who doesn’t love a good mystery, but does it really matter….

“History is much more the product of chaos than of conspiracy”
―Zbigniew Brzeziński

Whenever you’re faced with an explanation of what’s going on in Washington,
the choice between incompetence and conspiracy,
always choose incompetence.
Charles Krauthammer

(vintage wartime child’s lead figure of General Montgomery with a leash around the
Führer’s neck/Julie Cook 2017)

Ever so many years, those various agencies and governmental offices in charge of all
things covert and of all things hidden begin to release aged documents…
declassifying that which was once considered “top secret.”
As somehow time works her magic and renders that which was held sacred
as to now being considered ‘non est dignum’, or no longer of worth.

The most recent and tantalizing declassification has been the Kennedy files.

Ever since that fateful November Dallas day when a young president was gunned down,
mystery and intrigue swirled in the wake of a Nation’s grief.

Did Oswald or didn’t Oswald act alone?
Was it the Soviets?
Khrushchev?
The KGB?
Cheka?
Cuba?
Castro?
The Mob?
Hoover?
The CIA?
Jimmy Hoffa?
The Republicans
The Protestants….

On and on goes the swirling madness of whodunit, what ifs and conspiracy…
all of which plays out in the vivid human imagination.

And just this very day, I caught an interesting little questionable news worthy
tidbit…of another story of declassification and some old CIA dossiers…

It seems that as late as 1955, ten years following the fall of the German Reich,
the CIA was chasing credible leads that Hitler was actually alive and maybe
not so well, living first in Colombia, then moving on the Argentina.

Our history tells us that as the Russians stormed into Berlin, Hitler,
along with his long time companion and most recent bride of one day Eva Braun,
hunkered down in an underground Berlin bunker digesting cyanid capsules with Hitler
then making certain things would end by shooting himself in the head.

According to Wikipedia…
In accordance with Hitler’s prior instructions, that afternoon their remains were carried up the stairs through the bunker’s emergency exit, doused in petrol, and set alight in the Reich Chancellery garden outside the bunker. Records in the Soviet archives show that their burnt remains were recovered and interred in successive locations until 1970, when they were again exhumed, cremated, and the ashes scattered.

Accounts differ as to the cause of death; one version stated that he died by poison only and another view claimed he died by a self-inflicted gunshot while biting down on a cyanide capsule. Contemporary historians have rejected these accounts as being either Soviet propaganda or an attempted compromise in order to reconcile the different conclusions.
One eyewitness stated that Hitler’s corpse showed signs of having been shot through the mouth, but this has been proven unlikely. There is also controversy regarding the authenticity of skull and jaw fragments that were recovered.
In 2009, American researchers performed DNA tests on a skull that Soviet officials had long believed to be that of Hitler. The tests and examination revealed that the skull was actually that of a woman less than 40 years old. The recovered jaw fragments were not tested

When the Soviet soldiers advanced on Berlin, they were like a pack of wild
hungry and exhausted dogs—their enthusiasm for having crushed their mortal enemy would border on delirium.

Sections of their soot scrawled graffiti, along with holes made by grenades,
still remain on display in the rebuilt German Reichstag.

I find it hard to imagine that as triumphant as those Soviet soldiers were feeling
as they marched upon that city and finding the remains of Hitler, they would
somehow temper their enthusiasm for a hasty and impromptu burial as if some sort
of common sense suddenly prevailed and they found it important to hide the remains of madness lest any sort of shrine would eventually emerge.

I would think rather that there would be pictures taken, as soldiers would in macabre fashion, parade the now deceased and desecrated remains as some sort of trophy
and confirmation of victory….rather than the tale that the Soviets ferried off the remains, sealing them away.
This as we recall how the Italians who, finally rid of Mussolini, strung his body up
in the Piazzale Loreto for public display and desecration…
why would we expect the Soviet soldiers to show any more restraint?

So without a body, our imaginations have been left to wander and wonder all
these many years…

But what of it?

What does it matter all these many years later knowing that Hitler, who would now
be long dead, had run away?
Should we be surprised that a maniacal lunatic who was already cowering in a fortified bunker, wouldn’t consider escape? Would he be so daring enough of a coward to
have actually committed suicide or would he have run and hid if given the opportunity?

What of a president who was shot to death as our democracy played on…

Does some sort of new hidden truth change our lives or change our fate or the fate
of those gone before us?

The German Reich was over, the war soon ending with two bombs being dropped on Japan…
A president was dead as a vice president was sworn in as an assassin was soon
gunned down himself.

Our lives went forward as history turned another page.

And so man, with his most vivid imagination, races forward….
or races backward depending on who you ask.

Was the landing on the moon real?
What happens when you play a Beatles album in reverse?
Did the Holocaust really happen?
Was Jack the Ripper the Queen’s own physician?
Was it a Hillary body double?

On and on goes the often ludicrous speculations of what was, what could be
and what might have been…

But one thing remains certain…
That there is only one Truth that matters.
One Truth that stands the test of time.
One Truth that speaks to each of us consistently.

As C.S. Lewis again reminds us about the greatest
‘what if’ posed by man when he ponders the actuality that Jesus was who He claimed
to be…that of the Son of God as well as our risen Savior…..

“…He would either be a lunatic —
on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg —
or else he would be the Devil of Hell.

You must make your choice.
Either this man was, and is, the Son of God,
or else a madman or something worse.
You can shut him up for a fool,
you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or
you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God…”

I myself choose to fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God…
as His word is truly the only Word I believe as fact…
man may speculate on everything else in his world, but the one Truth remains…
Jesus Christ is both Lord and Savior….

“You are from below; I am from above.
You are of this world; I am not of this world.
I told you that you would die in your sins;
if you do not believe that I am he, you will indeed die in your sins.”
John 8:23-24

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2017/11/02/hitler-wwii-escape-investigated-by-cia-bombshell-document-reveals.html

we the people

“where there is a crime, there is an investigation…
where then is there an investigation hoping for a crime?”
Charles Krauthammer

I have been arguing for years that our society is becoming more intolerant,
not less and that in rejecting our Christian roots we will end up
rejecting our Christian fruits (including tolerance).
David Robertson

“Their common enemy is now an illiberal and feral anti-religious movement
which wants to criminalise faith.”
Kevin McKenna

(a tiny plucked fig rests on a bed of freshly picked herbs / Julie Cook / 2017)

Since today is Sunday, the Christian sabbath, I thought it timely, and perhaps
rather important, that I use today’s post to remind us, the Faithful,
that as we now rest and enjoy this holy day, that we should remember that there
are those who are waiting in the wings for our undoing….
and lest any of you think me daft or suffering from
the heat, all you need to do is look around your world….

The following excerpts are from an article written by journalist Kevin McKenna
which appeared in a recent column in The Guardian.
The Guardian being an odd place to find an article written by a journalist
who is alarmed by the brewing trouble he sees on the horizon for both
Christianity and our Western Civilization…
for The Guardian is known for its more left and liberal offerings.

The article is based on the current situation in Scotland but I believe we could
pull out the word Scotland inserting rather say Boston or Atlanta
or London…maybe New York, Berlin, San Francisco,Paris…or…well,
you get the idea….as it the sentiment is one of a global scale and not
merely localized to Scotland.

So maybe, just maybe, we see a bit of common sense actually filtering out of the
proverbial turnip….

Thus, if you sincerely believe that a human life in the womb is
deserving of as much protection as any other human life you are considered
an extremist and obviously (if you are male) a sexist who is guilty of
crimes against feminism. If you sincerely believe that the sacrament of
marriage is “a covenant by which a man and a woman establish between
themselves a partnership of the whole of life and which is ordered by
its nature to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education
of offspring” then there are people in Scotland who would wish to have you
jailed for homophobic hate crime.
And if you support the concept of faith schools then you are fuelling
sectarianism, despite there never having been a scintilla of evidence
to support such a specious claim.

It’s this insidious campaign of intolerance against Christians in Scotland
that Archbishop of Glasgow Philip Tartaglia sought to address in a recent essay
for the US online publication Crux which is influential in Vatican circles.
The archbishop claimed too many Catholics had become “wishy-washy”
about their faith.
They were being challenged by robust secularism,
according to the archbishop,
which was hostile to believing “in anything supernatural;
in anything they can’t see or touch or experience;
or in anything beyond modelling and encouraging decent behaviour”.

The Reverend David Robertson,
former moderator of the Free Church of Scotland and perhaps the most influential
Christian thinker in Scotland today,
knows what the archbishop is talking about.
The Rev Robertson has been the victim of a sustained campaign of abuse for many
years now simply for re-emphasising Christian teaching on the
sanctity of life and the meaning of marriage.
One of the big lies that have been allowed to take shape in modern,
diverse Scotland where all are apparently welcome is that failure to sign up to
the mainstream view of society and what it means to be human is evidence of hate.

If you are anti-abortion you must hate women;
if you are against same-sex marriage then you must be homophobic.
It’s a falsehood and a pernicious one at that.
Hatred of gay, lesbian and trans-gender people and hate crimes against women
are serious and ugly issues.
But knowingly to manipulate ignorance around these issues to make false
accusations against people whose religion you resent is an equally serious and ugly matter.
Kevin McKenna

Please find the full article posted here on the link to The Wee Flea—
whose author just so happens to be one of the victims of today’s
ugly and hate filled anti-Chrisitan rhetoric….

Kevin McKenna – It is time to stand up to those who wish to criminalise faith – article in The Herald

“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.
If you were of the world, the world would love its own;
but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world,
therefore the world hates you.
John 15:18-19

conspiracies

Whenever you’re faced with an explanation of what’s going on in Washington,
the choice between incompetence and conspiracy,
always choose incompetence.
Charles Krauthammer

(the severed peach leaves / Julie Cook / 2017)

(a once spritely spry apple tree / Julie Cook / 2017)

Well there has certainly been a bunch of mumbo jumbo out there lately over conspiracy theories
and those responsible instigators…those troublesome clandestine conspiracy theorists.
Because isn’t it is because of “them”, whoever the thems are,
that all of this shadowy pandemonium get’s its base to begin with??

But I’m digressing here as I need to address my own conspiracy theory…

You may remember a couple of weeks back when I posted a picture of a ripening apple we
had growing on one of the four apple trees?
For whatever reason….I’ve never had much luck growing apples nor
my peaches for that matter.
But this year I was really hopeful.

We had two apples on one of the four apple trees and one of the four peach trees was
loaded with about 11 little growing golf ball size peaches.
Maybe this was going to be my year…

So the other evening after my gentleman farmer of a husband had conducted his evening overseeing
of the 50 green Q-tips, aka, pecan trees,
he naturally rounded out the inspection with the fruit trees.

Once inside he summoned me to come see the trees.

“Why?” I hesitantly asked.
“Something has happened” he replied a bit alarmed.
“What do you mean something happened?” I countered.
“Because something happened, OK! Something has shredded the trees!”
“Huh?”
“SOMETHING has practically destroyed the trees!!!

and so naturally I dutifully follow my alarmed husband out the door…
now equally as alarmed.

“See this” he most defiantly lifts one of many sheared off tiny limbs
to one of the apple trees.
“And look at your peach trees….!!”

Sure enough….devastation.
But not devastation as in the deer ate off the leaves again.
This looked like someone had more or less taken a weed whacker to the poor trees.

Now we have had problems in the past with male deer who, when coming out of the velvet,
meaning when it’s the season that they start rubbing on anything and everything just
to get the fuzzy summer growth or “velvet” off of their forming antlers…..
but this isn’t the time yet for such as the horns are just now starting to grow.

(detail of a deer’s antler shedding the velvet, courtesy Dannerholz Whitetails)

So something else is to blame for this devastation….but what??

Now we have been told by reliable sources from those deer hunters who have been deep in the woods
behind our property that they have actually seen two black bears.

And it certainly is not uncommon for the Atlanta news to report on bears in suburban Atlanta
neighborhoods having migrated down from their normal habitat in the north Georgia mountains.
Plus it is not uncommon for the bears of middle and south Georgia to migrate northward—
all due in part to the bears natural habitats shrinking coupled by last year’s drought
which has sent hungry bears in search of food.

(youtube image of a mom black bear and her cubs wandering an Atlanta neighborhood)

Ok so I could see a bear deciding to decimate my fruit trees but there is another more
bizarre theory being tossed around out there that’s been floating around
ever since we bought the property and built our house.

Something strange and a little frightening.
Something of legend and lore….

Shortly after we were settled into our house, almost 20 years ago now,
I held a yard sale as we needed to lighten the load of having moved a lifetime
from one house to another.
And by the way, that was our first and last yard sale because my husband was none to keen having
folks park all over his new grass…but I digress….

So as the day was waning and the influx of shoppers was also waning,
a rather odd older woman wandered into our midsts.
I didn’t see her pull up in a car, so I wasn’t real certain where she’d come from.

She walked up to me and asked if I was the one who lived in the house as I politely
replied that yes I did.
She informed me that she lived down the road a ways, down near the creek.
The road past our house turns from neighborhoods and houses to pastures, woods,
cows, chickens, creeks, deers and more desolate than habitable.

This odd little visitor proceeded to tell me a rather interesting tale.

She told me not to be surprised if I should hear, see or even smell something strange
near our house…do not be surprised should I see something large wandering through the
fields or skirting near the edge of the woods.

Well I don’t know if you’ve ever had a yard sale, but you can certainly see, hear and even
smell that which is strange in the way of “shoppers”….just saying.

She told me that on several occasions her dogs would be barking wildly at night-
howling while desperately wanting in the house.
She’d go out to inspect the commotion only to be hit by an overwhelming, powerful
and horrendous odor.
And no, we’re not talking skunk or a dead possum or armadillo—
just an overwhelming stench.

Then one night, once again alerted by the dogs, she raced out of the house…
and this time she actually saw it….or actually a glimpse of it…
Just running back into the woods…a dark giant and very smelly ape like thing…

She then added that her dogs have remained scared to death ever since never wanting
to be out in the yard alone….

hummmmmmm……
Sasquatch…
Bigfoot….is that one word or two?

(youtube clip of a sighting in Georgia…..)

And so now on any late evening, or in the light of day for that matter,
when I’m out in the yard doing those things that I do in the yard…
and I catch a whiff of something odd…or hear something rustling in the overgrown field,
or catch an odd shadow along the edge of the woods,
I wonder…..

So there you have it—
something destroyed my fruit trees….while the question remains..
what….

But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth.
He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears,
and he will tell you what is yet to come.
1 John 16:13