage sockets. I kid you not. I got rid of that Sanford & Son monstrosity today. I had to sever the cord to pull it out of the wall. While I was at Home Depot, I looked for a plug I could splice onto it, but they cost nearly as much as new cords, so I’m tossing it.

Here’s a plug for Klein tools. I was tired, and I somehow got confused, and I cut the extension cord while there was still juice running through it. I popped the breaker when I shorted the wires. Those insulated handles work.

Tonight or tomorrow I’ll run conduit and connect this circuit to the outdoor stuff, and I’ll see if anything explodes.

I can’t say this emphatically enough: you need to overdo things when you work on your house. Example: never settle for a two-plug receptacle when you can have four. Never settle for a 15-amp circuit when you can have 20. Never get the crazy idea that you have enough power outlets. Sometimes you can add five dollars to the cost of a job and save yourself a lifetime of frustration and misery. Electrical stuff is very cheap, and if you spend a little extra, you can improve the livability of your house a great deal.

And always try to make things easier on yourself in the future. When you install something, imagine yourself trying to work on it a year later, and try to take the landmines and booby-traps out of it. I have no idea what I’m doing, but I am smart enough to realize that doing things right makes a big difference.

When this is over, I’ll have four sockets in the closet, two banks of lights in the closet, two more garage sockets, and a well-grounded 20-amp circuit that ISN’T connected to a 60-amp fuse.

Someday, I want an all-concrete house with concrete floors and double-pane windows. I want drains in the floors. I want to be able to clean the place with a hose and a leaf blower. I am fed up with frustrating BS that wastes my time.

More

I just have to offer myself this little salute.