why do important people scare me…

“What comes into our minds when we think about God
is the most important thing about us.”
A.W. Tozer

No one should really scare me, right?
If I am God’s and He is mine, then no one should scare me, right?

Well, I will confess that maybe psychopaths scare me.
They scare me because they don’t care what type of evil acts they unleash…
Think chainsaw killers…killing, torturing, maiming all for fun.

Yeah, scary.

But like I say…if I am God’s and He is mine, think
“do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul” sort of thinking…

But what about important people?
What about the people out there who wield power because of their money,
their positions, their roles within society…?

And so I have now decided that important people, or people who think they are important,
kind of scare me…as well as the nuts with chainsaws.

They scare me because they believe they have the world’s best interest at heart
and in turn, they like playing puppeteer.

They think they know what is best for both you and me and will flex their mindset
regardless of us little people.

I’ve always heard tell of that little conspiracy that there are just a handful of powerful folks
in the world who actually control pretty much all of the world–
the rest of us are just the victims of their whims, thoughts, and often selfish intentions.

I think of those secretive, elitist and highly protected meetings—
Think Davos in Switzerland.
The World Economic Forum

This year’s meeting was held in early February prior to the world pandemic outbreak.

The focus was to be “The World Economic Forum’s 50th Annual Meeting in Davos will focus on
how stakeholder capitalism can solve the world’s urgent challenges.”

It is a yearly meeting of the world’s rich and powerful…the leaders, movers, and shakers.

Invited attendees range from presidents, EU leaders to the likes of rich folks
like Oprah and Bill Gates—folks who like to use their wealth and positions to “influence”
the masses.
Even the more controversial figures such as George Soros and
the teen environmentalist activist Greta Thunberg are those invited to Davos.

We average folks usually don’t care much about such meetings.
We don’t much care because that’s just what world leaders and rich folks do…
they go to meetings and talk about the state of the world…
or more like the economic health of the world–
while we, the small folks of the world, do the true work of the world…
the making, buying, selling, and trading for the world.

So yesterday I caught another interesting post over on
Smoke of Satan and the Open Windows of Vatican II.

Well, it wasn’t so much a post as it was an offering of two links.

The second of the two links was to an article found on the blog ‘Barnhardt’,
regarding a member of the Italian parliament addressing her fellow MPs regarding Bill Gates.

Yep, Bill Gates.
The brain behind of all things PC and Microsoft now turned global activist, Bill Gates.
Gates’ ears should have been burning this past week thanks to the Italian Parliament.

May 16,2020
Bomb dropped in Italian Parliament: Gates should be arrested for crimes against humanity

A speech offered in the Italian Parliament by Italian MP Sara Cunial:

We all know it, now.
Bill Gates, already in 2018, predicted a pandemic, simulated in October 2019 at the “Event 201”,
together with Davos (Switzerland).
For decades, Gates has been working on Depopulation policy and dictatorial control plans
on global politics,
aiming to obtain the primacy on agriculture, technology and energy.

Gates said, I quote exactly from his speech:

“If we do a good job on vaccines, health and reproduction,
we can reduce the world population by 10-15%.
Only a genocide can save the world”.

With his vaccines, Gates managed to sterilize millions of women in Africa.
Gates caused a polio epidemic that paralyzed 500,000 children in India and still today with DTP,
Gates causes more deaths than the disease itself.
And he does the same with GMOs designed by Monsanto and “generously donated” to needy populations.
All this while he is already thinking about distributing the quantum tattoo for vaccination recognition
and mRNA vaccines as tools for reprogramming our immune system.
In addition, Gates also does business with several multinationals that own 5G facilities in the USA.

see the full article on the following link

Interesting Links: 1) 1968-69 Hong Kong Flu 2) speech from Italian MP that impugns Bill Gates

Bomb dropped in Italian Parliament: Gates should be arrested for crimes against humanity

So yes, the rich and powerful scare me especially when they have ideas of controlling
world populations by global sterilizations.

I will admit that I have not followed up on the speech by Gates.
But I have heard him in various interviews address third-world concerns…
perhaps that concern is depopulation.

The second link is to an article by the NYP of all things newsy.

It is an article about another pandemic during a different time.
A pandemic that, as far as the US was concerned, was trumped by the ‘summer of love’—
all despite the fact that the Hong Kong flu was raging worldwide.

Funny how three days of communal music, love and living surpass a global pandemic.

Maybe we need another Woodstock, a part deux…or on second thought, maybe not…

Here’s that link:

Why American life went on as normal during the killer pandemic of 1969
https://nypost.com/2020/05/16/why-life-went-on-as-normal-during-the-killer-pandemic-of-1969/

https://smokeofsatan.wordpress.com/2020/05/17/interesting-links-1-1968-69-hong-kong-flu-2-speech-from-italian-mp-that-impugns-bill-gates/

A double take on New Years…

Happy New Year!!!
We enjoy.
We rejoice.
Some of us recover.
Some of us ready for some football…

But as we do so…perhaps we must do so with one eye glancing sideways…
or perhaps, is that backward?

Let me explain.

Yesterday morning I had an appointment at the urologists
for a CT scan.
On New Year’s Eve of all day’s…

Long story.

I had gotten up early, already putting a nicely seasoned Boston Butt on the grill for
an all-day smoking. Bowl games were to begin at noon and the Mayor and the Sheriff
were scheduled to come.

I then readied and headed over to the doctor’s office to be there by 9.

I was surprised at how crowded the waiting room was so early.
Looked like I’d be there a while…sigh.

Backing up our story, before even having gotten up that morning…
sleep had been elusive during the night.
Tossing and turning, unable to stay asleep, at 4:30 in the morning I heard a breaking news alert.
Then an hour later, another alert.
Gees, I knew something bad was taking place someplace in the world…

At 6, hoping not to wake my husband, I finally reached for my glasses to see
what in the heck was exactly going on.

It was the US Embassy in Baghdad…and oddly enough it seems it was the Iranians who
were to blame…UGH!

It was when I was in college that I seem to recall trouble with Iran–going back
to the Carter Administration.

A sense of Deja vu crept over me as I read the story and then of the President offering
a strong and swift response.
What would that look I wondered?

Back then in 1979 ‘college’ students had stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and had taken
52 Americans hostage.

I remember one of my roommates vowing not to shave her legs until
the US Embassy hostages were released
Her personal showing of solidarity…
Her wait would be well over a year.

Those were very tense times in our Country…
We all had quick lesson regarding ayatollahs and what religious regimes looked like.

Before the hostages were released, Reagan would be elected as Carter was
to be a one-term president.

Being from Georgia, I was never a Carter fan…from the time he was Governor to the
time he was elected president.

It would be Reagan who would become the president.

Flash ahead to the waiting room where I sat, oddly enough, waiting on New Year’s eve.
I decided to check the news to see if there was any more regarding the US Embassy…
I spied the following headline, thinking it was a story from a time that once was…
but then I caught the word “tweet” and I knew this seemingly half-century-old story
was actually a current story…as in are you kidding me?!

Russia-Poland row over start of WW2 escalates

And so I read the story…

And then I knew— some things will obviously sadly, and even frighteningly, never change…

Add the fact that Putin, whose father served under Stalin,
is working to resurrect the ghost of Stalin past, is well…certainly disturbing
yet oddly not surprising…

Then throw in the fact that Poland and the ‘Allies’ (aka EU) are now near 80 years
later fussing over who started WWII is only more fodder for my day’s Deja vu…

So happy New Year…but just know that some things will never change…
as history continues repeating itself…

(from the BBC)

A row between Russia and EU countries over the causes of World War Two has escalated,
with a top Russian official condemning the US ambassador to Poland.

Parliament Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said a tweet by Ambassador Georgette Mosbacher was
“insulting” to Russians and Americans.

On Monday she tweeted:
“Dear President Putin, Hitler and Stalin colluded to start WWII.”

President Vladimir Putin says Poland and its allies are distorting history.

During a marathon news conference on 19 December,
the Russian president said it was “totally unacceptable and inaccurate”
to cast equal blame on Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin
for the war’s outbreak.
Mr Putin said he had requested Soviet archive documents in order
to write an article on the subject – Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 –
and, in his view, to set the record straight.
He argued that the Western powers and Poland had appeased Hitler’s aggression by letting
him grab Czechoslovakia in 1938.

The Nazi invasion of Poland came just a week after Hitler’s
Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov
had signed a non-aggression pact on 23 August 1939, which stunned the world.
A secret clause in the pact carved up Eastern Europe into Nazi and Soviet spheres of influence,
allowing the two dictators – one fascist, the other communist – to occupy and dismantle Poland.

Ms Mosbacher’s tweet recalled that Poland was a victim of the two dictators.
But Mr Volodin, who is close to Mr Putin, said the US state department ought
to make sure that an ambassador such as Ms Mosbacher had sufficient knowledge
of a country’s history before sending her to work there.

Mr Putin has revived wartime Soviet symbols, and portraits of Stalin are commonly
displayed in Russia now.
In 2020, the 75th anniversary of the Allies’ victory over Nazi Germany
will be marked.

More than 20 million Soviet citizens died in what Russians call the “Great Patriotic War”
after the Nazis invaded the USSR in 1941.
Mr. Putin’s father served in Stalin’s NKVD secret police and was severely wounded in the war in 1942.

President Putin argued that Stalin had tried to forge an anti-Hitler alliance with Britain,
France and Poland, but that the Munich Agreement in 1938 –
dooming Czechoslovakia – had scuppered that plan.
Stalin then had to reach a deal with Hitler, feeling betrayed by the West, he argued.

However, Western historians point out that the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact
meant Hitler did not have to fear a clash with the USSR if he invaded Poland,
so giving him the assurance he needed.
Moreover, Stalin then supplied the Nazi war machine with raw materials,
which helped fuel – literally – Hitler’s aggression against Western Europe.
How has this row escalated?

Monday, 30 December:
Besides the tweet by the US ambassador, Germany’s ambassador to Poland – Rolf Nikel –
also wades into the row, tweeting:
“The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact served to prepare the criminal invasion of Nazi Germany
against Poland. The USSR together with Germany participated in this brutal division of Poland.”

29 December:
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki issues a statement accusing
Mr. Putin of using the World War Two issue as a means to cover up recent international
setbacks for Russia, such as the sports sanctions imposed over Russian doping.
Mr. Morawiecki says “President Putin has lied about Poland on numerous occasions”.

27 December:
Poland’s foreign ministry summons the Russian ambassador to protest,
recalling that the war began with the Nazi-Soviet pact,
and that Poland lost about six million citizens in the war.
Earlier, Mr. Putin had scorned Poland and Western powers for appeasing Hitler
and had labelled Poland’s ambassador to Berlin in the 1930s an “anti-Semitic swine”.

19 September:
A European Parliament resolution – politically significant, but not a law –
urges EU states to “make a clear and principled assessment of the crimes and acts
of aggression perpetrated by the totalitarian communist regimes and the Nazi regime”.
It describes the war as “an immediate result” of the infamous Nazi-Soviet deal in 1939.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50955273

mirror mirror, review part II

“One day millions of men will leave the southern hemisphere on this planet
to burst into the northern one.
But not as friends.
Because they will burst into conquer,
and they will conquer by populating it with their children.
Victory will come to us from the wombs of our women.”
Algerian President Houari Boumedienne in 1974 speaking to the Gen assembly
of the United Nations
Excerpt from David Murray’s book
The Strange Death of Europe
(Page 310).

(Longshanks, King Edward I, the Hammer of the Scots played by Patrick McGhooan)

If you saw the 1995 movie Braveheart you may remember the early startling
scene where King Edward “Longshanks,” also known as the hammer of the Scots,
proclaims his right and the right of his noble knights of jus primae noctis.
It is a a Latin phrase translating to “right of the first night.”
It was a custom where a nobleman or king had the right to have sex with any
lesser woman or peasant on her wedding day…
beating the groom to the punch as it were.

It was often done with intent of being the first to take the girl’s virginity,
but more importantly it was a custom for impregnating the girl with a higher breed
of gene and a way of lessing the undesirable population.

Longshanks stated that if “they could not bend the will of the Scots,
then they would simply breed it out of them.”

It was a scene that left me sickened as I had never imagined such a thought.
Perhaps back then at 34 I was simply naive to the wicked ways of mankind…
at 57 I now fear I’ve seen a bit too much.

Now whether or not there is any historical accuracy or truth behind Edward’s
proclamation, that will be left to the historians to decide,
but the actual practice does indeed date back thousands of years and has been
documented as used in various cultures.

A sort of population control as it were, ensuring the propagation of a particular
lineage at all costs.
And it harkens back to Hitler’s same desire to breed pure Germans.

There is debate as to wherever he actually put this notion into practice
with the youthful female members of the Hitler Youth.
Sending the young girls to “camp” where they were mentally indoctrinated
as well as physically…as the Nazis hoped to breed a new race of
“perfect” Germans.

It is a rather sick and twisted way to do battle against an opponent…
simply breed them out of existence.

And even here in today’s quote we have a rather alarming modern nod to the
same thought when in 1974 the Algerian President,
Houari Boumedienne, told the United Nation’s General assembly very much
the same thing.

I read that quote on the good Scottish Pastor David Robertson’s latest posting on
his second installment of his review of
Douglas Murray’s book The Strange Death of Europe

The Strange Death of Europe – Part 2 – Immigration

It was actually the quote David Robertson closed his post with and the one I’ve
opted to open with as it showcases a mindset that is not so far removed from our
view as we of the oh so post modern era might imagine.

Below are the running thoughts and quotes pulled from this most recent post
with excerpts from the book along with David Robertson’s piggyback candid
observations.

I just can’t help but feel this is not merely an EU or UK problem.

We sit here in America rather smugly watching the tit for tat taking place
across the pond… what with Brexit and the EU’s response coupled by the on going
terror attacks in France, the UK, Belgium, Germany, Norway, Sweden…
as well as the massive influx of migrants…
predominantly a Muslim migrant population flooding into a non majority Muslim
land….

Thinking that the proverbial pond exempts those of us here from the
troubles over there.
But what we fail to realize is that their problems are indeed our problems…
as we are also wrestling with an extreme identity crisis…

In August 2015 Angela Merkel announced that Europe was open to refugees and she declared, “We can do this”.
Much of the media, like the Economist,
backed her and said that her move was brave, decisive and right.
And yet in 2010 in Potsdam she had made a speech in which she admitted
that “the approach to build a multicultural society and to live
side-by-side and to enjoy each other has failed, utterly failed”.
(Page 96)

“In 2015 after Merkel’s announcement, 400,000 migrants moved through Hungary.
They didn’t stay—or at least only 20 of them did.
They don’t want to go to the poorer EU countries–
they want to come to Germany and the UK especially.”
(David Robertson)

“The six Gulf cooperation countries comprising Kuwait, Iran, Qatar,
United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Oman had granted asylum to a grand
total of zero Syrian refugees by 2016.”
(Robertson and Murray)

“Not only has Saudi Arabia not made one Syrian into a Saudi citizen,
it has also refused to allow the use of 100,000 air-conditioned tents
there which are erected for only five days a year by pilgrims and the Hajj.
At the height of the 2015 crisis the single offer the Saudis did make
as to build 200 new mosques in Germany for the benefit of the country’s
new arrivals”
(page 316)

“When the 2015 crisis was at its height many individuals in Britain
from the leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party to the Labour Party
Shadow Home Secretary, with numerous actors and rock stars in between,
had said they would take in a refugee family.
More than a year later not one of these people had actually done so.
As with the generosity and benevolence throughout the crisis,
it was easy to expect others to be benevolent on your own behalf once you
had signaled that you are on the side of the Earth’s poor and oppressed.
The consequences of your benevolence could be left to others.”
(Page 285)

“The big problem that Murray identifies is that the assumption that millions
of people would just assimilate and accept ‘European’ values is proving
to be demonstrably false.
We are ending up with a clash of cultures and our liberal elites just haven’t
a clue what to do with that.
As a result they are creating a vacuum which is most likely to be filled by
populists of right and left.
It is astonishing that in Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany and France,
the far right are making great progress.
In Austria an extreme right-winger was almost elected President.
And yet lemming like the liberal elites still think that they are so
right that ‘everything will just be ok’.
After all they have the media, Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger, Richard Branson,
George Soros and Lady GaGa to reassure them that of course they are right!”
David Robertson

“What is the effect of people coming into Europe in very large numbers
who have not inherited the doubts and intuitions of Europeans?
Nobody knows now, and nobody ever did.
All we can be certain of is that it will have an effect.
Putting tens of millions of people with their own sets of ideas and
contradictions into a continent with its own set of ideas and contradictions
is bound to have consequences.
The presumption of those who believed in integration is that in time
everybody who arrives will become like Europeans,
a presumption made less likely by the fact that so many Europeans are unsure
whether they want to be Europeans.
A culture of self-doubt and self-distrust is uniquely unlikely to persuade
others to adopt its stance.”
(page 225)

“Whilst our political leaders talk of European or British or indeed
Scottish values–they don’t seem to be able to identify what those are.”
(David Robertson)

Meanwhile there is a crisis of confidence in much of Europe about what it
actually means to be European–
is it more than Ode to Joy, Italian lattes and Belgian beer?
The EU leadership has already decided that it has nothing to do with
Christianity (refusing to recognize Europe’s Christian roots),
but still can’t tell us what it does have to do with.
The one thing they do seem to have accepted as facts are the doctrines of
cultural Marxism – aka Gramsci.
This involves deconstructing the previous values on which European culture
was built and indeed trashing that culture.
(David Robertson)

Long before the politicians notice,
the public already knew that a continent which imports the world’s people
also import the world’s problems
(page 302)

To pile on the agony Murray then indicates how he considers Europe is
committing suicide –
(David Robertson)

“Moreover, Europe remains the world leader in not only allowing people to stay
but in assisting them to fight the state even when they are there illegally.
(page 204)

I don’t want to leave it there.
I think Murray’s analysis is correct–
but as we will see in a future part of this series–
he does not really grasp what Christianity is.
So just before I finish let me offer an alternative vision.
I think the EU is fundamentally corrupt and undemocratic and that,
because it is geared for the corporate elites and posited entirely on the
gods of free market capitalism and the ideology of cultural Marxism,
it cannot and will not deal with the coming crisis.
Indeed it is far more likely that an economic collapse will further fuel the disillusionment with mainstream parties and drive many people to the
political extremes.
A Weimar style collapse may well lead to a Nazi type solution.
(David Robertson)

Perhaps also we should recognize our debt to the Christians of the Middle East–
we bombed their countries and as a result they have been increasingly persecuted…)
(David Robertson)

We must remember that Mr. Murray is an avowed atheist yet seems to wrestle with ‘the notion of Europe glibly tossing away her very Christian foundation…
I look forward to the good pastor’s next review installment as I also await the
arrival of Mr. Murray’s book…

until tomorrow….

And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads,
with ten diadems on its horns and blasphemous names on its heads.
And the beast that I saw was like a leopard; its feet were like a bear’s,
and its mouth was like a lion’s mouth. And to it the dragon gave his
power and his throne and great authority.
One of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound,
but its mortal wound was healed, and the whole earth marveled as they
followed the beast.
And they worshiped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast,
and they worshiped the beast, saying,
“Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?”
And the beast was given a mouth uttering haughty and blasphemous words,
and it was allowed to exercise authority for forty-two months. …
Revelation 13:1-18

to be heartbreakingly humble

Humility is not thinking less of yourself,
but thinking of yourself less.
C.S. Lewis

(the dried faded viburnum blooms / Julie Cook / 2016)

“Amid the sparkle and the color and music of the day’s celebration
we do well to remember that God’s insertion of himself into human history
was achieved with an almost frightening quietness and humility.
There was no advertisement,
no publicity,
no special privilege;
in fact the entry of God into his own world was almost
heartbreakingly humble”
J. B. Phillips

Recently reading a blog post by a Scottish minister regarding the ever growing saga
in the UK over Brexit…the UK’s vote for departure from the EU and the UK’s
courts latest counter order to halt all proceedings…
as it is a continuing sickening rollercoaster ride of will it or won’t it stay….
I was struck by the deep similarities of all things political and Governmental in the UK
compared with our own fracas over this Election…
The haves and the have nots of power elites who toil to establish their will,
the movers and shakers who forget who they are actually shaking,
the liberal biased media outlets determined to bend the will of the people,
the votes that don’t seem to count unless they favor the favored one, so revote until it’s right…

More often than not, the average citizen,
make that the average Christian citizen,
who is currently feeling lost in this political melee and
who is actually fearful of what the future might hold in either country,
now needs to hold fast to the one true Sovereign who is indeed sovereign over all…
despite what others would wish for us all to believe….

“We don’t trust in politicians or in judges who think they are sovereign.
The real sovereignty is with the only real Sovereign.
When the result of this court case came out I felt a wee bit depressed –
not so much because of it, but rather because I thought – oh no, here we go again.
But I was speaking at Abertay University that night on Daniel 5
The Writing on the Wall and was greatly struck by the phrase
“he acknowledged that the Most High God is sovereign over all
kingdoms on earth and sets over them anyone he wishes” (v.21).
This trust in the sovereignty of God does not mean that we are political pietists
who don’t care about what happens.
It just means that we have such trust in the Sovereign Lord that we
recognize that we don’t rule and neither
does Trump/Clinton/Blair/Farage/Corbyn/May/Sturgeon or any of the elites.
And so we can respect those in authority and those not in authority.
We can have peace, even when we see things that disturb, anger and perplex us.

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:4-7 NIV)
David Robertson
Pastor of St Peters Free Church
Dundee, Scotland

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit,
but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.
Philippians 2:3

Unraveling? Hold on!

Courage is fear holding on a minute longer.
George S. Patton

Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home.
Our God, Our Help In Ages Past
Isaac Watts

(spicetail swallowtail butterfly hanging on in a rain shower / Julie Cook / 2016)

We’re all just holding on aren’t we…
seemingly by that proverbial thread.

We look all around us at the escalating global madness…
and we are mystified, even stupefied…
and growing more and more terrified by the day.

We find ourselves hunkering down, covering our heads, expecting the worst…
Or maybe we simply jam our fingers in our ears, dashing about chattering so loudly hoping
to drown out this frightening reality.

“We are living in a stressful age that New York Times columnist
Roger Cohen calls a “time of unraveling…Cohen imagines a future conversation
about the grim situations of the present and writes…
“It was a time of unraveling…a time of beheadings…a time of aggression…a time of breakup…
a time of weakness…a time of hatred…a time of fever…a time of disorientation” in which the “fabric of society frayed.”
(God and Churchill / Jonathan Sandys & Wallace Henley)

Our political conventions are bordering on the edge of the surreal..
mirroring that of a traveling side show or a two bit circus.

The candidates vie for our votes…
Yet they prefer busing themselves by trading the ugly tit for tat verbiage of hate,
lies and insults.
As the average citizen is left wondering…where have real leaders gone….

Our world is ailing with unrest….and withers under evil’s oppression.

Today, in a quiet suburb of the French city of Rouen, an 85 year old priest, Father Jaques Hamel, was viciously and savagely murdered during the midst of morning Mass.
He was attacked by two young masked men.

The young assailants took four nuns and parishioners hostage using them as human shields.
These attackers forced Fr Hamel to kneel before the altar as they shouted a tirade in Arabic followed with Allahu Akbar, all before slitting Fr Hamel’s throat in front of terrified parishioners…
all the while filming the entire apalling spectacle.

They were later killed by police.

ISIS has claimed responsibility.

Germans continues reeling while trying to make sense out of the latest terror attacks that have rocked their nation. The stories continue making back to back to back headlines.

First an ax wielding young man attacks passengers on a train in Wuerzburg, Germany…

Next a gunman kills 9 at a shopping mall in Munich.

Thirdly, another young man, yesterday, injures 15 outside of a bar, as he proceeds to blow himself up…

The leading newspaper in Turkey ran a front page story yesterday claiming that President Erdogan is now blaming the United States for last week’s failed coup as word circulates that he was actually to blame for orchestrating the whole debacle…which has now given way for his sweeping crackdowns within a country balancing between a tenuous democracy and a Muslim dictatorship.

All of this world drama, as the UK continues to figure out what their voting to leave the EU will actually mean…

Our world has been turned upside down…with Truth, Morality, and The Sacred each becoming a resulting victim.

Indeed the world is unraveling at an alarming rate…
So many of these headlines are simply overwhelming, leaving us all with a sense of loss,
worry and dread…

Fear gleefully now marches far and wide around our globe…as we look to placate our troubles…

However…

We mustn’t lose our hope…
No matter how daunting such the task.

For we may just actually find our comfort and our peace
hidden in the smallest of beings…

Imagine the humble butterfly…

A delicate creature if ever there was one.
Its wings thiner then tissue paper, covered in a dazzling array of fine and colorful powder.
No match for rain nor tempest storm….
And yet they somehow manage to survive.

At the first sign of a change in the weather…
As clouds thicken and skies darken as the winds begin to shift…
the butterfly knows to seek shelter…

For even a single raindrop can kill a butterfly.

Even the resulting dip in temperatures, following in the the storm’s aftermath,
is life threatening because butterflies need the heat of the sun in order to feed, mate and thrive.

Butterflies instinctively know the importance of seeking shelter and holding on during a storm.
It’s a matter of living and dying.

Perhaps…
just maybe…
Its time we each look to the One who offers us our shelter from the storm…
To the One who offers us life in the face of all that is dying….
For He is indeed our shelter from the storm….

God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging
Psalm 46:1-3

should we go or should we stay….

“And therefore I am come amongst you at this time, not as for my recreation or sport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live or die amongst you all; to lay down, for my God, and for my kingdom, and for my people, my honour and my blood, even the dust. I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart of a king, and of a king of England, too.”
Elizabeth I

(leftovers from the great wedding of two years ago / Julie Cook / 2014)

The votes have been cast and the people have spoken–much to the disbelief of many other people on this planet of ours…

BREXIT has become reality.

And why pray tell, is this yank daring to wade into the fray across the pond, in the land of over there, you may wonder…

Well, as I’ve stated to a few of my British comrades in arms…. that whereas it would appear that as an American I have no dog in the Brexit fight…it is for that very reason, that I am an American and my closet allies are those of the United Kingdom, that on the contrary, I think we all have a dog in the fight—
as do the other EU countries who are now set for divorce.

It is, however, not for me to ever state how I think those in GB should vote, just as I don’t enjoy being told who I should for for president. But as an outside observer, who is keen on this particular observation, as GB’s decisions do have an effect on this land of their first cousins….I have watched, read, waited and now marvel over the outcome.

The world powers-that-be have each waded deeply into the fray’s waters by telling the people of Great Britain how to vote.
With our President sadly leading the pack.
I apologize on his behalf…that an American president should tell the people of the United Kingdom how to vote on a very in-house sort of referendum…it’s not a very proper thing to do to be sure.

When I was a young new teacher, we had a long standing and powerful superintendent who was considered to be an entrenched member of the good ol boy system within our state’s educational, as well as political, systems.
He and I were not on the same sides of a political fence and I greatly resented each time an election would roll around and he’d make the rounds to each school, calling for a faculty meeting, just in order to tell “his” teachers how to vote…and that was to always cast a vote for his “friend.”

Now I could understand if there had been some sound educational reasons as to why we should be voting for his person of choice…
But for this superintendent, it was strictly a party vote of friends voting for friends—and I for one am not keen to vote for someone just because they are in cahoots with the boss…
especially when I don’t think them worthy of my vote…

I think I was also leery of voting for the entrenched politicians who had made a career out of their office.
For we know what they say…”complacency or familiarity breeds contempt”….
maybe that should read “breeds lethargy and corruption…”

Of recent weeks, I’ve read a great deal concerning the global financial powers-that-be bemoaning or gloating, depending on which side of the fence they line their pockets, what a Brexit would do to the global economy. The likes of George Soros, a man who has profited, or make that made a killing, on the downward slopes of markets before (mainly the Bank of England), is set to cash in once again.
And cash in big—but yet no one really knows how big he cashes in as he doesn’t disclose much…
This man parlays deeply and dangerously into American politics as he gives and gives graciously to the Clintons and their campaigns…He plays his hand in global economies and seems to try to muscle the outcomes of elections as well as markets worldwide—all to his benefit—

The rich and powerful trouble me.
Rich and powerful politicians trouble me.
Even our self-centered, anything and everything goes, millennials trouble me.

I have grown tired, vexed and weary of our political leaders telling us what’s good for us when they haven’t brought about any good themselves…
I am tired of those of the younger generations who whine and complain about those who vote for things such as leaving the EU or vote for politicians that don’t cater to the whims of youth, those young ones whose rallying cry is that “they” have stolen, or are in the process of stealing, our future…”
Yet they are either too preoccupied to be bothered with voting or don’t educate themselves on the bigger picture…

And granted the markets have gone tumbling today…
but it’s that analogy I keep hearing—that the markets are so volatile and actually so unstable that if someone sneezes in one section of the world, every other global market quickly reaches for a tissue lest the sneezing becomes a catastrophic epidemic —sending everyone scrambling for cover…
all of which we are seeing today.
That simply just doesn’t seem very secure in the first place…

So votes like Brexit, which send shock waves into the seemingly untouchable circles of the rich and powerful, the young and the unversed,
as well as for those of us of more average stature,
actually offer a bit of fresh air—
that the people–the average people, still matter.
For good or bad, they still can make a difference.
Their voice, for good or bad, can still be heard…
and that the vote of the everyday person does indeed still matter…

I think Brexit is just one more example of the average, dare I say middle aged and older person, being tired of how this world is being run…

So here’s to adjusting our sails…

The pessimist complains about the wind;
the optimist expects it to change;
the realist adjusts the sails.
William Arthur Ward

Where is your Peace?

Above all things let us never forget that mankind constitutes one great brotherhood; all born to encounter suffering and sorrow, and therefore bound to sympathize with each other.
Albert Pike

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature – trees, flowers, grass – grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence… We need silence to be able to touch souls.
Mother Teresa

“Spirituality is not to be learned by flight from the world, or by running away from things, or by turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, we must learn an inner solitude wherever or with whomsoever we may be. We must learn to penetrate things and find God there.”
― Meister Eckhart

A female mallard glides gently in the pond in the Boston Public Gardens / Boston, Massachusetts / Julie Cook / 2014

My heart is agitated and restless within me.
I am troubled by our times.
Global headlines are dire and grim.
Our own country is troubled by an exodus which is flooding into our land as we fret and worry how to best tend to these masses.
The weight of heartfelt burdens grow by the minute.

Yet you tell me simply not to worry.
“Forget about it”
“Don’t dwell on the negative”
“Think happy thoughts”
“None of this effects you, why worry”
“You can’t do a thing to change it, so don’t think about it”
“You don’t have a dog in this fight, therefore it’s of no concern”
“Be the ostrich and just put your head in the sand”

But I will not will myself to forget about troubles in our world.
I will not pretend everything is fine just because I am not being directly impacted.
It is true that there is very little I can do, if anything at all, to alleviate any of these maladies.
I am helpless, just as you are, watching dramas play out daily in the headlines.

But I ask you, how do I:
Tell the Dutch people not to worry?
Tell the Malaysian Airliner Company not to worry–agian?
Tell the Malaysian people not to worry–again?
Tell the Ukrainians not to worry?
Tell the Russian people not to worry?
Tell the EU not to worry?
Tell the small bordering countries of Russia not to worry?
Tell the Israelis not to worry?
Tell Jews worldwide not to worry?
Tell the Palestinians not to worry?
Tell the children of Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, El Salvador not to worry?
Tell the Americans in the border towns not to worry?
How do I tell all the parents who have lost and are losing children throughout the past week to simply dry those tears and carry on?

Where does your peace hide?
Where is your wellbeing located these woeful days?
Not your distractions.
Not your diversions.
Not your poisons to deaden any and all feeling.
But rather your Peace?
Your wellbeing?
Your clam?
Your anchor?
Your harbor?
Your refuge?

In such times, it is to Nature, which offers a soothing clam, that I turn.
In Nature is where I may observe life, as it goes steadily and happily along, despite global worrisome events.
To spend sacred time silently with the Creator of the Universe.
Finding in Him and in His handiwork the offerings of silence, of hope and of beauty which joyfully continues spilling froth from all His creation.
Here is where I find it possible to offer prayers for hope because here is where hope still exists.

May you find that place which continues to hold you in comfort and care—that place which offers you Peace. . . and may you then, in turn, offer prayers for the desperate healing of which our world is in such need. . .

(St Francis in a small garden adjacent to the Old North Church / Boston, Massachusetts / Julie Cook / 2014)

Listen to my words, Lord,
consider my lament.
Hear my cry for help,
my King and my God,
for to you I pray.
In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice;
in the morning I lay my requests before you
and wait expectantly.
For you are not a God who is pleased with wickedness;
with you, evil people are not welcome.
The arrogant cannot stand
in your presence.
You hate all who do wrong;
you destroy those who tell lies.
The bloodthirsty and deceitful
you, Lord, detest.
But I, by your great love,
can come into your house;
in reverence I bow down
toward your holy temple
Psalm 5: 1-7