David's Mountain Memories

The Pains of Daily Routines and the Satisfaction of Work Accomplished

2026-10-15T14:37:32.406-07:00

The reason I am titling this the way I am is due to some hassles during the week - with the Google Gemini program, writing and editing material, lazy and careless delivery people, and other things. I think I have cussed Google's tools online so much that if it were a person, I would probably be in danger of mortal sin. But, cussing out a technology tool in the privacy of your own office is not necessarily sinful except perhaps that you might be tempted to lose your temper and chuck a phone, a laptop, or another device out the window and indirectly injure a passing neighbor when it bops them in the head. I haven't gotten to that point yet, and don't intend to. So, what is all the fuss about this week? Let me elaborate.

This summer has been a season of catching up on a lot of projects - in the past five months, I have gotten five books printed, and have also taken care of some other things I needed to do which were the proverbial "bucket list" plans. The last of these projects, which I have been working on the past couple of days, has been the manuscript for the articles I put here for the year, and this year's book is going to be a big one! It is already past 400 pages for mid-October now, and I still have about two months to go yet! Two major challenges of this are the cutting, pasting, and formatting of the text, as well as trying to insert a workable TOC into the document. I have picked up a few ideas here and there for that, and it has simplified things a lot, but I am by no means a tech wizard - Word makes me curse Bill Gates' future grave, and pray he would go to it now (that might be a bit sinful, but sorry, Bill Gates is an evil jackass who wants to try to micromanage the world's population to bow to his whims - ain't gonna happen, Billy Boy!). The book is assembled, and formatted, and I did get a good TOC created in it, but I still have edits and proofing to do on it yet, and additionally I have to incorporate new stuff as I produce it too. It's a huge job. But, it is an important job too, and I need to do this. That explains why I am torturing myself with all the hassles. It comes with the territory.

The 2026 "Blog Book" will probably go to press mid-December, and I can have it printed and on my doorstep probably before 2027 dawns. I anticipate three more of these over the next three or four years, and at that point I will retire the blog to work on more extensive projects. That will mean then that my blog will be about 20 years old when it is said and done. I plan on continuing to explore the challenges of daily life until the year ends, but I have one larger project I want to finish before years end too, and that is an analysis of the work of Georgian authors Ilia Chavchavadze and Konstantin Gamsakhurdia. Both of these authors have ideas I really like, and Gamsakhurdia's in particular has impacted my own views on different things. It also is in line with my reconnections to the Armenians and Assyrians, two groups of people I have an intimate interest in. And, that leads to a very important decision I want to revisit here too.

Looking at the direction the "official" Roman Catholic Church has been going, I have made a conscious decision to start looking into other options. Especially with the dead, stagnant decay of Baltimore's Catholic community, I am just ready to take a step into something different that would embody more of my personal faith. To be honest, it is a decision I wished I had made many years ago when I had the opportunity, but I never really acted on it. It also involves these two groups of people I have strong connections to, Armenians and Assyrians. After visiting St. Mary Church in DC a couple of months back, something clicked inside me, and being in that Badarak was perhaps one of the most definitive moments I have had in some time. Something inside me that Sunday just sort of shifted, and when I think of my fictional self in the love story I just wrote too, it was a very similar moment to that. I was having this sort of mental dialogue in my mind, and a part of me was thinking "I really miss this." Then, another word popped into my mind, and it was this - "David, why not seek to become part of this church??" It was a seed, and it started to grow - when I was in that church that day, I felt like those people were my people, and for the first time in a long time, I was home. Over the past couple of weeks or so, I have been attempting to reach out to the priests at both Armenian parishes in DC (one is with the Armenian Church in America, and the other is with the Armenian Prelacy - the difference is that the former is subject to the Katholikos of Etchmiadzin in the mother land, while the latter is under the Catholicosate of Cilicia, based in Lebanon. They are identical in every way, but just under different jurisdictions) to find out what I need to do, and I also in particular reached out to the Armenian Prelacy, as if I were to make this leap, it would be probably with a Prelacy church as I feel somewhat more connected to them in a very personal way that is literally in my DNA. It all hinges, therefore, on when and who responds to me as to what I do next. Rest assured though, I am very serious about this, and I think it is for the best. I will be posting more about it as things start to come together.

My spiritual journey, and some challenges I am facing right now, have gotten me to shift a lot of focus on a lot of things. There is a lot going on behind the scenes I cannot get into right now, but the new frontier is a bit treacherous to navigate right now. Hopefully everything will come together soon enough, provided technology and lazy delivery drivers don't rob my sanity.

Any rate, that is what I had to say today, so I will end there. Thanks for reading, and see you again next time.

Writing Projects, Bringing Old Sketches to Life, and Other Things

2026-10-12T13:53:58.742-07:00

The past week for me has been a blur. For one thing, I got an offer for a substitute teaching job (on-call, so not full-time yet) at St. Francis Academy in Triangle, VA, which is close by Quantico. There are a few logistics to work out - the commute being the biggest - but I am happy about this overall. Also, I have been turning some long-sitting projects into reality this past week. As of yesterday, I published the second of my fiction books, and for those of you who have been with me from the beginning here, it's going to look familiar. Let's talk about it.

In August of 2012, just shy of two years into doing these blogs, I published a story on there called "Appointed to Consecration." I had originally written this back in 2001, and it was a sort of Catholic apocalyptic novel inspired somewhat by my own interest in both Frank Peretti's This Present Darkness, and the LaHaye/Jenkins series Left Behind. However, this was to be something different. In it, there are no Rapture scenes or theology, no Tribulation with the Antichrist, or an millenarianism. My story took its imspiration from three pivotal Catholic eschatological themes - the Three Days of Darkness, the Great Schism in the Church, and the Great Catholic Monarch. I decided that since I have some time to do it now, I would finish the project, and I did. The book kept the title, Appointed for Consecration, but it greatly expanded it to include even some recent personal references (one of the antagonists, as a matter of fact, is modeled upon the vile man who served as campus minister at the last school I worked at - that guy disgusted me, and I was able to create a character based on him). The book ended up being 119 pages, and it comprises 12 chapters. Later, I am going to do a deep dive as I have a discussion curricula planned, and I may turn it into something on here. The book just went to press yesterday, and is currently available on Amazon if anyone would be interested in getting one. I ended up being quite impressed with it myself in all honesty. The first fiction book I did prior to that the earlier week, however, is not going to be available publicly, as it is basically a fictional story that serves as a love letter for my fiancée Azi, so for now that one is for her and my eyes only. Besides writing though, I discovered something fascinating with Google Gemini - you can actually turn a drawing into a realistic picture. That is the second thing I was working on this week, so let me share some of that here.

At around the same time I published a story that would evolve into the first chapter of Appointed for Consecration, I also had decided to create a post at around the same time called "The Thrower Art Gallery." It featured a bunch of my original sketches that I had done over the years, and what I am going to do here today is share a few of the realistic pictures I was able to create based on those sketches. So, let's begin.

This first picture was of a church I sketched in my early 20s. The re-creation as a realistic drawing did not come out exactly as I planned it, but it doesn't look bad either.

This second picture was made much earlier, I believe when I was in high school. I really like the way this one came to life in all honesty.

This next sketch was one I drew during my early college years, around 1990 or so. I was wanting to be a new type of Pentecostal then, a high Churchman who was liturgical. This type of architecture also reflected the influence I drew from the Christian East as well.

This is one of the last sketches I drew. I made this one in 2013 on a Post-it note, and I decided to do it two different ways to bring it to life. The first is a plain, rustic building, and the second is a more up-to-date version that has been painted. It symbolized my nostalgia for home at the time when I lived in Florida, and looks like many old stores I recall on the highways during my childhood in West Virginia.

This one was one I drew about 20 years ago, and represents an ancient baptistry constructed in a Syriac Christian tradition. It was part of the larger church pictures I had made, as I was more or less trying to draw a panoramic portfolio of how I would construct my dream church. Fr. Aidan Kavanaugh's story about a first-century baptism was also a point of inspiration for this.

My love of vintage big bands inspired these next two. The one above was scaled down from the 40-piece orchestra I made in the sketch, but it still captures the spirit of it.

And this one represents an empty bandstand.

I really loved how this one rendered - it is my rendition of a coastal Lebanese village.

My rendering of a south Georgia village, with a giant Holiness church dominating it. I liked how this turned out too - rustic, but with its own charm.

This one turned out to be one of my favorites - it was inspired by the little mountain towns I grew up when I was a kid in West Virginia. This one has potential for other projects.

The sketch is reversed here from the picture that was made from it, but it represents probably one of my grandest church models. I am really proud of this one.

Since I kind of like Florida Cracker culture, this was my interpretation of a classic Florida Cracker cottage, and looking at it one can envision it being in the remote Everglades somewhere.

The final one I want to show here (it is not the last one I did, but for time and space considerations, I just picked out some of my best work) is the entrance to that large church I dreamed up. This was a miniature drawing, sketched out on a small notepad that was maybe 3"x2" in size. I did a lot of those too back in the day, and the way this one turned out was phenomenal.

As you saw the outside of the church, this is my envisioning of the inside brought to life. It wasn't exactly as I planned, but the realistic depiction actually looks better.

So, there you have it, some of my artwork brought to life, thanks to the magic of Google Gemini. I am not always happy with Gemini though, as at times I have yelled at it for trying to turn something into what looks like a totally different concept. Even on a couple of these I battled with it, but the end result was pleasing. Was it perfect? Not always, but I like them for the most part. This is the sequel then to the 2012 "Art Gallery."

All in all, this has been a busy year for me - a lot of publishing (including 5 books) and also some other new things. It is actually quite satisfying to get a lot of these old "bucket list" things caught up, and I am glad I did. I probably will have new stuff brewing later, so we'll see what happens. This month, however, is the cutting and pasting of all these blogs into the manuscript for the annual "Blog Book," which will be massive this year too. When you write books, the editing and formatting can be two of the biggest pains in the butt I have personally experienced, but the finished product is ultimately what counts.

That catches everything up for the week, so will see you soon!

Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth - Dake, Syriac and Ethiopian Bibles

2026-10-12T08:52:09.387-07:00

Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth

2 Timothy 2:15 (KJV)

This Bible verse was one of the first ones I ever learned as a new Christian after my conversion at age 16, and it has also provided me with a strong conviction for proper discernment. At times - especially in my 20s as a young minister still getting my bearings - this was tested heavily. I dabbled some in the hyper-charismatic version of Pentecostalism, and even took some questionable televangelists seriously in my younger years. But, I grew up, and in time I was able to see errors in things I once championed. We have all been there at some point - you have an initial enthusiasm about your faith in the beginning which makes you a sponge willing to soak up and absorb any type of teaching, even if it is wrong. This is natural, and it happens to many of us at points in our lives. However, while not beating yourself over the head about accepting errors at some point, we also should have the capacity to outgrow the errors as our faith begins to mature and we understand things better. That is what 2 Timothy 2:15 is all about. I am going to apply this today to a very specific area that seems to have gained some popularity over the years, and that is the usage of certain translations of ancient Bible translations such as the Syriac P'shitta and the Ethiopian Canon. In their orthodox forms, I love and value both of these Bibles, and indeed I have a deep connection to the people who speak these languages. However, there are some Christians who haven't matured much and think that there is some "hidden wisdom" in an ancient text that it never claimed to have, and this leads to some rather odd ideologies. I want to start first by telling my own story somewhat in relation to this, and then I want to take each of these and analyze them individually, the Syriac and the Ethiopian Biblical traditions.

Back when I first started Bible college at the age of 19, there were two things I was passionate about. One, it was my association with Assyrian, Armenian, and Coptic Christians. Secondly, it was my identity then as a Pentecostal. Both of these intersected in both good and bad ways, and in doing so I was launched into a bit of education that I never anticipated. Back in the day, I used two major Bibles as my main go-to versions. One of them was the massive Dake's Annotated Study Bible, which was gifted to me by a preacher uncle. Like many young Pentecostals then, I thought that using a Dake's Bible was the Pentecostal thing to do, and to be honest the four-column format and the extensive commentary notes did have some attraction to me. I will talk more in detail about the Dake Bible later, but there was another Bible I used too. After getting to know many Assyrians in my early 20s, I became close friends with Assyrian nationalist Dr. Sargon Dadesho - he at the time had an organization called Bet Nahrain in Turlock, CA, and he published a magazine as well as having TV and radio stations (both KBES). In 1995, I would have the opportunity to both visit and be interviewed on KBES by my dear friend Deacon John Khio, but my first contact was Sargon, and even to this day I consider him a dear friend. Sargon's magazine featured articles in both Assyrian and English, and there was a lot of cultural content in those then. On one occasion, he mentioned something about an Assyrian Bible translator named George Lamsa, and I made it a point to obtain a Lamsa Bible - I was able to purchase one through my college bookstore in early 1990. While I will go into more detail about the Lamsa Bible later, as it pertains to my story at this time, my Lamsa and Dake's Bibles were what I used for everything - if I prepared class projects, sermons to preach in churches, or anything else, those were my go-to Bibles. That went on for a few years until I started to become better educated in what both of these Bibles were actually, and in time I would get rid of them because I discovered a lot of heretical stuff within them that didn't match traditional Biblical hermeneutics. As I grew in my own faith beyond Pentecostalism into a more Catholic grounding, it became evident that neither the Dake's or Lamsa Bibles were really appropriate for serious discipleship, and I thankfully outgrew them as well as a lot of things associated with them. I use my own story to preface this because I am coming at this topic from a position of experience, and am not just shooting down anything I simply don't agree with. I used these Bibles, and I believed in them as valuable translations then, and I was completely clueless as a young man as to what sort of damage they could really do. But, thankfully, I grew. So, why am I addressing this topic. Let me give the introduction to that and we will go on from there.

Over the past couple of days, I have been listening to YouTube videos of my friend, Dr. Stephen Missick in Texas, who is creating some good content that deals with the Assyrian Bible in particular. Unfortunately, Stephen suffered some damage to his home during a bad storm, and a tree crashed into his house that almost destroyed the very valuable study library he has that he had accumulated over many years. Fortunately, the majority of his collection was spared damage, due to the providential hand of God, but this motivated him to explore his own collection and do some content on different translations and versions of the Syriac Bible he has come across over the years. I relate to that, because for the most part Stephen and I had a parallel course in our studies and association with the Assyrians in particular over the years - he is a few years younger than I am, and he also had the privilege of meeting some people I never was able to meet, including the Assyrian Patriarch Mar Awa. And, a lot of his own journey reminded me of myself - he was soaking up pretty much everything that entailed Syriac studies, as I also did, and he came across some of the same material I did over the years. Some of these included some spurious and somewhat controversial English translations and commentaries on Syriac Bibles, and of course he became familiar with Lamsa's work as well as that of others - notably the New Thought Syriac researcher Rocco Errico, as well as the translation work of Victor Paul Wierwille (who led the neo-Arian cult, the Way International) and some people who splintered from Wierwille's group such as Janet Magiera. When I discuss Lamsa directly, I will go into more detail about who these people are because they do tend to be given a higher level of importance in Syriac Studies than they perhaps should have. Stephen's video though made an important distinction between the work of people like Lamsa, Wierwille, Magiera, and Errico and their actual doctrines they possess, and I think that is a fair assessment. With a chronically limited English-language reservoir for Syriac Studies (that thankfully is changing, but it still merits work) I completely understand why we may have to by necessity take a sip from a proverbial "poisoned well," and I only hope for Stephen and others that Mark 16's promises that if a believer "drinks any deadly thing it shall not harm them." That is why I feel the discussion is warranted. I want to do this in three sections. First, I want to address the esotericist and cultic interest in Syriac studies, primarily through Lamsa's post-mortem influence. Secondly, I want to talk about the Ethiopian Bible, and how at times it gets many people who have a mystical motivation for interest in it. Third, I am going to deal with Dake's - how Dake intersected with Lamsa on some things, and also how many popular televangelists - Benny Hinn, Jimmy Swaggart, and others - use translations such as Dake's or Lamsa's to justify some of the odd doctrines they proclaim. Hopefully, by the time you read this, it will aid in you strengthening your own sense of discernment so you too can "rightly divide the word of truth." I am starting this on a Tuesday, and due to its complexity, it will take me several days to work on this so you more than likely will be seeing it several days after I finish it.

Let's start with George Lamsa. George Lamsa (1892-1975) was a Bible translator who was an ethnic Assyrian. In my earliest Bible college days as I started to learn about the Assyrian community, I first heard of him through Bet Nahrain Magazine, which published an article regarding some historical preservation of his back in 1991. Being I was looking for an actual Assyrian Bible, I immediately had the college bookstore order me one. It was more massive than any Bible - outside of my Dake's - that I had seen, and for a few years I used it quite regularly. I published an old book of my early sermons that is available on Amazon, and if you read some of my material from the early 1990s, you will note that at that time I quoted Lamsa's Bible extensively. However, as I grew in my faith, I started to notice things - when I looked more into George Lamsa's life, he was associated with a lot of weird stuff, including New Thought groups like Unity, the cultic Way International (Lamsa was a close friend of Victor Paul Wierwille, who founded that group), and the controversial Pentecostal tent evangelist William Branham (who, among other things, taught a version of Oneness Pentecostalism as well as a variation of the Calvinist "Two Seeds" doctrine). Of the latter, this explains why some in the "Word of Faith" movement, including prominent televangelists like Benny Hinn and the late Kenneth Hagin, utilized the Lamsa translation. I also found out later from my good friend, the late Fr. Quasha Klutz, in a phone conversation that the official Assyrian Church had never endorsed Lamsa's Bible, and indeed discouraged its faithful from using it. Learning of all that, I immediately began to distance myself from Lamsa's material, and instead focused on actual Syriac Bible studies and translations, including those done by the late Aramaic Bible Translation founder, Wycliffe missionary Esther Matteson, as well as more credible recent translations like those of Dr. George Kiraz (his is very helpful, as I understand the Western Syriac, or Suryoyo, dialect better). While I have close friends who are sound Christians that see some value in Lamsa's work - I get that, and can appreciate it - I would also discourage them and others from taking his translation work too seriously, as it may be questionable due to the influences he himself had.

Speaking of the Way International, that is of interest because after the death of Victor Paul Wierwille and the later scandal that surrounded his successor, Craig Martindale, a number of groups split from the original cult and formed their own versions of it - they differ some what in administration, as some of them don't have Wierwille's original rigidity, but they haven't changed the quasi-Arian doctrines that Wierwille taught. These groups believe in a school of thought called "Aramaic Primacy," which would assert that because Jesus spoke Aramaic, the original Bible must have therefore been written in it. There are two big issues with this. First, traditional Biblical scholarship - including the Syriac and Assyrian Church traditions - acknowledge Greek as the original language of Scripture (and some Hebrew as well, especially in regard to the Old Testament). Therefore, given this is the accepted view and it has the evidence to support it, Wierwille and even to a lesser extent Lamsa were wrong about the "Aramaic Primacy" just on that alone. But, there is another complication too - the Aramaic many of them rely on is either Assyrian or Suryoyo, or possibly ancient Estrangelo, which the latter two dialects derive from. The Aramaic Jesus spoke would have been a totally different dialect entirely, as it was Palestinian Aramaic, and if there was an existing dialect that was closer to that, it would more than likely be the Aramaic spoken by the small Samaritan community in Israel today. With that established, one of the branch-offs of Wierwille's original cult was a woman named Janet Magiera, who more or less compiled her own Aramaic translation. There is little fundamentally different about it from Wierwille's, and therefore it is to be studied or read with a big grain of salt. In our enthusiasm, we tend to embrace some weird things, and it seems these ancient Christian communities like the Assyrians often end up being exploited by groups that are radically different than their traditional Churches. The same is true with the Ethiopians too, which we will get into next.

If one browses online shopping platforms like Ebay, Amazon, or Temu, you will see literally dozens of books with the title "Complete Ethiopian Bible." This seems to be a recent phenomenon, as I didn't recall seeing these a few years back. I don't see anything fundamentally wrong with them on a theological level, but the problem is they are not the authorized Ethiopian Church translation, which doesn't exist yet (although I have heard rumors about one being in progress). Also, these books seem to be knockoffs of each other too. Unlike Lamsa or the various incarnations of Wierwillism though, the problem with these Bibles is not necessarily their theology - they don't claim to be something "secret" or "hidden" for one thing - but rather their authenticity as actual translations from the Ge'ez text. While some of them are actually quite good and are decent study aids - I so far have liked Asher Wilson's as well as the Faith Made edition of this - it's important to be consistently factual about what these resources are. However, for an even longer time, there are these other versions of Ethiopian Bibles, liturgy books, and classic works like the Kebra Nagast that I would find theologically suspect as well, and that is because of one thing - those particular English-language materials are often the production of Rastafarian sects, and that brings in a whole new level of heresy. If you are looking for research material particularly on the Ethiopian Tewahedo Church, I would advise looking to authentic Ethiopian sources first, and often a good Ethiopian scholar or priest can help with that.

Finally, let's talk about Dake a little. Finis Jennings Dake (1902-1987) was a Pentecostal minister who was first with the Assemblies of God, and later the Church of God, before becoming independent. An uncle years ago when I was still young myself gifted me a Dake's Bible, and I have to be honest with you, it is impressive - most people read it for the extensive liner notes more than anything, and the four columns of text on each page could easily elevate Dake's notes to the level of Scripture, which is an inherent danger. The connection that few have made though is that Dake too also relied on some of Lamsa's work - Dake's citation of Lamsa's work as being "authentic Aramaic" led many Pentecostals to be exposed to Lamsa indirectly, and this is why it has been even noted that some high-profile televangelists such as Benny Hinn, the late Kenneth Hagin, and Kenneth Copeland will often use passages from Lamsa to justify their own odd theological ideas. I admittedly did this too, as when I was a young minister I heavily relied on both Bibles for my own sermon preparation. I honestly regret doing that now, and that is why I wanted to publish something here warning people about the risks of relying on unorthodox translations of the Bible just because they promise some "hidden meanings" or they have an impressive amount of notes and commentary in the margins. I have actually learned over the years to be more cautious of that. Hopefully, that is a warning many will take seriously.

So, of these three Bible translations - Lamsa, Dake, and the numerous English-Language "Complete Ethiopian Bibles" out there - I think the only one I could still utilize with good conscience is the Ethiopian Bibles, and that is fine as long as you understand that these are not official translations. The one I have by Asher Wilson in particular is actually quite good - he and his co-editor, both of whom are fairly sound Lutheran Evangelicals with Concordia Seminary credentials - and I can find value in it as I have a few neat takeaways of my own by learning to appreciate the Ethiopian Canon better. It is also good to be at least familiar with Lamsa and Dake too, and you can research them as long as you are grounded enough in your own faith to reject some of the wilder and somewhat heretical ideas they had.

Thank you for joining me today, and will see you next time.

The Importance of the Creative Outlet

2026-10-08T20:21:25.697-07:00

I am just writing today because I have something important to talk about. Have you ever been brimming with ideas, but just cannot find an outlet to express them? You're a gifted writer, or you can create music, or you are an artist - but the society we live in seems to not care. Many people - including unfortunately our own families - tell us "Oh, you can't make money off that stupid idea!" Then you have the gatekeepers. Used to be if you wanted to create and publish something, there were ways to do it - you wrote a book, and then you gave it to a printer, and voila! You then have a book. Well, not anymore. There are self-publishing platforms, but they often make it so constrictive to publish something - it's the wrong font, the page count is too low, the page count is too high, and all the other BS they throw at you to make you want to throw your computer through a wall. Add to that the fact we live in an overly litigious society - if someone gets their feelings hurt over something you say, they go after you (in some cases, it's not real damage either - there are crooks out there that find ways to actually scam authors and publishers, and one has to be careful of such people). Then you are bullied and forced into withdrawing your work, and there are evil people out there who Google their names constantly just to find offense (yes, they are at heart opportunists). So, how do you get a creative outlet? Let me tell you how I have navigated that over the years.

The first thing to remember is not everyone is going to love your work - there are haters and critics out there all over the place, some of whom have nothing better to do, and they can really mess up a good day if we let them. I have come up with an answer to that over the years that seems to be a good repellent of the cockroach din of haters and critics - just tell them that if they don't like it, then maybe they should write or record their own then. When a writer, musician, artist, etc., puts a considerable amount of work into producing something, no critic should even exist - the person did their best, and if perhaps you don't like it, then the advice I would give to a critic like that is to shut the hell up and do something more productive with their lives. A lot of this is just plain jealousy too - we all have our likes and dislikes of course, and that is not the real issue. The issue is when someone else tries to impose their individual standards on everyone else. Usually, the hater or critic in that case probably has no talent of their own, and they are almost resentful that someone actually succeeded. The self-elected critic may not even have an interest in what whoever is doing in reality, but they just have to be an idiot and attack a person with real creativity. Again, here's a radical idea - if you don't like it, then no one is twisting your arm to look at, listen to, or read it. so again, shut the hell up. But, it isn't just badmouthing haters that are an issue with this, but also bigger "gatekeepers" too.

By bigger "gatekeepers," we are talking about corporate, political, and even academic entities who can just arbitrarily determine what deserves to be published and what doesn't. These people are not concerned with developing talent, and to be honest they never (or rarely) invest in true talent. They are often out for one thing - making a quick buck. That is why a person like Simon Cowell - who is tone-deaf and wouldn't know good music if he was ran over with it, yet he is such an arrogant ass - has so much power. If they really wanted to scout for true talent, they would use real musicians on those stupid shows. However, I don't watch them or keep up with the newest no-talent with a pretty face anyway - I just personally detest Simon Cowell because frankly the guy is a pompous ass. If a musician on the scale of Benny Goodman or Pablo Casals were to come in front of him, Simon Cowell would be the first one to reject them because they don't shake their asses on stage and lip-sync bad songs. Simon Cowell, therefore, is not a musical genius; he has a sex fetish for young girls dancing around in mini-skirts.

I know I gave Simon Cowell some flak that he rightly deserves, but there are others like him. Academic organizations are full of them. If you don't go along with the party line that a group of Ivy Leaguers and West Coast radicals are pushing, it is a 1000% possibility they won't publish your work. Again, they are looking for a platform, and not true scholarship. You see this also more often with literary magazines as well - it is a shame how so many talented writers were pushed into obscurity by some arrogant jerk who sits on the board of a big university. If true scholarly integrity were a thing, those guys would not be sitting on those boards, nor do they deserve to be. So, why am I going off in this? It is a complete side issue for me in all honesty, but it ties into something more important I want to talk about now.

I am a Ph.D. I worked hard to earn that degree, and I stand behind my hard work. Because of that, I also love to write and research. While a lot of my writing has been reflective or theological/historical, in the past week I have been working on my first creative writing fiction piece. It is a piece that I won't publish - not because of the critics and gatekeepers, as they haven't seen it. Rather, I used some personal feelings to create a fictional narrative, and it is very personal. I wrote it though to print into a single book - not one for sale - for myself. I went into some of the details of the story line earlier, but it is romantic fiction, something I never thought I would actually write. However, when you meet a special someone, they tend to bring out things in you that maybe you have repressed, and I have that special someone. She is my girl Azi, a beautiful woman of Filipina heritage that I met a year after my divorce. Azi was not someone I expected to meet, but I couldn't be happier as she embodies all I have ever wanted in a soulmate. My fictional writing was inspired by her, and in fictional prose it is technically a love letter to her. Therefore, it stays in that realm of personal security, although if I get an opportunity I could change a few names and turn it into something bigger. That still remains to be seen. Any rate, that is what all this is about - it is important too in understanding that when a writer, artist, or composer creates a masterpiece, it is often a labor of love. There are numerous famous pieces of literature, many great works of art, and many music compositions that could fall into that class of art, and they should. And, often, if you really look or listen, you will see the creator is sharing a part of themselves too. This is why the idea of professional critics of those types of media is a useless profession. A typical professional critic tends to be a person with the soul of a garden slug - they don't have artistic talent, musical ability, and it is a chore for them to compose a text to their drinking buddies. Yet, they think they have the right to make or break someone who really has done a lot of work and put their own heart and soul into something. If our society were ordered the way it should be, we should be paying the artists, writers, and composers and let the critics starve until they find another more productive means of employment. We have a lot of things backwards in this society, and that is a shame.

Any rate, this was about the importance of the creative outlet, and I probably spent more time attacking those who attack creators. The creative outlet one has is much more important than the haughty critic who tries to pick it apart. That is a reason as well why society has been in decline - when you defile the transcendental properties of being (truth, beauty, goodness) to a marketing scheme, it cheapens creativity and diminishes the creative process. Making money in itself is not bad, but when it becomes the primary object of societal advancement, it then becomes irrelevant because it is driven by selfishness instead of an intrinsic need to have supernatural grace work in our lives to elevate, heal, and perfect creation. Greed kills creativity, and the greedy man is the worst type of idolater in all honesty. Don't be greedy then, but be creative. You will contribute more to the preservation of Western Civilization if you take that advice. Thanks for allowing me to share, and will see you next time.

Reading the Signs

2026-10-05T09:08:53.775-07:00

I know that for many of you reading this, you are probably thinking astrological signs or something like that - that isn't what this week's reflections are about. Rather, it is just picking up on subtle things that maybe the Holy Spirit is saying, and that we sometimes miss. Then, Fr. Grassi, my former parish priest in Charles Town, also complemented what I was thinking in his homily at Mass yesterday, and let's see if we can integrate those here. I am still working on the article I want to put up that addresses things such as the Lamsa Bible and related issues, but that is going to entail more study. The reason for that is why I am writing this today. Let us begin by first talking about Fr. Grassi's homily briefly.

For anyone with any background in Catholic theology or philosophy, listening to Fr. Grassi's homily yesterday rings with a bit of familiarity. He was talking about the "tyranny of work," and how it is almost a sin against the self to be always busy and never taking time to just rest. He observed (correctly I believe) that now the technological advances society has adopted have also choked us - we are now taking work home at all hours, and we have smart phones, smart watches, smart glasses, etc., in addition to desktop and laptop computers. His homily was very convicting to me, as I find my mind racing with this, that, or the other, and I am always checking a screen for something even when nothing is there. All of this is of course very relevant to the day and time we live in, and I believe Fr. Grassi hit the proverbial nail on the head with what he shared. However, it also demonstrated that Fr. Grassi is an astute student of what he reads to, as much of what he said deals with a negative trait in society called acedia. This is a term that the Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper talks about a lot, especially in his seminal book Leisure: The Basis of Culture. Although Fr. Grassi didn't mention the concept by name, he pretty much identified the core aspect of acedia - being so busy that our activities almost become an idol to us. I won't get into Pieper's total analysis of acedia, as I have discussed it before, but Fr. Grassi's homily definitely reached something. And that is what I want to talk about today.

The reason I haven't been as active last week is due to one thing - I am working on my first fictional creative writing piece. I have only ventured into fictional writing a few times, and mostly it was not anything overly spectacular. It takes a special gift to write fiction, and I am not endowed with it in all honesty. But, I also remember what Robert Newton Peck, an old friend and perhaps one of the best children's writers of the 20th century, once wrote in his book about writing - get the raw idea out, and then refine it later. So, I used personal experience to construct a fictional story that entails a long-distance relationship where an American teacher falls in love with a Filipina, and he feels imprisoned by circumstance (some of that part of the story also resonates with Fr. Grassi's homily too) until one night he and his Filipina fiancée have an identical dream - in it, they are twenty five years old again, both of them (despite the fact in real life she is about 14 years younger), and in the dream they are beginning to make a life together. At a point in the dream during a small storm on the Sulu Sea outside their Palawan bungalow, they realize that they are in a dream but feel the connection strongly. They both wake up to rather unsatisfied lives, and they are their real ages again. But, as they video call each other, it dawns on them - they have not been able to be together for the five years they had their relationship, and between bureaucratic red tape, financial constraints, and other factors, it seems hopeless. But then this dream opens up something, especially in him - after a heartfelt talk with her, in which she reminds him to "remember twenty five," he makes a decision during his morning commute to just act on his true feelings, and within six months he had made the arrangements, and he makes a one-way flight to the Philippines where he and his girl step into a new life together - a very touching scene on a beach, where the sand sends a surreal feeling to his mind as his bare feet step onto it, solidifies the entire overarching point of the dream. As a result, they make a life together, and it ends up being a beautiful story. I won't go into a lot of detail about the story itself, but I wanted to summarize some lessons to take away from it that I dressed in a fictional scenario.

The whole point of the story boils down to one thing - sometimes the life we think we are living actually obscures the real person we actually are. We are afraid to let that real dimension of ourselves out because to be honest, it would probably cause problems with most people. The majority of the people we call family and friends would not have a clue as to that inner part of us, as it is something we often cannot explain for ourselves. The protagonist of the story is actually based on myself - it is about an inner aspect of myself I don't often share with just anyone, and this story provided a creative platform to sort of let it out. And, like Pieper's discussion of acedia, we tend to let things choke those parts of us which would actually be liberating because we have schedules, tasks that keep us busy, and a lot of mind-cluttering distractions. That unique aspect of ourselves is then just sort of obscured, although at times things we come across remind us that it's there. The point of my story is that if we know how to look for it, that right person is going to be there to help us rediscover that, and that person is often one we love - a husband or wife, a soulmate, a fiancée. Those people are a gift of God for a reason, and they are the ones we are meant to give our entire selves to, even those hidden things we don't feel comfortable sharing. Let's take a totally hypothetical example of what I am talking about.

Let's say there is a guy (or a girl) who is a brilliant person, but they are also somewhat introverted. The image they give to those around them is someone who is withdrawn, and also hard to know. This often leads to them getting ignored in the same way that Ficus tree in a bank lobby is - you know it's there, but it is not something you think about or care to pay attention to. However, underneath those layers is another person - this may be a guy who actually maybe likes singing karaoke, or he secretly may even like something like skateboarding but doesn't feel like he is someone who should do that. In his mind, he secretly may fantasize about it, but he is scared to death to try it because it would look out of character for him. Is this pride? I don't think so - it's more fear of being rejected or misjudged than anything. But, then he meets a nice girl who really connects with him, and all of a sudden he's thinking of trying it for the first time. He may fall on his ass doing it, but he just gets to that point where he has to give it a go. In the story, it is something similar, but not skateboarding (and believe me, personally that is not my secret guilty indulgence either!). He feels comfortable with that new soulmate, and she encourages him as he begins to share those deep things about himself. And, at some point, he just has to let go and go for it. That is the second point of the story too.

I talk about this because this is me - there are intimate things about myself I don't share with just anyone, and many of you reading this know what I am talking about. Even in 28 years of marriage to Barbara before we divorced, I never truly felt comfortable sharing a lot of things with her - it was not her fault, but one thing she told me once is that it seemed like there was a shell I had that she could not penetrate, and to be honest, she was right. The connection, in other words, was not really there. Sure, we cared for each other, and even had some wonderful moments together as a married couple, but that dimension of our relationship was missing, and it was no one's fault. We have a series of mental and emotional filters that are actually good for us, as they prevent the wrong people from weaponizing our personal feelings against us. But, if we don't take care to develop relationships of trust, that is a part of us that remains repressed and we never are quite our complete selves as a result. So, that is why God instituted marriage - that soulmate is just that; they are connected to you at the soul level, and in a sense this is what Scripture describes as "the two becoming one flesh." This doesn't happen with just anyone either - God built in those protections with us for a reason, so we should not consider them bad. And, that leads to the second aspect of this - the feelings of frustration and incompleteness.

Protecting yourself is a good thing - it keeps you from being wrongly exposed to the negative influences that can destroy us. But, it can also be overdone too - we can be so walled up that no one - not even God himself - can get through to us. And, we start to feel it. Because you can never be your full self, you feel like something in your life is missing, and that repression can become a prison to us. It needs to be broken by someone or something, and that someone should be the person we choose to spend the rest of our life with. And, we compensate that by distractions; we become overly busy, and we let routine and calendars enslave us to the mundane while that important aspect of ourselves is repressed. That is the real danger of Acedia - it can potentially lead to a type of idolatry of busy-ness. And like Fr. Grassi noted, it becomes rather tyrannical to us. It often takes a radical step to bring us back to where we should be, and that is the point of my fictional story.

In the story, the teacher, after that dream, has a heartfelt video conversation with his Filipina love, and then his morning commute to work, has an epiphany. While he was taking an Uber to his school where he taught, a thought came into his mind - "I wish this was taking me to the airport to fly out of here," and then his inner dialogue pierces with this question, "Why not? What do you have to lose?" He ruminates on this all day, and that causes a crack in the facade he built up over the years - the realization that he couldn't do that slavish routine anymore led him to say in his heart "This is my time, and this is my fiancée's time - it is OUR time!" and he returned home that evening a different person - a realization became clear that he needed to just step out, and so he did. Within six months, he and his beautiful Filipina fiancée would be sharing a smoldering, tender kiss on a distant beach in Palawan when he not only made the step, but he did so radically - he bought himself a one-way ticket and had no plans to return. There is a saying I have utilized and others have too that is proverbial - sometimes you just have to rip off the bandage. My character in that story did just that, but it took a dream and an Uber ride to make him realize just what he needed to do. Now, I want to transition to my personal feeling in this.

The point of creative writing - especially a fictional story - is that the author is often talking about themselves, and that is true here too for me. The character in that story personified me, and to be honest writing it helped me to see more clearly. Will I make that radical step my character in the story did? I don't think I am there yet, but I think God was speaking something through that to let me know that sometimes you just have to take the first step, kind of like the old Rankin-Bass Christmas cartoon Santa Claus is Coming to Town, where a young Kris Kringle actually converts an evil wizard into a good friend. The wizard, named Winter, was scary, evil, and had a lot of issues within him. Kris giving him that little toy train was the catalyst that cracked that ice shell around Winter's heart, and Kris sang a song in that cartoon to him that summarized it - "Put One Foot in Front of the Other." Taking the first step is the hardest and scariest sometimes, but once you take that step, it's a whole new world and you see things in a new way. With a lot that has been going on the past few years, I think that is where I am personally, and my character in the story definitely had that revelation too, just like the fictional wizard Winter did in that old Christmas cartoon. A few months back, I talked about the "unknown frontier," and it ties into this - you won't know what the frontier is unless you take the first step toward it. What's ahead may look clouded, scary, and uncertain, but taking that first step may be the best thing you can do for yourself. I am preaching to myself with this too, as I am sort of in that process myself, and it is no accident I was able to write the story either. I could say much more about this, but it would take a lot of sorting out to really do it, and I don't have the time to do that now but may hash it out in my journal at some point so I can articulate it better. Rest assured though, I will be revisiting it.

Thanks for allowing me to share my thoughts this week, and will see you next time.

False Idolatry in Christian Context

2026-09-27T09:09:08.404-07:00

I am writing a piece of reflection I didn't want to have to address, but it is becoming evident that it has to be addressed. When we invest god-like reverence and devotion to concupiscent human beings, we commit a form of idolatry clothed in "Christian" language. What I have seen indicts both Protestant Evangelicals and Catholics, as both are guilty of doing this in different contexts. Unless it is corrected and understood for what it is, I fear that any potential for evangelization and conversion of others is in jeopardy. I am going to address both of these separately, and then bring it all together.

On social media, I read a news story that radical Jewish settlers in Israel pepper-sprayed a 9-year-old Armenian boy named William just for riding his bike. When I read that, I was immediately heartbroken - who would do this to an innocent child?? And in Israel?? You sort of expect ISIS or Muslim Brotherhood terrorists to do things like this, but these are supposedly Israeli Jews who committed the act. The mother of this child said the boy is traumatized and is terrified of Israelis now, and I can see why - getting a dose of potent capsaicin in your face for nothing tends to do that, and for a young kid like him it is even more devastating. This story prefaces the first form of idolatry I wanted to talk about, and I am about to ruffle some feathers with this one.

I myself have both Sephardi Jewish and Armenian forebears, so what I am about to say here I am not doing in pleasure at all, but rather just extreme disappointment. For the majority of my life, I have always been a firm supporter of the state of Israel, and even seen the Jewish birthright to the land as a legitimate and historical claim. I still do, and that has not changed any. However, there are other people in that region who also have a birthright too, and I have been a long-standing supporter of the rights and legitimacy of indigenous Christians in that region too. In all honesty, these two things are not supposed to conflict, but they often have - there are some indigenous Christians who do harbor a historic anti-semitism, and there are also Jews who hate Christians, and both are wrong. That is a problem that is not going to be resolved overnight in all honesty, and it does cause me some distress knowing it is happening. However, in perhaps one of the most ignorant and stupid forms of idolatry, we enter the territory of "Christian Zionism," and this is where I want to go. The problem here is not with Christ-hating Jews, nor is it with antisemitic indigenous Christians - it is with American Evangelical Protestants who seem to be too stupid to know better about the history and demographics of the region, and hence "Christian Zionism" has become an idolatrous cult to some of them. So, let's attack this first.

Christians in the Middle East are our brothers and sisters in Christ, and as such they constitute a large number of traditions and religious communities - some are Protestant, some are Catholic, and some are Orthodox. These communities of Christians have been there for centuries, some even going back to the very birth of the Church. Many of them are also distinct ethnicities in themselves as well as being distinctly Christian - you have Armenians, Assyrians, Maronites, Copts, Rums (Arabic-speaking Greek Orthodox and Catholics who are not ethnically Arab), and communities of long-established ethnically Arab Christians as well. These communities have deep roots, rich traditions, and many have maintained their faith in the face of numerous persecutions over the centuries. Yet, American Evangelical Protestants are ignorant of them. I have a good friend in Florida whom I have known since my college days. He is the son of a conservative Lutheran minister who was involved in the earliest days of the Charismatic movement, and due to that he tends at times to be a bit hyper-charismatic in his expression. Although he is well-meaning, he is also woefully ignorant being much of his worldview is shaped by televangelists on TBN and Daystar. And, yes, he is a "Christian Zionist." When we were talking about Israel one day, I mentioned to him that we need to also be supportive of indigenous Christians in the area, and he mistakenly thought I was referring to Messianic Jews! He knew nothing of the ancient Christian communities in the region (despite the fact that his late sister-in-law was an Arabic-speaking Palestinian Christian - note that irony!) and like so many others who think like him, he was even somewhat dismissive of them. That, my friends, is the idolatry of "Christian Zionism," and let me explain how that works. The modern "Christian Zionist." fueled by the ignorant rantings of idiots like John Hagee and others on religious TV, considers Israel and every Jewish person to be perfect for some reason - everything they do (even when blatantly wrong) is ordained by God, and must be treated like a living Scriptural writ. Therefore, that verse in Scripture that says "touch not my anointed" is taken so far out of context that it almost sounds like a foreign religion, and indeed it is. "Christian Zionism" is not support for the Jewish people, nor is it support for the right of Israel to exist. One can completely support Israel's right to exist, and respect Jewish people, without being a "Christian Zionist." And, criticism of a bad Israeli policy or of the behavior of an individual Jew as a person subject to personal accountability is not antisemitism either. Jews, just like every other human being on earth, are in need of Christ too, and they must accept him to be truly saved and offered eternal reward in heaven. Jews individually can be bad people (look at George Soros - perfect example - as well as very left-leaning actors like the late Rob Reiner), and this bad behavior can be condemned without laying it on every Jewish person alive. "Christian Zionism" in contrast sees this differently - the true devotee of this nasty cult will actually say that Jewish blood supersedes Christ's Atonement, and if a person who espouses that view is claiming to be Christian, they are in heretical territory with that. For a person like John Hagee, an evil man like George Soros can get a free pass into heaven for having the right DNA, but a true saint and Doctor of the Church like St. John Chrysostom is condemned to hell because they are not "part of the tribe." For the "Christian Zionist," the Jewish person and the state of Israel become an idol, molded in their vision of perfection and thus every time a Jewish person does something good or bad it is considered a perfect act. This denigrates Christ, the true Jewish Messiah, and it makes Israel the "god" instead of him. It is because of this "Christian Zionism" must be rightly rejected, and no sincere Christian should embrace it because it is a different religion. You cannot be Christian and a "Christian Zionist," and it is totally possible to support Israel's right to exist and the dignity of personhood of a Jewish person while also acknowledging them as being like the rest of us, sinners in need of God's grace. "Christian Zionism" then has become a golden calf to some sectors of American Evangelicalism, and has raised itself up as a counterfeit of actual Christian faith. But, lest you think American Evangelicals are the only problem, there is an equally disturbing trend among American Catholics in particular as to confusion about what Papal infallibility really is.

In the past 20 years or so, the object of the Papacy in the Roman Catholic Church tends to focus on the person rather than the office, and a confusion of sorts seems to have generated among some laypeople in the Church about this. I don't believe that even the most radical sedevacantist would deny the validity of the Papal office - that is a See that was established by Christ himself, and is a historic episcopal chair of the Church. However, what many lay Catholics fail to understand is that the person who sits on that chair still is a human being, and is subject to the same concupiscent nature to sin and other human limitations as the rest of us. The first point here to establish is that neither the office or the person is God, and therefore neither are entitled to any type of worship. You respect the office, and if the person sitting on the chair in that office is sincere and faithful to Church teaching, then you honor the person with the respect they deserve. But, due to the fact that the human holder of the office is a mortal, sinful man, does that mean that he all of a sudden assumes some sort of "holy immunity" if he openly defies 2000 years of Church teaching? The answer to that is simple - NO!!! The sitting Pope has a responsibility to uphold historic Church teaching and to make sure that the Church maintains its integrity as an institution. When a Pope fails in that role, he essentially is forfeiting his office if it is on such a scale that it brings scandal and schism to the Church. So, with that in mind, let's look at the Papacies of Leo and Francis in recent years.

Francis instituted what is called the "Synodal Church," which supporters tout as being the fulfillment of the legacy of Vatican II. However, having studied the Vatican II documents myself in my Master's program, I see little resemblance. For all the criticisms of how Vatican II has been implemented over the decades, the documents for the most part have many good things - they addressed true reform, which is necessary at times, and they also affirmed the continuity of the faith. The problem with many of the documents - in particular Gaudium et Spes - is that they often have ambiguous language embedded into them by what I believe were the periti who served as advisors to the Council Fathers - these periti included questionable figures such as Karl Rahner and Edward Schillebeeckx, both of whom had some questionable ideas. While these periti could not overtly include their own visions of the Church, they were able to nonetheless exert influence by inserting ambiguous language that can be interpreted by anyone essentially any way they chose. And, that is where some modernist ideology entered the discourse, and it is what informed even future Popes like Francis and Leo. Therefore, I don't even think it can be justified by just identifying these modernist things as "the spirit of Vatican II," as I really don't think that was the real spirit of Vatican II - it is more an issue of implementation due to taking liberties with certain ambiguities in the Council documents. This of course creates a problem for the Vatican bureaucracy - how can you, for instance, try to profess that "there is no salvation outside the Church" when at the same time you have some people taking ambiguities in documents like Gaudium et Spes to say that "all religions lead to God?" You can't have both! And, as for the definition of the Church, why is it that often many of these Vatican officials have more empathy with liberal non-Catholic hierarchs like the liberal Archpriestess of Canterbury, and then don't extend the same charity to either the SSPX or Protestant Evangelicals? And, therein lies a problem with some Catholics creating a "Pope-olatry" that is at odds with the official teaching of the Church, and this in turn makes the current person sitting on the Chair of St. Peter an idol. This is where we want to go now.

In the past couple of weeks, I have had some interesting discussions with people who think that for some reason every time a Pope farts it is new Scripture or some sort of divine revelation. For challenging them on that, I have been called "Protestant," "heathen," and "schismatic," yet all I am doing is challenging them with what the Church actually teaches. The problem with many lay Catholics is that they are not as theologically literate as they should be, and because of that they also have a mistaken view of what "Papal infallibility" actually means. Recently, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano wrote a lengthy book entitled The Capital Schism, in which he argues that there is a distinction between the Papal office itself and the one who currently holds it, and there are times when the person sitting in the chair may actually be a mortal enemy of the Papal office itself. It sort of stresses what I said earlier, in that the person and the office are two different things, and a sinful man can indeed occupy the office. When I hear uninformed lay Catholics actually say that Leo is appointed by the Holy Spirit and therefore allegiance to him must be absolute, even when he is in error, it raises concerns. No Catholic - or for that manner non-Roman Catholic Christians like the Orthodox - disputes the validity of the Papal office. The Eastern Churches have affirmed for centuries that the Bishop of Rome is a valid office. However, the Christian East in particular objects to this idea of Papal primacy, because it is giving the Bishop of Rome authority he never actually had. When that happened, problems started almost from the beginning, in that it raised the Pope to a position in which he had inflated authority, and questioning that would somehow be questioning God. What does that sound like? Every cult and new religious movement of the 20th century in particular has had undisputed leadership like that - Jim Jones, Warren Jeffs, Sun Myung Moon, etc., and the list goes on. No Eastern Church patriarch or bishop claims that type of power in all honesty, and indeed, collegiality seems to be the accepted norm in all other branches of Christendom. Therefore, it creates a sort of cult inside the Catholic Church of Papal devotees, and there is an inherent danger there - it raises a Pope to some sort of semi-divinity, and that then creates ignorance and confusion among lay Catholics who are somehow conditioned that the Pope cannot be questioned, challenged, or even stripped of his office because he was "ordained by the Holy Spirit" to have that office. And, if you somehow differ with that interpretation, you are labeled a "schismatic," "Protestant," or worse, as I have been many times, as have Archbishop Vigano and others. So, that leads to a specific problem, and this is what it is.

When a Pope is raised to be equal to or above Christ in the latter's own Church, it means that a cult has been established around that Pope, and anything therefore he does - even if it blatantly violates centuries of doctrine and tradition - is somehow holy. There are way too many Catholics who think like this, and it betrays their own ignorance as to what a Pope truly is as well as his actual responsibilities as a Pope. As for the argument of "the Holy Spirit chose him," so was King Saul chosen the same way, and look what happened there - the king the "Holy Spirit chose" ended up consulting familiar spirits with a witch later. And, even if this is the case, God may have another purpose for allowing a wicked king or an errant Pope to occupy an office - he may be using it to winnow his harvest. Just because the Holy Spirit chooses something does not make it a blessing - at times it can be a judgment too. So, did the Holy Spirit choose Leo and/or Francis to occupy the Papal office because they are holy men and everything they do is blessed of God? Not necessarily - God may have bad Popes sitting on the throne of St. Peter in order to chastise his Church. That means that perhaps we shouldn't see the Pope as a divine vessel, but rather as an instrument of judgment to separate the true Church from the false one. God is ultimately in control of all things, yes, but that does not mean that the person God allows to occupy a position of power is somehow anointed of him - it may mean God is allowing a season of self-examination to test where his people stand. So, don't be quick to defend a Pope when you know he is wrong just because you think "God put him there." That becomes idolatry, and the reason that guy is sitting in that seat of authority may be to expose that idolatry rather than affirm it. So, for those of you who think Leo is farting divine decrees whenever he drops a deuce in the Vatican commode, I would challenge you to think of this another way - and, self-examination may expose the idolatry you might be sheltering in your own soul if you think the Pope is above the Tradition and Scripture that has guided the Church for two centuries. I think that is the point Vigano and others are trying to make too, and we would do well to listen.

These two forms of idolatry in American Christianity - the Protestant idolatry of "Christian Zionism" and the Catholic idolatry of Papal exaltation to a level the Papacy cannot claim - are why in many cases we have failed in the culture wars in the past. When we realize that neither Bibi Netanyahu nor Leo XIV fart rainbows (and dare I add Donald Trump to that too), the sooner we come to understand that there is something greater than we can see and it should move upon us to seek it out. May God heal our nation, but may he also help educate our people to understand that misplaced devotion in the wrong things will only end up disappointing. Thanks for allowing me to share, and will see you next time.

Upcoming Things

2026-09-23T15:09:36.544-07:00

This is a short post today just to give an idea of what we are going to be discussing for probably the remainder of this year, as there are a couple of important topics I want to explore. Creating a lot of information with a personal touch has been the overall dynamic of what I do here, and have been for approximately 16 years now. While I originally started this blog as a sort of creative outlet for just random thoughts, I can see how it has evolved over the years to include a variety of topics ranging from political and religious trends, to memory exploration, and to specific ideas. And although I don't make them available for mass markets, I also do print all of the blogs for each year into their own books at the end of the year, usually meaning that the last blog post for a given year is mid-December (there are exceptions to that, such as this year's book when I compile it, given I had two other posts post-publication of the previous year). If anyone reading this is interested in obtaining those, feel free to send me a message and I can tell you how to get them. At this time, there are eleven volumes of them, and this year will be twelve once it is published. I do these as a sort of "yearbook" of my work, and it makes them look good on a shelf. Let me talk about how that evolved in a moment.

Back in 2013, I was starting to preserve physical copies of my articles, and did so by essentially printing them out and first putting them into sheet protectors and three-ring binders, and then later using my GBC to comb-bind them. That in all honesty did not look good, and the volumes were clumsy and not as easy to access. When I published my first book in 2014, an idea hit me - why couldn't I create bound blog books each year too? When I compiled the first of these at the beginning of 2015, it consisted of two large volumes of over 500 pages each, as I was essentially compiling 5 years worth of articles at that point. However, I was impressed overall with the way they turned out, as my self-publishing service, Lulu, does good work with binding and everything. From that point, I made a commitment to print these out every year and have them in bound volumes, and they varied by years - for instance, the 2019 book was tiny, as was the one for the years 2020-2022, as I didn't write as much then. However, the books for 2023-2025 were massive, as I tended to write a lot more then. I also had the idea in the earlier volumes to include things from my old Bebo page and my early Facebook notes, both of which were earlier attempts before I was able to set up this Blogspot site. The articles contained in those date back as far as at least 2006, and while they were not as extensive they did provide a sort of picture of how I was evolving as a blogger. And, that leads me to talk about a few things relative to this too.

Most of us recall the earliest days of social media. For the most part, before Facebook became a thing sometime around 2007, the major social media site was called MySpace. Many older people (I doubt the Gen Z crowd will) probably remember those early MySpace days. I never liked MySpace personally, so I never actually had a MySpace account, but it had competition even back in the day. One of the less-traveled competitors of MySpace was a similar site called Bebo, and I did have a Bebo account for a number of years - I signed up with that back in 2005, and used it as a sort of impromptu writing platform once I became more familiar with it. In many ways, Bebo was essentially a MySpace knockoff, but more people my age used it because to me and some others I had talked to then, MySpace was more or less a place for teenage girls and effete metrosexual guys to hang out, and it just had little interest from me - I feel the same about TikTok now, as I don't have a TikTok either and am not too enthusiastic to get one. But then 2008 came, and Facebook made its appearance on the cyberstage, and it appealed to everyone. I was invited by a dear friend to sign up for it then, and I did. That was about 18 years ago, and I am still fairly active on Facebook even today. Upon entering the Facebook universe, I discovered their "Notes" feature then (I think they may still have that, but am not sure) - so, as part of my active presence, I started doing weekly "Notes" on that, and continued to do so until about two years later when I found out I could actually have a true blog site, which is how I ended up here. So, I have about 2 years or so of Facebook "Notes" that I may or may not have published in a blog book yet, so I will have to go back and check that. If not, I may give them a separate book with the Bebo posts, and that will constitute a prequel to this blog. This is actually a good time to be talking about this, as I have just hit my 16th year anniversary publishing blogs like this, and I am very appreciative to Blogspot for allowing me to do so. While I haven't gotten a huge amount of traffic (I can count my actual followers here on my fingertips), I do occasionally get nice messages and notes from people and those are always appreciated. I have had the occasional trouble though - last year, a disgruntled Fundie who I evaluated took issue and almost cost me my teaching position, but thankfully the school administration saw beyond it and it blew over. I suppose when you put yourself out there in the public square, there will always be a malicious pigeon that wants to crap on the monument of your achievement, but you just wash the crap off and continue on. There is a good life lesson in that somewhere I have to revisit too.

This blog was actually the second of three I had started back in early 2010, as Barbara encouraged me then to use online opportunities as a resource to get my own word out as a sort of ministry or something, and that is how the first blog, Sacramental Present Truths, began. Some months later, I started this blog, which originally had the stupid name of "The Creative Side of David" before I finally changed it to "David's Mountain Memories." When you are trying to think of a title of something, it pays to sound it out first before settling, because in a pinch you can come up with some idiotic names and people notice that. "The Creative Side of David" made me sound more like a metrosexual hippie, and it really wasn't me, so I am glad I did change it eventually. The URL for it though has not changed, but no one will notice that anyway so I don't worry about it. The food blog "From David's Kitchen," came shortly after, and the end result of that is my cookbook I just published a couple of months ago. As cooking and trying to immortalize some of my favorite (and least-favorite in a couple of cases) restaurants made up a substantial interest of its own, I wanted at the time a separate platform for that. However, as the years commenced, it became clear that it was more practical to combine everything into one blog, and since this one had the most activity, it was the one I decided to continue by integrating SPT first in 2022, and at the end of this year I am also merging the food/restaurant blog into this one as well. Starting next year, this will be my sole publishing platform, although I am going to leave the other two sites up for archival purposes in case anyone needs to access them. And, that means I have a short word to say about the blog's future before moving forward.

I have essentially decided to close the blog on my 60th birthday, which is in 3 years. So, I will continue to write and add content regularly for another couple of years, and on December 31, 2029, we will say farewell to it. In this next three years, I have some more in-depth topics to explore, and that will start with what I plan on rounding this year out with.

For upcoming articles here, I am planning on doing a more deep-dive commentary into dream interpretation from a Catholic perspective, as I have a couple of books to peruse as well as some other important material. I want to do something on this because in recent years dream interpretation has become more of an interest, but it is also dominated by occultists, Jungian psychology, and hyper-Pentecostals. Based on the fact that I believe dreams are nothing to dismiss as well as also wanting to present a sound Christian perspective, I want to give my thoughts on what I am reading as well as giving some basic ideas for people who may be pondering the question as to whether their own dreams have meaning. I will be writing that in the next couple of weeks. The other article is also very entailed, and it has to do with some Georgian writers I find interesting, including one of my favorite authors named Konstantin Gamsakhurdia as well as the work of Ilia Chavchavadze. These are writers that most American and European people have heard little about, but they have some profound ideas they communicate in their works. So, at some point in October we are going to explore them as well. I have a vested interest in the nation of Georgia as well, and feel that it is a mission to help more Americans appreciate Georgian literature (and the beautiful polyphonic singing they are noted for as well, not to mention their food - I love khatchapuri, although without the raw egg!). As one of the oldest Christian nations in the world, Georgia is integral to me to know more about, and thankfully here in Baltimore we do have a good Georgian restaurant (I reviewed it last year too on my food blog). That gives you an idea of what I will be exploring as this year begins to wind down, so stay tuned.

Anyway, that is a quick catch-up of everything, so will see you next time!

Decisions, Decisions!

2026-09-22T09:29:52.600-07:00

As I am writing this on a rainy Tuesday morning, I am at a series of crossroads, and feel like there is a traffic light that won't turn green. It gets frustrating, aggravating, and just fuels the natural human trait of impatience. However, in the midst of this, I have come to a few new decisions about myself that I feel need to happen, and currently am moving forward on some of them while waiting for the ability to do so with others. While obviously there are no promises about life being easy, in all honesty if one works toward something it should at least get easier. This is where I am in my mind right now, and it is a lot to sort out. However, there are a couple of things I am almost certain about at this point, and I wanted to talk about those.

My Christian faith is an integral part of my existence, as without it I am not sure where I would be at. But, at this point in time I am questioning some things about what I should do, and while my basic faith will remain the same, the setting in which I will live it out is at this point up for change in all honesty. By faith, I am a very committed Catholic - it took a long time to come to terms with my faith, a lot of struggles, a lot of questions, and I believe I am in a good place with my personal faith. However, the church I am part of right now is something I am not absolutely sure about, and I wanted to spend some time talking about that today.

As you have heard me say before, I am of the conviction that the term "Catholic" is not the monopoly of a bunch of Vatican bureaucrats who don't practice what they preach themselves. And, the inconsistency coming from the Vatican apparatus in recent years has got me concerned - is the Roman Catholic Church even truly "Catholic" anymore, or is it just a platitude to them? The recent pronouncements of Pope Leo and his second-in-command, a pervert in a cardinal hat by the name of Fernandez, makes me wonder about this. On one hand, they are booting out the SSPX and other conservative and traditionalist clergy, even excommunicating them. On the other, now there are pronouncements saying that conversion is "not necessary" as well as a bunch of universalist BS like "all religions lead to God" and other such stuff. This represents both an inconsistency and a contradiction - if indeed, as the Church has taught for centuries, that "there is no salvation outside the Church" and then in the next breath saying that all religions are the same, it causes some serious problems. You have to be either/or, and not both/and, in this case, and the one negates the other. I mean, seriously, have we not affirmed the Law of Non-Contradiction for centuries, meaning that something cannot be and not be at the same time? This bad inconsistency on the part of the Pope and some of the Sadduccees that advise him is causing a lot of confusion among the faithful, and this is why perhaps it is time to face up to reality that perhaps the Roman Catholic Church is not the Catholic Church, and that begs another question: What is the true Catholic Church then? This is the fundamental question at the root of the personal reflection I have been doing recently, and it has led me to look into something much more radical. That is what I want to share now.

Based on how my own faith formation has shaped me, there are two defining principles to ecumenism that guide me. The first is what is called the Augustinian Affirmation, and although I am not sure whether St. Augustine said this or not, it is still a sound principle:

In essentials, unity

In non-essentials, liberty

In all things, charity

We are going to spend a little time on this, as I am also coming at this from the position of a former Protestant who became Catholic. I believe for one thing in what is called a "hierarchy of truths," but I am going to define it differently here based on how it relates to other Christians. In the way I would see this, there are two tiers:

Tier one: The truths all Christians - Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox - share that makes us Christians.

Tier two: Sacramental truth - this applies to other Apostolic Churches such as the Orthodox, other types of Catholics, Oriental Churches, and the Assyrian Church of the East, as well as some Anglo-Catholics and high-Church Lutherans. A sacramental understanding is shared by such groups, and it gives a validity to sacramental grace being received in any of these contexts

This means that we can accept other Christians as Christians because they share a faith with us that has fundamental beliefs we share with them too. I know that some radicals on all sides of this would have problems, but let them - ultimately, God will determine who or who did not serve him. The affirmation attributed to Augustine attests to this as well.

The second principle I stand on regarding how I see other Christians I relate to is called the Vincentian Canon, and you have heard me talk about this before. It essentially affirms that what constitutes "being Catholic" is that which has been held in all times, all places, and by everyone who affirms the truths. While this would be more specific to the second-tier application of the Augustinian affirmation, to a degree it also can be applicable to non-sacramental Christians of sound faith like Evangelicals and Pentecostals. I think also that is one of the positives of Vatican II as well, in that it does view Protestants as "separated brethren" rather than some sort of heretical schismatics because in their wisdom the Council Fathers did understand that these people are fellow Christians and not a whole different religion or anything. Question is though, how was this implemented? I want to get into some problems with the way the Vatican has played fast and loose with ecumenism over the past 50 or so years, and that will give you an idea of where I am going.

I have made the statement many times that it is not so much Vatican II that went wrong so much as it is how some radicals implemented Vatican II reforms. No place is this clearer than ecumenism. If the Church were truly as grounded as it claims to be, then on a larger level the Vatican should have been seeking out relationships with Christians who at least had solid convictions - the Evangelicals, the Orthodox, more traditional/conservative Anglicans and Old Catholics, etc. Instead, it seems like some figures in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church have taken an inconsistent approach to how they engage in ecumenical affairs - they tend to form bonds with liberals, non-Christian religious traditions, and even heretical sects like Mormons rather than with those Christians who actually adhere to historic positions that are professed officially by the Catholic Church. The inconsistency has grown more flagrant under both the regimes of Francis and Leo, in that faithful Catholics like Fr. Frank Pavone, Archbishop Carlo Vigano, and the SSPX, are given excommunication exactly for being faithful Catholics, but then Fernandez and the other bureaucrats in the Vatican turn right around and kiss the posteriors of Islam and radicalized mainstream Protestant liberals. Saying the St. Michael Prayer at the end of a Mass in some dioceses is forbidden, but by all means put up a Pachamama or a Santa Muerte idol. This type of inconsistency is what is making me formulate questions about whether or not I should stay identifiably Roman Catholic or not. After months of ruminating over this, I have begun to make some inquiries of my own, and I want to talk at length about that now.

I have shared my story already about my close relationship with the Armenian people, and a few weeks ago I also talked about visiting an Armenian church in Washington, DC. There was an experience in that liturgy (Badarak) there which caused some things to surface for me, and in the past couple of weeks I have begun to make inquiries about what it would entail to be received into the Armenian Church as a full communicant. Being as a Catholic I already share the same sacraments with them, I don't think the process will be all that complicated, but I currently am waiting on Ter Hovsep, the priest at that parish, to respond to me. I am also inquiring of the other Armenian church down there, Soorp Khatch (Holy Cross), about the same thing. Once I am better informed either way, I will make a decision before year's end about what the next steps will be. Please keep me in your prayers, and I will share more details later.

Thanks again for allowing me to ramble today, and will see you again soon.

Reflections

2026-09-19T09:07:40.535-07:00

I had originally started to do some reflections earlier this morning, but then decided to start over, so here we are. I am not sure where this particular discussion is going to go, so just enjoy the ride today.

I am in the process of reading up on some Catholic resources regarding dream interpretation, and there are woefully few of them. As a matter of fact, the Christian market in general tends to not have a lot devoted to this topic, as many of the books on it that are out there tend to either be from hyper-Pentecostals or New Agers and occultists, with some secular Jungian psychology thrown in. I have two books in particular I wanted to look at once I have them, as well as some notes from a Catholic priest, Fr. Chris Alar, that did some teaching on the topic too, so once I do I want to tackle the topic myself. I tend to believe in the significance of dreams, as they often tell us things about our own inner thoughts that we either don't face up to or maybe don't fully understand. Not every dream is a message from God either obviously, as I am of the belief that many dreams are just our way of coping with those times in life when we have stress and anxiety. However, that does not rule out the possibility of spiritual significance in some dreams either, and I have had some dreams that told me some things too. I won't get into all that here, but within the next week or two I will have a more detailed discussion on the topic.

As I write this, I am in a bit of a state of flux myself. Have you ever been on that verge of something to happen, but the wait is excruciating for it? That is kind of where I am right now, and it is about to get on my last nerve in all honesty. I won't go into details of the specifics on this, but I am waiting on some news for some things, and if you don't mind doing so, for those reading this just keep me in your prayers. Thanks for that, and in time I may share some retrospection on it all, but for now I am not sure of a few details myself so I can't really say much.

I wanted to talk about a movie I watched last night. It is an old movie, and it is one many are familiar with probably as it was released in 1996 and titled Matilda. The movie had an all-star cast, including Rhea Perlman, Danny DeVito, the young actress Mara Wilson, and even Pee Wee Herman (Paul Reubens) makes an appearance as a cop. The plot of the movie is this young girl, Matilda, who is born into a family of idiots - the father, Harry, is a crooked car salesman, while the mother, Zinnia, is a self-absorbed bingo-obsessed bored housewife. The couple could care less about Matilda, as she is essentially just an unwanted addition to the home, and she is often neglected and diminished by her parents (who don't even know her actual age). In her solitude though, little Matilda develops her mental abilities quickly, with a real hunger for reading in particular, and for a young girl her age she shows a remarkable self-sufficiency. Due to the selfish neglect of her parents, Matilda doesn't even get to go to school yet but she teaches herself things and advances even without the benefit of formal education. Then one day, her dad sells a car to this nasty big woman named Trunchbull, who happens to be the principal at an academy, and for a deal on the car Harry the dad agrees to enroll Matilda in the school. Matilda at first is overjoyed, but that fades quickly when the extent of tyranny Trunchbull rules the school is on full display. However, the bright spot in this story is a pretty and very sweet young teacher, Miss Honey, who immediately takes an interest in Matilda and helps her to focus the intelligence she has, and in the process they grow close. However, a sub-plot to this is that Trunchbull is actually Miss Honey's step-aunt, and the tragic story of that was that her father died under mysterious circumstances and "Aunt Trunchbull" gained custody of the young girl but was abusive to her. As the movie progresses, Matilda's parents become targets of an investigation (her ditzy mom thinks the FBI agents staking out their house are speed boat salesmen, although Matilda knows better) and justice is eventually meted out to Trunchbull for her sins and she is forced to leave the school. Miss Honey then becomes principal, then adopts Matilda (her parents were more than happy to do that), and the school turns around almost overnight. The movie itself is really cute, and I have seen it several times over the years, but there are some lessons in it for us that I think carry significant value, so our discussion will pivot to that today.

Matilda is a picture of many of us - we face adversities where those who should be the closest to us are often the ones who are quick to isolate and dismiss us. However, rather than being a punishment, the isolation caused by adversity can be an important teacher for us, as it helps us to really lean into our own unique strengths. The part I omitted was that Matilda's expanding mind also allowed her to have some very unique powers, and that played a role in bringing justice both to Trunchbull and her deadbeat parents. Obviously, we are not able to make things move at the point of a finger like Matilda did as a special power, but we can cultivate other talents even when people don't recognize them. When I watch that movie as a matter of fact, I also see a lot of myself in it, as I was a kid who achieved much despite adversities in life. Likewise, we all encounter the Trunchbulls - those people who threaten us because they either don't understand us or they have an agenda and we pose a threat to them. In more real-life terms, I call the Trunchbulls I face "gate-keepers," as they are always creating obstacles to impede or prevent progress. The key to overcoming those is not to fight them, but to strategically know how to target their weaknesses, and to use our own strengths to outshine them. The Miss Honeys are also in our lives too, and those are the people who do believe in us and are our encouragers and cheerleaders. They are an integral part in the role they play to helping us be our better selves. It is also possible that in some aspects of our lives, we are the Matildas, but in other aspects we are the Miss Honeys. And, to be completely honest, some of us have the potential to be Trunchbulls too. A few think they are being a Miss Honey when in reality they are actually being Trunchbulls - we see that now in the current Vatican leadership, and it is a factor in some decisions I am in the process of making too. The best way though to get rid of a "gate-keeper" is to dismantle the "gate" from which they draw their power, and smart warfare mandates that we do this as the best course of action, as often the "gate-keeper" will destroy us if we take them on head-on. Bottom line, a young Matilda has the potential of growing into either a Miss Honey or a Trunchbull, so it is up to the formation of that young Matilda to choose the right way. We all start out as Matildas in some aspect for sure, but what we blossom into depends on how we overcome adversities and other things. That is a major lesson I draw from this.

I like watching movies to get ideas, although I am also just entertained as a good movie on occasion is a nice diversion from the rigors of life. However, on occasion that idea finds you, and when it jumps out at you, it is important you grab it. Culture is designed - when it is appreciated properly - to create inspiration in others. Literature, film, music...they can all stimulate ideas and inspiration. And, a whole lesson can come from watching a movie like Matilda, even if it isn't the original intended message of the movie itself. In the future I will probably add more insights like this as well.

Thank you for allowing me to share, and will see you next time.

God's Promises, and What to Pray For

2026-09-18T08:58:20.455-07:00

This is a sort of challenging lesson to share, as it does entail a few things that I have struggled with at times, but I think people need to hear it. I know that many people are familiar with the ramblings of televangelists "claiming" this and that "in Jesus's Name" all the time, and as they do so often they are talking about some pretty extravagant stuff - one, Jesse DuPlantis, even swore that "God told him" to get a $40 private jet. And, of course those of us old enough to remember the televangelist scandals of the late 1980s remember some of that stuff too - Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's air-conditioned doghouse, Oral Roberts saying "God was going to call him home" from the top of a tower if he didn't raise millions of dollars, and other such antics. Much of that stuff starts out with a Bible verse, and then with some esoteric nonsense from the New Thought movement and other sources, it gets twisted into what is called the "Prosperity Gospel," or as its detractors call it, "Blab it and Grab it." For a short time in my early 20s, I was mildly involved with some of that too, as I used to listen to people like Kenneth Copeland and Benny Hinn, and I even got to see the granddaddy of that movement, Kenneth Hagin, in person at a meeting he held in Ozark, Alabama, back in 1990. However, when you see the futility of that garbage, you quickly come to understand how harmful it is - I mean, seriously, if that crap worked, then why aren't the parking lots of the megachurches that preach that stuff filled with Porsches and Rolls Royces? Likewise, with all the inconsistencies and scandals that happen in those circles, one would think that people would catch on to the con, but they don't - "Christian TV" is still as popular today as it was 40 years ago, and variations of the same nonsense are still out there. However, instead of the "old guard" like Marilyn Hickey, Benny Hinn, Morris Cerullo, John Avanzini, Kenneth Hagin, and Oral Roberts (the majority of whom are now deceased), a new group of snake-oil salesmen are out there with an even more blatant display - people like Joel Osteen, Kathryn Krick, Steve Furtick, Todd Bentley, Paula White, and that Bethel crowd. And, when they become old and pass away, provided Christ tarries long enough, there will be another group of these who will pop up like bad weeds in a cornfield, and they keep reproducing themselves. Observing this though, a question popped into my mind based upon a position I take in studying stuff like this - is there any truth to what these people say, or is it completely a lie? And, if there is truth, how do we peel away the nonsense to get to it? That is what I wanted to talk about today, and hopefully this helps someone else who has been through the wringer of life as I have many times.

I have talked some in my Genesis study (which is now available as a book on Amazon if you are interested) about something called euhemerism. Euhemerism is a position that presupposes essentially that at the root of every mythology is a fact that inspired the myth. From a Christian perspective, this is the view that proves that the Flood legends of many cultures are indeed fact, because they confirm a central truth in Scripture that there was a great Flood - cultures from the Maya to the Chinese have flood legends. If it is a universal theme, then something must have been the source of the various myths and legends, and as a euhemerist myself and a historian, it is a goal to find out what that was. There are other things too like this - dragon legends, the existence of giant races of people, etc. The man this theory was named after was Euhemerus of Messene, and he based his theory on the fact that in Greek mythology, there are two classes of pagan deities - one is earthly, meaning they were based on actual historical figures like kings and such, and the second is a heavenly class, the Olympians, who could be observed in nature (Nickolas Roubekas, An Ancient Theory of Religion: Euhemerism from Antiquity to the Present. New York: Routledge, 2017: xv). As this theory evolved, two varieties of it came into existence. The first, secular euhemerism, presupposed that mythical imagery could be easily explained with natural phenomena, and the lack of a modern name for whatever it was led to the divinization of whatever the entity was. The second, Christian euhemerism, established that many ancient myths were corrupted versions of something factual that Scripture as God's Word documented, and that the scattering at Babel of humanity is what led to a variety of interpretations and corruptions of truth. I fall into this second camp myself. However, the discipline of euhemerism is not only applicable to the mythologies of ancient civilizations - it can be used as a tool to discern truth behind heretical belief systems. When approaching the "Prosperity Gospel," we must therefore do so from the perspective that it is essentially a mythology, and a corruption of actual truths. False teachers have used a core truth to wrap corruption around ever since the serpent beguiled Eve in the Garden in Genesis 3. Therefore, it created two problems. For one, the falsehood far eclipsed the original truth, and people associate these teachings with complete falsehood, and rightly so. However, secondly, it also means that a core truth is being missed because we associate language related to it with a false religious movement like the so-called "Prosperity Gospel." Perhaps it is time to revisit those core truths, view them in their proper context, and perhaps it will help us make sense of things we experience in life. So that is where this teaching is going. I am probably going to be writing on this for a couple of days, so bear with me.

In my many years of the Christian walk and also many hours of studying Holy Scripture, I have deduced that there are three things based on God's promises that we can (and indeed should) pray for. I am just listing them here, and the Scriptural passages that back them up will come later in the discussion:

1. Protection from the destruction of adversity

2. Provision of needs

3. Direction in decisions.

I am going to take these now one by one and elaborate upon them.

First, protection from the destruction of adversity is an integral one to understand. We all know adversity happens - it is not adversity itself we are protected from, but rather destruction based on adversity. The story of Job is perhaps the best illustration of this because God allowed a lot of crap to happen to Job, but he warned Satan that there were limits to what could be done. The ultimate purpose of adversity is for growth and the development of character, and God has limits as to what can actually come against us. It also is not a "get out of jail free" card to exempt us from sin and death, because we live in a fallen world, and ultimately every one of us will face death unless the Parousia happens. That death can be untimely, or it could be the end of a natural process (old age), but it is inevitable. However, the will of God is the determining factor in that - if God doesn't want you to go yet, then you won't go. This is why divine healing is possible today and we cannot - despite some fatalistic Calvinist heresies that are more pagan than Christian - deny the fact God can heal of any disease, even the most terminal, provided he still has plans for the person suffering it on the earth. Therefore, it is not wrong nor is it a sin to ask for healing from illness, or even deliverance from adversity - we ultimately don't know God's will, but we are given promises we can rely on for protection. It is at this point I want to address perhaps the best-known of those promises now.

Ephesians 6:10-18 is the famous "armor of God" Scripture, and although I went in detail on that in my Ephesians study I published in 2014, it is important to understand. As part of my daily prayer regimen, I usually "take on" the armor of God daily, and there is a significance to each piece of that armor as it regards how we are protected. However, the key aspect of this is in verse 10, which reminds us that the armor is to protect us and enable us to stand against the enemy's schemes, and to stand despite any assault launched against us. This pairs with another Scripture as well, that being Isaiah 54:7 - "no weapon formed against me shall prosper." In my own prayer regimen, I combine this with the "armor of God" passage in Ephesians 6 as I pray protection over myself every day. Notice what these passages actually say though - they are not a guarantee against spiritual or daily adversity, but they guarantee that the person will be protected from destruction from such attacks. The promise here is that if God called you to something (and here, I reference Romans 11:29, meaning God cannot take them back once he has given those to you) then you must prevail to carry out that plan. This is God's own promise, not mine or anyone else's - it means that when adversity hits, you have the choice to ask for protection, and you can remind God he is obligated by his own promises to provide that. As this is the most basic promise God has made, it means that it is the one easiest to appeal to and usually that prayer is answered on a daily basis. Again, unlike the "blab and grab" televangelists say, this does not mean that you will avoid adversity, but rather that with God's protection you will prevail against it. And, even in the rare case God brings natural death through the adversity, the reason is that whatever God was doing in your life will impact and touch others regardless.

The second one is the complicated one that brings a lot of controversy to people, and it also is the source for a lot of bad theology because it is misinterpreted in popular spirituality so much. This of course is the provision of needs. The verse for this is located in Philippians 4:19, and it says simply "God shall supply all your needs according to his riches in glory." Focus here is on the word needs. Because we live in a fallen world, our bodies require a lot of needs - we need shelter, food, clothing, transportation to get about, and a few other things specific to the time in history we live in, such as open communication media and such. All over Scripture, from even as far back as Genesis 3 and the Fall, there is evidence God supplies needs - he clothed Adam and Eve in the Garden when they fell and were aware they were as naked as jaybirds, and later in Exodus he provided manna and quail in the wilderness, as well as fresh water from a rock, so the Israelites could survive in the wilderness. Later, he provided Elijah food brought by birds when he was hiding from possible execution by Ahab after challenging the demon god Ba'al. A little later on, his disciple Elisha fed a woman with just a little oil and flour during a famine. Then, going back to Genesis, God gave Joseph wisdom to prepare for rough times in Egypt. In the New Testament, we see Jesus multiplying fish and bread to feed thousands, turning water to wine to make sure party guests had refreshments, pulling a coin out of a fish's mouth to pay a tax, giving direction to Peter and the other disciples on where to cast a net to get the most fish, and on and on that goes. These circumstances all demonstrated a need that was provided for, and thus we have every right to ask God about our needs - if you are struggling to make bills because those job offers are not calling, you have a right to ask God to help with that. Like adversity though, needs are inevitable - without those basic necessities, our very survival could be at stake. But, what if it seems God doesn't listen to your prayers? Well, this is where I want to get personal in reflecting about my own circumstances at times.

First, I want to look at Genesis 32:22-32. In this passage, Jacob was on the run from Esau, and the reckoning had finally come for them to confront each other. Jacob was naturally scared - if he had the birthright, what would happen if his estranged brother killed his whole legacy? Obviously having this weighing on his mind, Jacob cannot sleep that night, and is sitting by a river just pondering everything when a strange individual all of a sudden comes up and engages in a tussle with Jacob. They fight, and fight, and fight, until the morning sun dawned on the eastern horizon. In this struggle Jacob was prevailing, and as a sort of defense measure to gain the upper hand, the other person dislocates Jacob's hip, but Jacob refuses to let go until he is blessed. Although Scripture says this being was an angel, there are Church traditions that talk about this as being Christ himself - remember, Christ is eternal, begotten not made, and even pre-existent before his Incarnation, so it makes sense. The mysterious figure (Christ?) does bless Jacob, and also bestows a new name - he is no longer the "deceiver," but instead is Israel, "one who wrestles with God and prevails." Jacob (now Israel) does not prevail of his own merit though, but because God let him. The result? The meeting with Esau turns into a joyful reunion, and all turns out well. So, what does that mean personally? This is where I want to be personal.

In my prayers over the years, I grew impatient to the point I would sometimes call God every name in the book, cussing him out, and then throwing ultimatums at him to do something. These were times when I was on the brink of losing a home, or needed income from a job, or something else I faced. There are these long, dead silent times where you feel God is not listening to you at all, and it does grate on the nerves a little - lest you condemn me, let me remind you that probably you have felt that way too at some point, so just "fess up" and be honest before you judge, OK? One verse I tend to remind God of at that point is Philippians 4:19, but I also remind him of his own parables in the Gospels, particularly one that comes up in Luke 11:11 - that is the passage where it says that if a son asks for a fish, will the father give him a snake? Or if he asks for bread, will he get a rock? The passage then goes on to say that if a wicked father loves their kids enough to give them basic nourishment, then shouldn't our heavenly Father do even better? I have to be honest with you - I often feel like I have been bitten by too many snakes over the years and have broken too many teeth trying to chew rocks, so it gets a bit flustering asking over, and over, and over and still meeting dead silence. This is true especially when you are down to a bottle of water in your refrigerator and have an eviction notice sitting on your kitchen table. I know what you are thinking too, because I have thought the same things - you know you have been a decent believer, because you tithe, you go to church regularly, and although you are not perfect, you are at least as consistent about your personal life as you are able to be, and yet you are seeing far more evil people getting blessed abundantly while with each passing day your savings trickle and those bills are coming due quickly with no resources to take care of them. You see false teachers like Kenneth Copeland jetting around in $40 million aircraft, yet you are trying to figure out how to even afford the bus ticket to get to your work the next day. I know - that has been me at different points in my life. You go through a cycle - am I doing something wrong, did I miss something, or what in hell is going on?? You are drawing blanks as this stuff floods your thoughts, and it is literally driving you nuts. You hear some TV preacher saying to "claim" things (which, conditionally, will only work if you send a thousand dollar "seed" to them - in other words, your monthly expenses) and wonder "is there a way I can actually do that which doesn't entail heresy?" You are scared, desperate, and impatient, and finally you lash out at God because his silence is becoming intolerable and deafening. You yell at God, you bargain with God, you put out fleeces to get answers, and nothing - you are ready to second-guess your own faith and wonder if it is even worth it to serve a God who seemingly could care less about your situation. But, if you know Scripture, you know God makes promises, and being God is the source of ultimate truth, he cannot lie (see passages such as John 14:6, Romans 11:29, Deuteronomy 31:8, Isaiah 40:31, and of course Philippians 4:19). So, if it is a promise he has already made, then he is obligated by covenant to fulfill it. And, this is where some clarification is needed so you understand the proper context of what this actually means.

God said he will supply our needs and not our wants. So, to begin, do you really need a Porsche, or do you really need a 14-room sprawling estate in Beverly Hills?? No, most of us don't. But, we do need proper shelter, and our jobs often depend on reliable transportation. And, if there is indeed a calling on our lives, our security with basic needs is what the salvation of souls only we can reach is contingent upon - if we are smothered in burdens, we cannot effectively do what God called us to do. This is why God is obligated to meet basic needs for us, and to help us to get to that next level. Now, there is anothe factor here too many don't understand. If you hear these televangelists screaming about "claiming this" or "confessing that," they are wrong on a fundamental level - are those things they supposedly are telling you to "claim" something that fits your own abilities? What do I mean by that? If you have an advanced degree, a good employment record that reflects years of experience, and the talents and skills necessary to be at a certain level in your life, you deserve to have what comes with that because you actually earned it and can stake a claim to what rightfully should be yours. If you have a background that merits you landing that $100K annual salary, then you have every right to pray and even claim that particular door to open. And, until it does, God obligates himself to keep promises to provide for your needs. A lot more of this also is intertwined with seeking direction too, but all three of these interrelate, which is why they are fundamental promises we have every right to ask God for. You will hear others on the other side of the spectrum - the "humbly proud" overly-altruistic crowd - say that we should embrace suffering, and that it is "our cross to bear." Ummm...let me put that to rest right now. What they are talking about is the idea of "being persecuted for righteousness's sake," and it has to do with being honest and bold in the proclamation of our faith, even if it could have consequences for us. That is actually a noble stand, and nothing wrong with that. However, the super-altruistic crowd get it as wrong as the "blab it and grab it" bunch when they say and twist that to mean that you just roll over and accept your fate - it will be alarming to see how many souls were condemned to hell because of the failure of these people to actually have a backbone to do what Scripture says and "earnestly contend for the faith." What we are talking about has nothing to do with the salvation of our souls and eternal destiny - these are things that affect us in the present moment, and I don't see anything in Scripture saying that it is somehow a sin to actually stand up to claim that which truly is rightfully yours if you have invested time and resources into it. I am going to one day do a whole other study tackling fake altruism as well, because it is just as big of a problem as the "positive confession" TV preachers, and both of them have their roots in the sin of pride. If the faux altruists really wanted to help and encourage people - and forgive the coarse language here - then they should get off their lazy, cowardly asses and maybe help out those who are really struggling and do deserve better because they earned it and maybe that is the answer God is providing. And, that gets me off on one other thing with this.

At times when we holler at God and cuss him out in our prayers, the fact of the matter is that maybe he has answered our need, but the channels he moved upon to answer either ignored him or they are just too prideful and cowardly to step up. I have seen a lot of that too, and it sickens me how supposed "believers" (even clergy) act when someone is really trying to reach out. My ex Barbara had something like this happen to her recently. She was having some serious medical issues at the time, and at the parish we attended here at Baltimore at the time she approached the Dominican friar who pastors there about it one Sunday after Mass. I have been in parishes where, if a parishioner expresses a need for prayer for an illness, the priest drops everything and prays right there at that moment. Fr. Grassi, our former pastor at St. James in Charles Town, WV, was like that - his heart for his parishioners was so compassionate, and he embodied what a pastor should be. You would think that a priest in a religious order - especially a Dominican friar like the priest at this parish in Baltimore is - to even have that charism more so. But, he didn't - when Barbara approached him about her medical issue, all he told her was that "it is your cross to bear," and then said a "God bless you," and that was it - no prayer, no compassion, no nothing. Later, we stopped going to that particular parish for another - and related - reason, but the Dominican failed in his calling that day. No hope, no encouragement, and not even a prayer - just a dismissive "it's your cross to bear" crap. Especially if someone has a pastoral calling, this is unacceptable. If you are in a church with a callous minister like that, get out now - go somewhere where the priest or minister actually cares. I have a similar beef with these self-proclaimed "social justice warriors" as well, like the campus minister at the school where I used to teach. For all his screaming the word "justice," this man is a fraud, and he is all about agendas and not service. A person like that should not be a position of pastoral care of any type, lay or ordained. While the "cross to bear" thing has some merit - yes, those exist - it also means that someone needs to be there to support an encourage you when that burden gets intense. Even Jesus, when he was being crucified, had a humble African named Symeon of Cyrene to help him. Where are the Symeons these days?? It seems like the Judases and hirelings are outnumbering them in the Church. I got a bit down a rabbit trail with that, but it also illustrates that maybe on occasion our anger is misdirected at God when the very person who could be the answer to our prayers chooses not to listen - we don't know that obviously at times, and may not even know who that potential person is, but because of their failure it hits us hard too. I know that illustrates another dimension we only see in retrospection, but you get the idea that often it feels like we are facing things alone, and God's apparent silence coupled by the lack of support from others tends to push hard against us. There are a couple of more points I will make with this before we move onto the third promise.

If God is calling you to be the encouragement to someone, I would strongly advise doing it. That person may be hanging at the end of a thread right now, and you may be the answer they need. It doesn't mean even that you have to empty your wallet and give it to them or anything like that, but maybe you have the very insight they are needing to help give that direction. Likewise, if you are the person at the end of your rope, don't settle for less than clear direction - after all, is it not God who claims he is not the author of confusion (I Corinthians 14:33)? If that is the case, it is God's obligation to do two things. First, he needs to provide clear, concise direction when you do as he commanded by asking him for it. Second, there should be no mixed signals. I know we have heard about the "still, small voice" and all that, but in all honesty, this is not always going to cut it. That "still small voice" may actually be just your own thoughts and feelings, and if you act on them you are still up against a wall. At that point the issue is not trusting God, but perhaps our own ability to clearly understand the direction, and a "still small voice" at that point is not practical. God does do the "still small voice," but it is dependent upon the situation as to whether it is clear or not. And while of course both Christ himself and St. Paul chided the Jews of his day for "seeking after signs" (Matthew 16:4, 12:39, and I Corinthians 1:22), it must be understood that we are still living a corporeal existence, and sometimes a small sign may be the only thing that shows us what we need. I believe in all honesty that the aforementioned verses about that were speaking more to two other things - first, the validity of Jesus as the Messiah, and secondly, the almost idolatrous reliance upon the supernatural that some hyper-Pentecostals display at times today - than to just a simple bit of needed direction. We all need a sign to direct us - that is what that red octagonal stop sign at the end of your street is all about - or else we could be steered wrong. A true believer will want to make sure they are flawlessly on-point, as deviating from the plan could be catastrophic. So, asking for a tangible sign of direction is not the issue, and it is indeed OK to ask for that. And, keep wrestling with God until you get it - you are a human being with limits, so it is OK to get a bit frantic in your prayers because you are being honest. I believe that if we understood all this better, it would make living out our faith far less complicated. We don't have to "act holy" to talk to God, in other words - we come to him as we are because he should already know us anyway since he created us. And that leads to something else I wanted to address.

I have gotten into watching the videos of this lady named Kaziah Hancock. Kaziah was someone I learned of years ago on Doris Hanson's online podcast "What Love is This," and much like Doris, Kaziah comes from a polygamous Mormon Fundamentalist background but she also came to know Christ and is a committed Christian today. The main thing Kaziah is noted for is her artwork - she has done some beautiful portraits of unsung heroes in the military, police forces, and other service roles, and if I am correct about this she donates those to the people's families. However, Kaziah is no sanctimonious Mother Teresa type, nor does she claim to be - when she speaks, it is real, and sometimes it is a bit rough for many ears as she is not shy about using a cuss word or two when she gets fired up about something. To be honest, I find that quality refreshing, and thankfully in this day and age it seems as if sincere Christians are actually not caring about how things are said, as sometimes the truth is not pretty and couched in Elizabethan "thees" and "thous." It is almost as if we have to in order to get the message across, and that is why I am not really that dogmatic about a little coarse language on occasion when it is spoken by Christians, and I am doing that myself when the occasion warrants too. Of course, when you were raised in a culture where saying the word "ass" meant you were hell-bound or something (even if it was out of the Bible and in reference to a donkey), it is a bit of a shock to the system at first, but then you see the heart of where it is coming from, and you find yourself resonating with it. The imposed puritanical piety of the past is not something that necessarily denotes holiness, as even some great saints of the Church had some behavior some would consider crass and inappropriate - the great Doctor of the Church, St. Athanasius, for instance, had no qualms with knocking the heretic Arius on his keister at a Church council. And, let's not even get into that eccentric class of Eastern saints called the Yurodivi (Holy Fools). Some of the things they said and did would scare the ever-loving out of the most straight-laced Baptist church lady in the South. But, the Church recognized them as saints. I kind of see Kaziah as a sort of Protestant Yurodivi, and I mean that with the highest level of respect - we need more like her, in all honesty. If you get the chance, look up her videos on YouTube and check her out for yourself - you will learn something if you do, and it will be a good thing.

Let us move onto the third promise now, that being direction. Direction is something we are commanded to seek in the Bible itself. We are told in Psalms for instance that the Lord is "a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path" (Psalm 119:105). Of course, for those of us who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, the first thing that comes to mind with that verse is that song based on it by Amy Grant, and that is probably the only way some people learned it (Kind of like one version of the Salve Regina in the Mass - many associate that with Whoopie Goldberg's rhythmic performance in Sister Act). This verse is the reliance of the psalmist on divine guidance, and it is just the start. Another verse along those lines is this one in Matthew 6:33, which says "seek ye first the kingdom of God and its righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you." This too is often committed to memory via a Maranatha chorus based on the verse that came out in the 1970s. Then, there is this one - Psalm 37:23, which affirms that "the steps of a righteous man are ordered by God." The other one is a more physical example in the Gospels with the story of St. Peter walking on water - direction is the key component here too. Proverbs 11:14 also is integral here about tangible direction - it admonishes us that the abundance of good counsel is guaranteed safety. What does this all mean? It means that seeking counsel and direction from God is not only a promise he gave, but also a command - we are admonished all over Scripture to be dependent upon God. So, if he commanded it, promised to give it to us, and it has been understood in that context for the 2000 years of the Church's existence, it means that like Jacob in Genesis we have the sanction to demand that God honor the promise HE made to give us direction, and we can challenge him without being considered an apostate by those self-righteous souls who would take issue with that honest contention. So, yes, it is perfectly within reason to demand God give us direction, and a tangible sign he's listening if necessary. We can also ask for counsel to come to us, or who to seek out for it, and that is part of the promise and the command too. I would honestly think that God would be more prone to answer a request like that because we are doing exactly as he asked, and not relying on ourselves but rather seeking him for the answer. But, it isn't that easy - God's silence can be deafening, and even the well-intentioned reassurances of others that when God is silent he is working the most doesn't cut it when a rent payment is looming and you need an answer yesterday. And, as human beings, we lose patience - we don't need to apologize for that either, as it is just how we are wired and created. Therefore, if you are seeking that direction, continue wrestling with God as Jacob did to get it, because you are just staking claim to his promises.

Now, before wrapping up, let's talk about "claiming" a bit. Is it right to "claim" something? If you turn on TBN, Daystar, or some other religious channel, you hear people like Kenneth Copeland and Creflo "Cashflow" Dollar screaming at you to just "claim it!" What do they mean? In their less-than-honorable and problematic declarations, they are talking about what is called verbal manifestation - this means if you speak it, you can speak it into existence. That is something only God is capable of, and it is part of a non-Christian heretical esotericism that the Bible itself does not teach. Of course, people who do teach this use the verse in Hebrews 11:1, which says that "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Because of that, it takes some enigmatic thing called "the force of faith" to speak things into existence. This is another reason why much of this "prosperity gospel" stuff is also called "Word of Faith," because that is where they get this from. It ties into other weird esoteric practices that hyper-charismatics have baptized from New Thought and the occult too, such as "affirmations," or statements that say essentially you are this, or that, or the other - it also promotes self-deification as often these affirmations are preceded by the words "I am," and that is a core concept of people like Joel Osteen and also bears affinity with self-help gurus like Oprah too, and it is totally unbiblical and heretical. But, can we claim anything? Let's deal with that.

If you stake a claim to anything, be it in a religious context or even a more practical legal context like property law, one thing is clear - is their some interest or right to the claim to make it valid? As a paralegal, I used to work on cases that dealt with that issue to some degree, and in all honesty you have no right to claim anything unless there is a specific clause that says you can. That being said, I personally believe that if you have earned the right to something, you can stake a claim upon it. This has nothing to do with the soul or eternal salvation or anything related to that, but is strictly a temporal natural law issue. If you have worked in a certain profession for years for instance and have built up a level of competency and experience, then you have the right to be seriously considered for a position that will be qualified by your background. If you earn a Ph.D. or other higher degree, you are not required to settle for less - you have claimed a place at a bigger table, and you have the right to go after positions that merit your credential. On God's terms, it makes a very real application to the verse in James 2:17 and 2:26, which says faith without works is dead. It means that if you are to ask for something, you should do so in confidence knowing it is what you qualify for. While God can definitely give direction for a new vocation - and we should ask him for that - it should not be a descent into confusion when you have to settle for less than what you are worth. Therefore, if you have earned that opportunity, stake the claim on it - this is rightly "claiming" what now you can actually lay claim to. It is something that is earned, deserved, not contingent upon your soul's salvation, and meets the needs you have, and by all means God is obligated by his promises to give you the direction to stake that claim, and then provide the way to achieve it. And, that is not the same as the garbage Benny Hinn and others spout about "naming and claiming" things you are not realistically entitled to. I hope that clears some issues up.

I know this was lengthy, very frank, and it also was something I believe people need to hear. Take it as you will, and hopefully something in this will be liberating to someone who reads it. Thanks again, and will see you next time.

Memory Lane Meanderings Continued - High School in TA

2026-09-15T06:29:25.161-07:00

I wanted to wrap up my reminisces of Terra Alta and my high school years, and we'll start by first talking about how we got there.

I mentioned that Mom had been a live-in caretaker for an 88-year-old man named Webby in the community of Mannheim, just across the Cheat from Rowlesburg, beginning around March of 1986. Webby was ailing and in steep decline, and would pass away only a couple of months later - it was a shame because he was a nice man and I saw first-hand how he suffered then and it was heartbreaking to see. Any rate, Webby's son-in-law who lived just up the street, Earl, had a mother who at that time was around 93 years old named Myrtle, and he needed a caretaker for her too and thought Mom would be perfect for that. So, a couple of weeks after Webby's passing, Mom went up to Myrtle's first - Myrtle lived a few miles north of town on Salt Lick Road, closer to the community of Terra Alta than to Rowlesburg, and being I had to finish out a school year I decided to stay at Earl and his wife Dot's house in Mannheim until I finished school. When my freshman year finished, I moved up with Mom to Myrtle's house on Salt Lick, and at first it was not a good experience, but in time I would settle in and it would lead to three of the best years of my life.

The first impression of our new place up there on Salt Lick was how remote it really was. While only a few miles from Terra Alta, it seemed like a world away. The house was situated on about 10 acres of farmland that Earl owned, but Myrtle's POA was Earl's younger sister Opal, who lived closer. Opal would come down about once a week to take Mom and Myrtle to the store, and that outing proved to be a highlight during those summer months. I did have a little break in the monotony then as that summer we had both a VBS at the Baptist church I was part of in Rowlesburg, and later in the summer I was given a week at a church summer camp in the central part of the state near the town of Cowan. However, the isolation of our new house initially was a bit rough for me to get used to, and I was wondering how I would survive the summer months there. Thankfully all of that would soon change, as starting school at East Preston that September for my sophomore year turned out to be a good thing. Once I started school there, I got involved in the high school band, in the German club, as well as also keeping myself busy with church as I launched into activities with my new Baptist church in Terra Alta - within a short time, I was also teaching a Sunday School class and would also come to be involved in leadership. Church and school band were my social life essentially then, but a lot of other important things would begin to happen as well.

The school year of 1986-1987 went off without a hitch, and I really found my place and was able to fit in well. The following summer there - 1987 - was much better as I was able to really explore a lot of things. What I remembered most about the summer then was how I could get out of the house, explore the surrounding area, and I got back into wildcrafting again as well as beginning to experiment with cooking. That, and my musical tastes as well evolved somewhat as I began to really get into Stravinsky, Copland, and some other serious music along with my big band hobby, and I also forayed into gospel music as well - Black Gospel particularly. Summer 1987 was good, in other words. However, my junior year of high school - 1987-1988 - would also be an important year then as I was also introduced to the Armenians and Assyrians, as well as developing a very strong interest in Byzantine and Russian history. Much of what would shape me as an adult would happen during the three years I lived on Salt Lick, and also Myrtle grew on me as well. "Myrt" as we called her became a sort of new grandmother to me, and I really bonded closely with her during those years and that could be a whole other story in itself. Summarily though, my high school years were good.

When I got to the summer of 1988, then I was able for the first time in about 10 years to go visit Dad - he got me a plane ticket and I was able to go to Georgia with him for two weeks. I had my first summer job there too, as I was helping Dad with his business - he was in home construction, and I learned how to install drywall and a few other practical skills while earning a few bucks in the process. It was also my first trip to Silver Springs in Florida, and little did I know that just four years from that point I would actually be living there, as my future mother-in-law had a home there. However, at this point I was still in high school, getting ready for college, and all that was on my mind was the future I planned to have. A part of me misses some of that great optimism and excitement I had then, and I even envy high school seniors today who have that same feeling - you feel like the world is yours and that you want to grab any opportunity out there. Of course, when reality sets in later, it can be sobering, but the optimism and hope are nice feelings. Let me reflect on that a bit as it has a lot to do with this period in my life.

I often miss a lot about my younger days, especially when I look at how much older I truly am now. Many of the people who were part of my life then are now long gone - they passed away in increasing numbers over the past 25 years or so. I've lost many friends, family, teachers, and even a few classmates from those days, and it is at times a sober reminder that I am not immortal either, at least in this body. I remember so many good things about those years - one perhaps was the excitement of getting a lot of mail then. While I had limited funds to actually order and pay for things, I did have a pen, a good knack for writing, and eventually I even found an old beat-up typewriter I put to use. At that time I was into my newfound Christian faith, and was determined to become "super-Baptist." So, I was writing practically every Baptist denomination I could think of, and ended up with a banker's box full of literature. I think I was probably one of the first kids in my high school to actually do a Social Studies fair project on American Baptists, and I placed. I almost placed a few years earlier when I was a freshman in Rowlesburg, as I made quite the impression on the judges with my work on American big bands I did. Had I not contracted the flu then and missed the finalist display I placed in, I could have probably won that - but I still placed, so that is what mattered. My Baptist project did well too, as I ended up with I believe a second-place in that, so I didn't complain. The Social Studies fairs then were a way to basically put into a focused project your personal interests, and in doing so it meant you were also applying knowledge you gained. In college, I would do this more, as a stack of term papers, portfolios, and a dissertation all bound in volumes behind where I am sitting now testify. This provides a good point for a segue way, so let's chase that momentarily.

Over the years, I have often been accused of being a packrat or a hoarder as I keep anything and everything of significance. Had water damage and some other things not happened in Kirby, I would have probably saved a lot more than I did too. I save every letter, every card, every calendar, every journal, every school project, etc., and I have them all organized into binders in bins either in my closet here now or under my bed. The cumulative amount of that I have saved currently fills about 15 8-gallon bins, and additionally I have taken to publishing bound volumes of school projects I have done over the years as well as even these blogs. While it does sound a bit hoarder-like, in reality it isn't as I only preserve those things of significance - there is a lot of rich memory in old cards and letters, and more technical information in tax, school, employment, and medical documentation I have hung onto as well. While living here in Baltimore, I don't have the access to the bins as conveniently as I used to have, as it is a bit of work dragging them out and adding stuff to them, so any recent documentation over the past couple of years I am organizing in a file box to put into the designated binders later. I have also inherited a lot of Mom's and Dad's records as well since they passed on, and have those organized also. All of those bound record volumes will be placed in a large cabinet once I am settled in a more permanent housing location, and they will stay there for a long time to come. At this point, I wanted to explain how a file system works for me.

I am a big believer in having a sort of personal archive of any and all documentation, and my go-to choice of housing is a large, fire-proof metal cabinet. A fire-proof, weather-proof cabinet serves as a sort of informal vault, and when I was in Hagerstown I had two of them for just this purpose, as well as two others for my music collection. The unfortunate circumstance of our move necessitated leaving them behind, which was a tragic loss in all honesty, but I had little choice. In the future, there are stipulations for a cabinet system like this I will implement. For one, the cabinets must be on wheels and readily mobile - if I have to rent a house for much longer, this is a wise idea because it will eliminate a lot of logistic headaches. I am also planning on at least two of these in the future - one will be for the record binders I have tax histories, employment and medical records, etc., stored in, as well as placing my small safe in it too. The second cabinet will be strictly for photo albums and journal books, as there are many more of those. Being I am now the unofficial custodian of all of Mom's and Dad's old pictures, as well as a growing collection of my own, they need to be housed properly. I want to eventually created digitalized records as well, as I would love to scan everything onto flash drives to store safely in case I need them. As I begin to transition from blogging and journaling to working on the life story project, I am also planning on eventually creating content sheets for each of my binders and really organizing them properly. This will be a monumental project in itself, but it needs to be done. I also want a section in one of the cabinets for all my family and local history books too, as right now they are on a bookshelf but they deserve to be kept separate as they are deeply personal. My family and local history books, my blogs, and my own published work currently occupies 80% of a four-tier small shelf behind me, and while I am not anticipating many more volumes to be added to that, they still deserve their own space though. Those local and family history books are integral to writing my own story, which is why they deserve premium housing. I want to eventually do a tutorial article here about how to organize a file system based on my method, and I think that would be a good resource especially for those who are interested in their own family histories. I divulged a lot of my personal planning here, and if you are reading this and are wondering where the hell I am going with all that, it does connect to the memory lane strolls too - those "strolls" would not be possible without meticulous record-keeping, in all honesty. One's memory - even for the best of us - can only go so far and you need to access work that directly relates to the topic, and in constructing background information for what I share with you here, it is reliant upon many local sources of which I may do a historiography on later to give an idea of how to research local history as I have. And, that leads to some further thoughts.

When other people publish work, it can be a valuable resource for providing a background to your own, and your work in turn may fill in some gaps for someone else. I rely on a pretty extensive shelf of family histories, local histories, and books on topics of local interest to supplement my own thoughts, as it does help. There are some things, for instance, I may have been too young to recall details on, so works like that help tremendously. Also, the availability of online resources is good too, and I have greatly utilized those. If an online source has some significance, I tend to also print it out and GBC it as its own book as a good fingertip reference if necessary, and I have amassed a few volumes of those as well. Given I am the type of person who wishes to capture everything about a topic, I do research extensively, but admittedly at times I do cut corners where I maybe shouldn't. I am now thinking as I write this that perhaps a good guide would be in order to provide some tips on what I do to preserve research and such. Others have done this with a degree of success, and perhaps maybe it is time I think about a more technical and practical resource as well. I will explore that again at some point.

At any rate, I suppose this wraps up both a memory lane meandering as well as a few insights as to how I organize information, so I feel this is a good place to conclude. Thank you for allowing me to ramble, and we will see you again soon.

Memory Lane Meanderings Continued - Between Kirby and Terra Alta

2026-09-14T18:38:26.923-07:00

One of the most integral things a person has is their memories. I am going to spend a large part of the remainder of this year talking about some places. I talked already about my early childhood in Kirby, and the Little Falls Chapel in Falling Waters my late step-grandmother attended, and today for some reason I wanted to just talk a little about my high school years in Terra Alta now. This is a pivotal part of my early years, as Terra Alta was my high school period and I had a generally fond and memorable life there, including essentially adopting a whole new family (or, maybe they adopted me, who's to say?). Any rate, I am also doing this because in a couple of years, I will be finished blogging and will be embarking on getting my life story project typed up (the draft has already been handwritten in several books so I just need to get it in print now). One of the reasons I am doing it this way is due to a bit of uncertainty about the new chapter of life I am about to embark on - soon I will be starting a new position, and with that more than likely a move to somewhere else, so I don't want to do a whole lot with bigger projects until I eventually am settled into a more permanent place. Where I am at now in Baltimore is meant to be temporary, as I came here to work for a season at a Jesuit high school in town and that mini-chapter of life has ended now. As everything comes together in the coming weeks, I will elaborate more on what is happening. But for now, we are just going to revisit some of my past years, and introduce you to some of the places I grew up. I hope you can enjoy the ride.

There is a bit of a back story on Terra Alta before I arrived there, and I feel that is an appropriate way to open this story. In the summer of 1985, I had successfully completed what was two of the worst years of middle school I had ever experienced - I felt out-of-place, and faced a lot of harassment and bullying then both from popular kids as well as the more rough crowd, and I didn't feel like I fit in anywhere then. Things had started to improve for me in the second half of my 8th grade year, but it wasn't much to really jump for joy over. At that time, we still lived in Kirby, but during that summer after my 8th grade year completed, we faced a lot of things - bone-crushing poverty due to a drastic change in our life circumstances was a primary issue, and instinctively I started to gradually pack up stuff beginning in July 1985 because I saw the end coming. For food during that particular summer, we relied on three things - I had gotten into making homemade drop biscuits from scratch that fed Mom and me, and supplemented that diet with food we got from the local church's food bank (thank God for First Methodist Church in Romney, as they really helped us then - I still want to send them a small financial gift one day for that), and then raiding the neighbor's gardens at night to harvest things like cabbages, cucumbers, ears of corn, and yellow squash, which we then would fry and have as a simple dinner - meat was at this point a luxury, as the store in town had cut off Mom's credit, and for some reason Mom did not even get SNAP benefits or the Community Action assistance that had helped us for many years. To put it plainly, we were suffering badly. When you start looking at fried sliced cucumbers and fried cabbage as a feast, you know you are scraping bottom. It finally came to a head in mid-August, when circumstances dictated a move for us, and we then moved back with my grandmother and step-grandfather, who themselves at the time were in the process of a move of their own. We all ended up moving together to the nearby community of Baker in Hardy County, and my step-grandfather rented this really nice farmhouse from an old, cranky man. The farmhouse itself was actually quite nice - it had a beautiful kitchen, and the upstairs was relatively comfortable too. It was at that point I started my high school years at East Hardy High School, and come to find out, high school was much better than middle school.

The farmhouse that my step-grandfather Lonnie leased was located out a remote country road called Sauerkraut Road for some weird reason. The house was on one side of the road, and across the way was a nice little cattle pond and a small barn where the landowner kept some cattle. It was about midway between the towns of Rio and Baker, and it was remote from both although the surrounding countryside did have some fairly affluent houses of people who worked in DC but wanted a quiet country getaway on the weekends. At East Hardy, two very interesting things happened. For one, I had graduated from alto sax - which Mr. Foster had so graciously set up lessons for me - to tenor sax, and our band teacher was a very nice preacher's wife, Mrs. Funkhouser. Her husband, interesting enough, was also my English teacher, and a Methodist minister too. A few years back, Mrs. Funkhouser wrote her own book of memoirs about her career as a music teacher called Measure by Measure, and I have a small piece I contributed to it that she kindly asked for from many of her former students. I also have one of my few early band pictures in there too - in the marching band then, I played cymbals as I was still a bit rough around the gills as far as my saxophone skills went, but I did get to play tenor sax in the small studio band (a high school big band, which was heaven for me) the school had, and that was a blast. A second thing that happened there was that I developed a massive crush on a girl named Holly - Holly was beautiful, and Mom kind of helped that along by talking her up to me because she worked with Holly's parents the previous year at a fiberglass factory there in Wardensville. The crush on Holly had three reactions - first she thought it was cute, then she got extremely annoyed at me, and then after I poured my soul into a letter to her, we knew boundaries and respected each other. I can't totally fault her reaction to me though, as it was to be expected, but man, did I have it bad for her! However, I did make a close friend there I still keep in touch with today, and her name then was Michelle Gray. Michelle was a bubbly redhead who really made me feel welcome in the school, and because we both played sax then in the band we sort of had a bond between us. Although Michelle was a cute girl, I never had any type of romantic feelings for her as to me she was just a really good friend and I really appreciated that in a new school and all. We continued to keep in touch for a few years after, but then just sort of lost contact as we embarked on our respective futures. However, about 15 years ago this thing called Facebook came into existence, and we reconnected and still keep in touch even today. Michelle I believe lives in Virginia now, where she is a happy married and successful real estate agent with a couple of grown kids of her own now. I still keep up with Holly too on occasion - Holly married and has a nice family now, and I think she still lives in that general area. I also think Holly has grandbabies now as well, although I could be wrong - that is hard to believe too! East Hardy was overall a very good experience for me, but it was way too short. There were three things that happened I will give detail on now that caused us to move, so let's get into those.

The first thing that happened was the cranky old landlord of the farmhouse, a cratchety old man named Charlie, and he told Lonnie he had to move. I would guess that a large part of that had to do with the menagerie of animals my grandmother and him had - a ton of dogs, and an assortment of poultry outside as well as I believe a cat or two. Plus we had our dog Jill, my cat Dora, and my grandmother had parakeets. All of that was slightly off-putting to old Charlie, and I think too he had friends who spied on his property back there (there was suspicion about the school bus driver, an older lady named Mrs. Leatherman, whom I believe was one of Charlie's longtime friends). So, in early November, that facilitated a move, and two subsequent things happened that made that possible.

The first was the death of Lonnie's older brother Lee. Lee lived in Rowlesburg, and in almost every way he and Lonnie could have been twins. Lee had a house just across from the cemetery there, and their sister Betty lived across the street in another house. I cannot remember all the details of how it happened, but my grandmother and Lonnie somehow got the green light to move into that house, and this would be a huge adjustment for them - this meant they couldn't keep as many animals around, and therefore they had to ask a friend in Hampshire County to take all their poultry as well as a number of their outdoor dogs. So, yes, I remember how that went, especially trying to transport a pickup truck with its bed full of cages containing cackling chickens, quacking ducks, and honking geese at 11 at night. When the move finally came, that was challenging as well, given Lonnie and Mom went up to Rowlesburg first and my grandmother and I were stuck in a bare house for a night waiting for them to come back for us - I remember sleeping in two chairs pulled together while my grandmother slept on a cot that was left for us. We made the best of it, and at some point I want to also devote a story to my grandmother too, as over the years our family dynamic was interesting to say the least. To summarize though, my grandmother could be cranky, mouthy, and loud, but when it came down to it she always looked out for me, and I recall that with great fondness. I was actually thankful that when she finally passed away in the hospital in Winchester, VA, in 2004, Mom, Barbara, and I were there. However, my step-grandfather's brother paled in comparison to the next event, as it affected over one million people throughout the region.

On November 5-6, 1985, an event happened that was perhaps one of the worst disasters anyone in our state had ever faced. A particularly strong hurricane that had struck the Gulf Coast earlier - the hurricane was the fifth of the season, named Isabel - and sent rough weather well into the Ohio Valley. According to Bob Teets and Shelby Young in their 1985 book Killing Waters: The Great West Virginia Flood of 1985 (Terra Alta, WV: Cheat River Publishing), on page 5 it was noted that all of the previous four hurricanes of that active season caused a cumulative damage of around $2.5 billion and had so far cost 18 American lives between them. Although Isabel herself would go back out to sea off the east coast of Georgia, a much more catastrophic storm called Juan was forming around the first of October, and it would hit the Gulf Coast between Pensacola and Port Arthur, TX, at around that time. Juan was apparently only a Category 1 storm, and under normal circumstances it would give the Gulf Coast a bit of a beating and then be over. However, a cold front from the Midwest would meet up with its remnants later, and that is what made it perhaps the most dangerous storm on record, doing almost as much damage far away from the ocean as Andrew would do later in 1992 and Katrina 20 years later in 2005. By the time the flood waters did their damage, the storm was not a hurricane anymore, and Juan had evolved into just a monster system of some other classification that dumped a tremendous amount of moisture over the Alleghenies and the little river towns like my hometown of Parsons and Rowlesburg would be hit hard. Last year, 2025, was the 40th year commemoration of that horrendous flood, and what happened next was one of the most upside down years yet as we settled into Rowlesburg then.

By the time we had finally moved to Rowlesburg, the town looked like a war zone from the damage the flood wrecked on the town. While we were still in Wardensville when the flood had hit, the only thing that impacted us was the cattle pond overflowing into the road and not much else, as the farmhouse in Baker was far enough away from major rivers to not be overly affected (although many towns nearby were - Romney, Wardensville, Moorefield, and Petersburg were all hit hard). But, we moved during the time the aftershock was still evident in Rowlesburg, and moving there meant a lot of adjustments. For one, there was no drinkable water, and thanks to the generosity of Anheuser-Busch and other companies, water was distributed for free at the local Southern Baptist church in town. The water itself came in six-packs of white cans, and each family in town could get a few cases a week based on family size. The house my grandmother and step-grandfather moved into was thankfully far enough away from the river to not be affected, as it was at the ridge on the southern edge of town on 72. However, the magnitude of the damage to the center of town was astronomical - whole streets and whole houses were completely flattened, and a deep, thick blanket of mud submerged many places then. Being the Baptists and Catholics in town had the best resources, they worked together to help the town recover, and to this day both churches are talked about with great respect. The other churches in town - the Methodists and a tiny Church of Christ near the railroad - were pretty much destroyed, and the only other church in town - the tiny Pentecostal church nestled in the hills just north of the town on Salt Lick Road - was cut off and had to rely on the nearby town of Terra Alta for what it needed now despite the fact Rowlesburg was normally literally in walking distance. The damage the flood did to the town would take literally years to completely recover from, and even today it is fresh in the memories of many people there. Perhaps the most shocking adjustment though was school then, so let's talk about that now.

In the early 1980s, every major town in Preston County had its own high school, as the schools in the county had not been consolidated like they were elsewhere then. I want to say that pre-1985 there were five high schools in the county - Central Preston in Kingwood, West Preston in Reedsville, East Preston in Terra Alta, Bruceton High School in Bruceton Mills, and Rowlesburg High School which served the southern part of the county then. After the flood happened, school had to resume somewhere, and by the time I got there, Rowlesburg School was meeting in the fire hall of the Buckwheat Festival grounds in Kingwood. Although Central Preston was literally just at the end of the street then, the Rowlesburg School was small enough (around 300 students) to set up in the fire hall. Our classrooms consisted of partitioned walls, and the principal had his office in the back of the building while the Buckwheat Festival kitchen served lunches. Gym class was conducted at the Civic Center at the other end of the festival grounds, and there was no more band at that point. If we needed a library, that was located on the next block in Kingwood, or students were allowed to use Central's library down the street. And, that was the rest of my freshman year. Interesting story about that was a few years back, in 2018, Barbara wanted to go up to the Buckwheat Festival, and that was the first time I had been in the old fire hall in 32 years. If you ever have a chance to go to that, the Buckwheat Festival in September merits visiting - those Preston County buckwheat cakes and that sage sausage are worth the trip alone. When we went to the festival in 2018, surprisingly we actually sat at a table in the very area my homeroom/History class (Mr. Cassidy was a great teacher then) used to be, and that was a surreal feeling too. Also during that year, we had a long bus trip to school. The buses picked us up in downtown Rowlesburg then, and we would have to go south on 72 to Macomber, and then climb the mountain on US 50 to Fellowsville, before turning onto SR 26 to go to Kingwood via the community of Tunnelton. North 72 ran by the Cheat River, and large chunks of that road were destroyed by the floodwaters so no one could access it for months. The bus ride was long, and I think it also altered the school schedule then somewhat then too. To complicate things more that year, Mom and I would move in early March 1986 across the river to the community of Mannheim, where Mom secured a live-in caregiver position for an 88-year-old man named Webby. A short couple of months later, Webby would actually pass away, and then our move to Terra Alta would happen, which is the subject of another story later.

Living in Mannheim was not the worst condition I had ever been in - I mean, after all, I actually had lived in a flood zone all that winter! But, it was an adjustment. While I had a room to myself upstairs, the conditions were very sparse living there - Webby could only eat boiled stuff, so my heavens, we had a lot of boiled pork chops with onions! If you have ever experienced those, I feel you - while they were edible, it was some of the most bland, depressing food I think I have ever eaten. Mom seemed to thrive on it though, and come to find out later Mom was exercising a bit of extreme altruism living there and come to find out she could have easily varied the diet a bit. Problem is though, my mom could not cook - she was never all that good at cooking. Thankfully, I discovered ramen soup then so I also ate a lot of that too. It was also during that time I became a born-again Christian too, as I had accepted Christ when Pastor Olen Phillips prayed with me on a cold January night and I was baptized two weeks later. But, I felt truly like I was encountering spiritual warfare at that time, as I was not content, and I felt very depressed a lot of the time. There were bright moments though, such as fishing in the Cheat with my good friend Jack Schaeffer then and catching the occasional hellbender salamander, as well as harvesting a ton of broad-leafed wild garlic in a meadow just beyond the house. Moments like that, and a lot of prayer, kept me sane then. Of course, once we did eventually move to Terra Alta and I started my sophomore year, I would soon find my own niche and settle into it well, but at this point it was still a time of upheaval for me. When I do the next part of that story, I will talk in more detail about how that went.

The year beginning in August 1985 and ending in June 1986 was a rough intermediate period for me, and it was literally a year of transitions - I went from a dorky middle school student living in Kirby to becoming a fairly secure high school student in Terra Alta by the time July 1986 rolled around. There is a lot about that transition year I would love to forget, as it was rough, but at the same time I also grew too. As I continue the second part of this later, you will see how I sort of came of age in Terra Alta as I began to find the person I truly was, and that would shape me as I grew into adulthood later. Thanks for allowing me to prattle, and will see you next time.

Another Visit Down Memory Lane

2026-09-11T13:35:18.903-07:00

I wasn't going to post anything else today, but I wanted to just share something while it was fresh on my mind about a childhood memory. This is a strong recollection too, as it was considered family legend for many years on Mom's side of the tree. First though, today also commemorates what happened on September 11, 2001. I recall that day ever so vigilantly, because at the time I was only 31 years old and I remember when it happened. I was actually completing a job interview in the same building where Barbara worked at the time, and this was in downtown Tampa on Westshore Boulevard. Being we lived in St. Petersburg at that point, I had ridden in with Barbara for the interview and after I finished my appointment, I was just sitting in the car in the parking garage behind the office complex. The news came on that morning about the World Trade Center getting hit by what was thought to be a rogue airplane (they discovered later that Islamic terrorists had hijacked the planes), and I vaguely saw something about it as I was finishing up my interview as the agency's office had a TV in the lobby that was broadcasting what was happening live. At the moment, I didn't know all the details, but everyone was in a bit of an uproar about it. Then, Barbara and the people in her office were told to get out of there and leave early, as a major city like Tampa would be a premium risk. When we got back to the house in St. Pete, the first thing we did was turn on the news, and there it was - the collapsing towers and then the plane hitting the Pentagon. It was a surreal moment then for all of us, and the one thing I recall at that point was that all of a sudden political differences didn't matter - it was time for us to come together as a nation. I would venture to say that it was probably the last time we were really a united nation, as now at 25 years later there are idiots like Hasan Piker celebrating the tragedy, and radical Islamists like Ilhan Omar in Congress dismissively describing that day as "some people did something." Up to that point, the only real scare was Y2K, which came and went without anything happening then despite the hype we heard in the late 1990s about it. However, that tragic day - September 11th - would define what has been one of the most chaotic centuries we have had yet - the 21st century has been one crazy thing after another. First was 9/11, then it was Hurricane Katrina which did tremendous damage 4 years later. After that, we had a brief bit of hysteria with the whole 2012 scare, and then the political scene started getting insane when "wokeness" for a while really prevailed, and then there was COVID, the Iran war we have now, and God only knows what is next. Seeing all of this happening in the past 25 years is really making me miss the 1980s and 1990s. And, it is also one reason why I decided to start taking a lot of forays onto Memory Lane to revisit some things and share. What I am about to share took place personally for me about 50 years ago, and it is one of my more light-hearted memories but I got some good information earlier in the week that helped fill in some gaps. So, we'll dive right on into it.

As I have talked about before, my late grandfather and my step-grandfather lived in a little community just outside Martinsburg called Bedington. To get to this community, you would go north on Route 11 until you got to County Route 5, also known as Bedington Road. If you turned right onto Bedington Road, the little town was just about a few hundred yards, and if you kept going you would then make a left turn onto what was called Scrabble Road. A couple of miles out there is where my grandfather owned a sizeable parcel of land, and he had a mobile home on it then. My step-grandmother Goldie at the time was the quintessential homemaker, so she had cellars full of canned goods, gardens full of things such as cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, and other vegetables that would end up being canned and stored in those cellars, and she also kept a few chickens down close by Hoke Run, a small creek that ran in behind the property where I used to catch tiny spring peeper toads (that has a place in this story shortly too) and other critters in large Maxwell House coffee cans or jelly jars. Additionally, Goldie was also devoutly Pentecostal, the result of a very intense conversion she had about 10 years before when she was first diagnosed with cancer (that would eventually take her life in 1979). Her fervent faith led her to start going to a little church in nearby Falling Waters where she would essentially be a member until she passed away, and in either a fortuitous circumstance or by divine guidance it turns out that little church now has a website, and that is what brings me to what I wanted to talk about today because now I have a historical backstory on a little church that played a pivotal role in my childhood.

Little Falls Chapel, Falling Waters, West Virginia

The recently discovered website for Little Falls Chapel has a concise history section to it, and referencing that (if you want to look at it yourself, the URL for it is https://littlefallschapel.com/discover-the-rich-history-of-little-falls-chapel/ ) I got a bit of a backstory on the little church. It seems the history of that little church goes back to the early 19th century, when a group of Pennsylvania Germans settled there and established what was the Salem German Reformed Church, a Calvinistic church that originally was German-speaking. In time, it then was assimilated into another Calvinistic tradition, the Presbyterians, and this led to its rebranding in 1892 to Little Falls Presbyterian Church. In time, the Presbyterians outgrew that little building, and they have a more modern brick structure just down the road still called Little Falls Presbyterian Church. But, it was in the 1960s when the church began its transformation to another tradition of Christianity, that being as a Pentecostal church. There is a little more to this story than the church website has, so I will devote a bit more space to telling that.

The church website said that in 1962 the Church adopted the name Little Falls Calvary Temple, and it became an independent Full Gospel Church. The pastor of that church for many years was a diminuitive older man who looked more like an insurance adjuster by the name of Rev. Claude Benjamin (or "Jeff") Carbaugh (deceased 1994) and his wife Alta (1914-2008). Rev. Carbaugh, who was originally from Pennsylvania, was an ordained minister with the Church of God denomination, but chose to pastor an independent Full Gospel church instead. Although later retired, the Carbaughs were pretty active in church planting in both Washington County, MD, and in Berkeley County, WV, as Alta's obituary said they planted about 17 churches. Given the name "Calvary Temple" was attached to the Little Falls Church, I am thinking there is some connection between that and the larger Calvary Temple in nearby Williamsport, MD, which was founded in 1940 by a Rev. Vernon Wesley Miles (1913-2001) and his wife Mary (1913-2010) - the connection I want to make is if it was possible that Rev. Miles may have been one of the people that Rev. Carbaugh originally worked with, given that Alta's obituary noted that at her passing she attended there regularly. This means I need to do the work of the historian I am and do a deep-dive into Calvary Temple's history

Interior sanctuary, Calvary Temple, Williamsport, MD

Well, as it turns out, it looks like Rev. Carbaugh pastored a different church at the time called Jones Chapel, also in Williamsport, so he and Rev. Miles were not directly connected although I would wager they knew each other. The history of Jones Chapel, including a photo of a very young Rev. Carbaugh, can be found here - https://wmspthistory.org/jones-chapel. At that time, he was still in the Church of God denomination too, and Little Falls Calvary Temple was still Church of God up to around the late 1960s, when it was just called Little Falls Chapel from that point when Rev. Carbaugh pastored it. By the year 1976, when I first became familiar with the little church, my step-grandmother Goldie had been going there for several years, and even led house prayer meetings in her living room. And, that leads to a hilarious story I wanted to share that some of you may have heard before, but it bears repeating with more information now.

Interior of Little Falls Chapel during a Sunday service

I mentioned the affinity I had for collecting all sorts of critters years ago, and one thing I loved catching was these tiny little toads called spring peepers. A spring peeper is so small it could fit on a dime with room to spare, and after a summer rain they could be found all over the place near creeks in wooded areas. I had a "sweet spot" just a little ways behind Grandad's house at Hoke Run where I would catch dozens of those little amphibians, and I collected them in one of the large aforementioned Maxwell House coffee cans. On one occasion, it was a Wednesday afternoon, and as was the routine, Goldie had the church ladies over for a prayer meeting, and she assembled about 15 or so in the room, so I was encouraged to sort of stay out of the way by Mom and instead go hunt frogs, which I gladly did. That particular day, I had a can full of about 30-40 of those little critters, and I was really quite proud of myself. So, I go back to the house, and not thinking that a prayer meeting was going on inside, I just happily charge in like I usually did. The 15 church ladies and Goldie were doing some praying - they were crying, wailing, and speaking in tongues like good Pentecostal church ladies do, and to be honest, they did not even notice me when I came in. That would change quickly, as I had a bunch of jittery tiny frogs cramped in a can, and they wanted out! And, I was excited to show them off, so the lid to the can came off, and tiny frogs went all over the place. That got the church ladies' attention! Next thing I know, the prayer meeting is in chaos as these 50-something-year-old Pentecostal church ladies were scrambling on top of chairs and screaming because some of the frogs decided to hitch rides on their panty hose. That of course meant that for me, the church service had just started, and I was about to get one hell of a sermon from Goldie - she was not happy! Grandad of course was sitting in the corner with a big goofy grin on his face - he was enjoying the show - and my poor mother looked like she was about to have a stroke. From that point on, I think caution was taken to keep a disruptive 6-year-old boy with a can full of critters at a safe distance away from any church functions! Later, I would also try to take Rev. Carbaugh - who in my young six-year-old mind I for some reason called "Preacher Jake" because I actually really liked him, and he seemed to be entertained by me - a gift of a large field toad I had caught earlier in the day and snuck into the church in my suit pocket one Sunday night. While "Preacher Jake" got a good laugh out of it, my step-grandmother Goldie was not amused and she came up with her own behavior incentive to keep me on the straight path in church. Everyone knows I hate pickles (you all have heard that story already), and Goldie was well aware of it. So, as a behavior enforcement measure, she kept a small baggie of them in her purse to make sure I behaved myself from that point, and all I had to do was see her just show them in her purse and that would immediately cease any bright idea I might have in church with anything. Looking back on it, Rev. Carbaugh was a nice and very longsuffering guy, and all accounts I heard of him were that he was a good pastor to his people. I am a bit surprised that whoever set up Little Falls' website didn't mention him somewhere, but it is easy to fill in gaps now, thanks to the miracle of the internet. Anyway, now that I told that story, let's get up to date about Little Falls.

In 1997, a widowed lady pastor, Rev. Linda Reese, assumed the pastorate of the little church, and she is still pastor there as far as I can see. The little church runs about a dozen congregants a week, and it does have videos of its services and a solid web presence, including the aforementioned website as well as a Facebook page. They are pretty much now an independent, identifiably Pentecostal church, and they are still going strong, which is good. I figured that as a historian it would be a good story to tell, thanks in part to the very good information they have on their website plus the material I found on Rev. Carbaugh later too. I am thinking about doing more recollections like this as I learn more about certain things, so stay tuned.

Thanks again for joining me, and will see you next time.

Revisiting Graded Absolutism

2026-09-09T14:48:13.394-07:00

I wanted to revisit this topic today based on something I had just read a couple of days ago. It was the text of an interview given by Fr. Daniele di Sorco, a priest of the SSPX, with the Italian District of the SSPX. The article can be found at https://fsspx.news/en/news/sate-necessity-invoked-sspx-real-60862 (accessed September 7, 2026). In the article, Fr. di Sorco is discussing something called "the state of necessity," and as he defines it, essentially that means a situation exists where a danger is evident, and this danger can be to body or soul - the presence of the danger, therefore, allows for the disregard of certain laws which could result in something harmful. Reading that brought me back to what Dr. Norman Geisler said in his book Christian Ethics about graded absolutism - remember, he defined it as when the greater good, rather than the lesser evil, is pursued to follow the higher moral duty. If two moral duties clash then, the believer is exempt by virtue from the lower duty by virtual obedience to the higher duty (Norman Geisler, Christian Ethics. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010: 98). It is this reason why the Thomistic premise for just war exists, and why in certain circumstances (such as this demonic Lindsay Clancy who is in the news right now for murdering her own kids) capital punishment is also permissable. In essence, both the state of necessity and the idea of graded absolutism are intricately related, if not even synonymous with one another (their component convictions are remarkably identical). This means then that I would argue that Father di Sorco of the SSPX is in essence espousing graded absolutism as it relates to the way the Vatican has responded to the recent SSPX episcopal consecrations - the higher virtue of adherence to doctrinal orthodoxy exempts one from the duty of Papal allegiance when the Pope himself is in error with certain things. I tend to agree with Fr. di Sorco on this, as what I have been seeing from Leo as well as his predecessor Francis and some Sadducees in positions of authority in the Vatican as well as some diocesan leadership has raised cause for concern. This is where I will get into the "meat" of my argument.

While I essentially went over the more fundamental aspects of all this earlier, graded absolutism at times is warranted, and we see even God himself setting the example many times with it, particularly in the Old Testament. In the early days of Creation, for instance, God allowed consanguine marriages without consequence to populate the earth, and later he tolerated polygamy for a short time - polygamy was never God's ideal at all, but God worked through the process to accomplish a greater good. God also allowed a degree of mass destruction in the books of Joshua and Judges because there was a greater good there as well - it has been offered by some that many of those original "-ites" that the Hebrews came against may have been beings who were not fully human, based on the Genesis 6 principle. All you hear about, for instance, are supersized giants like Og of Bashan and Goliath, and some of those individuals were astronomical in size. I tend to take those accounts at their word, and I understand why God would want entire populations of these individuals eliminated - they were in essence corrupting the land in unnatural ways. In this day and age - and believe it or not, you actually hear this from people! - this makes God a racist genocidal maniac who made Hitler look like a Cub Scout. It is one reason many of them are ambivalent to Christianity, but they don't understand the context and setting of the story. If these supersized individuals were indeed somehow the descendants of fallen angels, then they were a mistake and were not part of God's original creation. So, God had to cleanse the corruption of Creation for his own people to make the way for the redemption of mankind, and these half-angelic supermen were a problem. Other sources of this I have read have said that those disembodied souls became the demons, and I see that as a possibility. This means then that Satan - who is a fallen angel and not a demon - rigged the system to produce his own slave army to do his bidding, and that would make some sense. I am not here today to argue the origin of demons, but rather that graded absolutism has been part of the story of God's purpose for mankind since the beginning. If we are created in his image, then in that case it only makes sense that we are given the liberty to apply the same principle to the world we live in today. The road to the right thing is often crisscrossed with bad acts and decisions, but they can be used for the greater good. That explains just war and capital punishment then, but what of people disregarding a bad Pope? Let's address that next.

The issue with this whole situation is a definition of terms, namely the Papal office vs. the person who occupies it. The Papal office has Apostolic sanction and authority, and it supersedes all who occupied it because they too are subject to the Apostolic teachings that established the office. So, when a sitting Pope does something stupid or sinful - such as worshipping a Pachamama or groveling to Islamists or the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party - he is in conflict with the Papal office. So, there are some like the SSPX then who see this as a violation, and thus they are justified by their actions to continue the faith they hold convictions to even if it brings them into direct fire with a sitting Pope who is disobedient. And, while Fr. di Sorco notes correctly that the state of necessity is not directly addressed or defined in Canon law, but it is implicitly understood by Magisterial teaching. This leads to a few observations of my own as it relates to the SSPX issue but also to wider problems in the Catholic Church in general.

For one thing, I disagree with the good Father on one point - he makes the claim that all of Vatican II is in error or is wrong, and I respectfully disagree with that. It is possible to be a faithful and orthodox Catholic who attends the post-Vatican II Ordinary Form Mass. I have attended many myself, and they are reverent, valid, and I saw no conflict with my personal faith. The priest I consider my confessor and main counsel for spiritual matters, Fr. Timothy Grassi, celebrates the Ordinary Form in his parish every Sunday, and he is perhaps one of the most sound and orthodox priests I have ever known (as well as, like myself, having sympathies for the TLM without actively attending it). Neither Vatican II, its documents, or a proper implementation of its reforms are the real problem - the problem is a wrong implementation of those things, and way too much of that goes on. While it is true that there were dissident and rogue periti who served in advisory capacities at the Council, it is also true that for the most part the documents that came from it - in particular Lumen Gentium - are quite good. I have a few issues though with Gaudium et Spes, as a lot of the liturgical abuses and other things we have seen can be traced back to what is perhaps a very faulty application of its more ambiguous language. If a document like Gaudium et Spes is to be studied, perhaps some clarifying commentary would be in order to utilize with it. I also tend to agree with what my good friend Charles Coulombe said as well, that being you accept what is good, and throw out what is bad - there were many good things to come from Vatican II as well, and as long as they are consistent with Tradition then there are no problems. However, watch out for bad players in the game too - the dissident priests, the rogue bishops, and others who bend things they read in those documents to such a degree they can say anything they want them to say, and this is where you get characters like Cardinal Tucho Fernandez, James Martin, Richard Rohr, Richard McBrien, Bede Griffiths, and - dare I say it! - the late Pope Francis, among others. These are individuals who try to rewrite the recipe, so to speak, and they tend to cast Tradition in a foreign mindset that many of the early Saints and Fathers of the Church would have rejected. The same goes for some pre-Vatican II figures too, such as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Merton. And, that being said, it bears a few closing thoughts.

To begin, let me just reiterate that Pope Leo XIV, as well as Francis before him, were mortal, concupiscent human beings. They didn't fart holy writ every time they sat on a toilet to do their thing, and for some badly misinformed Catholics who tend to give them more allegiance than they deserve, I would caution strongly to be careful - you are on the verge of creating an idol out of the occupant of the Papal office, even when what he is doing falls short of that office he has been given. It is also a fundamental misunderstanding about Papal infallibility too - this does not mean that every time the Pope burps it is divine revelation either; that is not how Papal infallibility works. For Catholics who hold to that erroneous view of Papal authority, you have just put Leo on the same level as Warren Jeffs of the FLDS, and the psychopath Jim Jones, and nothing good will come of that, I can assure you. The Pope is also subject to Magisterial standards as well, and where he falls short, no one is obliged to follow it. That is something people like the members of the SSPX understand, and that is why a state of necessity may be warranted, as it flips on its ear what the definition of a heresy is - who are the real heretics, and who really is in schism? Is it a group of individuals who want to preserve a traditional form of the Holy Mass, or is it a Pope who tends to bow in reverence to pagan idols? That's a definite thinker for sure, but it shouldn't be - the standard was established two thousand years ago when Jesus commissioned twelve men - his Apostles - to lead his Church on earth. Magisterial teaching, and Holy Tradition, began there, but it had a foundation as well that goes back millennia before it. On that we start getting into the history of philosophy and Judaic/Hebraic tradition, as both contributed to the construction of our Tradition because both were rooted in areas God created - one the natural law, and the other supernatural Revelation. That, therefore, is the standard we judge things by, and we also cannot forget the importance of Holy Scripture too - God's own words, infallible and inerrant, eternal truth. If something does not align with those, it is to be rejected, and if a cleric of the Church insists on holding the bad ideas anyway, they have declared themselves schismatic. So, does that mean Leo XIV, or his predecessor Francis, were schismatics? Weigh the evidence and decide for yourself, but just keep in mind the man is not the office. The Papal Office is eternal and established by God, but the man who sits in the chair of it will be a creature of sin, and how they understand honestly that fact will determine how they responsibly accept the awesome burden of that office.

Thanks again for allowing me to share, and will see you again soon.

Summer Has Ended

2026-09-08T07:00:21.186-07:00

Today is Labor Day, and my goodness, did I labor! I spent the majority of it doing a reorganization of my quarters here, and I am overall impressed as some things needed to be done. It has been my view that Summer starts with Memorial Day weekend, and ends with Labor Day. Although equinox Summer won't end until around September 21st, the Summer season (meaning the time people take off for vacations, schools being out, etc.) is essentially over. We will have warm days for a while for sure - I may not even have to wear a coat out until at least mid-October, so the weather will be nice out but not insufferably hot. Technically, by the time Labor Day weekend comes, many schools have been back in session for about a week, including the school where I used to work which started classes on August 31st. But, today ends the Summer season, and for the next week or so people will be shifting into Fall mode as the pumpkin spice flavors of everything from cupcakes to Rice-a-Roni (yes, I did see that!) will be starting to populate your local grocery store's shelves. I like pumpkin spice myself, but there are limits as to what you can add a pumpkin spice variety to in all honesty. Oddly, just a couple of weeks ago I finished up some pumpkin spice Tootsie Rolls I had gotten last year - candy tends to last a very long time for me these days, and I have had candy in the house in some form for months. Pumpkin spice Tootsie Rolls are one of those things I have tried, and have also decided they are no longer a bucket list item - while they are not bad, I don't think I will get them again (I stick with the classic chocolate ones or the fruit-flavored variety bags - the orange and the lime ones are delicious). Come to think of it, I think this year I will restrict my pumpkin spice indulgences to coffee and pies - that will be sufficient, thank you.

Speaking of school things, as I was cleaning out a ton of papers I had accumulated over the past few years, I managed to save a lot of my old lesson plans from my classes. I am thinking they will make a nice portfolio of my work for later, and I may even construct a few articles here out of some of that, as they are overall good lessons. I am actually toying with the idea of maybe compiling them into a bound book for use later, or at least GBC them into a book of some sort so that they look better and then I can add them to my personal papers as a sort of personal work accomplishment. While I am notorious for letting clutter accumulate over a lengthy amount of time, there is also something cleansing about sorting it out and throwing useless junk away - as much as I love keeping memorabilia, I also cannot be called a hoarder either as I am not adverse to getting rid of things I don't need. Given I am a bit crunched for space in my quarters, I undertook some major reorganization over the past couple of weeks, and my room now has a new and more organized look as well as being less congested. That is one benefit of preparing for the months ahead as I get ready for a potential move soon - that all depends on where God opens a door, and I wanted to talk a bit about that now and tie it to the changing seasons a little.

When one thinks of Summer, the most popular thought of the season is recreation - the weather is good for swimming, outdoor activities, and vacations. That's a positive view. However, there is the other side of the Summer months too - they are insufferably hot, things are slow, and if you're strapped for cash or have limited transportation, your house can soon take on the atmosphere of a prison. That is why even since I was a kid, I have always sort of liked it when the Fall came - I was never overly thrilled about going back to school (what normal kid is?) but something about the Fall season just felt good. The coolness of the air, the more frequent cloudiness and rains, and the hustle and bustle of a lot of upcoming holidays and the conclusion of an old year with the dawn of a new one was something that was somewhat exciting. Even seeing the first snow in November was exciting - everyone loves that first snowfall, especially as it blankets the ground in a beautiful white blanket of cold frozen water vapor. Now, come March, you are also glad to see the snow go too, because after the below-freezing temps and endless white snow outside by that point it starts to get a bit depressing. Again, it's the changing seasons. The two seasons most people seem to not have issues with though - the ones that avoid extremes of weather - are Spring and Fall. Spring and Fall both mean that a refreshing break comes after months of either extreme heat or extreme cold, and both are seasons that signify for me anyway times of new beginnings and fresh starts. So, both Labor Day and March 1st herald significant renewal times. Now, how does that relate to life? This is where I want to get a bit personal.

I have not divulged a lot of my everyday life and challenges I face here unless it is in retrospect later, and I am not going to do that here or now either. However, I can say that there are some challenges and decisions I have been facing over the past couple of months, and I am ready for a new season to dawn in my life. By the time the calendar year gets to Labor Day, like today, the weather takes on this strange sort of battle, and especially in September and early October, there are extremes within one week - a week can start out extremely hot, then get really chilly, and then heat up again. It is as if the old season does not want to let go and give way to the new one, and that struggle in climate can be challenging. In life that happens too - we get very impatient for change, and wonder why God is not doing anything, and what makes it even more complicated is that you may feel really good about things one day and then wake up in a cold sweat worrying the next. It is not the greatest feeling to swing between those extremes in all honesty, and I will be open to say that is something I have experienced recently myself. So, what did I do? Let me talk about that.

In my own life, I am not the only one going through some intense challenges - Azi, Barbara, and several of my friends have been hit with this too over the past couple of weeks, and it has really stretched us. One friend of mine, who is a very accomplished minister and writer in Texas, has been faced with challenges to his late parents' property, the death of an uncle he was really close to, and also dealing with some unfair treatment he received from a very crooked activist general when he was in the military. Though the circumstances in my life as compared with his are somewhat different, I actually relate on a level - we both seem to be asking the question "what in hell is going on??" And, there are others I have talked to that feel this way too. So, what do you do in this case, and how do you pray, make sense of things, etc.? I will give you my response to the particular situations I am addressing, and you can judge for yourself whether it resonates or not when you hear how I approached that issues.

When we ask God for something, there needs to be a couple of things to consider. First, is it God's will to ask for it? There are promises in Scripture, notably Philippians 4:19, which say God provides for needs, and indeed one of the Hebrew names for God in the Psalms and elsewhere is Jehovah Jireh, meaning simply "The Lord Who Provides." What that means is that God's will has already been established - he provides for needs. Now, over the years you have greedy televangelists like Kenneth Copeland who have twisted this into the whole "name it and claim it" heresy, which emphasizes lustful indulgence over needs. You don't need a multimillion dollar jet, but you do need a reliable source of transportation in today's society, and a suitable income to provide for your food, shelter, and other things. This is where I believe a more correct application of "sowing seed" comes into play here that is more consistent with reality. The way we "sow seed" to secure our necessities entails building experience, getting a decent education to have a suitable vocation, and doing so in a way that builds something. In other words, "sowing seed" is not about giving tithes to get something back from God, but rather it is putting forth the labor and effort to cultivate something, and this also has a dimension in the statement in James that says "faith without works is dead." There is nothing in Scripture that says God gives people things just because they are entitled - the only promise there is our eternal salvation, not a temporal situation. In temporal situations, there is a meritocracy which necessitates proper background for proper status, so if you work hard, study hard, and do so with a level of competence that matches intelligence, you should be rewarded. So, if you rightly ask God to open some doors for you and you rightly hold him to actual promises in Scripture he himself said, then you are not doing anything wrong or heretical - it doesn't have bearing on your eternal soul (at least not completely) and it doesn't entail miraculous intervention either. God opening a door for what you already have the merit for is not a miracle - it should be the fruit of your labor. So, it is OK to ask for that. And, let me be completely honest with you - I have really gotten frustrated at God for this at times, and even now I have some frustration about a couple of things as I write this. I want to address this in a more practical way for you, as it may relate.

We have all been there - it feels like the end of our rope, and we are starting to get desperate. So, we get very agitated with God, and that is when the bargaining in prayer starts. I am guilty of this myself, as I want to be as honest and consistent with you as possible, and I often have prayed in the past that if God will do this, I will do that. The problem wasn't the bargaining necessarily - that just shows you are a person who doesn't want to get something for nothing and you are trying to establish you are willing to make a commitment. But, perhaps that is not the approach that is necessary. For one, we are taught in Scripture itself to "study to show ourselves approved," and that means knowing what God actually says in all areas. Part of that is promises God actually makes - he promises to supply our needs, he encourages us to come to him with our burdens, he tells us that we have to be able to put some effort into things to cultivate fruit, and he also has clearly stated in Acts I believe that if you have an actual vocation from God, it is a permanent call that cannot be taken back by him. And, as far as getting frustrated with God, not only is it natural to do that, but even Scripture records in Genesis about Jacob wrestling with God too and demanding a blessing. Also, we are human beings, so we have limits to what we can deal with at this point too - so, it is natural to get mad at God on occasion, and I am not too proud to admit my own imperfection here because I have to be honest in saying that I have even cussed God out on occasion too. In many cases, once you cool down, there is time to repent of anything really volatile later, but you and I are human beings with limits, and God's silence at times can be deafening for us. What is worse, often it is only in retrospect that we see where God was truly at work, and even then you still have the nagging questions as to why it had to happen the way it did, and that tends to resurface once we have a word with God in frustration later. This now gets me to a point about something that needs to be said about the judgment of others.

There are some Christians who would probably be a bit shocked and appalled at what I just said, and I have something to say to those people. For one, I bet the image they maintain on the outside is not as squeaky-clean as they want to present it to be - for all the displayed piety and sanctimonious act they show to others, I would wager a month's salary that they too have felt the same way in their prayers as well, and they are just too ashamed to say so. They have an attitude similar to the fictional Hyacinth Bucket from the aptly-titled Keeping Up Appearances Brit-com in that image means everything to them, but image doesn't always reflect reality - it's called being human, and as holy and sanctimonious as they may appear, they fail too at times and they have vulnerable moments. I have seen both Catholics and Evangelicals who act like that too, and a part of me just wants to slap them upside the head and say "Cut the crap!" but I restrain myself and just mock their sanctimonious tone. Or, worse, they get caught up in the world of people like Kenneth Copeland, and they think they can "claim" things they didn't earn and are not actually entitled to. If you have only managed to work a $15 an hour job at Wal-Mart as a greeter, you are not entitled to a Lamborghini - God will provide adequate transportation for you which is his providing for your needs, but if you want to "roll and stroll with the big dogs," you need to think about upping your own game and maybe preparing for that role that will pay you the $100K annual salary to afford a luxury car like that. And, you may bemoan not having a 6-bedroom estate in a luxury gated community, but on a Wal-Mart salary that isn't going to happen either - you work hard to build your credit, and you can get a pretty decent but less-extravagant home somewhere that you can live comfortably in. However, on the other side of that, if you have earned a Ph.D. in something and you have a long illustrious track record of quality work and experience, then it works the other way too - if you feel your credentials and work warrant producing fruit, and you have sought to do that, then there should be doors opening for you. And, that is where it gets frustrating, because you keep wondering what's missing, what you are doing wrong, etc. And, you are wondering why God is not opening the doors you worked so hard to have opened for you. You are not "claiming" something by faith that is not yours in that instance, but you are asking real questions. This is where the silence on the other end of your prayer conversation can be deafening, and I want to offer something here for that too.

The way I approach a prayer like this is simple - I first recall what God's actual promises are, and I also reflect on what I should have based on what I have worked for, and then I lay it out before God. Upon doing that, there are some things to keep in mind:

1. Be open - God can - and should - open doors based on his promises, and you want to be ready for whatever that door is.

2. Set conditions within reason - For those who say that we should not "demand of God," I have something to say. First, you can demand from God what he has actually promised, and even Biblical characters like Jacob did that. Second, you have every reason to ask God to make the path clear of what door he is actually opening to you - if this is truly him, then you have a right to expect that all the necessary factors will fall into place to make it happen. It is perfectly OK to pray like that. God is a God of truth, and if his word is true, he has to honor it. However, just be informed realistically about those promises, and don't ask anything you don't feel, or more importantly realistically know, you deserve.

3. Realize you are not alone - In life, we may know of others who are going through similar or even worse conditions, and like us they are Christians and need God's intervention too. If you know who those people are, remember them please, and intercede like a public advocate for them as well.

4. Anagogical vocation promises - Here is a very hot take on this. Many of us feel a calling of God to a certain vocation, and there is an evangelical underpinning to that. I am of the belief that each person called of God is specifically called to certain people, as yours may be the only voice that impacts them. Your success in life, and your satisfactory fulfillment of that calling that burdens you, is contingent upon the souls of those people. Remind God of that too - if he truly loves everyone and died for the sins of the world, then he cannot hinder you to reach those only you can reach. Place those souls on the allegorical altar of your prayers, and remind God that if he loves them, he also needs to help you too.

There are those who are going to think my approach to prayers like this is a bit weird, and that I may even be on the verge of disrespecting God and insulting his feelings. Here's the thing about that people - God is a big boy, OK? You cannot project your own fragile egos on him because he transcends us all, and believe me, he has probably heard much worse from others. If God had such a fragile ego and was easily offended like that, he would have zapped this planet into oblivion centuries ago. Maybe those who have a problem are actually the ones with fragile egos, and you might want to be careful if you are - you are creating a god in your own image, and that perilously borders on idolatry.

I think I have made my point with these thoughts, and I went to an entirely different place than I intended, and that is OK. If this encourages you, then my job is done - you may be that person that only a word like this could reach, and if it encourages you, I have done what I am supposed to do. Thank you, and will see you next time.

Summing Up a Week

2026-09-05T14:37:49.409-07:00

I was not planning on visiting here today, but figured I would talk a bit about a few things. This week has been challenging - the grueling waiting for something to happen, because a current situation is getting somewhat critical. The thing I am waiting for is a call for a position, and I am not sure what has been going on. When I was on LinkedIn a few days ago, many are experiencing similar problems - they are highly qualified but are being "ghosted" by employers or sent that usual letter one hates to get that says "While your credentials are impressive, we have decided to move forward with another candidate." Getting a stupid patronizing message like that tends to show a couple of things. On the positive, at least the employer (or the stupid bot who autogenerates this crap) responded. However, the negatives far outweigh the positives. One negative is that nine chances out of ten, a real person has never laid eyes on your resume or CV, because HR personnel are lazy now depending on AI bots to do the work for them. Another negative is that it makes an applicant feel frustrated - there is always more credentials needed (despite the fact the person probably worked their butt off over the years), more qualified candidates, and it makes you feel as if you will never land the position you deserve. This has led to a number of people settling for less, and that is totally unacceptable. Of course, there are supposed resume services and so-called "career coaches" (talk about worthless professions, that is one of them) out there circling like buzzards to suck money out of people who already are living on tight budgets as their savings dwindle just to survive while waiting for that offer to come to them. My advice to potential job seekers is this - you can get most of that help for free through either your state unemployment office or through a lot of employment agencies that will never ask you for money because their client companies pay for the talent they contract. If an employment agency ever asks you to pay something up-front, it is probably a scam so leave and then report them so they don't try to screw someone else over. So. dealing with greedy "resume coaches," lazy company HR departments who never even look at your resume in the first place, and the fact that you get a lot of conflicting advice about resumes - such as the old chestnut that you have to alter your resume for every job you apply for (who has the time for that??) - does little to boost the confidence of a highly qualified professional who, by every measure, should have recruiters knocking down their doors instead of the other way around. I am starting to think maybe I should apply to be an HR manager - they let the AI bots do all the work, and then just pull arbitrary rules out of their backside for companies to implement (including some frankly unethical ones such as indemnity clauses). That, or maybe running as a Democrat for public office - neither job seems to require much in the way of intelligence, or at least that is the impression I am getting. Any rate, I know that was a bit of a frustrating opening to today's thoughts, but just needed to share it.

I have been focusing on a lot of personal organization over the past three months, much of it being badly needed. In the cramped living space I rent here in this rowhouse in downtown Baltimore, I was almost boxed in by storage bins, and I had to come up with a solution. So, the downstairs living room - which none of the three of us who live here even uses - has become a de facto storage area for our stuff - we each have a section of the room. Being this place is very temporary, I am not getting too settled into the room I am in - I have a work area, sleeping, and closet space, and that functions for me right now. We have of course a shared bathroom and kitchen, although neither is anything to brag about - the kitchen flooring needs some major renovation, and the bathroom toilet tends to clog on demand at least every couple of weeks like clockwork. I want to go back in time a little to document the history of how I got here, as I think it is a good story to relate at this point.

With a lot of craziness that happened in Hagerstown at the old place around this time two years ago, we had to make an abrupt move that neither Barbara nor myself were prepared for. That resulted in a two-week stay at the Motel 6 in Charles Town, WV, which I kind of missed after I left (although I didn't miss the chaos of trying to raise funds to stay there, my goodness!) before I got the email from the then-principal (now vice-principal) of the Jesuit high school in Baltimore where I was offered an 11th-grade Theology teacher position, and of course I took it. Given I had just earned my Ph.D. only a couple of weeks before leaving Hagerstown, it was the golden opportunity, and was definitely a career change. So, in order to take the job, I also had to find a house, and quickly. On a rental homes site, I found this guy who owned several properties in Baltimore, and I got in touch with him once I was offered the job, and given my situation, our parish church in Charles Town was more than generous in providing the funds I needed to secure the place - I still owe them a tremendous debt of gratitude even today for the amazing way they really helped us then. The place I finally took was a 106-year-old rowhouse off of Greenmount Avenue in eastern Baltimore, and I was able to rent a tiny bedroom that was considerably smaller than what I was used to for around $620 a month. It was not my ideal place, and if I could have moved to someplace better, I definitely would have, but at that point in time I had to get settled in quickly. So, it was me, three cats, and my pet rabbit then who settled into the place, and I only had a few items with me, given the rest of what I had was in a storage facility in Martinsburg at the time. The salary the school paid me was perfect for what I needed, and I recovered quickly from the trauma of the move. But, I had challenges, and want to recount some of those.

I mentioned having a menagerie of pets when I moved out of Hagerstown, and that included a rabbit, three birds, and three cats. I really did not want to drag the rabbit and the birds along, so I attempted to rehome them while I was still in Charles Town in the hotel. I was able to rehome the birds just before moving here, and during Thanksgiving week a few weeks later I was able to rehome Zoe, my bunny. I did not want to really give her up, but in all honesty she was very noisy - she was making all sorts of racket at night due to getting used to a new place, and for a while I had to put her downstairs so I could get a decent night's sleep. After some time, a nice guy from Johns Hopkins took Zoe and I am so happy he did, although I did miss her. Then it was just the three cats - Barbara's cat Mickey, who she could not keep where she was living in Rockville then, and my two cats Tippy and Lily. Tragically, during the course of our move Lily suffered a head injury that led to a nasty infection, so I lost her that Christmas after moving in and had to bury her in the back yard. Mickey would pass from old age the following November (2025), and I would have to put him to rest across the street. So, of my original pets, all I have left is Tippy, and at 15 it remains to be seen how long he will last - he is starting to have trouble with his eyesight now, but seems to be OK otherwise for the time being. I was essentially on my own then from the end of October 2024 until the beginning of March 2025. I had begun during that time to, thanks to decent paychecks, recover some of what I had lost from Hagerstown, and in no time I was able to transform my own room into a decent living space. But it was lonely - there were two other guys I shared the house with, one being an older stonemason named Joel and the other a young Mexican-American college student named James. As of now, James still lives here and has the room at the end of the hall, but in late January Joel had secured a new place with his fiance Alex and he would move. The way things came together with that though could not have been timed more perfect, and I want to talk about that.

As I mentioned, in October 2024 Barbara and I had to, by necessity, go different directions. Being Barbara worked in Rockville at the time, she secured a place with five male roommates close to where she worked, managed by a psychotic owner named Nadine. This Nadine person was very micromanaging, and Barbara was not really that happy there despite the house itself being nice - she could not have Mickey with her, and therefore it was up to me to take care of him here for her. However, with Joel moving, an opening happened quickly in this place, and I was able to get our landlord to fast-track it so Barbara could move into the place by March 1st of that year. So, that happened, and it transformed the place some as Barbara was company for me again, and it was nice having her back. With her back, she was able to have her cat Mickey, and we eventually were able to wrap up the rental on the storage unit in Charles Town and get our stuff over here this year. Barbara and I also helped each other out too, and it makes grocery budgets and other things more manageable for both of us. Living in this rickety old rowhouse in Baltimore is not ideal by any means, but it is only temporary until God green-lights us to move on. And, that is what has been maddening. Many reading this know the feeling too, and it is not pleasant. You wait, and you wait, and you wait, and most days it is the proverbial crickets - it can get a bit discouraging. In time, some doors will open, we know that, but it is just a bit stressful as we have to watch our budgets and things in the interim. So, this is where we are.

With the departure of Mickey and Lily, we gained two new cats now. One is Rocky, whom I got back in May 2025 at the Humane Society in Hagerstown. While I really wanted another tortie because I was missing Lily, Rocky brought his own unique personality to our home, and I am happy we got him. He has also grown into a huge cat too, but I also realized he needed some company - Tippy could not help him much because he is too old. But, in December that was taken care of too when the most adorable little female black cat showed up - this is Sadie, and she has also been a joy to have too. Both of them fill a void left by the passing of both Mickey and Lily, and they are new cats we have gotten in a new house. At one point, I may talk about my pets over the years, especially the cats, as I have consistently had a cat as a pet in some form or another for almost 30 years now. Given these two are young yet (both less than 2 years) I am anticipating many years of joy from them.

So, any rate, we come back to the present - my contract at the Jesuit school ended on June 30, and I am currently waiting for something to come to me as I have done the work of putting out resumes and everything else. Being I already have the Ph.D., this should be going easier but it isn't - now it's a Maryland teacher certification which, although not totally required by private schools, definitely enhances chances. I have an appointment this coming week with a nonprofit that helps secure teacher certification for candidates, and they have some free coaching and direction that could maybe offer some good insights into what needs to be done. I also have Armenian lessons coming up starting in October, and then I was persuaded to go for a D.Min. in Catechetics at my alma mater, Franciscan University of Steubenville, in Fall 2027. There are things to look forward to, in other words, but right now it is just maintaining a consistent income that is integral. For those of you who are praying people reading this, please keep me in mind when you say your daily prayers.

That is most of what I really wanted to reflect on this week, and if all goes well, I may have some more inspirational stuff to share next time. So, thanks for visiting, and will see you again soon.

Scam Business Categories That Should Be Eliminated

2026-09-02T03:31:39.936-07:00

When people have tight budgets and have to prioritize necessities, especially during job transitions, it is often a good thing to reach out for help. The job market can be unnecessarily complicated, more so now that AI "gatekeeper" screening slaughters most resumes and CVs before an actual person even looks at them. Along with this is tax liabilities - when you get slapped with a bill from the IRS threatening to levy your assets when you have limited resources, it makes people seek help to make sense of that too. The US tax code is a cumbersome hodgepodge of frivolous paper waste that, when compiled, is the size of a library in a small town. That is ridiculous. The need to survive - securing income, and also mitigating excessive tax burdens - has created a weird niche for a whole industry of "services" that capitalize on people's vulnerabilities. There are two major areas where this is evident

1. Resume writing services and job search companies

2. Tax settlement firms

In all honesty, these are two industries that don't need to exist, and they are two of the most corrupt moneymaking schemes out there. The first one preys on the desperation of job seekers who haven't heard anything back from companies they have applied to and have had endless rejection letters. The second makes unrealistic and false claims about "IRS debt forgiveness," which is rare if it even exists at all. If you go on a social media platform like Facebook, you will see literally hundreds of ads for both of these rackets (and let's be honest - that is exactly what they are), and it just gets to be a literal headache trying to navigate without those damn ads assaulting your senses at every turn. Let me take the first one, the "pay to work" scam.

Resume writing and career coaching have become big business these days, and you cannot scroll on social media or anywhere else without seeing ads guaranteeing you things about finding work. They promise to short-list you, put your application material in front of a hiring manager, etc. A person who is desperately needing work will see that, and thinking it is an answer to prayers, they click on it, and then the big fonts and continuous flipping through screens of repetitive claims finally come to a place where you are asked to fill out details, upload a resume, etc. You do all of that, and then you click a button. And - voila! - there's the catch! In order to get their services, you have to pay them a fee to find you work, and in all honesty when I see that I run the other direction. When anyone asks me to pay them for the "privilege" of landing that $100K/year dream job, they are lying to you - don't waste your money. Nine chances out of ten, you will need the money they are trying to scam you out of for basic necessities, as you are probably facing a budget crunch due to your resources coming down to a trickle, and to waste money on a service that 90% of the time will not deliver what they promise is insanity. A real employment assistance service should never ask you to pay them, and I am going to show you how the correct model works.

The traditional staffing agency (or temp service) generally is not going to charge you to find work for you. Often, you just submit your information, and a staffing rep will call you to go over your options. Then, they will notify you of potential job opportunities, and you can have the option of accepting or rejecting them. This is how the traditional staffing industry - made up of firms like Aston Carter, Randstad, Robert Half, and others - has worked for decades, and in my experience I have had some of my greatest successes securing work with them over the years. Some of these agencies are also industry focused - Ally Educators is one that comes to mind for teachers, and a Florida-based firm called The Legal Registry works within the legal profession - but they operate pretty much the same way. These agencies are generally efficient and effective at getting candidates short-term work, and they are also honest with you if any issue comes up. So, these are businesses, so how do staffing agencies get funded? They are contracted by companies to find talent, and the company pays them a set rate. For instance, if you are signed up as talent at one of these agencies, and a client company decides to hire for a position you qualify for and sets a rate of $18 hourly to pay you, their contract will stipulate that they then pay the agency around $30 hourly for you, so that the agency makes a profit too. That is actually a decent business model, and it's also fair as well. And, as a result, the candidate needing work does not have to pay out money from their pockets, as the companies do that for their own services they receive which includes hiring people like you to do specialized jobs. The down side, which to these staffing agencies' credit is honest, is that they will tell you up-front that they don't necessarily guarantee placement. You may even go for weeks or months without a peep from the agency, but if you are still available, at some point they reach out and you have yourself work then. The virtue of consistency then is something many traditional staffing agencies have, and that can be appreciated. However, these buzzards on social media that promise things they can't deliver, and then try to charge you for it, are not the same. So, the recommendation here is to stick with a traditional staffing agency for a more rapid chance at getting some decent work until the full-time permanent opportunity opens up.

Another thing about this crap was addressed by a gentleman on LinkedIn recently concerning these emails you get. After some time, when your personal savings are dwindling and you have to rely on maxing out credit cards to pay basic expenses, the job search can get discouraging. The guy on LinkedIn, who is called Ramon, made some interesting points in a post on there. He noted the common AI-generated phraseology you get, and these are some I have seen often too:

1. From Indeed: "Your extensive leadership experience could be a strong match for this role."

My commentary on this one: When you get something like this, it is often a job so far out of your field and experience that an actual hiring manager would laugh himself silly if you submitted a resume for it. I have actually gotten things like this for attorney positions, one time I got one for a phlebotomist, and another time it was a blue-collar gig like a forklift driver. This is how you can tell a dumb bot generated that crap.

2. From LinkedIn: "Your background aligns well with this opportunity."

My commentary: Yeah, right! Like the Indeed AI-generated spiel, this one is a bunch of BS usually too as a lot of things they list this way have nothing to do with your actual background.

3. From Glassdoor: "You may be a great fit."

My commentary: This one tries to qualify their "assessment" with the word "may," but often what you supposedly "may" be "a great fit" for is something outside your professional demographic.

4. From recruiters: "Your experience really stood out to me."

My commentary: Well great then - do I get the job if I impressed you that much? Yeah, this is yet another bot and not a real person.

5. The email about something you did apply for: "We were impressed with your background, but..."

My commentary here: Here is the problem with that. If you liked me so much, then why the rejection letter? While at least they had the courtesy to respond - that's nice at least - they don't have to blow smoke up your hindquarters by trying to patronize your hard work.

As Ramon very correctly said, none of us are going to get every job we apply for, but the problem is more fundamental than that. Many of these places utilize robot "gatekeepers" that tend to reject a submitted application before a real person even knows it exists, and as a result, you end up applying to hundreds of positions you know you're qualified for, and out of those hundreds you are lucky to get a dozen responses, and even less will actually invite you to either an in-person interview or a Zoom call to talk more. For all the time a candidate wastes on this - and that doesn't even take into account that there is no real standard for what a resume or CV looks like, so you have to tailor those to every damn thing you apply to - it eats into dwindling resources such as gas in a car, Uber fare if you don't have a car, basic groceries, and in time it affects credit accounts and your living expenses. Most qualified people who keep getting ghosted or rejected for jobs they really should have are forced to waste a lot of time and energy on superficial junk that won't even be viewed by a human eyeball anyway. Usually, the useless, stupid bots intercept and auto-reject your resume before even a mail clerk sees it. This is why personally I have little use for AI. And, I have little use for so-called "job assistance services" that will charge you a small fortune you cannot afford to promise you jobs you never get. That radically has to change, and a human dimension has to be restored to the job seeking process. People have to feed and take care of their families, and cannot afford these stupid games with AI bots when they need income. Ramon also noted that the hiring process in general has become direly disconnected, and I agree with him 100%. As he notes, you are supposedly "qualified" but then not selected. And then it is the guilt trips from people - your resume was not the right this or that, you didn't have a cover letter, etc. In other words, they say it's your fault for not getting chosen, even if the references you submitted gave glowing recommendations, and your resume showcases the best of your work history. That means that many qualified people who could contribute a lot are kicked to the curb, and some billionaire executive could care less. Any rate, that is my perspective on that situation.

The tax services are a whole different level of annoyances. In recent weeks, I get more than 20 calls a day from buzzards making promises to eliminate or reduce my tax debt, and they promise things that the IRS even says won't happen. The IRS may reduce what you owe, but it doesn't get total forgiveness unless it's a unique circumstance. However, those scavengers who prey on vulnerable people facing tax levy letters and other looming threats are not interested in helping you - they are interested in turning a profit at your expense. It is kind of stupid really, because if someone is struggling with a massive tax burden, then how in hell are they going to pay hundreds of dollars to some scam artist to do something that theoretically is impossible. I think social media platforms need to rein in those annoying ads, and even communication companies should go after them for calling people 20 or more times a day too. That is another thing I am sick of when trying to find real answers to issues, and then these people give you a migraine with the scamming and nonsense. It's got to stop.

I think I have said all that needs to be said for now about these two bogus business schemes, and if there is a way to force legislation to stop them, I am all in on it. You should not have an additional and unnecessary burden imposed upon you when you are genuinely seeking help, and buzzards like tax remedy "services" and resume-writing firms as well as paid job boards need to be declared illegal for the way they exploit others. If you need help with finding a good career, often there are free programs at churches and through most state Department of Labor offices that will help you in more realistic ways - they don't guarantee results, but they can give constructive feedback and assessment on your strengths and areas you could tweak. Your tax revenue already pays for those, so you have a right to use them. Also, a close friend who has some gift for creating resumes and CVs can do you a better service for less price - they probably need the income too, so utilize them and they will often work out something with you too. However, please do not fall for those garbage ads on social media for services like this, because they will just rip you off and not deliver anything to you. This is some practical advice based on my own experiences over the years, and I am offering it for free because it will do more good that way.

Thank you for letting me rant, and will see you next visit.

On Where My Catholic Identity Goes From Here, My Connection to Armenians, and More

2026-08-31T19:10:19.062-07:00

This is a bit of a follow-up to my last post as there are a few things I want to sort out before moving forward. I am in the process of drafting a letter of direction to my former parish priest, Fr. Grassi, because I value his input as a true man of God. There is a lot here to sort out, so I will just dive into it.

To begin, let me talk a bit about my Catholic faith. I say up-front that I am Catholic until the day I die, but it comes with some boundaries now too. What I am about to say about myself is not going to go over well with either mainstream and more liberal Catholics, or with the trads either, because I have some things I differ on with both of those extremes. I guess the biggest thing is to define who I am as a Catholic, and then try to plot a course forward (the spoiler - as I am writing this, I already have a plan, so we're good, but you just need to hear it). As I mentioned some time back, I am a Vicentian Catholic in the truest sense in that I am pretty much inclusive of all Christian tradition that is rooted in Apostolic faith - this means that when I say "Catholic," I mean anyone who holds the historic and traditional Catholic faith over the ages, and it is not consigned to just churches who see the Vatican as their leadership - in recent decades I would argue that there are good Catholics who are still faithful to the true faith despite some of the stupidity that comes from the Vatican and from many robed bureaucrats with the titles of "Bishop" or "Cardinal." Many people I would mention as rightly being called Catholic are not in communion with Rome - the Orthodox, the Oriental Churches (including the Assyrians), the more conservative Old Catholic jurisdictions, the SSPX and the sedevacantists, the Polish National Catholics, traditional Anglicans, and even a few Evangelicals in the East in particular who have still maintained the traditions of their people (groups like the Armenian Evangelicals; the Mar Thoma, St. Thomas Evangelical, and Believers Eastern Churches in India; Coptic Evangelicals in Egypt; some Assyrian Evangelicals, and groups such as the Eastern-Rite Lutherans, the Georgian Baptists, and others). Those Evangelical groups don't have the fullness of Apostolicity, but they do participate in it on a certain level. There are other groups within the Roman fold though I believe that fully embody Catholic faith - parishes such as my old home parish in Charles Town, WV for instance, as well as the Eastern-rite Churches, which thankfully for the most part have been largely immune to the BS the Vatican and some liberal Roman Catholics push. Likewise, I would like to distinguish who I also call Christian, because I believe a large number of Evangelicals are also my brothers and sisters in Christ, and to that degree they participate to a limited degree as well in the true Catholic faith although neither they nor some Catholics would admit that. Because I have highlighted groups who are fairly conservative and traditional and I have an ecumenical sentiment with them, I would be chastised by those James Martin and Cardinal Cupich types. Also, because I believe Protestants - in particular good Evangelical and Pentecostal Protestants - to be fellow Christians, then some self-professed Trads would not be happy with me either. However, in all honesty, I have grown too old to care about what they think, because I know from whence I speak too. I was a former Evangelical Protestant, and as such I knew I was a Christian and served Christ, but I also knew a dimension to my sincere faith was lacking and discovered it when I decided to embrace the true Catholic faith. However, despite the Trads and other converts who have a narrower view about who or what should be called "Christian," I also did not come to faith like some of them did either. I have told the story of my Convergence Movement participation in the mid-1990s, but there is another dimension to my actual faith I need to share to clear up where I stand too. For my TLM friends, this is going to make their heads explode, but equally it will rattle the feathers of some former Fundies I knew too in the Protestant traditions. Again, I don't care, because what I am about to share is what really shaped my spirituality and faith, and I am more Catholic today because of it.

For most of my Christian life, and practically all my Catholic journey, I didn't get a lot of influence from Roman Catholic writers. There are many I have read, and I also did have some good professors at Steubenville that enriched me deeply, but they more or less provided the undergirding to convictions I already had shaped over many years. Even back in my Protestant days, I had a deep and endearing connection to the Christian East - it started when I was in high school with learning about the Byzantine Empire, and it grew later as I became acquainted with a number of very amazing Middle Eastern Christian communities such as the Armenians, Assyrians, Maronites, Copts, and others. While I am not 100% Eastern Christian myself, my influences lean that direction and have for decades now. In my Catholic part of my Christian walk, the parishes I went to where I was primarily the happiest were Byzantine and Maronite congregations, and one of my earliest spiritual mentors was the late Fr. Eusebius Stephanou, who was an early Orthodox participant in Charismatic Renewal and he is the primary individual who introduced me to the richness of Patristic writings. I also owe much to other Eastern Christians, including Fr. Qasha Klutz of the Assyrian Church, with whom I had a very long friendship until his passing last year. Then there is also the late Dr. Krikor Haleblian, who although an Armenian Pentecostal pastor and professor at Fuller Seminary, was a mentor to me as well about Armenian liturgical and spiritual practices. Dr. Haleblian's book, The Armenian Church in Context, was something I received from him personally as an autographed gift, and I still use it to this day. People like Fr. Klutz, Fr. Eusebius, and Dr. Haleblian helped me to understand what it meant to be an Eastern Christian, and also how to integrate some of those Eastern Christian elements into my own faith, which I have done. I don't rule out the West either though, as I mentioned many great professors at Steubenville (I give particular mention here to Dr. Bergsma, Dr. Crosby, Dr. Regis Martin, Dr. Scott Hahn, and Dr. Mark Miravalle), as well as one of the best Anglican bishops I have ever met, my former diocesan Archbishop Mark Haverland of the Anglican Catholic Church. And of course, I cannot leave out Fr. Timothy Grassi, my very wonderful former parish priest who really went above and beyond with helping me. Along the way as well, there were even a few decent Evangelicals that merit consideration, as they are the ones who taught my about intercultural relations (thanks Baba Rodney White), common-sense living out one's faith ( I owe that one to the late Rev. Olen Phillips, who also I was blessed to be led to Christ by and was baptized, and also Rev. Clarence S. Pansler, who had a realistic way of living out a true Christian life). These are all people that have personally impacted the person I became as a Catholic Christian, and they also shaped much of my own faith in ways they never imagined. Like a good recipe for a stew, each of them contributed an ingredient or two into my own "recipe" of faith, and integrating that helped me in so many ways. That is why they are my personal "hall of heroes" as they and some others I forgot to mention were catalytic in the development of my personal faith. However, there has been the opposition too, so let's briefly deal with them.

I have been in the ring so to speak combatting a diverse group of adversaries - over-zealous Trad Catholics, mouthy Fundamentalists and Pentecostals, rabidly leftist Liberation theologians, lukewarm Catholics who have a skewered view of the authority of the Papacy, and a few very staunch Orthodox Christians. While a handful of these people later became good friends and we respect each other today, in the perpetual battlefield known as social media I have had to block people who just got obnoxious. One, a Pentecostal fundamentalist in Florida named Karen, once threatened my job for calling her out on some racist nonsense she posted on her personal page. Another, a young, stupid, and impulsive Trad Catholic, threatened a sort of apocalyptic violence against me - he told me essentially when I called him out on his attitude that he "would meet me on the field of battle during World War III and introduce me to the Final Judge." And then there are the liberals - they hate people like me. The conservative Christians - Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox - are mostly decent and the more obnoxious among them are a small minority. However, in recent weeks two things have happened at once that brought some of what is being called the "Woke Right" out of the woodwork. The first was talk surrounding Dolly Parton's death, and the second is the rise of a young group of hotheaded dumbasses calling themselves "Orthobros" who are feigning conversion to the Orthodox Church but do not reflect Orthodox Christianity in any way (these are not the same class of converts like Fr. Peter Gillquist, who was part of the Evangelical Orthodox movement in the 1970s and 1980s and eventually was received into full communion - he and his group were decent guys who had a wealth of good material that helped me. These so-called "Orthobros" are much like some of the Mad-Trads among TLM Catholics, and have a similar mentality). I am now going to take these one at a time and give my thoughts on them.

First, regarding Dolly Parton's death, I must say for the most part many were positive about her and genuinely liked her. Liking and respecting someone though and agreeing with everything they might believe are not the same thing, and they should not be conflated. Dolly, like all of us, was a fallible human being who made mistakes, but she had a quality many people lack - she was real, and that is why she garnered a lot of respect. This is especially true among people in my native Appalachian region, because Dolly was a daughter of the mountains and we understood who she was and where she came from. That being said, there have been some idiots posing as "Christians" who decided to take a big ol' figurative dump on poor Dolly's grave before her remains even chilled, and I found that astounding - you don't disrespect the dead, even when you don't like them. It is rude, and in poor taste, especially if they recently passed and haven't even had formal funerary rites yet. A former professor of mine who is a great guy, Dr. Alan Harrelson was the one who shed light on these jackasses, and he pointed out two very prominent ones. The first is a Fundie Baptist named Spencer Smith, who more or less said Dolly was consigned to hell because she didn't have the same cookie-cutter faith he does, and the way he acted was appalling. This is not the first time Fundie Baptists have done dumb things though - remember Kent Hovind, Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church, the Duggars, etc.? Bottom line is that these are the wrong people to be attacking someone, as they have enough dung in their own potato patch to smell up an Iowa cornfield. Dr. Harrelson, with his endearing Southern drawl and his direct way of saying things plainly, told Spencer Smith what he could do with his "judgment:" basically, he told them to shove it up their backsides, and I agree 100%. The second guy was a big letdown, and that was Ken Ham. While admittedly Ken Ham has done some good work with Creationism, and I have even used his material at times, I also see him now in the same light as his now-disgraced Fundie Baptist buddy Kent Hovind - he called Dolly basically demon-possessed, and then said she "enriched" herself with Dollywood (ironic, since Ken Ham basically opened his own theme park called the Ark Encounter that rivals in scale to Jim and Tammy Bakker's old Heritage USA scheme - what is with these Fundies and money-making schemes??). Dr. Harrelson made an excellent point that I have been saying for years, and it is this - he noted that people like Ken Ham idolize their own interpretation of Scripture over actual Scripture, and that their interpretation even overshadows Christ's love for mankind and desire for all humanity to be saved. I will even take Dr. Harrelson's very astute point further and say that Ken Ham and others like him love to codify their own variation of what I call the "tradition of anti-tradition," and by conflating the Holy Tradition of the Church with Jesus's admonition against "traditions of men," they create their own. And, as Dr. Harrelson (who also recently converted to the Catholic faith too) also correctly noted, it is a form of idolatry because for all their cries of Sola Scriptura, they don't really have a high view of actual Scripture - instead, they idolize their own opinions about Scripture, which often entails a lot of twisted stuff. However, I have another serious issue with Ken Ham that goes beyond this discussion. Many of us who are Catholics are Young-Earth Creationists, and although the Catholic Church itself has no official position on origins (they say study the views essentially to be informed about them in Papal documents) it is also not discouraged officially, although Darwinian-derived theistic evolution tends to taint the more bureaucratic of Popes and Cardinals due to influences such as Teilhard de Chardin. However, instead of seeing good Catholic Creationists such as John Wynne and Hugh Owen of the Kolbe Center as valuable resources, Ham and his ilk let their anti-Catholicism taint their judgments, and therefore Catholic Creationists often have to operate independently of the more Evangelical-heavy Creationist networks, despite having the same convictions. This has been influential in steering me away from relying on Ken Ham's materials - I still utilize some good Protestant Creationists' works, such as those of Henry Morris, but when they invite scandal like Kent Hovind or act like pompous self-righteous jackasses like Ken Ham, they don't merit my support at that point. Thanks to my good friend Hugh Owen, a lot of my own studies on origins go back to the Patristic writings and other documents to shape my own perspective, and Hugh has been a huge blessing over the years with supplying materials to me. If you want a good Catholic Creationist study as a matter of fact, I would highly recommend Foundations Restored, because it is a rich reservoir of sound Catholic teaching on origins, and Hugh played a big part in its production. If you are interested, check out the website at www.foundationsrestored.com. The Kolbe Center as well has a lot of good resources as well too, and you can check them out at www.kolbecenter.org. That way, you can steer away from the anti-Catholic BS of people like Ken Ham, and you can receive sound teaching on origins from good Catholic sources. As a proponent of Intelligent Design as well, I recommend the premiere group for that called the Discovery Institute, and you can access them at www.discovery.org. DI also has some good online courses available as well, and a lot of Catholics work with them as they have a much more ecumenical scope. Any rate, I got off-track there a bit about that, so let's regain our bearings and move on. However, in concluding this particular part of the discussion, I think some people would be better if they just shut up, particularly when disrespecting the dead like Dolly Parton - my goodness, let her at least be buried first before you start attacking her, fools! I think that sums up my sentiments on that, so there is more to talk about.

So, I went down that rabbit trail to come back to the discussion, and the subtexts here were relevant to the discussion as I am in a place in life where I am not going to necessarily hold everything like your typical Roman Catholic does - while the theology is not a question, some social and ecclesiological things are, and those are what I oppose. As a young man in Bible college years ago, I fell in love with Armenians and Assyrians, and always felt a vocation to work with them in some way - that is one reason my major and concentration were Missions when I was an undergrad. However, the unfortunate thing about Evangelical Bible college Missions programs in the 1990s when I was an undergrad was that students were indoctrinated to "convert" people in distant lands to a cookie-cutter version of themselves, and that never sat well with me. A lot of that was fueled by another man-made tradition of Evangelicals - anti-Catholicism. However, it was not confined to just Roman Catholics, oh no - a good "on-fire" Pentecostal missionary had to go after the Orthodox, the Anglicans, the Lutherans, and - I kid you not on this! - even the Amish and Mennonites, whom many of them considered their so-called spiritual forebears! In other words, basically these American Protestants saw themselves as the true manifestation of Biblical Christianity, and they were taught that anyone else (especially ancient Churches who predated them by centuries) was seen as "heathen" and "unsaved." I was the odd man out then too, because I always thought it was stupid to convert other Christians - I mean, it is one thing if you want to evangelize pagan tribes or Muslims, but other Christians?? In cultivating close and warm relationships with a lot of Armenians, Assyrians, Maronites, Copts, Ethiopians, Syriac Indians, and others over the years, as well as a lot of ethnic Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox communities, I saw Christ in many of these people, and they probably had their spiritual affairs more together than the idiot young Bible college "missionaries" did. So, the rhetoric at a Pentecostal university then frankly offended me because I knew better in all honesty, and when I had a forum to do so, I openly challenged that mentality. One time for instance, I refused to participate in the semester Missions Convention because I witnessed a stupid display of my classmates in one of their "presentations" marching around with signs on stage like deranged Price is Right girls that labeled Byzantine-rite Catholics and others as "lost people groups," and what is funnier is that those idiots probably didn't even know what the hell a Byzantine Catholic even was! While I am proud of obtaining my undergrad degree 30 years ago, if I could go back in time I would have chosen a different school and would have become a Catholic Christian of some sort sooner. It was an education regardless, in more ways than one, and today I still keep in touch with many of those classmates - very few of them are in the actual mission field, and that is a good thing. One, who was the de-facto head of our Intercultural Ministries team, ended up teaching salsa dancing with her husband where she lives - she was a nice kid, but I don't think she ever really comprehended what true intercultural communication was. I think of all of our group then, I may possibly be the only one who has been engaged interculturally with others - I taught at a high school that was 100% minority students, and spent a large part of my adult life being in relationships with ethnic parishes that I was even actively involved in ministry in. And, God willing, my second long-term teaching assignment is going to be at an Armenian Orthodox parish in DC, and for me that means something. So again, where is this all going? Let's see if we can real this big one in.

My identity as a Catholic has been shaped by the whole Church in many aspects - I am pretty much Eastern in much of my mindset now, but do retain some good Latin and Anglican practices too, such as being an adherent of Thomistic philosophy. But, it was overall the Christian East that shaped the type of Catholic I am, and that is why given the current craziness going on in the Western part of the Church, I think I am opting for the Eastern-rite instead. While my preference would be a Maronite parish, in Baltimore the sole Eastern-Rite Catholic Church is a Ukrainian parish, St. Michael's, and that is where I am calling home until it's time to move on. I toyed with the idea of converting to Armenian Apostolic if I get this school position, but probably won't - if anything, if an Armenian Catholic church establishes in the area, I will attend that. I have a partial Armenian birthright too, so I am at home with them as my people essentially. My fundamental identity overall is still Catholic, although I am not a fan of either one of our two recent Popes, and I have less love for some of the bishops and even some clergy who openly defy Catholic teaching on fundamental things like human sexuality and even Biblical origins of the universe. But, I have to remember I am not Catholic because of the Pope, whoever that might be. The Pope is a man, not a divine being, so his authority over me only goes so far, and I respect it within given boundaries. Essentially, where the Pope agrees with established doctrine and Tradition, I am in agreement - however where he varies, I actively oppose that. For instance, I don't think our Cardinals and the Pope should be giving homage to pagan deities like Pachamama (which warrants instant excommunication, by the way) but then they cruelly ostracize faithful Latin Mass groups like the SSPX. And, with 60% or more of American Catholics denying basic things like the Real Presence and other things, that is not the Catholicism I embrace. Many visionaries and saints in the Church foretold a schism happening in latter times, and I think we are seeing the initial tremors of that now. If the Church splits, I will align with the orthodox side of it. Thankfully though, it seems that the Roman Church crisis is only affecting the Roman Rite, as the Eastern Catholics have tended to bind more strongly to their traditions and have remained generally orthodox in faith and free from the controversies surrounding many Roman dioceses in the US and Europe right now. Another shining hope is the Third World, as there are more orthodox Roman Catholics in places like Latin America, Africa, and the Philippines. That is encouraging, and that faithful remnant will be the true Catholic faith when that schism comes. It will be a smaller Church, as the late Pope Benedict XVI noted, but it will be a more faithful Church. And, with the way things are going - the Archdiocese of Baltimore is a microcosm of the greater issue, and in Baltimore proper the Catholic establishment is decaying - this could be a reality sooner than we think or could have guessed even. But, the type of Catholic I will be is a historical Catholic, with heavy influence from the Christian East. And, that is why my work with Armenians is important as well.

Thank you for this long, rambling post and for enduring it with me, and I will see you next time when I have more inspirational thoughts.

A Nice Reconnection

2026-08-31T11:27:48.306-07:00

I am writing this to share a very nice and unusual experience this weekend, as it was something I feel was defining for me personally. I want to first give some background on where this happened, then the experience itself, and my own history as to why it is significant. This is one of those things that in all honesty I cannot explain, but it felt amazing and there was something happening there.

A few weeks back on a whim during my job search, I decided to do something different. After looking into a few things, I discovered to my personal joy that there is an Armenian school in Washington, DC, called Shnorhali School, and it is affiliated with a sizeable Armenian Apostolic parish, St. Mary. A week or two after just submitting an inquiry about whether they may need teachers, the principal - a nice lady named Nunik Nishanian - called me and wanted to schedule a meeting about finding out what role I could take on there. She told me that their priest, Fr. Hovsep, and his family were visiting Armenia and would be back before the end of August, and therefore the best day to set up something would be on August 30, or yesterday. So, I made the arrangements, and with Barbara in tow, we made the journey via Uber down there yesterday. Not knowing the times when everything would be taking place, I more or less decided the best time to leave to go down there was around 7:30 AM, and so we did. We arrived there at about 8:22 AM, and waited for a short time until a deacon came in and unlocked the church, allowing us to go in. The deacon, a very friendly guy, told us to essentially just make ourselves comfortable. At 9:30, the younger kids had instruction in singing Armenian chant with a young subdeacon, and then a prayer service followed by their Badarak (Divine Liturgy) followed, and that was almost 2 hours. I will have more to say about the liturgy momentarily because that is where a very unique experience happened to me, but after the liturgy, there was a coffee hour where I got to have an informal conversation with Fr. Hovsep - he was a very nice priest, and is currently finishing up a Ph.D. himself at Catholic University of America - and then I got to sit in on the parent orientation for the school there. After, I talked briefly to the principal, got to peruse the gift shop (where I found an Artsakh flag - I wanted one of those - as well as some Armenian coffee and flavored olive oils), and then we caught our Uber back home to Baltimore. It ended up being an all-day thing, as we got home yesterday after 3, but it overall was a good experience. It has been an objective of mine to attend at least one Armenian Badarak, as I already knew the liturgy somewhat and could identify the chant in it by tunes due to a cassette (and later CD) recording of the Komitas Liturgy I received years ago. The Armenian Badarak is perhaps one of the most beautiful liturgies of the Church - there is a melancholy dimension to it, but it is also very reverent and holy as well. But, what happened to me during that liturgy yesterday is what was significant, as I have never experienced anything like this before, and I want to talk about it now.

Although everything in the Badarak was in Armenian except the Epistle reading (which was done by an altar server) and the homily, we had a liturgical text in both Armenian and English so it was easy to follow - knowing the tune to the various chants also helped keep my place too, as I am familiar with how the various parts of it - the Der Voghormia (Lord Have Mercy), the Soorp Troparion (this is the Sanctus in the Roman-rite Mass essentially) and the Hayr Mer (the Armenian "Our Father") are all very familiar to me, and when I hear the tune for the chant (which I believe was composed by Komitas) I know immediately where I am in the liturgy. And, like the Roman, Byzantine, Maronite, and other historic liturgies of the Church, the Armenian Badarak has essentially the same fundamental elements, although somewhat ordered differently, so as to be consistent with the ancient liturgical form these other historic liturgies are based upon. This means that despite the language difference, one who participates in these liturgies is still a participant in the "Mass of the Ages" and God's Holy Spirit is still definitely in it, if not more so in the case of what I experienced yesterday. One very important difference about the Armenian Badarak that most other liturgies (with the exception of the Coptic, Syriac, and Ethiopian liturgies) do not practice is that the participants in the liturgy at the altar - the priest or bishop, deacons, subdeacons, and acolytes - do not wear shoes when they are participating in their functions. Many have a set of specially-made altar slippers, while others (especially the teenaged acolytes) are in just their socks. However, at a given moment in the liturgy itself, the priest who is consecrating the elements of the Eucharist must remove his slippers and the ornate miter he wears. This is a serious connection to the Old Testament practice of removing shoes when on holy ground, and its reverence is actually a profound thing to see. All of these various elements of yesterday's Badarak set the stage for something profound to happen inside me as I was observing the liturgy. At a point in the liturgy, the way the priests, deacons, and subdeacons were chanting the Badarak made something deep inside me click, and the English translation I was following in the book literally jumped from the page at me, and the feeling of that was surreal. I am not sure how to correctly articulate it, but something about that beautiful chant, the translation on the page (and it was liturgical content that I had heard in other forms many times in Masses and liturgies ranging from traditional Anglican to Coptic), and the general connection I have had for four decades with the Armenian people caused something to just sort of snap in place, and it was as if God's presence came to me in a special way. I have honestly never felt anything like that before, and it was a very beautiful feeling but one I still cannot totally explain - I can explain what happened, but the exact feeling I cannot pinpoint. I just know that in that liturgy I experienced God in a special way I had never experienced before, and I would love to be able to experience that again in all honesty. Now, I have had these little supernatural "blips" happen in Masses before. Not long after my First Communion into the Catholic Church in 2000, as a matter of fact, I was sitting in a Mass at the Cathedral of St. Jude in St. Petersburg, FL, and when Fr. DeJulio who was the celebrant started saying the words of consecration over the Body and Blood, I recall as plain as day seeing a pillar of fire descend over those elements - for me then, it was a teaching moment I believe, showing the exact point bread and wine were transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ. On another occasion, I attended a Serbian Divine Liturgy (also in St. Pete) and a profound joy came over me there during that liturgy - it moved me to tears. I later found out that this was described by the Russians as an emotional experience called umilenie, and to describe that it is like a tender, sweet and comforting touch of God's Spirit on someone that goes to the core of their being and pierces any filters or walls the person has. That was a beautiful experience as well. A third time something like this happened was just three years ago at St. Mary's Church in Hagerstown. When Fr. James, the celebrant, was giving the homily, I recall seeing this huge angel standing behind him with its wings outstretched, and what that showed me was that this priest, Fr. James, had a shepherd's heart and God was protecting him. However, as powerful as all those past things were, what happened in that little Armenian parish yesterday was something completely different, and in order to explore that further, let me recap my own connection to the Armenian people as I believe that has a huge bearing as to why this happened.

The front entrance of St. Mary Armenian Apostolic Church in Washington, DC

The ornate carvings on the front door of the church

The inner sanctuary (note, there is a curtain on the altar that is closed at pivotal parts of the Badarak)

The ornate carved Armenian khatchkar (cross) at the front entrance, which was donated by a generous group of parishioners as noted on the plaque in the back

In order to understand how I was invited to an Armenian church for a possible teaching opportunity with their school, let me take you back 28 years. In early 1988, I had become interested in Byzantine history, and in reading about the Byzantine Empire I came across a small nation of people called the Armenians. The Armenians are the indigenous Indo-European inhabitants of eastern Anatolia and the south Caucasus region, and they are direct descendants of an ancient kingdom called Urartu, which is mentioned in the Bible. Urartu was a big regional power in its day, and it was noted for having some skirmishes with the Assyrian Empire that lay to its south (the interesting twist is that it would be the descendants of both of these peoples who would become the first nations to convert en masse to Christianity, and they would also share a lot of persecution and atrocities committed against them in centuries to come). By the time Rome came to be the great imperial power it was, somehow the transition between the ancient Urartians and the modern Armenians happened, and the region has been known as "Armenia" since. Learning of the unique Christian heritage of the Armenian people, I took a keen interest in them during my junior year of high school, and had amassed a considerable amount of information on them, thanks to a large packet that the Armenian Archdiocese sent me that summer (I still have some of those booklets even today). When I learned more about what the Turks had done to them over the centuries, I began to take up their cause, and by the time I started college I knew these were the people I needed to foster a vocation to. This early interest climaxed in 1995, when a trip to California where I actually preached at St. Nareg Church in Montebello, CA, where my dear friend Dr. Krikor Haleblian pastored. Due to some unforeseen things that happened in subsequent months after that trip, I slowly began to table my interest in Armenians and Assyrians, and while I still advocated for them when I could, I was not as into it as I was in my late teens and early 20s. However, in 2017 something began to happen which started calling me back to this original love, and it happened ironically in my own family tree. You see, I come from a line of people who had nobility connections going back over 1500 years, and somehow about 900 years ago some of my ancestors ended up being Crusaders who went to the Holy Land, and one prominent family of them I am connected to is the House of DeLusagnon. When the DeLusagnons embarked on the Crusades, they forged a bond with some Armenian noble families who had been dispersed by Muslim hordes to areas on the southeast coast of what is today Turkey and extending into northern Lebanon, and with these Armenian noble families (including the ones who contributed to my own DNA, the Mamikonians) they forged the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia. One of the descendants of this family would also interesting enough come to be the tsar of Bulgaria in the later Middle Ages too, and that is how my personal bloodline ties into an Armenian root. That was perhaps one of the most amazing discoveries I have made in my genealogical research in years, and it contributed to me rekindling my interest in Armenian topics again, along with the long-awaited release of The Promise in theatres in 2018 as well as my discovery of the very amazing Kohar Symphony Orchestra. All of this together was a kick in the butt I needed to rekindle my first love with the Armenian people, and I have been slowly building back my legacy with them since. Yesterday though was pivotal - I connected with an actual Armenian community near me in a very special way, and I may be getting more involved with them in weeks to come as that teaching opportunity is still very real. I now just leave it in God's hands, and will be revisiting this later.

This is going to be one of those two-part discussions this time, as there is another aspect to this that also deals with how I define myself as a Catholic. The recent controversies and craziness coming from Leo out of the Vatican have caused me to make a lot of decisions, and I want to spend some time talking about that tomorrow. It has no bearing on whether I will stay Catholic or not, but it will redefine what my personal Catholic faith is going to be, and I have come to some sobering conclusions about that I want to discuss separately at another point. Thank you for letting me share something as special as a personal thing that happened in an Armenian church yesterday, and will see you soon.

The Passing of A Legend and Other Thoughts

2026-08-26T08:26:06.863-07:00

As I am writing this today, there is a bit of sad news - the country music legend Dolly Parton passed away yesterday. I wanted to share a little about that as well as some other thoughts as imagination dictates, so we will see where this goes.

I have never been a fan of Dolly Parton's music - it just wasn't my thing. There was nothing intrinsically wrong with it, and indeed a few of her original songs (notably "Coat of Many Colors") had some inspiring messages and stories in them. However, Dolly as a singer was just not my cup of tea as I have never been into country music. However, on many other levels I really admired and appreciated her. Dolly just had this quality that endeared her to almost anyone, and you just could not help but like her. Granted, she was often the subject of humor, as her well-endowed bosoms were the talk of many comedians, but even she had fun with that with her own self-depreciating humor. I think what really made Dolly so charming to many people was her sweet, folksy, and down-home personality, which really made her someone that everyone wanted to be best friends with. Although I was not a fan of her music, I have to say though that Dolly was actually also a very talented actress - I am not sure if she developed cinematic presence as a career enhancement or what, but it worked brilliantly for her. Her appearances in movies such as 9 to 5, Steel Magnolias, and Joyful Noise were classic performances, and she brought that wonderful personality in those roles. One of the most amusing lines, as a matter of fact, in Steel Magnolias, was when she was gossiping with the neighbors about her new assistant (played by Darryl Hannah) and her newfound religious zeal, and she said the girl was so messed up that her boyfriend Sammy "didn't know whether to scratch his watch or wind his butt." That line, every time I watch that movie (and I have seen it now dozens of times) still makes me chuckle, and I have even used it on occasion. A line like that is not what you would call sophisticated prose, but it was clever, and that is something else I wanted to talk about.

The personality that Dolly radiated was just good old-fashioned Appalachian charm, and for those of us who grew up in the region we related to that well. Dolly was like a familiar friend or neighbor to many of us, because she talked like us, thought like us, and we understood her. I think that also added to her status as far as being both a musical and cinematic legend as well. By what I understand too, she was like this when she encountered fans - unlike many celebrities who think their "common" fanbase was beneath them, Dolly interacted with people. She never acted superior like she was somehow better than anyone else, and it was clear from observing her over the years that she never forgot where she came from. In Tennessee close to where she grew up in Pigeon Forge, there is of course Dollywood, and in the center of that park there is an old house that - and I am not sure if it was the original house or an identical replica of it - gave a picture of Dolly's homeplace. It was humble, not pretentious, and again, for those of us who grew up in the region we could identify with that. I actually really enjoyed taking the tour of it years ago when I visited Dollywood, and it was perhaps one of my favorite parts of the park (besides the Southern Gospel Hall of Fame Museum on the grounds, which was also worth seeing too). That aspect of who Dolly was endeared her to a huge cross-section of the American public, and even people with radically different worldviews from each other could appreciate Dolly in some aspect. If anyone could truly have a gift of bringing people together, it was her. That made Dolly a very uniquely American institution too, as just her person represented what America was intended to be. Dolly was not perfect - she had a few social and political views I would fundamentally disagree with - but she was real, and that is what I respect about her. President Trump is even ordering the flag to be flown at half-mast for her too, and I think that is a fitting honor for her. Dolly truly was an amazing lady, and she will be missed for sure.

Dolly Parton - who was the same age as my mom but maybe 11 months older - made me again think about my own roots. In Scripture, there are many places that admonish us as a virtue to be honest with ourselves, and to be who we truly are. When people act pretentious or superior, they lie to themselves, and when it eventually comes to light about who they really are, it creates scandal and embarrassment. Being honest up-front with people about the person one is can be amazingly liberating, as you don't have to excuse your existence just to live up to a standard you were never meant for. Again, this goes back to my continuous mantra of being consistent - God does not necessarily expect perfection, but he does expect us to be consistent with the person we are, and how he created us. This is why, in one of the Timothy epistles I believe, St. Paul admonishes us to be straight-forward with our communication with others - when asked something, we let our "yes" actually be yes and our "no" actually be no. It doesn't warrant us revealing every little deep, dark secret about ourselves (babbling like Chunk in The Goonies did with the criminal Fratellis when they apprehended him), but it does challenge us to be honest and consistent when people talk to us. Too many people have made an art out of wordsmithing (I don't even know where that term came from, but I have always hated it) in that they can weave these pretentious, verbose explanations of things to try to skirt an honest answer - politicians have mastered that for generations. The average guy has neither the time or patience for BS like that, and God doesn't either, which is why he addressed that specifically in Scripture. Simple, honest, and consistent answers to questions will always be a good thing, even if it carries potential risk. It may actually alleviate the potential for bigger problems if we are up-front in the first place, because then at least we can command the respect of the other person because we were at least honest with them. I think Dolly Parton personified that well, as she is one of the few celebrities over the years who was consistent and up-front about herself, and I think that is why such a broad spectrum of people liked her. We can learn much from that, and I speak to myself too, as I too have been guilty at times of weaving elaborate stories instead of just being up-front, and when I encountered someone with a well-honed internal BS meter, it brought me back to reality quick. We've all been there, let's be honest. And, that leads me to some other thoughts today.

Despite the common courtesy of consistency and being simple and honest in our communication, we tend to dig our own holes deeper at times when we allow our mouths to get us into trouble. My ex-wife Barbara has a weakness for that, God bless her. When she gets nervous, Barbara talks, and my goodness, does she talk! She is almost like the fictional Chunk in The Goonies when someone else does not interact with her, and she has said things at times which were a bit more than what her listeners were asking for. Doing that has gotten her in trouble, and on occasion during our marriage she got me on the hot seat too, which I would later get onto her about. I am not sure whether that is a defense mechanism or just a nervous reaction, but I also surprisingly can understand it. When you feel like you are losing the interest of someone you are talking to, it tends to be a natural response to just babble on and on about everything and then you say too much. I too have done that on occasion as well, so I can't totally fault Barbara either. It is interesting that cops and others rely on that nervous reflex though to get confessions out of people, and it is an effective strategy. And that is another reason it is also important to guard what you share with others - it can come back to bite you. While that seems on the surface like it is not consistent with the "yes and no" simplicity of Scripture, it is very much consistent with that because a part of communication is just sharing what is needed, and being careful with how you say things. Being honest does not mean being so altruistically defenseless that anyone can take advantage - it is OK to have boundaries. So, it is integral that as human beings we are both honest and consistent in the way we communicate, but also only share what is necessary and keep thing simple and relevant. You do not need to go into a 3-hour spiel about your life story when a copy randomly stops you for being a little heavy on your gas pedal. In a case like that, you acknowledge, apologize, and accept responsibility, and in the case of a minor traffic issue, a cop will respect you more and probably let you off with a warning if you conduct yourself honestly and without talking too much. The two things go hand in hand and do not contradict.

Speaking of keeping things simple, I think my point has gotten across, so I will wrap it up. Dolly Parton was an institution, and she will be missed for a variety of reasons. However, her legacy gives us a very valuable lesson - be true to yourself, and don't forget where you come from. Thanks again, and will see you next time.

The New Week

2026-08-24T06:23:51.023-07:00

Last week, it was a series of strolls down memory lane, and I am not sure as we begin the final week of August if I will have any such pangs of inspiration, but we will see where it goes. There are a few other things to reflect upon though so we will start with that.

As I mentioned a few weeks back, I am beginning to have some disappointment with the Roman Catholic Church in this city, or at least how it is represented. Hearing a Dominican friar of all things go on a rant in a church bulletin about the SSPX and the bishop consecration issues a few weeks ago, especially when there are more pressing issues the Church has than that, led to to re-evaluate my relationship with the Vatican. For the time being, beginning yesterday I have decided to go back to something that felt good and was more connected to ancient tradition - I attended Divine Liturgy at St. Michael's Church yesterday, a Byzantine-rite Ukrainian parish in town here. You would think that a city the size of Baltimore would have more Eastern-rite churches, but in reality there are few of them here. There are a couple of Orthodox parishes, and a Coptic, two Malankara Syrian, and 7 Ethiopian/Eritrean parishes in the area, but many of those are in the suburbs of the city and not as close as I would like. A city the size of Baltimore, especially given its unique geographical position between Philadelphia and DC, should be teeming with Eastern-rite churches, but it isn't. However, the Ukrainian parish will do just fine, especially since they have English-language liturgies on Sundays, and I think we will go there for the time being until more of God's plan about where he wants us to be is revealed (more on that will be forthcoming on Sunday next, as I have an important meeting in DC then). It felt very nice to be back in a Byzantine-rite setting again, and although it has been about 7 years since last attending an Eastern Catholic church (the last one was St. Mary in Weirton, WV, when I graduated with my Master's from Steubenville), the order of the liturgy came back to me easily, and I felt at peace. Oddly, the priest there, Fr. Yuriye, is a married priest, something I am glad to see the American parishes of the Eastern rites are re-implementing after years of letting local Roman ordinaries dictate policies to them. His wife was acting as cantor during Mass yesterday (the liturgy in this case was not sung, as the crowd was rather small - there may have been a dozen of us there for the English-language Mass), and despite a small number of people, they were very friendly to us. Until I get some clear direction as to where I am going and when I need to get there, I think this beautiful Ukrainian parish will be my church home.

Also over the weekend, I had a couple of interesting exchanges, and wanted to talk about one in particular. Despite my sympathies for the TLM and the fact I believe in people's rights to attend it if they so choose, I have to admit there are some crazy people at times on that side of the issue too. Some of the younger crowd who decide by conviction to attend the TLM get a bit radical, and I came across one of those Saturday. The discussion began with a post the moderator of the group (a nice guy in Florida named William, who has been a good friend for several years) posted something about the late actress Katherine Hepburn. Although she was a legend as an actress, let's be honest - Kate's legacy was not a flawless one. She was a professed atheist during much of her career, and she was openly bisexual, having relationships with both men and women in her younger days. When that fact was brought up, one of these young radicals accused myself and a couple of others of "judging" her, despite the fact we were not being judgmental but were stating facts that the woman was open about herself when she was alive. I told the guy essentially - he was a young, dumb hothead who thinks he has all his crap together but he doesn't - to go relax and get a cup of coffee or something. He then proceeded to go apocalyptic on me and said essentially that "on the battlefield of World War III" he was going to "make sure I met judgment," which in reality was a serious threat. On both the Left and the Right these days, you have these crazy people that tend to take things to extremes, and all they want to do is "vanquish their enemies" and they almost have a blood lust doing so. This young and very stupid man was no different - he sounds like he listens a lot to Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens too much, and the poor fool probably would canonize Hitler (some more radical Trads have went there!) because he considers the Jews as an enemy. A few years back, a similar person even said he could "hate" Jews because Jesus told him to - I would like to know what Gospel he read that in. It is OK to have strong convictions and standards - I certainly do, as many of you may have guessed - but when you start crossing a line into hatred and violence in the name of our faith, you essentially cease being a true Catholic and you become for all intents a jihadi of some sort. The name for people like this was coined by some commentators as "the woke Right," and it is unfortunately about as volatile as the purple-haired DSA antifa terrorists on the left. In reality though, the "woke Right" is not truly conservative, and should not be thought of as such - they are more or less embracing the same wacky garbage their Leftist counterparts spout. This means that in reality, there is no difference between Nick Fuentes and Hassan Piker - they are, to me, the same despite what they call themselves. It is integral to understand that if you take a position on something, there has to be room for maturity - you can be as staunch as you want, but at least be grounded. This young "rad Trad" Saturday was not that at all - if anything, I bet the poor fool listens to people like Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson, and in time it will destroy him without the necessity of any help. This leads to a little discussion now I wanted to have today.

I have said before that God does not send people to hell. On the first glance, that almost seems like it is Universalism, until you understand the context. God did not create hell for us at all - Scripture affirms that - but rather as a prison for Satan and the fallen angels. However, unfortunately something happened in Genesis 3, and it led to man's forfeiture of eternal life - sin and death entered the picture, and because mankind chose to believe Satan, he also chose Satan's fate. Remember too, that in the Garden of Eden the serpent (Satan) did not twist the arm of Eve to sin - her own free will caused that. Much of what we attribute to Satan today - and don't get me wrong, he is still evil and is a tempter - is actually the result of our own stupidity. The young fool I had the exchange with Saturday missed that point, and was blaming Satan for things that simple human will caused - in that regard, he is much like the more hyper-Pentecostal folks I used to see who attributed a demon under every rock and in every crack of a brick wall. Hell is real, and it is a consequence of unresolved sin, but it is not God who sends us there - we send ourselves. Do you think Satan cares that we use variations of "the devil made me do it" shtick to excuse our own shortcomings? Not really - he sits back and smiles as he watches the willful rebellion of God's own creation against its Creator, and although he does tempt us and can be an influence, it is ultimately our own willful action that gets us in trouble. And, dare I say this - Satan is the master theologian and Bible scholar too. You are probably hyperventilating at that statement, but just hear me out - Satan knows Scripture and the body of doctrine well enough that he can use it to his advantage, dangling just that right verse in front of someone enough so they can twist it into something it does not intend to say. Every cult that exists has resulted from that very thing - take the truth, and then that little voice "what did God really say about this?" which Satan plants in our minds, and out of that a whole faulty theology can be built around it. And, despite the safeguards of the Deposit of Faith, some Catholics too are prone to this as well. The young fool I debated with is a prime example of that. He took a teaching of the Church - just war - and twisted it as a carte-blanche for hating and destroying those he deems as "enemies." Many popular televangelists have been doing that for decades too - Kenneth Copeland and other false teachers have taken spiritual gifts as a way to manipulate people into accepting cultic theology like the so-called "Prosperity Gospel," and they have profited lucratively from it. This is why we have to "study to show ourselves approved," as II Timothy 2:15 admonishes us, and sharpen our own gifts of discernment to know where that blurred line is so we don't cross it. Is God against material prosperity for instance? I don't believe so. However, does he guarantee it just because someone speaks "affirmations" about it over themselves? No! I have been a recipient on many occasions of God's provision, and I thank him for that every day, but that doesn't give me the right to be entitled to it because it is a grace God gives if he so wills. As the late theologian Romano Guardini proposed and was correct about, the whole key to the Lord's Prayer we say every morning in our Rosaries and every week at Mass is a four-word phrase - Thy will be done. I have heard some of these heretical televangelists actually call that a "demonic" phrase despite it being from Jesus himself, and they have even mocked people praying to discern God's will. Yet, that is what we are actually told to do! It also proves something else - the whole idea of Sola Scriptura that many Evangelical Protestants champion is itself a subjective concept. I have stated, and still believe, Scripture to be divinely authored and the inspired Word of God; that will not change. However, a strict belief in Sola Scriptura is as impossible as it is to be a true atheist - at some point, the Sola Scriptura proponent in reality believes another more man-made dogma and it is basically this "Scripture alone, but my interpretation is the ultimate authority." Every prosperity-preaching televangelist claims their teachings are based on Sola Scriptura, and so do their Fundamentalist critics; someone is wrong, or maybe both are (I opt for the latter answer). Even among the most staunch KJV-Only Fundamentalists, there is no standard as to what Sola Scriptura actually means - they condemn each other actually for having different views. That being said, the whole Sola Scriptura position is essentially also a trap of Satan, because more fights have been caused over that than one could count. And the reason is simple - even Scripture itself does not teach it. I have already given my views on Scriptural inerrancy and inspiration, so I won't rehash that, but I can summarize it by saying that one can believe the Bible is the inerrant and infallible Word of God, divinely authored and inspired, without believing in the idea of Sola Scriptura. Sola Scriptura is a Newtonian reaction against extremes that happened in the Catholic Church leading up to the Reformation, and had the bishops done their due diligence and addressed the root problem, then the Reformation probably would not have happened. But, much like much of the leftism coming out of the Vatican apparatus today, nothing gets addressed properly and thus true reform is ignored - the proponents of the liberal garbage dismiss those that have concerns, and hotheaded reactionaries on the other side go full nuclear without seeing the positives of their own Church and capitalizing on them. Both sides have been wrong, and both have allowed their own wills to be exerted over God's will, and Satan is laughing - he laughs at both radical hotheads like the young foolish man I talked to yesterday, as well as at people like James Martin who want to obliterate the traditional Church in favor of a modernist agenda. Both of them are deceived by Satan himself, and a lot of confused people are caught in the middle. And, that is the point. Satan may have planted some seeds of confusion, but look who is cultivating them - it is not Satan; we tend to screw up things pretty well ourselves without his help. Until that stark reality is seen by everyone in the debate, there will not be any true resolution. And, it means there has to be a safe haven for many innocent people who just want to live out their faith to do so without having liberal bishops and radical traditionalists tearing at them. That is the challenge, as well as where I am personally right now.

The bottom line to all this is that we should always seek the truth, and seek guidance for God's true will in everything. If we do that, it will buffer us against attacks from any direction. Thanks for allowing me to share, and will see you next visit.

Going Down Memory Lane

2026-08-21T18:38:44.228-07:00

When I was reflecting yesterday, I basically gave an entire background of my history in the little town of Kirby, WV, as a kid. That has been sort of my state of mind lately, as I have been reflecting on a lot of things, and some of it even shows up in my dreams at night now. One thing I have really reflected on is how I have been retracing steps over the past 20 years. It seems like I have been going back to places I lived before - for instance, take now, when 51 years after I went to kindergarten on the west side of Baltimore, I am now sitting in the middle of the east side of the city. Back then, I had very little familiarity with the east side of town, as our family primarily settled in the areas of Irvington and Pigtown on the west side, along with a whole population of West Virginians who came to Baltimore after World War II as a result of the "Hillbilly Highway." At one time, our family was part of what was probably one of the biggest ethnic groups in the city, as Appalachian-Americans dominated a lot of communities here. Of course, in the ensuing years as the various families - including mine - raised their families and earned their comfortable lives, many either moved out to the suburbs or retired back home in West Virginia where they could afford it at that point. Even today, I would estimate that within 12 miles of where I am sitting right now I probably have about 20 or so cousins. Many of them are from my generation, and a large number of them were born and raised here over the past couple of generations - of all my cousins that live within that close proximity of me, I would say I am more than likely the only one who was actually born in West Virginia who is still alive. I was also raised there as well, although a few of the cousins like to present the image of being "mountain men," but they are in reality Marylanders by birth and by culture. I am unfortunately not really close to any of my cousins that live here, and that is truly unfortunate as it would be nice to have that family infrastructure. But, they don't care about me, they never really got to know me, and at this point all of us are in our 50s now so it really does not even matter anymore. They essentially have their lives, and although they know full well I live here, none of them have really reached out to me since I have been here. So, that is their choice and I will respect it. Imagine though if I all of a sudden inherited millions of dollars though - I would wager every damn one of them would be trying to knock down my door. Money has a strange way of grabbing attention, but too bad that some people - even blood relatives - only see dollar signs and not the person their own family is. I have come to terms with that, and shortly I will talk about how. First though, I wanted to reminisce a little about how I remember Baltimore when I was a kid, as it is indeed much different now than it was then.

Not too long ago, I watched Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares and an episode that focused on a small eatery not too far from where I am at now called Cafe Hon. Although Cafe Hon is now closed, it used to be located in a neighborhood just west of here called Hampden, which consists of a population of Hopkins students and hipsters and is part of what is called the "White Butterfly" area of the city. Hampden is just west of the Johns Hopkins University campus, and back in the day a significant population of Appalachian people lived there. The owner of Cafe Hon, Denise Whiting, was trying to recapture some of that "old Bawlmore" charm starting with the name of the establishment, Cafe Hon. For those who have been acquainted with Baltimore for many years, the word "Hon" is a term of endearment (it is short for "honey") that owes a lot to the Appalachian population that settled here in the 1940s and 1950s thus making Baltimore essentially the unofficial capital of West Virginia then. However, Denise made a fatal error in judgment when she tried to trademark the term, and it caused a mess which was the focus of Ramsay's visit some 20 years ago. Luckily that got straightened out, and Denise regained some social credit as a result. Another thing Denise did too was encourage the classic "Baltimore chic" look with her waitresses - this included bob and beehive hairdos and the cat-eye glasses, also attributed to some degree to the West Virginians and western Marylanders that lived in the area then. To be honest, that was what I remembered back in the day too, as there is something strangely comforting about that - it reminds me of my aunts and other relatives who lived here then. It was also reflected in the cuisine - when one thinks classic Baltimore food, one thinks comfort - stuff such as fried chicken, deep-fried oysters, slow-cooked pot roast, meat loaf, and other delicacies like that. Of course, Baltimore then was also a sort of cross-fertilized culture hub too, and thus the pizzas here then were one of a kind as well. For many of us who were kids back in the 1960s and 1970s, that was the Baltimore we remembered. Since moving back here a couple of years ago, I have seen regrettably little of that classic Baltimore food here - even Cracker Barrel does a better pot roast and meat loaf than most places here do. Now, all you see is soul-food shacks, and the sanitary conditions of those places are questionable at times. Whereas back in the day it was Gino's who was the biggest fried chicken place, today the new chicken monopoly here is Hip Hop Chicken and Fish. I actually do like Hip Hop's chicken, but it isn't the same as the fried chicken Baltimore used to be noted for. And, instead of taking advantage of those succulent Chesapeake Bay oysters here, many Baltimore seafood places in town now opt for the cheaper and lesser-quality Florida Gulf oysters I used to see in Florida when I lived there - that is tragic as well too. But it isn't just a food thing unfortunately - the urban blight as I am seeing neighborhoods that look crappy with abandoned row houses and littered streets, as well as the polarizing political radicalization and even the Catholic Church seems to be in a state of decay here. In recent years, the various sex abuse scandals have bankrupted the Archdiocese of Baltimore and as a result many churches have closed (one sadly has been converted into a microbrewery on the east side of town) and there is a disconnect and apathy on the part of clergy here that makes a visitor to a Catholic parish here feel like an invasive goat turd in a punchbowl. I first became attracted to Catholic spirituality in Baltimore as a kindergartener back in 1975, but after being here two years, I have decided that perhaps there are other expressions of the Catholic faith to explore that don't require blind obedience to politicians in robes in the Vatican. My faith has suffered, and I now feel spiritually malnourished. At some point I will talk about some decisions I have come to, but suffice to say, the past two years have been eye-opening for me. I am noticing this discussion is starting to take a dark turn, so let's bring it back.

One of the saddest things is the lack of family cohesion, which I have alluded to before. After going through a divorce and then losing both my parents over the past six years, I am feeling very alone right now. Thankfully, despite the divorce Barbara and I are still close, and she is essentially my family right now - we will never be romantically connected again and we are OK with that, but that doesn't mean we cannot be friends either. Barbara has more or less become the sister I never had, and I am very thankful for her - we look out for each other now, and although the dynamic in our relationship has baffled some, there are others who see it as a sign of maturity and strength on our part. I don't worry about the talk and gossip that may ensue over anything that relates to us, and neither does Barbara - we are in a good place with each other, and that is what matters. And, I am also seeing someone else at this point, and I think it is time to reveal a bit about that.

In July 2022, about a year after our divorce was finalized and the Church was granting us an annulment, I decided I didn't want to spend the rest of my life alone, so I began to look for a potential soulmate. One thing that has always endeared me for years was the simple charm and irresistible beauty of the Filipina, and that is where I started my search. After a few months of unsuccessful attempts, I eventually heard from a very sweet Filipina in the city of San Jose del Monte, which is in the Bulacan Province on the island of Luzon just outside metro Manila, and her name was Azenith. Azenith was at the time 39 years old, had never been married but had been through a bad relationship (which did produce one blessing, a sweet daughter named Amirah) and she was looking for someone, in her own words that she "can grow old with." Something about her drew me, and a few days after we met we decided to pursue a relationship. Four years later, we are still in a strong relationship and very much in love - to me, Azi (as I affectionately call her) is the most beautiful and sweetest woman, and I thank God for her every day. Every morning we message each other, telling each other "I love you," and she is always fussing about my health, whether I eat enough, etc. However, it has been a bit challenging for us - a long-distance relationship between a couple when they are a half a world apart tends to test the limits of love, and we both feel that daily but we still love each other. I am hoping in the next year or so to get over there finally to see her in person, and it would also be a good time to begin preparations for a more serious commitment - I have already asked her to marry me, and she very happily said yes. And, after four years, it is time to actually meet and be together too - we both long for that. So, if God wills, in the near future a trip to the Philippines may be happening. I was a bit hesitant to share this, but we do already have a few of our close friends who know already, and Barbara is excited for us too - she wants to be Azi's maid of honor! I wanted to share that as I feel as if God is going to create a new family dynamic to replace the broken one I had in the past, and I am excited about that too. This is the first time I have shared openly about this, but I figured after four years it is time. And, that leads to another dimension of my reflections.

While it is good to reminisce about the good aspects of one's past, it also is integral to build a future too. I feel that with Azi - and the extra blessing of a daughter named Amirah - something new is about to happen, and I am ready for that. This is not only a new chapter in our family legacy, but a new volume of the work itself. My and Azi's future will redefine the legacy of both sides of my family in a new way, and I think it is a new volume of history that is long overdue. Things happen for a reason, as God leaves nothing to chance, and none of this is accidental. So, what needs to happen here is not demolishing the past, but instead taking what can be salvaged from it and creating something new and beautiful that will change a course our family has been on for several generations. It is long overdue in all honesty, and I am about making that happen. Of course, I don't know exactly what that will mean yet, but all in good time, and more importantly, in God's time. Often to preserve a legacy, you have to do an extensive renovation on it to rebuild what has decayed and has caused problems, and the old, rotten wood needs to be discarded and replaced with something more durable. This too will be a process, but I think at this stage in my life it is a process I am excited to get on with.

I have shared a lot - and I mean a lot! - in this reflection today, but there is something liberating about finally revealing a few things I wanted to reveal for so long. Please pray for me as I begin this new stage in my life as the dust clears from the last few years, and thank you in advance to those of you who have been supportive of a lot of things I have come up against in the past few years too - there are some individuals who really shined in a time when I was facing a lot of uncertainty, and one that immediately comes to mind is my cousin Elvira. Elvira is I would say about a 5th or 6th cousin on my mother's side, and we have been in touch for about 7 years and she is also like a sister to me. Like myself, she has been through a lot, and likewise we have helped each other out on occasion when we needed it. I was the only member of our immediate branch of the family, as a matter of fact, that even went to her wedding in 2019, and I was glad I did - Elvira is a real gem, and I love her like a sister. She needs prayers too now though, as she has had a few health challenges recently, and being she is still young yet and has a good life ahead of her, I am praying God touches her and restores her health to where it should be. Elvira and a handful of other people have been Godsends to me, and I am thankful for each and every one of them, and for a good parish church, St. James the Greater in Charles Town, WV. If any man could be made a saint while still living, I would advocate for Fr. Timothy Grassi who pastors there for the honor. Good people make a huge difference in the lives of many, and I have known some of the best with Barbara, my cousin Elvira, and Fr. Grassi. May God be with and bless them all.

Thank you for allowing me to share a few things that were deeply personal today, and I will see you next time. As much as I have been writing, do not be surprised if I maybe have one other discussion here this week! I will see you all next time.

Reaching the End of The Summer

2026-08-20T19:35:28.522-07:00

As I am writing this, it is August 20th - in all honesty, this summer has flown by, my goodness! But, when I was doing some reflection today on my childhood and teenage years, one thing that is evident is change happens, for better or for worse. Although the past few days have been somewhat busy, I do have a bit of breathing room and will often take a look at something that stokes the memory archives a bit, and today I decided to take a little "journey" to where I spent a large part of my childhood, the town of Kirby, WV. In all honesty, I could not believe how really different it looked there, so I wanted to talk about that a bit.

Ever since I was a kid, I loved maps - I could take an atlas, study it for hours, and then I could find almost anything. With the 21st century now in full swing, the atlas books we used to have are almost a thing of the past - they still sell them, but with everyone going electronic the new thing is Google Maps. Personally, I love Google Maps - it takes you to street views, and you can sort of "drive" through communities without even leaving your desk. Every so often, I like to do that with places I have lived in the past, just to see what they look like now. Today, I decided to check out Kirby to see what happened there.

I want to take you back first to Kirby in the year 1982 - I was 13 then, and had already lived there two years, and it was not an overly populated place but it had a small town vibe. Cox's Store was the central part of the town, and it was where the general store, post office, and the event venue for the community was located. Owned by Lincoln and Nellie Cox since 1940, the store was really much older as it dated back to the late 1800s and is somewhat of a local landmark. Back in the day, it stayed pretty busy too - a group of 20-something young guys from the surrounding countryside gathered out there almost every night to socialize and do other things (I never was particularly thrilled with that, as often they liked to target me for harassment as a young kid too), and during the day a lot of the older folks around the area - one of note being old Mr. Donahue who lived a couple of miles away - would come and sit in the store and just socialize with Nellie as she operated the store. The place was not exactly downtown Baltimore, but it stayed pretty busy. The rest of the town consisted of approximately 7 mobile homes, the Grassy Lick School where most of us went to elementary school then, the American Legion Hall where Lincoln Cox was the local commander, the Baptist church on the other side of the bridge that spanned Grassy Lick Run, and about 6 other houses (including the Coxes, who lived right across the street from the store). Additionally, Lincoln Cox had a few utility sheds near the creek, and his son-in-law Dean Westfall had a small pigpen between where we lived and the school. In behind the trailers for a short time was a landfill where the local "wino," John Haines, took care of burning everyone's garbage. We lived in the trailer then that was at the far end of that park, bordering a small culvert that separated our yard from the Westfall corn field. On the main road just above our house there was a row of hazelnut trees that I used to harvest from abundantly - I got a lot of hazelnuts in the Fall off of them, and in the summer they also housed a huge population of stick insects (walking sticks) and the occasional praying mantis I caught that would hunt them. That essentially was the tiny town of Kirby, which at one time probably had around 50 residents within the corporate limits and perhaps a couple of hundred more a few miles out in the countryside that utilized the post office there. While those years were largely probably some of the poorest I had ever experienced, they had their good points too and it was in reality in Kirby that I sort of discovered my identity and would be shaped into the person I am today. I have talked about some aspects of that upbringing before - how I discovered my love of vintage music, and also how I used to play in Grassy Lick Run catching hogsuckers for the dog and also trying to capture small sculpins down in those large rocks near the bridge. Kirby was not all bad, in other words, but I did face some adversities that many kids my age could never imagine, and the other neighborhood kids were pretty much in the same situation. As we all grew older, we scattered to the four winds and did our own thing; a couple unfortunately are no longer with us. As we began to drift away from Kirby in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the town began to sort of die with the exit of many of its residents, and when the Coxes finally passed away in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the store, school, and other venues around the area would close and the town would essentially be a ghost of its former self. Nothing was more apparent about that then when I did a little Google Maps excursion there today.

As mentioned, the store closed years ago, and the school closed in the early 2000s, so by that point there was not much left. The nearest towns were some distance away - Augusta was about 15 miles to the northeast, and Romney, the county seat, was almost 25 miles away. Therefore, the next actual town over was nearby Rio, and as Kirby went into decline Rio assumed much of the business that Cox's Store once generated. Today, Rio is pretty much like it was 40 years ago, as the local "Rio Mall" where I originally got my first vinyl items in my music collection, is still doing a very lucrative business and a few other stores have opened up there now too. But, not so Kirby. When I did the "street view" feature on Google Maps, it zoomed in on Grassy Lick Road at the intersection of Grassy Lick and Rock Oak Roads, where the old store is. Moving north on Grassy Lick Road, the first thing I noticed was the big field where 7 mobile homes used to be - they were apparently moved out years ago, and even the culvert that bordered our old yard there was obscured by encroaching brush. The Westfall corn field is no longer there either, although I did notice those hazelnut bushes are still growing. The place is now stark in how different it looks, and I was frankly shocked. While about 7 years ago we had driven through there as Mom wanted to take a drive that way, and the trailers were gone then too, it still was a bit to absorb seeing that even that old apple tree that used to be in front of the house was taken out as well - I remember those apples well too. The apples that grew on that tree were big, but they were also very tart. They were good apples for pies or apple butter, but not for just eating. However, that often did not stop me from occasionally grabbing one off the lower branches of the tree when I could reach them. I also remember that tree when my best friend Ralph was teaching me to ride a bike then - I ran it into that tree! Interesting how I remember small details like that, but that is the credit of writing a journal all these years too. Now that I think of it, there were two trees in that large meadow that served as a courtyard for us there - one was the aforementioned tree in front of our house, and the other one was at the other end of the field, on a path that we wore going down to the store then. That tree marked the fence line for the Cox's house as well then (and even that fence is gone now!). I did notice the two large sycamore trees that were in the back yard are still there though - they loomed tall over the spot where the old trailer used to be at the far end of the culvert. The Google Maps street view feature is updated for April 2026, meaning that as I am writing this that was four months ago. Also, and quite strangely, the outline of the access road to our old park as well as the driveway to our house can still be plainly seen too. On the edge of that was a large shrub that the local kids I hung out with and I called our "fort bush," and I noticed it was still there too, although much bigger than it was then. A large field still divides what used to be Westfall's corn field from the Grassy Lick School, and since the school closed the local folks repurposed that as a community center now, essentially serving the purpose that Cox's Store used to. As much as I marveled at the Upper Potomac ghost towns like Kempton and Bayard closer to my home area of Tucker County, Kirby too has become essentially a ghost town in real time, and oddly, it is quite a surreal feeling to see that a place where you spent 6 years of your childhood and early teens is now basically just a collection of a few houses and nothing else. I often wonder if others I knew from those days feel the same way? That would be worth exploring. I suppose at this point I should give a little history behind Kirby and how it came into existence, as I am a historian after all!

Recently, I had the fortune of finding a copy of a book entitled Historic Hampshire (Parsons, WV: McClain Printing Company, 1976). It is an older history book of the county, and different individuals contributed to it. Lincoln Cox actually wrote a very good historical overview of Kirby in it, and as he notes beginning on page 388, the area had some documentation of explorers dating back at least until the 1790s. Many of these early White adventurers (and later settlers) were called "Long Hunters" according to both Cox as well as a short essay by Eileen Hott and Betty Racey in a later book published called Hampshire County, WV: 1754-2004 (Romney, WV: The Hampshire 250 Committee, 2004) on pages 63-64. Curiosity about how the place got its name though comes from the late Hamill Kenney in his West Virginia Place Names: Their Origin and Meaning, Including the Nomenclature of the Streams and Mountains (Piedmont, WV: The Place Name Press, 1945), who notes on page 353 that the name was attributed to one of its earliest postmasters. I had always wondered about why the creek there was called Grassy Lick Run, and fortunately Lincoln provided the answer in his history of the area - apparently it took its origin from the "lick springs" of the areas (which also produced minerals like salt from the depths of the earth too, which served as a mineral source for deer and other wildlife, hence a "lick") meaning places where local fauna gathered to drink, and in this particular area there was also a lush abundance of grassy meadows, hence the name "Grassy Lick." As prey animals were drawn to areas like that, it would also draw hunters as well, given the close proximity Kirby has to both Short Mountain and Nathaniel Mountain, which are still to this day popular hunting areas. This is where both early American Indian tribes as well as White "Long Hunter" settlers were attracted, and in time settlements like Kirby sprang up. As the old Cox's Store also served as a post office back then too, it was established in 1864 probably by some guy named Kirby, as Kenney proposed, and the genesis of the town dates to that. This means Kirby came into being as a community after West Virginia became its own state a year earlier. In my high school years later, I would also live close to a similar type of water source in Preston County called Salt Lick, so at least 10 years of my life were spent near places with the name "lick!" This is by no means an exhaustive history of Kirby at all, nor is it meant to be as I probably left out a few details, but you get the idea anyway of how the place got its name. That too solved a big personal mystery for me too, as learning about place names has become a sort of thing for me as a historian.

As I read more about this, I will probably revisit it more later. I do have a print-out of Kenney's book, but it is currently packed away, so when I get to a more permanent place soon I will dig that out any maybe find out who the mysterious postmaster "Kirby" was then, as I think he'll have that in his book. Reading Lincoln Cox's account of this makes me regret not talking to him more then, as I probably could have learned a thing or two. However, relationships then were complex, and most of us saw Lincoln and Nellie as just our landlords and nothing more, as to many of us they were almost like feudal lords then who really didn't connect with the majority of us who were living at poverty level. Lincoln and Nellie both passed away years ago, but thankfully this is an aspect of his legacy that lives on, as well as the pictures one can find of him as a school teacher back in the day - he taught the 5th and 6th grades at Grassy Lick many years before I was even born, and that was his chosen profession after he completed an exemplary service as an officer in the military during World War II. In retrospect, I appreciate Lincoln a lot more now than I did then, as it turns out he was actually very impressive. Interesting enough, his daughter Beverly and three of his granddaughters also became educators as well. One of the granddaughters is a principal at what I believe is a middle school in Morgantown, the second (her sister) teaches at a school in Virginia, and his youngest granddaughter is now an assistant principal at Hampshire High School in Romney. While the girls radically differ with their grandfather (he was a die-hard political conservative who was influential in Republican politics in the county then, while the granddaughters are openly very much left-of-center in their political leanings) on ideological issues, they do carry on his legacy. While he never directly influenced me as an educator myself, I actually can study his legacy and learn some good things from that too. I often wonder what he would think now if I could talk to him as Dr. Thrower instead of that poor skinny local kid who checked mail once a day then at the store? I do still talk to his daughter Beverly on occasion - she herself is retired now and is living a peaceful life in a house that is perched on the ridge just above where we used to live years ago. Beverly, like so many of us, has mellowed too - time does that - so it is good to be connected to her too. That is, as long as she doesn't hold it against me for stealing corn out of her field when I was a kid!

Those were just some random thoughts I wanted to share here today, and I am hoping to write more stuff like this in months to come. Thanks again for joining me, and will see you next time.

A Positive Side of Philosophy

2026-08-17T16:36:52.264-07:00

When I was researching information on both proportionalism and MTD, I also came across something else that piqued my interest because in all honesty I agree with it. It is found in Evangelical scholar Norman Geisler's book Christian Ethics, and although he is going to attribute this to a Reformed perspective, it is actually more of an Augustinian/Thomistic view as well and thus is compatible with Magisterial teaching. The idea under discussion is called graded absolutism, and it does help make some clarifications on some tough choices we may or may not encounter. But first, let me talk about Dr. Geisler.

Norman Geisler is a sort of household name among American Evangelical Protestants because he is one of their preeminent scholars. In all honesty, his work is actually good, and his books on ethics, like this one, also can easily be utilized by Catholic and Orthodox people as well as there is much common ground. Geisler is also one of those people who you know represents a balanced view of things too, and as far as Evangelical scholarship goes, he is very credible. As an undergrad at Southeastern University, some of Geisler's work was required text for some classes, and therefore I am quite familiar with him. While obviously I don't necessarily agree 100% with everything he may believe, I found a lot more common ground with him when it comes to ethical issues than I found differences, and that is why I am going to use his work here to talk about this concept of graded absolutism. There is a lot to cover, so I am going to hone in on the basics of the chapter he devotes to it in his book just to undergird my own thoughts on the subject.

So, what is graded absolutism? On pages 96 and 97 of his book, Geisler talks about moral absolutism, and he identifies three types:

1. Unqualified Absolutism - This view essentially means that no exceptions to a moral issue are to be considered. You can't lie about anything, and stealing is out of the question. Geisler associates this view with the more Old-Order Anabaptists, especially in regard to pacifism.

2. Conflicting Absolutism - Essentially this means that one may have to do something messy that conflicts with Christian morality out of necessity. While Geisler associates this with Lutheran tradition in particular, I would go a bit further by saying that it also applied to some Christian rulers of late antiquity and the Middle Ages - take the Emperor Constantine for instance, who despite having a conversion to and preference for Christianity, he still had to do unsavory things throughout his reign, The way he reconciled this was to put off an actual baptism until the very end of his life. This also has some Machiavellian undercurrents to it as well.

3. Graded Absolutism - What Geisler means by this is essentially that at times we may have to do something that is morally conflicting in order to accomplish a greater good. Two of the most noted examples of this includes how some Christian abolitionists help free Black slaves during the days of the Underground Railroad - this involved a risk of breaking civil property law, as well as some forging of papers to help people, but ultimately the greater good end took precedent over the more contradictory means. The other example was of forged papers and armed resistance during World War II in Nazi Germany, which saved the lives of thousands of Jews as well as liberation of some lands like France by armed resistance which often had the blessing of a local religious leader. While Geisler classified this as more of a Reformed Protestant perspective (and in Calvin's Institutes, it is advocated), in reality it also could be the conclusion drawn from reading people such as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas as well, particularly in regard to situations such as "just war" theory or capital punishment.

Geisler too notes that this existed to some degree in Augustine's writings, and he notes on page 97 that Augustine has three key points in regard to what graded absolutism is:

1. There is a hierarchy of virtues

2. Moral duties sometimes conflict

3. There is no culpability for obedience in doing the higher thing.

That is basically some of the takeaways I wanted to share from Geisler's chapter, as there is a lot more - perhaps one day when I get a print copy of his book I will explore and revisit this more. This is going to provide an underpinning for what I am about to share at this point.

First, an example and a story. My good friend Stephen was a chaplain in the National Guard for many years, and due to an ideological issue that Biden pressed during COVID, a bunch of bureaucratic higher brass - no doubt led by General Mark "Thoroughly Modern" Millie, a coward if there ever was one - targeted Stephen and so many others due to their political and religious views. The main culprit that attacked Stephen was some officer named Ron Burkett, and the damage he did to Stephen (and probably others too) was catastrophic. As a child of two Vietnam-era vets myself, I take this sort of thing seriously, as our military should have an honored place in our nation but oftentimes they are targeted and persecuted by idiots (usually on the Left) for just existing. I totally sympathize with Stephen, but in a recent interview he really broke emotionally in regard to what this nasty, filthy coward of a military officer named Burkett did to him, and it was volatile! However, I believe what Stephen demonstrated was graded absolutism, and therefore he did nothing wrong except being a human being with feelings who was at his limits. And, there was also a righteous indignation in him, as I saw him not only expressing frustration for his own situation, but also for so many others who were targeted this way. In the near future, Stephen is going to be publishing his own story about this, so I won't steal all his thunder here, but suffice to say his indignation was totally justifiable. There may be some Christians who have a fourth form of absolutism called "faux absolutism" who will judge and fault Stephen for even using a couple of cusswords in his video, but I don't judge that - we are human, and yes, even on occasion I tend to utter an F-bomb if something upsets me, and I don't think that is going to consign me to the deepest pit of hell. Besides, after I blow off steam, generally I quietly repent to God for it anyway and life goes on. I think Stephen should be allowed that same grace too - after all, he served our nation honorably so I think he merits being able to vent a little. Sometimes life can take us down some dark paths, and because we are concupiscent human beings and not perfect, we will have vulnerable moments. Anyone who says otherwise is lying. Graded absolutism, I believe, is a way to deal with it and to make sense of it without compromising things. But, even in history we see where graded absolutism was also a valid option, although at times it could be ugly.

Among the Church Fathers for instance, we have St. Athanasius of Alexandria, who is actually my confirmation saint. St. Athanasius, in all the iconography and such, is depicted as almost angelic until you read some historic accounts - for instance, he beat the crap out of the heretic Arius for the damage done by the Arian heresy, and his disciple, St. Shenoute of Atripe, was equally volatile. Even the famous St. Nicholas - who we like to depict as a mythological character called Santa Claus who doesn't even remotely resemble the real person - was known to clock someone upside the head if they upset him. So you see, even saints had moments. Even our Lord, Jesus Christ, actually horsewhipped a bunch of marketing hucksters in the Temple compound for doing what they were doing, and that is in the Gospels! So next time you see that WWJD bracelet, perhaps the right thought comes into your mind when you want to horsewhip Joel Osteen for his nonsense when you see him on TV - that is probably what Jesus would have done too. It means there is no culpability morally for doing the right thing, even if it takes a drastic action. And, I will not even get into the stories of the class of saints called "Fools for Christ" (or Urodivi in Slavonic) - people thought they were a few drumsticks short of a bucket, but they had holy lives and many are canonized saints in both the East and the West. We sometimes forget that as human beings, we are not angels, and thus perfection is not only not to be expected, but is also practically impossible. But, even with our limitations, Jesus still loves us, and there is a certain comfort in that. And, as a grace, he gifted us with the reality of graded absolutism to assure us that at times it is OK to risk doing something if it ultimately achieves a greater moral outcome. That is graded absolutism in action.

A form of graded absolutism has been practiced by Christians without any moral qualms for centuries - from the tyrannical decrees of the Emperor Decius up to what has happened in recent decades in totalitarian and militantly Islamic lands - and in a way it is a defense mechanism that we have and there is no real sin involved if it is an act that preserves a family or a community. But, I would argue that graded absolutism was not limited to just defensive action, as it could be offensive as well - the Crusades, for instance, were an offensive against Islamic colonialism that was persecuting other Christians. Also, there is the story of Vlad the Impaler, the individual Bram Stoker's vampire character Dracula is based on. I consider Vlad a hero because he took an offensive stance against a horde of barbaric Turks, and he didn't take prisoners - many of their barbecued corpses became the fuel source for candlelight dinners for him, and it sent a clear message. As gruesome as some more sensitive individuals may find this, we owe Vlad a depth of gratitude - had it not been for his extreme actions, we might well be Muslim today, because the Turks would have taken larger parts of Europe. Not only is it one dimension of graded absolutism in that an extreme action had a higher moral outcome, but it also was exactly what Aquinas meant by just war - cutting off the enemy at the source by acting offensively first may prevent a greater tragedy, as long as there are perimeters established. Vlad, for instance, did not kill women and children - he took a preemptive strike against dangerous armed hordes who would have killed him just as ruthlessly had he not taken the initial offensive. That preemptive strike may have saved civilization. The same with Klaus von Stauffenberg during the Operation Valkyrie mission against Hitler during World War II - although Stauffenberg was unable to eliminate Hitler, it did show that there were brave German military officers willing to take a stand against something that was morally evil, and the way they saw fit to do that was by getting rid of the source of the problem. For that, Hitler was shown too as the evil demonic psychopath he was, while Stauffenberg will be always immortalized as a hero (and given he was a devout Catholic as well, I think Stauffenberg was martyred and deserves canonization too). If a law therefore is unjust, it is actually a moral imperative to defy it - the defiance may be carried out by extreme measures, but the end is the greater good. I would say in that case, based on the moral just-war law of Aquinas and Augustine's teachings, there are a couple of stipulations for this:

1. A person who chooses to do this action cannot be coerced into it - it comes from their own free will and sense of duty.

2. Unless unintended, collateral damage to innocent people should be avoided. The person carrying out an act of graded absolutist rationale is also doing this for those innocents too.

3. One cannot be afraid of getting a little messy in doing the right thing - a justifiable homicide may happen, or some damage may result, but if it does it is fully circumstantial and not part of the actual plan.

4. If an action like this happens, it must be thought out, and there needs to be a lot of prayer behind it - if there is a doubt or any uncertainty about it, then that just means it needs to be refined.

When this is the domain of the military or law enforcement carrying out their duties, we remember also the verse in Scripture - blessed are the peacemakers - because law enforcement and military have the goal of making peace and keeping the peace. "Peacemakers" are not skipping hippies with posies singing "Kumbaya," but are those people called to bring and maintain actual peace. And, sometimes they wear a uniform. This is why the whole "defund the police" crowd on the political Left are essentially immoral, because they don't want peace - they are following the opposite in many cases, a Nietzschean "struggle of will" mentality that seeks to bring anarchy and confusion to remake their own image of a utopian state, which oftentimes is the bigger nightmare (read Orwell's 1984 or Huxley's Brave New World, but also look what happened with regimes that started from that - the Bolsheviks, Nazis, Maoists, and every other totalitarian dictatorship started out that way). In the case of a graded absolutist approach, no one should go looking for trouble, but we should always be prepared if it comes, and not just for us - we have our families, our neighbors, and our society as a whole to consider. Again, to reiterate, don't go looking for trouble, but be prepared if it starts banging on your door.

I thank you for enduring my ramblings on this topic, and much more can be said about it. I will want to deep-dive it more once I read some more on it, but you get the idea. A philosophical framework to our worldview is integral - philosophy is what we think, and theology is what we believe, and they are not in conflict. Faith and reason are essential components in a balanced worldview, and it is time we stop trying to divorce them - that was the grave error of the Enlightenment, and thus it needs to be reversed in Christian thinking. I will see you next visit.

Dealing With Some Adverse Philosophies

2026-08-15T10:31:27.303-07:00

I am thinking about maybe developing this into a series, so we'll see where this goes first. Today, I got my replacement copy of Christian Smith's and Melinda Denton's book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). I have touched some in the past on Smith's and Denton's analyses, but felt it was important to revisit them due to my own experiences teaching the past couple of years at a highly secularized Jesuit high school in Baltimore. The key to this whole book is Chapter 4, which begins on page 118, and it deals with something called Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (hereafter referred to as MTD). After compiling their findings based on a number of interviews, Smith and Denton crystalized MTD as essentially consisting of about 5 basic points in a creedal system that they list on pages 162-163. Here are those five points:

1. A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.

2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, which proponents believe summarizes the Gospels but also is a thread running through most world religions as well.

3. The central goal in life is to be happy and feel good about oneself.

4. God does not particularly need to be involved in one's life except when conveniently needed to resolve a problem.

5. Good people go to heaven when they die.

A few things become evident about this whole thing, and one of them is that none of it is original. You see things here drawn from universalism, traditional Deism, some New Thought (al a Oprah and Joel Osteen) ideas, and a hefty dose of postmodern automatism. The basic way to summarize this mentality further is that God just is, and that we just need to be good people to ourselves and each other. While it all sounds good, and indeed there is a bit of truth in some of it (such as objective principles of natural law) it is really not exactly Christian, but rather forms the foundation of a new faith tradition - a tradition essentially of anti-tradition, if you will. It also forms the basis for some radical things we have been seeing in recent years regarding DEI policies in the workplace, the whole "woke" nonsense, and the quasi-Gnostic subjectivism of reality is what also enables people to identify as "transgender" and other stuff. The problem with a system like this goes back to something fundamental I have beaten to death in many earlier discussions. I will now pivot to that.

We established many times that you cannot have true faith without justice, and visa versa. In the case of a faithless justice, the concept of justice becomes an arbitrary mantra that can be invoked to justify tyranny. As I have said before, many of the worst tyrants in recent history have all shouted the word "justice" over and over, but then they perpetrated some of the worst atrocities in the history of humanity based on their version of "justice." Oddly too, a lot of them to some degree utilized many of the things that comprise MTD, Some - like Hitler - espoused a form of deism that at its root was pantheistic (the whole volkisch obsession with Blut und Boden, for example, was pantheistic at its core). For this, Hitler's personal religious views were described by noted historian Richard Weikart as being essentially a utilitarian pantheist who used religious language when it suited him without believing in it - this has a moralistic quality that makes his audience feel good, because in Hitler's world the whole concept of "God" gets redefined as essentially the blood in one's veins and the soil one stands upon. In many aspects, many of the MTD crowd are probably much closer to Hitler in their views than Jesus ever was, and when you add some other aspects of this - the Nietzschean "struggle of will" for instance - it has created the volatile political environment we see now in the early 21st century. This is a reason why I have argued that National Socialism in Germany was more of a left-wing than a right-wing movement, and when you look at BLM, Antifa, and some other more terroristic movements we see today, there are some very stark similarities with the Freikorps in 1920s Germany. Now, they both even share a vitriolic antisemitism as well. That should give us cause for alarm.

While that would be the subject of a whole other discussion, let's get back to MTD for now. I tend to agree with Dr. Albert Mohler's assessment of this when he wrote on it that "The casual 'whatever' that marks so much of the American theological and moral landscapes - adolescent and otherwise - is a substitute for serious and responsible thinking. More importantly, it is a verbal cover for an embrace of relativism" (Albert Mohler, "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism: The New American Religion," at www.albertmohler.com/2005/04/11/moralistic-therapeutic-deism-the new-american-religion-2/ April 2005 - Accessed 8/7/2026). What Dr. Mohler is saying essentially - and he is correct - is that none of this is new, but is rather the same prepackaged postmodern nonsense we have been seeing in culture for a while. However, in the 21 years since both Smith's book and Mohler's article were authored, this has gone nuclear - the ideology that has MTD as its foundation is now called "wokeism," and it is the inevitable consequence of a growing ambivalence toward traditional values and moral absolutes. It reduces God to basically a stage hand in human affairs, and in many ways it encapsulates much of what Spinoza and Machiavelli wanted to do with the status of religious faith. So, it is an Enlightenment fruit. It also has ties to another term I wanted to introduce, that being the idea of proportionalism.

Back when I was doing my Master's program at Steubenville, one of the books for a course I took was Christopher Kaczor's analysis of proportionalism, and unfortunately I lost that original book. I will reorder Kaczor's book in the future because I feel it is a valuable resource to have, but for now I am going to rely on some other source material I found concerning the topic. Proportionalism is a concept within moral theology which asserts that certain moral positions can be revised in lieu of their rightness or wrongness. Later, I am also going to talk about graded absolutism as proposed by Evangelical scholar Norman Geisler, but the two are not the same despite similar questions each poses. Proportionalism, if taken to its ideological conclusion, actually is the goal of what such writers as Antonio Gramsci and Herbert Marcuse, as well as the Frankfurt School, proposed as "cultural Marxism." There is also a healthy dose of Herbert Spencer's social Darwinian theory as an undertow to this as well. The more recent term coined for this is "critical theory," and it applies a similar mentality to proportionalism in that it seeks to revise what is "good" vs. what is "bad." Combine that with some aspects of MTD, and you get a religion then which rewrites morality in such a way that now "gay marriage" and transgenderism are considered to be a "blessing" rather than as a propensity for sinful behavior, and it gets worse. If then added to this volatile toxic recipe is a hefty dose of Nietzschean "supreme will" and "the struggle," you get anarchism that ushers in tyranny. It is what we come back to about the concept of justice as well - if we divorce justice from faith and basic natural law (which was authored by God anyway, as natural law has a supernatural origin), we get something confusing, chaotic, and ugly. In other words, the Democratic Socialists of America and their Antifa foot soldiers. This is why there must be a set of absolutes in place, as there do need to be boundaries to all that. So, in the next part of this, I will talk about what an actual perspective of absolutism entails, and it should clarify a few things about why many of us do oppose radical leftism now.