Beyond The Rim…

It has been some time since I posted anything. There are many reasons why, most of which don’t amount to a hill of beans (seriously insignificant). However, when I actually sit down and put fingers to keyboard, suddenly the clarity of thought I had as I moved about doing things in the house deserts me. There is just too much to say.

We live in remarkable times, some would say perilous times. Back in the late 70’s, when my father was in his mid 50’s, he decided the end was near and felt if he could live to see Y2K, he would be around to see the culmination of history. So he changed his life, diet, and exercise and began working toward being around for that moment.

Well 2000 came and went and the end did not materialize. He is still around, though sadly what happens in the world today is mostly beyond his caring. However, I have, to a degree, inherited his perspective, and I feel the need to prepare for what may occur in the next few years, especially 2012.

What is going to happen? I have no idea. Will it be the cataclysmic events my father expected twelve years earlier arriving later than expected? Maybe. Who knows? Yet, there is something in the air and it isn’t Springtime pollen.

hope this restart of my blogging life will be sustained and is not just another momentary jolt of wordsmithery. We shall see. There is so much to write about and so little time to collect my ephemeral thoughts. But hey, its a start.

Grace and peace to your day.

It has been so long since I posted anything on this blog that is feels like I am starting over. That said, I was thinking today about knowledge, or in the field in which I work the common term is intel. Knowledge/intel is power. It is often more important than weapons, because without it, weapons are shooting in the dark.

Then I had an insight. The temptation of Adam and Eve was about knowledge. Satan said to Eve:

For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. Gen. 3:5

The original temptation was centered on knowledge and Satan equated it with godhood, that knowledge was power that could make you a god.

From there I began to think about knowledge and about God, the difference between knowing about and knowing, having a form of godliness and having the real thing. There is a difference between the knowledge that is given, revealed if you will, and that which is demanded or taken, stolen if you thought about it.

This is a line of thinking I have just begun to open, but I find it interesting that my favorite spiritual book is J. I. Packer’s Knowing God.

It has been good to put fingers to keys. I pray that this is really a starting over. Grace and peace to your day.

The Blog update is complete, so I thought I would let you know that I have finished the editing/rewrite of the first book in my Moses chronicle: Beginnings. Among other things, I added about 3500 words, revamped much of the dialog in the beginning, which was woefully lacking, and reworked the climatic debate.

I will be sending it out to prospective agents this weekend. Here is hoping it is good enough for someone to bite on.

If you want a copy, I will be happy to send you one (spiral bound) for $15 plus $5 shipping and handling. If after reading the book you are dissatisfied for any reason, you can return the book for a refund of the purchase price-no questions asked. Just click the Buy Beginnings button below to order through PayPal.

Sageline Publishing with PayPal
Note: Use the Credit Card Continue link

I am going off-line while my site is converted to a new version of WordPress and MySQL. Check back next week and hopefully everything will be done.

Grace and Peace

One of the niceties that separates us from our historical ancestors is our use of condiments on our food. We have many possibilities to spice up our daily fare from the simple salt and pepper to the common mayonnaise, mustard, catchup, and for the adventurous, hot sauce.

I can’t say I was surprised when I took the condiment test and I turned out to be a bit on the capsicum end of the scale. My wife would have argued that I was more toward Horseradish, but I don’t think that was one of the selections.

Whatever I remind you of, I have been told more times than I can count that I am an acquired taste. Well, that’s life in Meisheid Zone…

We regularly get deer in our back yard, sometimes as many as 10-12. Tonight we had both a red fox and several deer. Before I could get my camera together the fox had exited stage right, so I decided to shoot a few of the deer before the twilight disappeared.

When people see the deer in our yard, Bambi immediately comes to mind and it affects everthing they think about these creatures, including our concerns over deer ticks which have given several neighbors Lime disease. Those concerns are always dismissed with a wave of the hand and “But they’re so beautiful.”

They can be very beautiful, as you can see below. However, in the 23 years we have been here, from our limited observation (how many frequent our backyard), their numbers have tripled.

Deer in the Back Yard

Considering the lengths that radical Muslims go to “protect” their ritual purity (e.g. Ayatollah Khomeini, after the Iranian revolution, declared that all non-Muslims were impure. He said that to wash the clothes of non-Muslims (you have to touch them), to eat with non-Muslims (sharing food), or to use personal items touched by non-Muslims (such as dinner utensils), would spoil a Muslim’s ritual purity), I have always wondered how the mullahs explained away the fundamental problem facing suicide provocateurs (sorry - martyrs).

The problems abound. Take for instance the well-known 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta. He demanded in his “will” that his body not be touched by a woman. It would make him ritually impure. However, in crashing the plane into the World Trade Center he inseperably mingled his body parts and blood with that of his victims (obvious being touched by them), both from the plane and the building, many of whom were women, in effect forever defiling his own body by his own actions.

Look at the suicide bombers who mingle their blood and body parts with that of their victims, who are considered impure, especially in the case of Jews, who are called pigs, a vile unclean animal to Islamists. There is a rabid desire among Islamists that their dead body not be defiled, but every suicide bomber by their own actions make their dead remains radically impure beyond any possible repurification.

I could go on, but you get the drift. Even their own religious logic shouts against their actions, condemning them, rather than rewarding them with their [insert desired number here] virgins.

Surprise! Oh, sorry, it’s too late to make amends. So sad, too bad.