until you assist, you will not know

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable,
to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

(image as seen on a blog)

Last week I wrote a post regarding Bill 481, Georgia’s Heartbeat Bill.

https://cookiecrumbstoliveby.wordpress.com/2019/03/30/beating-still-the-heartbeat-bill-or-the-day-the-sky-was-falling-in-georgia/

Since writing that post, I have read a myriad of other blogs and articles regarding the bill
as well as a promo for the movie Unplanned—a coincidental overlapping of happenings.

But we already know that I don’t believe in coincidence but rather in the workings of the Holy Spirit.

I have not seen the movie Unplanned, but I certainly hope to.
That is if my heart is strong enough.

I found it ironic that on the opening weekend, the Hollywood powerhouse movies
paled in the opening numbers versus the unorthodox Unplanned.

It is a movie based on Abby Johnson, a young director of Planned Parenthood who found herself
having to assist in an abortion—
It was the very option Abby, as well as her organization, had ardently been promoting and providing
for women–and yet it was during that very option of a women’s right that rocked Abby’s world forever.

It was during her assistance in a procedure, a procedure that Abby had ardently supported for
women as a woman’s right to choose…that changed her life forever.

Abby Johnson had been a Planned Parenthood director but had never seen images of
the baby during an abortion.
Today, she was pitching in to help the surgeon perform the procedure by manning the ultrasound.

What she saw made her cry.
The baby wriggled and tried to escape the vacuum.

“They always do,” the doctor deadpanned.
(from the movie Unplanned)

The day prior to reading the promo for the movie, I saw the image I’ve posted above.

A political cartoon of sorts…considered impractical by many …
yet not so far fetched as the hardened heart would imagine.

The doctor’s remark to Abby during the abortion procedure was correct—
a baby who is being aborted, fights for life.
They do not simply succumb to a suction, a burning painful saline solution or
a shredding scalpel.

The baby will fight to “get away”.

The baby wants to remain and wants to live.

It is not a logical thought process but more of a natural reactionary process.
When threatened with termination, a fetus will squirm, wiggle and move away from the ‘threat’
in order to survive.

And so it is with this in mind that I find myself more and more incensed by the likes
of an Alyssa Milano—the very vocal actress who is leading the charge for Hollywood to
boycott Georgia for allowing such a bill to become a law.

I read an article which reported how Milano had presented a petition to Georgia’s lawmakers
with 40 signatures threatening to boycott Georgia should Bill 481 become law.

Well, since the bill has passed both sides of Georgia’s governing body and has been
sent to the Governor’s desk for his signature, signing it into law,
Milano quickly made her way to the State Capital
where she presented a lawmaker with her concern.

The lawmaker calmly asked her in which district was she living and casting her votes.
Milano replied that she does not live in Georgia but was merely in the state to shoot scenes
for her latest television series…
the lawmaker turned and walked away.

The fact that an actress who calls California home comes to Georgia, insisting that Georgia
amends its laws to suit her political agenda, is in a word, assinine.

I have a great deal to say soon about abortion, adoption, life, and death…but the time
is not right as I am still walking a journey that is not yet complete but I do have
one thing to say to those women who clamor that abortion is a woman’s right.
That abortion is not to be an issue determined by male lawmakers as they are not women…

Milano and her ilk clamor that it is not “right” for male lawmakers to make
decisions for women and their bodies.

Last I checked female lawmakers were voting as well—

I don’t give a damn about a male lawmaker voting for, passing and signing a bill into law
that is insidiously cloaked as some sort of sacred women’s issue when in actuality
it is an issue of a man and women making a baby, a baby that is a by-product,
more often than not, of lust and sex….
plain and simple.

An innocent by-product, mind you, of poor decisions and selfish decisions…

And no we’re not talking about the smaller percentage of rape and other issues but
the majority of abortions as by-products of poor decision making and mere mistakes.

Who may I ask is standing up and voting for the vulnerable by-products?

It is not a matter of rights or timing or practicality or convenience.

To abort a baby is an act of murder.

And what I have to say to Alyssa Milano and her small army of militant feminists…
Go work in the “procedure” room—watch the ultrasounds, listen to the heartbeat.
You, Ms. Milao, have two children if I’m not mistaken…
would you happily give them over to death today?
I don’t think so.
So would you have given them over to death before they were born?

Until you perform an abortion, sit in that room, look at what is removed…
until you have that blood on your hands, you then tell me that you wholeheartedly
support murder.

Being adopted has always been a keen reason as to my intense aversion to abortion…
but I think having become a grandmother has only heightened that aversion.

This past year, I have marveled over, first, watching this tiny life emerge, then grow,
and change while learning…learning to smile, roll, hold, sit, stand, hurt, cry, laugh,
…I hold her and I wonder how anyone could have merely cast a death sentence over her.

Until you personally kill, then you let me know how you wish to tell
others how to vote.

“Whoever takes a human life shall surely be put to death.
Leviticus 24:17

A first…or will it be the last?

(the oldest surviving Icon or image of Christ, the Pantocrator / St Catherine’s Monastery, The Sinai Peninsula)

For the first time in 2000 years a Holy Mass for Easter will not have been held in Mosul.

“So what” you shrug…
“Who cares about Mosul?” you ask…
“Isn’t that in Iraq?” you quip…
“Isn’t Iraq Muslim?” you assume…
“Why would there be Easter in a Muslim land?” you espouse…

Well…yes, because for 2000 years there has been a celebration mass for Easter,
as well as Christmas and every other time a mass is to be said,
in what is now considered a Muslim land.

For Christianity has been practiced, as an organized religion, just following the
Resurrection of Christ, in this region of the world for the past 2000 years.

Christianity has been a long protected religious minority under the rulings and regimes
of various sultans, and in more recent times, dictators such as
the likes of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi.

But how can that ever be…as we are left alarmed asking ourselves.

Because various Muslim leaders throughout the ages have in fact protected the
Christian Church within this Muslim land.

Not all of them mind you, but many have….as they have been tolerant.

In 1219, during the 5th Crusade, St Francis traveled from Italy to Egypt
as a Christian ambassador of sorts.
This was a time in which the Holy Roman Empire was fighting Muslims, Jews and heretics
in order to keep Jerusalem free and open to traveling pilgrims wishing
to visit the Holy Land.

But control of the region became a long, deadly and bloody conflict.

There was much stubbornness on both sides as each faction refused to budge in their
dominance of the region.
Countless lives were being lost and this grieved the heart of Francis.

Francis wished to share his faith with these unbelievers and if need be, he was willing
to die a martyr while proclaiming the Gospel to the unsaved.

Francis was opposed to the killings and bloodshed on both sides and had sought the
current pope, Pope Innocent III’s permission to travel to Egypt to meet with then Sultan,
Malik-al-Kamil,
nephew to the Great Kurd leader, Saladin.

Unarmed, history tell us that, Francis was arrested and beaten by the Sultan’s army.
He was eventually taken to the Sultan,
who was intrigued by this man who came wearing a tattered tunic
while carrying no weapons nor a quest for battle, but rather a love and desire
to share the word of God….
that being that Christ died to save sinners and his teaching was that the first shall be last,
the last shall be first and we are to love our enemies.

Francis won over the Sultan’s respect and favor….
And eventually following Francis’s safe return to Italy,
a peace was brokered between the Sultan’s armies and the European forces.
With Jerusalem once again being open to Christian pilgrims with a promise of
safe passage by the Sultan.

Sadly however…history reminds us that peace is a tenuous affair
wherever man is involved…

We know that there were a total of 9 crusades with the final fall of the final Christian
stronghold in Syria in 1291.
The land has been in Muslim control ever since.
And throughout the centuries that control has been both with and without toleration
for the minority people and faiths of Christianity, Judaism
and other minority sects..

But with the recent toppling of dictators such as Hussein and Gaddafi,
the vaccum which was created with their oustings has been filled by something
much more sinister and vile.

ISIS
The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

ISIS is not tolerant.
Not tolerant of even varying sects of Muslims who do not adhere to the Sunni ISIS strict
following of Shia laws.

ISIS is not a single man who one may perhaps find reason with or
in turn topple and remove.
Rather ISIS is a fanatical organization which will not rest until “the infidel” is vanquished.
And they do not care who or what stands in their way…nor how their ends are met.
No one is exempt from their terror..not children, women, the old or in firmed.
They give new meaning to the words barbarism and sadism.

Eliza Griswold, a journalist who recently returned from an extensive study of the region
and of this anomaly of the systematic eradication of Christians and others sects in places
such as Iraq and Syria, was interviewed by FOX News.

Mrs Griswold offers a very sobering account of what she sees as the death throws of the
Christian faith in a part of the world in which Christianity has
existed since its very inception.

She lays out the argument for the need to eliminate ISIS and its spawned fanatical groups
or either humankind will have to live with the stalk reality that entire ethnic groups,
such as the Yazidis, and certain religious peoples and their existence will be gone forever
from a land which is as old as time itself. And not only gone from a region of this planet,
but gone from earthly existence.

And so my question to all of us…
will the knowledge of this eradication be something we can live with…
down in the depths of our human knowledge and understanding…
and within the soul of our consciousness.
Or…
will we allow ISIS and all of its tentacles to spread as far as they wish,
eliminating huge swarths of humankind…
that is until we see them on our very doorsteps?

Please read the article, but more importantly watch the 5 minute video clip of the
Griswold interview.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/04/14/christian-persecution-how-many-are-being-killed-where-are-being-killed.html

truth and lies

When the truth is found to be lies
And all the joy within you dies
Don’t you want somebody to love, don’t you
Need somebody to love, wouldn’t you
Love somebody to love, you better
Find somebody to love
Lyrics Somebody to Love
Jefferson Airplane

(St Kevin’s Monastery / Glendalough National Park, Co Wicklow, Ireland /Julie Cook / 2015)

“He who dares not offend cannot be honest.”
Thomas Paine

Finding ourselves living in the balance between Truth and Lies
With fiction far outweighing reality,
The faithful stand caught in the middle…
bewildered, battered and weary.

When did this vacuum, now plaguing the land, become so fierce…
As so many are now left reeling in total shock and confusion.
No longer able to discern between this or that
as all lines have finally merged and blurred beyond recognition.

Hawking on the sidewalks, like a street vendor peddling hotdogs,
the falsehoods and fake tales are pushed as the gospel to each hungry passerby.

“Read all about it,” they shout with verbiage in hand,
while passing out dribble like candy to an unsuspecting child.
As the affluent youth tear and burn a once proud flag.

With reality and truth now being pawned off as phobia,
the righteous are stripped and thrown to the wolves.
While the insatiable appetite of the beast is impossible to quell.

The time to take courage has arrived right on cue…
As a handful of the faithful now remain ready to defend…

Yet in the end, when all is finally left in tatters and ruin…
there will be only one thing left standing in the smoldering debris,
which is the only hope that will set those who remain free…
and that being, simply…
the Truth…

But I will leave within you
the meek and humble.
The remnant of Israel
will trust in the name of the Lord.
13 They will do no wrong;
they will tell no lies.
A deceitful tongue
will not be found in their mouths.
They will eat and lie down
and no one will make them afraid.”

Zephaniah 3:12-13

being mindful of the void

“Between stimulus and response there is a space.
In that space is our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Victor Frankl

He who is void of virtuous attachments in private life is,
or very soon will be, void of all regard for his country.
There is seldom an instance of a man guilty of betraying his country,
who had not before lost the feeling of
moral obligations in his private connections.
Samuel Adams

(blackeyed Susans / Julie Cook / 2016)

“Just as nature abhors a vacuum, so too does the human soul.
As we forget who we are and where we’ve come from, a great
void is being carved out in the soul of the West—
and many other belief systems are seeking to fill the vacuum.
In the ever-expanding marketplace of ideas, it’s no surprise that
“ancient organism and idolatry are making a strong comeback in the midst
of Western civilization”
God and Churchill
Jonathan Sandys & Wallace Henley

…so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
Isaiah 55:11

Peril

Grüß Gott
(German for Go with God)

“So it is more useful to watch a man in times of peril,
and in adversity to discern what kind of man he is;
for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart,
and the mask is torn off, reality remains.”
― Titus Lucretius Carus

(a small section of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, Germany / Julie Cook / 2012)

Peril.

We don’t much care for peril or that which is perilous.

Yet our world, our society, our civilization is consumed by peril.
Yet we prefer not to think about this.

We prefer to be distracted.
Distracted by that which is…
bright and colorful,
soft and sweet,
happy and nice…
and for some even dull and dark…
anything to take our minds off of all that is now in peril.

Because who wants to sit around pondering peril and perilous…
when one can look at a shiny baubles, happy videos about kittens and puppies
or lose oneself to reality TV—nothing better than watching the lives of random folks
on television fall apart, or lose massive amounts of weight or dance their socks off….

Our politics are in peril
Our colleges are in peril
Our environment is in peril
Our National Security is in peril
Our athletes are in peril
Our foreign relations are in peril
Our race relations are in peril
Our children are in peril
Our veterans are in peril
The family is in peril
Our healthcare is in peril
Many of our fellow human-being’s state of health is in peril
Christianity is in peril
Judaism is in peril
State Governments are in peril
The US Postal Service stays in peril
The TSA seems to cause peril
Our airports are in peril
Our opinions are in peril
Our Country’s infrastructure is in peril
Our young people are in peril
Our safety is in peril
Much of our drinking water is in peril…
on and on and on and on…
ad infinitum…

You get the picture…

With so much peril all around us, it’s no wonder the hits and likes of
the puppy’s and kitten’s videos are skyrocketing.

I like to read but sadly time is not always my friend allowing me to do so.
I have a book that I purchased a while back but have made a point recently to grab it
when running out the door to rush dad to this or that procedure and doctor.

Church of Spies
The Pope’s secret war against Hitler
by Mark Rielbling

It’s a great book.

Spies, intrigue, narrow escapes, secrets, murders, tortures, codes, double agents
double crossing….
and it’s all true.

Real life high stakes espionage involving all sorts of folks…some folks in the most benign places you’d never expect to find double agents, accomplices, or spies.

I have been troubled over recent current events in this country where folks, mostly younger folks, have taken to labeling various political minded individuals as Hitler.
No one in this country comes anywhere close to possessing any sort of similarities to Adolf Hitler.
It is flippant but even more egregious to label anyone as Hitler.
It insults the 6 million individuals who were murdered in his concentration camps–not counting the countless numbers of soldiers and civilians killed during the course of the war…it cheapens and lessens each one of their tragedies.

But most folks today don’t really understand the total enormity of what Hitler’s ideology, atrocities to mankind, and reign of terror did not only to the people of the greater world almost 80 years ago, but what his deluded visions continue to do to us today…

For most of us today this is all merely fodder for the history books…
a bad blip on the radar of the past.

Maybe our generation who has been taxed, as has been the generations before us, with reminding current as well as future generations of the enormity of all that was in those dark days of World War II are not doing our job.
Maybe reminding others of past perils and of the similarities to today’s perils is simply too much, too challenging—- so therefore ignoring it has become the better option….

Opening the backdoors to incoming troubles.

Words uttered in 1940, the words of Helmuth von Moltke, a German lawyer involved in the resistance, ring as true today as they did all those many years ago…
“totalitarian war destroys spiritual values. One feels that everywhere. If it destroyed material values, the people, whose thinking is mostly limited by their perceptions, would know how and against what to defend themselves. As it is, the inner destruction has no correlative in the perceived world of things, of matter. So they fail to grasp the process and the possible means of countering or or renewing themselves.”

Our spiritual lives are currently in peril…shall our means of countering such be also lost, in turn allowing for a new sinisterness to fill the vacuum?
Extremism and radicalization loves to fill in where the spirituality of mankind has faded…

Those brave men and woman who worked silently and secretly to oppose Hitler and the Nazi regime, those who risked everything in order to stop, who even attempted to assassinate the ensuing madness, had to consider not only removing Hitler but what to do in the void following his removal.
That is, should they have succeeded in that removal.

As they were keenly aware of what could fill the vacuum should Hitler be disposed or eliminated.
For chaos often begets chaos….

Father Ludwig Kaas, an exiled German priest turned abettor for the resistance, noted that “the elimination of the furor Germanicus of Hitlerism will leave particularly among the young and restless generation a spiritual vacuum which will have somehow to be filled if another explosion is to be avoided”
As an alternative order-principle, the Vatican proposed European unification. An economic federation, Kass argue, would prevent anarchy, exacerbated patriotism, aggression and war
(Church of Spies p94)

The similarities of then and today are eerily mirrored.

Rather than Hitlerism, Nazism, the Nationalist Socialist Worker’s Party of then, today it is ISIS, the Islamic State, and an extremist Islamic Caliphate. Many of the young men and even woman who leave families in order to go join this barbaric rising regime are most often the restless of their generation.
They are those who are lost, bored, disenfranchised, angry, even oddly hopeful…

Many of the young terrorists who were responsible for the attacks in Paris and later those in Belgium had been no stranger to the local authorities as they had been versed in petty crime, local drug dealing, unemployed, foreign nationals..lost, living on the fringe of a country not their own.
There have been a few however who had been educated, integrated and accepted, yet felt a calling back to something buried deep within their core…

Has our world allowed this latest void, this vacuum, to expand?
Have we allowed the lessons of the past to pass us by…
Have we allowed the perils of the past to lessen over time?
Are today’s perils only those same past perils that have evolved over time into something
new yet equally perilous….

It took brave individuals willing to risk all they had to eliminate the perils of their time
to ensure the safety and wellbeing for us…the future generations they didn’t know.
But it was for those future generations that they did not know, but believed to be worth fighting for…

Have we forgotten that there are further generations worth fighting for?

Maybe we need to think about, taking a closer look at this perilous world of ours, and consider what we need to do in order to make things less perilous…..for not only ourselves but for our future hope…

Grüß Gott

He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, 11 as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many.
2 Corinthians 1:10-11