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Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
- John Kenneth Galbraith

There's more to spIT.

I was thinking a couple of weeks ago about the ocean. I was thinking about how huge it is and about how salty it is. I was thinking about how people used to go bathe in the ocean because they believed it had healing properties (which it does). Then I started pondering how God molded Adam and Eve with His own hands. He breathed the breath of life into them. How very extremely, beautifully, intimate that is. I imagine Adam taking a deep breath and exhaling and the air that is within him is the air that was within God.

I thought about Mark Ch. 7 Vs. 31-37 and Mark Ch. 8 Vs. 22-26. In Ch. 7 Christ heals a deaf man with a speech difficulty. The first thing He does is spits on His fingers and then puts His fingers in the man's ears and on his tongue. The man is healed.
Then in Ch. 8 Christ spits on a blind man's eyes and laid His hands on his eyes. The man is healed. In these two separate instances Jesus uses His spit to heal these men. Why? He didn't have to do that. Jesus could of just given each man a look and they would have been healed.

Maybe it's the same reason why our Father formed us with His hands. The same reason He knit us within the wombs of our mothers. The same reason He breathed the breath of life within us. The same reason He loves to speak to us from within ourselves. He is an intimate Father. He is a present Father. And His hands are never far from us. They are always present. He is always present.

Back to why I was thinking about the ocean. It's salty. God created all of nature. He spoke and everything that is worth looking at appeared. Brace yourselves this may sound odd, maybe the ocean (at least in the beginning of time) was God's spit. Why not? Jesus used His spit for healing. Maybe this great big body of water which many have gone to for peace, for healing, for pure enjoyment, maybe our very intimate God spit this ocean into existence. In Genesis Ch. 1 it talks about how God was hovering over the surface of the waters in the beginning. It doesn't say how the water came to be. The Bible doesn't say He spoke it into existence but it states it like the water just was.

I don't know. Just thoughts twisting in a mind that is tired of calling its thoughts insignificant. And even if the ocean isn't God's healing spit. These thoughts have caused me to appreciate how very intimate my God is. And that comforts me. As I hope it comforts you.

I wrote this a couple of months ago. I just came across it and I read it to my suitemates and they responded well to it so I'll share it with everyone else.

As I lay there thinking about my mom with my worry a tangible body sitting beside me and gripping my stomach and strangling my throat I lay there and dialed her number. It rang once. She didn't pick up. Twice. No answer. By the third call horrible images had taken an unwelcome stay in my mind. It was two in the morning, she was sleeping. She's fine. She's fine. She's fine. I got a call by the fourth 'she's fine'. It's my mother with a sleepy voice. She wasn't annoyed, she was just concerned and sleepy. I heard her voice and I asked her, "Are you okay?" "Yeah mama, I'm fine. You okay?" she responded. A squeaky yes from me and then sobs racked my body. I was literally shaking, I was crying so hard. Then, at two in the morning I thought I was crying because I was relieved. Now I realize I was sobbing because I could never keep her. I could never keep anyone. And that scared me. It still does.

Life is not a circle.

Have you ever been afraid of getting what you want? Or apprehensive of going after your dream? Your afraid of what might happen when you get it. Maybe when you reach your goal it's not all it's cracked up to be. It seems to me that sometimes our mind tries to make things better than what they really are. We say that life would be great if we had this and that. But when we get what we wanted something ends. The race has been won and the goal is accomplished. What's left? To enjoy the spoils of our victory? To dream up something new? Maybe. Or maybe as long as we're here on earth nothing will ever be good enough. And I think internally in the deepest corners of our being we know that. Even those that don't believe in God, Angels with wings, and streets of paved gold.

We are meant, we are built, we are designed for better. We are made to live eternally. So we always wonder what's next. But down here where there's gravity we discover that there is really no such thing as 'the circle of life'. Our planet may be round but our lives here are a straight line. And this line is not perpetual it ends and so do we. But those of us who believe in something more we have something many don't have. Hope. And a comfort that our lives of goals and dreams are not in vain. All we accomplish here will mean nothing. But it gives us something to do while we wait for the Man we are running the race for. So keep perspective and keep talking to the Man. He listens. And once you achieve everything you want to achieve you will stop and ask, "what's next?" And God will smile. Because there is so much more.

A void to avoid.

It's funny how a void means that something is missing, empty, or not occupied. For example, I have a void in my heart because my husband's off in war. Or...I have a void in my heart because my father was never around. I have a void in my stomach because I haven't eaten. I have a void in my life because I don't believe in anything. A void. Avoid. When there is a void we try to avoid it by filling it with something else. Sometimes we try to fill the void with good things and sometimes we fill it with bad. It's interesting to me how the words are so closely related. Just a thought that was bouncing around in my brain.

Short Sweet...Beep Beep.

As I sit here on my kitchen table trying to avoid the inevitable fact that I must study atoms and molecular bonding, I ponder on the thought of posting another recommendation. And so here is my recommendation, The Alchemist. Read it, dig it and think on it. It's a great book and a short one. It's filled with truth and wonder. What more can you ask for in a book? Alas, now I must study and avoid reading, The Kite Runner. Which is right in front of me and very compelling. Maybe it'll be my next recommendation. Peace.

Recommendation

I just finished reading this book and found a profound truth in it. Steinbeck shows that the most visible kind of strength, the strength used to oppress others, is born out of weakness. I recommend this book, it's harsh, has beautiful descriptions, and is full of truth and rich symbolism. If you have time this summer pick it up and read it. It's really short, you can read it in under a day.

In my humbly firm opinion.

"A man who stops believing in God doesn't believe nothing; he believes anything." -G.K. Chesterton

It's so incredibly frustrating to me how liberal the media is. They profess to show two sides of a story when they only show and embellish the side they want. Which is usually the side that paints liberalism as the good side, the forward thinking side. If you were to put a split screen and place on one side a liberal talking about the wonderful facets of abortion and on the other side a conservative talking about how wrong abortion is, the conservative will usually end up looking like a narrow minded jerk and the liberal will look like this kind-hearted, accepting, saint. How the media spins it that way is beyond me.

It's just sad how 'intellectuals' view religion as a sort of prison of the mind. The ideologies and concepts of religion seem like chains that trap people who when imprisoned long enough turn into robots. When nothing could be further from the truth. It's when people don't realize their need to serve, their need to belong to something greater than themselves, their desire to be loved unconditionally; it is then that people are imprisoned. They hide behind their books and scholarly papers, behind their rallies of acceptance and so called liberation, they brag about their forward thinking. But it is only when we acknowledge our need that we achieve real freedom, the type of liberation that makes you want to change the world.

I am sick of seeing how people are being spoon fed poison and are made to believe that if you don't allow this and if you resist that then you are somehow backward thinking and will eventually be inept mentally and socially. I think people show their intelligence when they pick and choose what they will or will not allow in the recesses of their mind, whether it be the books they read the programs they watch, the people they vote for and so forth.

I think Matthew Arnold wrote what is happening to the world in an achingly sad and beautiful way in his poem Dover Beach...
"The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world..."

Many people reject faith because you can't prove it with an equation. But thank God we can't because wouldn't we be a lot more like robots if we could prove everything with an equation? And I for one am a free thinker with a will of my own and a knowledge of who I willingly serve and nothing could be more liberating.

Things that you don't want to happen do...Because of you.

I felt the hole. It was deep and stretched miles. I felt the distance that yawned, I saw it and knew I could never make it. The thing is all of this could have been prevented. I didn't have to stand on one side of a canyon looking longingly at the other side. I dug this crater myself. I dug it with my laziness, my excuses, my wayward wants, my ignorance, my addictions and with my lack of communication. I formed it and strengthened it with my bare hands. Now I couldn't destroy what I had so carefully built. Little did I know that what I had created would turn into Frankenstein. Only one other pair of hands could bring this monster down. The question is would I throw away my laziness, give up my excuses, hand over my wayward wants, acknowledge my ignorance, face my addictions and pick up a phone? Time will tell.