#this is probably our most controversial hill to die on

[dmndgs]

Whatever you do with another consenting adult is none of anyone's business. Whatever you write about or create for your own pleasure and enjoyment is ALSO none of anyone's business. The only way these things become problematic is when they involve people that cannot/have not consented (yes, minors included;no, not cnc as it has been discussed beforehand). Crucially, if you HAVE created something featuring acts that would be morally unacceptable in real life- or have found comfort in other people's works as such- DO NOT SPREAD, POST, OR ENDORSE/SUPPORT THESE WORKS IN ANY WAY. It is MORE than fine to seek comfort in the ways that work best for you. What isn't fine is endorsing your suffering in real, living, other people.

that last comment is so fucking revealing as to the actual priorities and worries of people who say 'get therapy' lmao

[liskantope]

Back in late 2020 I made a post which mentioned as a side comment the impression I get from a lot of the more aggressive SJ people that writing/saying a lot (e.g. writing long, nuanced, qualifying, and/or perhaps defensive-sounding responses) is seen as evidence in and of itself of being wrong in the argument, specifically the type of wrong that comes from a position of privilege (I thought a little later I wrote a short post focusing only on this, but I can't seem to find it now). The example in the above-linked post is in the strangely-proportioned screenshot, where someone who is being attacked for not bowing down to the Correct political opinions keeps responding with lengthy, articulate, nuanced comments (which include some acknowledgment of her own weaknesses) and is met only more vehement attacks declaring checkmate explicitly on the grounds that her comments are long. The end of the exchange happens when she leaves a comment raising her eyebrows at being attacked for long-windedness, and the entirety of the response is "...you and your privilege". It's a finale that's stuck with me.

I was reminded of this today when an unexpected spurt of activity showed up on my Tumblr: an activist with whom I got into a contentious exchange well over two years ago for some reason chose now to abruptly reblog a several of my lengthy responses with pithy remarks (okay, plus one which includes a link to her own independent blog post about it which I don't think I'd seen before), and a minor flurry of likes and replies followed. I don't care to reblog any of this now, or even link to it, because my getting into that debate is something I'm really not proud of: the topic is not a hill I want to die on, and I dislike my awkward defensiveness and repeated apologies and semi-retractions. If I'm going to spend time and energy arguing something really controversial, I would rather it be a discussion where I can be really incisive and not catch myself arguing carelessly and sloppily and feel the repeated need to step back and clutter everything with caveats and apologies. But, if you are curious, I was defending a YouTuber I respect from being cancelled for being Problematic, and this exchange happened in spring of 2021.

The one new bit of substantive information for me coming from today's activity is the link to a separate blog post written at the time, which further confirms that there's no point in me continuing to defend that YouTuber to this activist: apparently among the list of things that makes this YouTuber's case worse and confirms their guilt are (1) publishing an earlier video which made all of the exact right points but which (surprise, surprise) got noticed by more people than a written article by a lower-profile person from the Relevant Marginalized Group making essentially the same points, (2) acknowledging that the Relevant Social Justice Cause is a good one and including a link to a fundraiser, and (3) momentarily sighing with a slight look of exasperation when first bringing up the accusation of being Problematic in a video. (Sorry I'm continuing to be vague here.)

Continuing to argue with this activist would be a waste of time, since our rhetorical values and norms are clearly too far apart for us ever to reach each other. Looking at it makes me grateful to have found a part of Tumblr that does share my basic notions of how discussions should work.

But what strikes me most of all is how my lengthiness itself is somehow treated as evidence of my guilt or wrongness or privilege or something. One of my lengthy reblogs got met today with a single sentence mocking it as a "dissertation" and managing to weirdly characterize my thesis without explanation, while another later one got met with "Have you considered just.... never talking again? Because you are not good at it." Again, these little zingers were fired off probably within a few minutes earlier today, in response to things I wrote back in spring of 2021.

That's the exact same kind of back-of-the-hand dismissal that I mentioned above having witnessed done to someone else (with the "...you and your privilege" comment). It reads like "This person talks too much, that's how you know they're in the wrong, so no need to address any of their points, if I smack them with a one-sentence response saying 'Haha that just further confirms you're wrong!' then I win."

And it's like, usually I consider my ability at cognitive empathy to be quite good, but it's hard for me to figure out what the other party is actually thinking in a situation like this: I can sort of get my head around not respecting nuance in certain selective situations and thinking the ability to feel nuance is a sign of privilege or something, but I can't quite figure out how they justify these one-sentence blanket dismissals on the grounds that the other person's comments are too long without imagining that they must be aware on some level that they're just being domineering-in-an-internet-way and deliberately going for a cheap and empty slam-dunk. This isn't very charitable, but honestly I have a hard time understanding such people's motives any other way.

[laggingbehindreality]

7, 16 or 19 for the JoJo game?

ive been procrastinating on this for like a day bc of the fear of choosing boring answer but you know what. I am a boring person at the end of the day. I can at least be a boring person who gets things done and has fun with it.

7. Favourite Stand design? Least favourite Stand design?

Genuinely the toughest question because like,, to me this is a question of 'does the design work for what the story is trying to achieve' and not 'do i like how this looks' (even though the second interpretation is probably what the original question was trying to ask)

So. Favorite stand design.

Purple Haze is the stand of a traumatized teenager with anger issues who covers up deep insecurities with pedantic insistences on maintaining an air of the high society and formal college education that tossed him out to begin with. Of course the shape of Fugo's soul is a hunched over zombie that bleches disease and lashes out at the drop of a hat, but paradoxically values looks and cleanliness to the point of stumbling itself. This stand explains who Fugo is better than other characters describing him, it's the definition of what a good stand design should be aiming to achieve (in my opinion).

Least favorite. I don't know if this will be a 'controversial take' or whatever so please know that this isn't a hill I'm trying to die on, it's the example that most clearly jumped out at me while going through the list of all stands in JJBA.

Pearl Jam's design, to me, is entirely too fierce. Not to say that it doesn't work, it's perfect for the moment it's revealed (fix that spagetti!) but after we find out that the stand is harmless and beneficial, i think the stands should close their mouths to signal to the audience that they aren't agressive anymore. Like, I love me some sharp teeth, but there's that thing about how our brains interpret expressions, and the fact that the teeth are so sharp really makes it feel like these are little parasites that eat your insides rather than little tomato helpers that give you healthcare for the price of lunch. It's an extremely small detail, but it stuck in my brain for this long, so why not be pedantic, right?

16. Favourite ship(s)?

Squatizi, easily. I love that they're just fully, unapologetically in love with each other, and that they look ready for a long walk on the beach. One time I told someone on instagram that I hated narancia for killing them and they told me GOOD bc they were a narancia fan.

I also like. When Carne is also a part of squatizi. Squatizine. It frustrates me because even people who can kinda see it are like 'oh so Tiziano would talk to him right? And Squalo would be all defensive and worried for Tiziano's safety?' like,,,,, if i thought that was how it would go down, I wouldn't ship them. I think Squalo would be just fully enamored by Carne and after a few months of Carne slowly realising Squalo does actually like being with him and isn't secretly trying to make fun of him like Secco and Cio do, they do dumb boys-will-be-boys things like climbing tall rock outcroppings to jump into lakes from, grilling things really badly and arguing about internal temperatures and propane vs wood-burning, falling asleep in the sun after forgetting to put on suntan lotion and waking up looking like a pair of lobsters. Tiziano is the exasperated girlfreind third wheeling these two's extremely stupid bromance do you understand me

19. Creepiest moment / Stand / character?

This might be too tame of an answer but like. Enrico Pucci.

He's a priest, right? And everyone who is not in the protagonist's squad respects him for being a religious leader. The prison guards just let him wander wherever he wants, look into any prisoner's information and whereabouts, no questions asked. People outside the prison refer to him as 'father' because like, he's very obviously dressed like a priest, even if he's acting weird he's still an upstanding guy, right? He only gets in to the kennedy space center because someone saw him in line and invited him in after the ticket desk sold out. Everyone's just like, trusting the guy who is running himself ragged trying to bring about the end of the world, and only a squad of about ~6 prison inmates and Jolyne's dad are aware of how bad his previous actions were, and they had absolutely no idea how bad things were about to get until the final battle.

And then the final chase where Pucci is just,,, briskly walking to keep up with a sobbing child, so consumed with grief upon witnessing the death of a universe that he can barely get to his feet to run. Stressed me out a lot, yknow?

[theparanormalperiodical]

Everything You Never Knew About The Nazi UFO Conspiracy Theory (it’s a wild ride)

Oil.

You could tell the story of the modern world through oil.

The thick, sticky liquid is the dark glue clobbering the West together. Nations go to war, governments plot and plunder, and innocent people get caught up in the crossfire. All for oil.

But the oil I’m talking about didn’t start a war. It instead leads us to a little known historical tale. A tale that in turn brings us to the front step of a conspiracy theory.

Our story starts in Queen Maud Land, Antarctica.

It’s currently -46 degrees celsius. We are surrounded by soft, white stretches of snow and sharp, mountain-esque peaks breaching the ice.

But some would have you believe there is much more to the land lying just beyond the North Pole. According to some theorists, beneath the frost-bitten ground lies an entire hidden society. And amongst the people gathering in this underground bunker sits technological advances quite literally out of this world.

In 1938, an expedition from Nazi Germany was sent out to take control of Queen Maud Land (known then as New Swabia) in order to supply whale oil for the upcoming war in Western Europe.

Theorists, however, claimed that after the war, the remaining Nazis in Europe fled to New Swabia and may have even kept and developed their advancements in aircraft technology. Yes, it is here they keep and dispatch their UFO technology, helped only by a superhuman race or aliens!

Strap in, kids. It’s time to talk about the messy, mysterious and my-god-this-is-weird-shit Nazi UFOs.

2010 was a pretty tame year by the decade’s standards.

But in late November, a meme was born. A meme that probably relaunched a conspiracy that once thrived in a postwar world: it claimed aliens paid a visit to the guys at the top during Nazi Germany’s heyday and offered up advice for advanced aircraft technology.

Ancient Aliens (season 2 episode 5) gave us innocent viewers the lowdown on the UFOs spotted during and after the war that were supposedly related to Hitler’s regime.

This theory clusters alongside other Ancient Aliens theories - that extraterrestrials have popped down now and then to help construct vast civilisations like Ancient Egypt.

Is it true?

Is it bugger.

But the theories and the evidence put forward frame a unique time in history.

What are Nazi UFOs?

The title of this theory is far from imaginative. The theory claims the Nazis were successful in advancing aircrafts and spacecrafts during WW2. But there is also talk of postwar survival of this technology, whether concealed at the North Pole or hiding in plain sight at NASA.

We know that the Nazis made vast strides in engineering and weaponry. In fact, the ‘evidence’ route forward by theorists relies heavily on accounts from high-up figures in the Axis countries.

Take the Repulsine: this was a specialised engine built during the war. How far was the stretch from this feat of engineering to alien-tech? Is it possible that an advanced race of extraterrestrials stopped by with a few tips and tricks?

Apparently so, as put forward by the claims of the Haunebu flying saucer and the occult-inspired Die Glocke (the existence of both of these aircrafts is, of course, highly disputed).

Nazi UFO believers should get some credit, however - they at least did some research. They got their facts right on three crucial pieces of evidence, before losing control of the wheel and skidding off the track completely.

Firstly, yes, we know they claimed New Swabia in 1938 for the purpose of obtaining whale oil and potentially for imperial pursuits, as well.

And yeah, they researched advanced propulsion tech. They even created a prototype of a circular-winged aircraft that looks preeeeetty similar to your run-of-the-mill UFO.

They even get right that there were flurries of UFO sightings during the war by allied forces.

But as soon as 1950, outlandish claims emerged, mere years after Germany surrendered and the Allies claimed victory. But we need to start at the beginning.

The year is 1944.

The end of the war is just on the horizon. The Allies have liberated Western Europe from Nazi grip. But a new, surprising threat is in the soldiers line of sight, too.

It was a cold, November evening. Lt. Fred Ringwald was in a night fighter piloted by a fellow Lieutenant. As they soared above the Rhine valley, the two american soldiers spotted something in the hills of Strasbourg.

8 fiery, orange lights were staring back at them.

They were sure, as any fighter pilot in that situation, that this was enemy aircraft. And yet nothing showed up on the radar. As soon as they turned the plane to prepare to fight, the orange lights had disappeared.

Many would attribute such sightings to combat fatigue, St. Elmo’s Fire (weather phenomena during a storm where glowing plasma appears near masts) or the fact that pilots would have seen many aircrafts clogging across Europe's skies.

But soon, the sightings began to spread. And fast.

In December, a pilot saw “5 or 6 flashing red and green lights in ’T’ shape.” in the skies near Breisach, Germany. They followed him but quickly vanished.

Days later, two orange glowing lights were spotted by two more flight crews.

They rose from the earth to 10,000 feet before tailing the fighters for approx. 2 minutes. They then stopped following the allied planes and disappeared.

“They appear to be under perfect control at all times”

Keith Chester

These sightings would become so common, they’d be given a nickname:

Foo fighters.

Scientists would go on to investigate them, later decoding them as advanced German aircrafts and weaponry. As they were only spotted by allied forces, it was likely they were advancements such as the V-1 or V-2 rocket.

But after the war, UFO sightings continued to apparently connect the dots:

Project Sign, an official US UFO investigation team, linked the designs of the German Horten brothers to UFO reports. The head of the follow up investigation confirmed some of their findings:

“When WWII ended, the Germans had several radical types of aircraft and guided missiles under development. The majority were in the most preliminary stages, but they were the only known craft that could even approach the performance of objects reported by UFO observers.”

Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, 1959

It was only after the war that accounts from former officials of the Axis regimes appeared to support these claims.

The first newspaper report forging a connection between UFOs and the crushed Nazi regime was written by a former Italian Minister of National Economy under Mussolini’s regime:

"types of flying discs were designed and studied in Germany and Italy as early as 1942"

But this doesn’t suggest aliens airdropped a PDF of flying saucer designs. We know that flying saucer aircrafts can and have been created.

A similar account from a Czeh scientist spurred on another key element of this conspiracy theory.

Die Glocke.

December 9th 1965.

All is peaceful in the small town of Kecksberg, Pennsylvania. That’s about to change.

Six American citizens in Detroit, Michigan, Windsor and Ontario witnessed a fireball score across the sky. NASA later claimed that this was a meteorite or a Soviet satellite crashing back to Earth.

UFOlogists weren’t so sure.

Many claim they saw a large object the size of a VW Beetle spotted with strange symbols, like hieroglyphics, being carried out by a truck from the area cordoned off at the crash site.

UFOlogists believe they recovered The Bell, an occult-alien-hybrid spacecraft.

Apparently, such claims bear a similarity to the designs of an aircraft laid out in a Wehrmacht document about a vertical take-off craft. And then Rudolph Schirever, the man claiming he designed it during the war, gave a statement the same month something crashed to the earth.

He told Der Spiegel that he designed a craft powered by rotating turbine blades. He developed it until April 1945 at BMW in Prague before fleeing to the Czeh Republic, as it is now known. 3 years later, he claimed the designs were stolen.

He thinks Czeh agents nicked his ideas for a foreign power.

Could it have been for an underground society of failed Nazi war criminals stowed away in underground base in Antartica?

(That was a mouthful.)

Many have attached their own take to Die Glocke.

Some believe it was anti-gravitational, others claim it was a time-machine. Some claim a Nazi colonel handed it over to the US military to buy his freedom, and a few even allege that the US forces forced Nazi scientists to build Die Glocke and advance it’s anti-gravity technology.

This stuff is pretty out there.

Quite literally.

But the last bit does fit actual history: US forces did bring over Nazi scientists to advance their space technology.

Postwar Theories

When historians began to reflect on the war decades after it ended, new ideas banking on UFOs followed suit.

In the 1960s, one of these most infamous theories was put forward in the controversial book The Morning of the Magicians.

It made numerous claims about the mysterious and fictional Vril Society which was based on a novel about superhuman-angel-alien beings that lived inside the Earth. In 1935, a German engineer fled to the US spouting claims that the Nazis did indeed have a society dedicated to finding the Vril.

The Morning of the Magicians claimed the Vril Society was a precursor to the Nazi party amongst other ideas. They supposedly created flying disc prototypes and had a secret base on the moon.

Oh, and about that Antarctica underground base?

It’s so the Nazis can vanish into the Earth and meet that advanced race living down there.

Jumping onto this New Swabia bandwagon was Ernst Zündel.

This Holocaust denier (*stares into camera*) wrote many books throughout the 70s claiming flying saucers were secret weapons released from this base. He even claimed he would attempt to locate the base and reveal the Earth was crammed full of aliens this entire time!

In 2002, he let slip that it was a big ruse to bring in more cash for his publishing company.

At the end of the decade, Migeul Serrano gave it a go. He was a Nazi sympathiser and believed that Hitler was the avatar (a deity on earth) of a Hindu god. Apparently he was hanging out with the hyperborean gods (Greek gods that are stowed away at the North Pole) underground until he was ready to release UFOs and bring in the Fourth Reich.

The last, infamous proponent of this theory had physical, real-life consequences.

A year after Serrano made his claims, Richard Chase professed that Nazi UFOs had forced him to commit numerous brutal and bloody crimes under threat to his own life.

Chase is one of the most infamous serial killers in history, earning the title the Vampire of Sacramento due to his reputation for murder, rape, cannibalism and necrophilia. These claims can be traced back to his schizophrenia which prompted him to believe prison officials were poisoning his food as directed by Nazi UFOs.

***

I think sometimes it’s easier for us to frame the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime within the context of something the horror genre would spit out. We’d much rather spin tales of occult rituals and far-out entities than admit actual humans did what they did.

It’s no surprise that following the war, a surge in movies detailing alien invasion emerged. It fit the fears of impending doom from a foreign, fascist government, a reality for many nations during WW2.

What do you think is the craziest claim?

If you liked this blogpost, make sure you like and reblog it. And while you’re down there, hit follow to read something spooky every weekend!

[cannot-decide-on-a-fandom]

I understand that it’s currently (well, it has been for a while, but still) fun and cool to make fun of Supernatural and treat it as if it was always just a stupid, mediocre at best show, but the reason why the entire thing going on with it sucks is that it really wasn’t.

I’m not saying it hasn’t done the things people are saying, like killing off every LGBT character and the one important disabled character over, at the time, 12 seasons (well, apart from Bobby, but he got cured, which is a whole other can of worms), had little diversity in terms of people of colour, because it has, and while I don’t think it’s inherently bad to kill minority characters, when you kill/mistreat all of them, that’s very different to “this one character died and he was gay”. I’m in no way denying the problematic writing of the show, and yeah, feel free to call the shitty writing in that aspect. Because that is shitty.

But Supernatural actually did have a lot to love. (this turned out longer than I expected, so I’ll put it under the cut, but please read it if at all interested, because I am curious what other people think. Also, this is based off of what I’ve seen, so our views of reactions might be a little different)

There are no finale spoilers in this, apart from “it was bad”

In terms of characters, I still love Cas with my entire heart, he is generally a well written and fascinating character (not flawlessly written, obviously, but still interestingly), and has a really cool opening role, season 4 still being among my favourites of the show. The characters were incredibly flawed which is actually a really cool thing to see because perfect characters take me out of the story, Sam and Dean were generally good protagonists to follow, I love Crowley and Jack, 2 of the other characters who were at some point listed as lead cast members, I didn’t even have the hate regarding Bela’s character or Ruby’s, there are some really interesting side and recurring characters too (Charlie, Kevin, Jo, Ellen, Bobby-all dead admittedly, which is definitely the frustrating and irritating thing), and they’re likable while still feeling relatively grounded, a surprise in a show about the supernatural.

As for the plot, I’m not gonna act like there were not bad storylines or badly executed ones. I don’t hate season 7 as much as others do, season 8 is my personal least favourite, but that entire season felt like filler for most of it, and to be honest I barely recall any episodes from s7. Plus the villains were probably the weakest (not strength wise, but writing wise) of the entire run. But every season up to season 5 had so much to care about and love, and while for me seasons 6-8 were not great, seasons 9-11 are all some of my most loved hours of TV (which I know is controversial, as people are so quick to say everything went bad after season 5, but I disagree with that too). Yes, the stakes may have escalated way too far and saying stuff like “ooh, God’s sister is the enemy” can seem ridiculous, I never once felt that they lacked heart and lacked a genuine desire to create. It really felt to me as if the people working on the show really did care and wanted to create and tell their stories.

The one off, meta, and special episodes are really fun and Supernatural has kind of become known for them. Things like Changing Channels, The French Mistake, Baby, Stuck in the Middle (With You) are all interesting concepts to apply to the show and whether you like all of them or not I think being able to have some unique or cool things up their sleeves even after a decade deserves props for at least trying (also, writing this now, I have a strong temptation to rewatch 12x12)

And one thing that I still genuinely commend Supernatural for (again, not that they did it perfectly, but I didn’t sense any malice from it) is that the show has encouraged its fans to explore what they want in their own writing and supported them in that. Some people may hate the meta stories, and that’s perfectly fine. But episodes like Fan Fiction were used as a thank you and an ode to the fans, not as a way to mock their interpretations. Dean explicitly says that his interpretation of the stories is not any less valuable than anybody else’s. The Real Ghostbusters did have Sam and Dean shocked at there being a Supernatural convention, but it was because anyone would be uncomfortable if their lives had cons around them, it wasn’t treated as if it was just wrong to be interested and love stories. I understand the issues with Becky’s character and yes, she was not a great example of a fan and I wish it wasn’t done in that way (especially one particular episode, which the show, ever so slightly to their credit, addressed in season 15), but I think that for the most part, the cast and crew recognise how much interpreting the story in your own way matters.

Supernatural wasn’t a shitty TV show that never deserved the success it had, it’s a show that was full of lovable characters, interesting concepts, some actually really good lines (even though it became most known for the memey, jokey lines like “I lost my shoe” I will die on the hill that there were so many thoughtful, deep, interesting lines of dialogue in the show. I am tempted to rewatch the show and make a list honestly because a lot of them I recall really stuck with me for a while and there were actual lessons, believe it or not, in them), actors doing their absolute best and mostly succeeding, a show that tried to do things outwith or a twist on their base genre, and over all a show with a lot of good in it.

The reason the way the season went is so frustrating is specifically because it wasn’t as bad as people like to claim. If it was always bad, yeah, people might be disappointed, but it wouldn’t be as big of a deal if it always sucked. It’s upsetting because throughout most of its run, Supernatural has shown that it is capable of creating interesting, enjoyable, emotional stories, and it’s show it can have interest, enjoyable, and emotional finales.

Of course it really fucked up with its representation throughout the whole show, nobody is denying that, and good. #TheySilencedYou/Us is important. It should exist, because it’s ridiculous how some of their characters were treated. They literally brought Eileen back for 30 seconds one time specifically to kill her, and that really annoyed me, among many other instances. But Supernatural did have a lot to love and a lot to care about, which is exactly why it pisses me, even as someone who hasn’t watched the show in years until this year, off that they threw away 15 years of character arcs, story writing, and 15 years of the positive things the show gave us to create a finale where it’s clear they did not give a crap as to what the fans or even their own cast members would be happy with.

So no, I don’t think Supernatural is a crappy show with bad writing that did not deserve to survive as long as it did. I think Supernatural had heart and love and passion put into it and through 15 years some stories were halfbaked and haphazard but it wasn’t just a bad program. Which is why what happened to it can fuck off, and why I feel bad for the fans, and also cast members who are dealing with a) letting go of their characters in a way that they’re unhappy with (eg-Jensen) and b) dealing with the backlash directed at them when they really aren’t the ones who should be dealing with the problems, because the writers should have known better (Misha)

(One last thing, I’m aware most fans aren’t cruel to the cast, this is a vocal minority, it doesn’t mean I don’t still feel bad for them)

[mrlnsfrt]

The Cure for Spiritual Lethargy

(This is not a Christmas post, though it also applies to Christmas)

It is December and all around me I hear Christmas songs and see Christmas decorations. This is the time we usually talk about God’s great gift, the gift of Sis Son! This post is about God’s great gift, but more specifically this post will focus on our response to God’s gift. When we think of the birth of baby Jesus, of His eternal humiliation to live and die in this sinful world, do we stop to think about what our proper response should be? I do, I often think about this. In my post Reflecting on my life - 2020 (and also Who I am) I mention how I grew up as a believer. This means I do not remember learning about Jesus, I always knew. So Christmas and calvary are stories that I have known from my earliest memories. This presents a unique challenge for me because how do I react to a story that I already know? Maybe some of you are on a similar boat. You know the story, so this extraordinary story, one that has the power to transform lives, becomes rather ordinary due to familiarity. I can’t change the story, I shouldn’t. So how do I keep it fresh in my heart? How should I react to God’s desire to be with me? (I have several posts on God with us)

In this post, I would like to outline some things we can do to keep our relationship with God from growing stale.

Blow the trumpet in Zion, And sound an alarm in My holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble; For the day of the Lord is coming, For it is at hand: - Joel 2:1 NKJV

There are so many different things related to Jesus coming. How are we supposed to feel?

“Now, therefore,” says the Lord, “Turn to Me with all your heart, With fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.” So rend your heart, and not your garments; Return to the Lord your God, For He is gracious and merciful, Slow to anger, and of great kindness; And He relents from doing harm. - Joel 2:12-13 NKJV

One of the things we are called to do is to turn to God with our whole hearts. This cannot be done outwardly only. Cold formalism and religiosity spell spiritual death. Never trust your dress and behavior, those can be shaped by outside pressures. What is the state of your heart? Do you long for Jesus? Of is Jesus just a cultural artifact in your social and personal life?

Can I be completely honest with you? This next part concerns me. This next part troubles me, personally.

Blow the trumpet in Zion, Consecrate a fast, Call a sacred assembly; Gather the people, Sanctify the congregation, Assemble the elders, Gather the children and nursing babes; Let the bridegroom go out from his chamber, And the bride from her dressing room. - Joel 2:15-16 NKJV

As you probably know, I am a pastor, a spiritual leader. Yet I have no idea how to sanctify the congregation. I can blow a trumpet, I can call for a fast, if it wasn’t for COVID I could even try to gather the people and assemble the elders. But here is the thing. How often are we willing to do this? When was the last time you tried fasting and praying? When was the last time you were concerned with your standing before God? I am not talking about your good works or obedience. I am talking about your love for God. Do you really love Him? If you do, how often are you concerned about His mission for your life? How often are you concerned about showing your love for Him through all that you do? Do we come together as a church, as a family, and seek God? Is that how I sanctify the congregation? Do I encourage and invite everyone to humble themselves and seek God?

If you keep reading, Joel 2 is not all doom and gloom.

“So I will restore to you the years that the swarming [k]locust has eaten, The crawling locust, The consuming locust, And the chewing locust, My great army which I sent among you. You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, And praise the name of the Lord your God, Who has dealt wondrously with you; And My people shall never be put to shame. Then you shall know that I am in the midst of Israel: I am the Lord your God And there is no other. My people shall never be put to shame. - Joel 2:25-27 NKJV

God ultimately promises restoration. Ultimately God provides for His people. My concern here is not with God. My main concern is with me being asleep in my relationship with God, and not even realize that my love for Him is growing colder each day as I simply go through the motions. My understanding of Joel is that there was a great need for spiritual reformation before the people would be ready for the day of the Lord.

I believe we need faithful men and women, who are sensitive and obedient to the promptings of the Holy Spirit and the teachings of the Bible, and will proclaim this warning to the world. God gave us prophecy in the Bible for a reason.

And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts; knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. - 2 Peter 2:19-21 NKJV

Do we seek the knowledge of God more than all hidden treasures? Do we count it “better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold?” (Proverbs 3:14) God is willing to reveal to us the great things of the kingdom.

The secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him, And He will show them His covenant. - Psalm 25:14 NKJV

So, are we are seeking God, at all?

The Birth of Jesus

Think of the Christmas story. At the time of Christ's first advent the priests and scribes of Jerusalem, who had access to all the prophecies, might have recognized the signs of the times and proclaimed the coming of the Messiah. The prophecy of Micah designated His birthplace (Micah 5:2); Daniel specified the time of His advent (Daniel 9:25).

God committed these prophecies to the Jewish leaders; they were without excuse if they did not know and declare to the people that the Messiah's coming was at hand. Their ignorance was the result of sinful neglect. - The Great Controversy 313

Today, we have the Bible available to us. We all have access to the word of God. Yet how much time do we dedicate to its study?

Could Christians become so absorbed in their ambitious strife for place and power that we lose sight of the divine honors given us by God? Do we get so caught up chasing after worldly things that we forget our responsibility of sharing the gospel and helping those in need?

Imagine this with me.

People have been waiting for the Messiah since Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden (someOne is coming). The elders of Israel should have been studying the prophecies concerning Jesus. With profound and reverent interest they should have been studying the place, the time, the circumstances, of the greatest event in the world's history—the coming of the Son of God to accomplish the redemption of humanity. All the people should have been watching and waiting that they might be among the first to welcome the world's Redeemer.

“But, lo, at Bethlehem two weary travelers from the hills of Nazareth traverse the whole length of the narrow street to the eastern extremity of the town, vainly seeking a place of rest and shelter for the night. No doors are open to receive them. In a wretched hovel prepared for cattle, they at last find refuge, and there the Saviour of the world is born.” The Great Constorversy p313

Imagine, God is born among us, and we miss it.

The majority of the people were distracted. The religious leaders were seeking earthly power and honor and missed the most anticipated event in the history of the world (up to that point). This season, as we think about the birth of Jesus, this ought to be a sobering thought. The majority of people missed the birth of Jesus.

Imagine the angels with me.

Imagine heavenly angels who had seen the glory which Jesus shared with the Father before the world was. Now imagine these same angels looking forward with intense interest to His appearing on earth as an event filled with the greatest joy to all people. Imagine the angels who were appointed to carry the glad tidings to those who were prepared to receive it and who would joyfully make it known to the inhabitants of the earth.

This is unbelievable! But Christ had stooped to take upon Himself human nature; He was to bear the infinite weight of misery as He would make His soul an offering for sin (Isaiah 53:10). Nevertheless, the angels desire that even in His humiliation the Son of God might appear before men with dignity and glory befitting His character. Would the great men of earth assemble at Jerusalem to greet His coming? Would legions of angels present Him to the expectant company?

Imagine, all of heaven excited about the birth of Jesus, meanwhile here on earth, virtually nobody, is anticipating this incredible event. Everyone is just going through the motions…

Imagine the angel, disappointed, about to return to heaven and report that no one was available to receive the good news. Then at last the angel discovers a group of shepherds who are watching their flocks by night, and, as they gaze into the starry heavens, they are contemplating the prophecy of a Messiah to come to earth and longing for the advent of the world's Redeemer. Finally! Here is a company that is prepared to receive the heavenly message! And suddenly the angel of the Lord appears, declaring the good tidings of great joy. Celestial glory floods all the plain, an innumerable company of angels is revealed, and as if the joy were too great for one messenger to bring from heaven, a multitude of voices break forth in the anthem which all the nations of the saved shall one day sing: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” (Luke 2:14)

“Oh, what a lesson is this wonderful story of Bethlehem! How it rebukes our unbelief, our pride and self-sufficiency. How it warns us to beware, lest by our criminal indifference we also fail to discern the signs of the times, and therefore know not the day of our visitation.” - The Great Controversy 315

But if you’re familiar with the story you know that those shepherds were not the only ones that the angels found watching for the birth of the Messiah. In a distant land, there were also those that looked for Him; they were wise men, rich and noble, the philosophers of the East. As students of the natural world, the Magi had seen God in His handiwork. They then studied the Hebrew Scriptures and learned of the Star to arise out of Jacob, and with eager desire they awaited His coming, who should be not only the “Consolation of Israel,” but a “Light to lighten the Gentiles,” and “for salvation unto the ends of the earth.” Luke 2:25, 32; Acts 13:47.

What does this story tell you about God? These men were not Jews, yet, they sought light, they sought God, and light from the throne of God illumined the path for their feet. What a tragedy that the priests and rabbis of Jerusalem, the appointed guardians and expounders of the truth, were shrouded in darkness. And how wonderful that the Heaven-sent star guided these Gentile strangers to the birthplace of the newborn King.

Jesus came not just for the Jews, not just for the middle-east, He came to save all.

When Jesus was born as a baby, the Jewish religious leaders should have been the first to lift their voices and proclaim the birth of Jesus, the first to warn the people to prepare for His coming. “But they were at ease, dreaming of peace and safety, while the people were asleep in their sins.”(Great Controversy 315)

Jesus described His church like the barren fig tree, covered with pretentious leaves, yet destitute of precious fruit. There was a boastful observance of the forms of religion, while the spirit of true humility, penitence, and faith—which alone could render the service acceptable to God—was lacking. Instead of the fruit of the Spirit the church was full of pride, formalism, vainglory, selfishness, and even oppression.

Israel, at the time of the birth of Jesus, was like a backsliding church who closed their eyes to the signs of the times. God did not forsake them, His faithfulness did not fail them; but they were the ones who departed from Him, and separated themselves from His love. As they refused to comply with the conditions, His promises were not fulfilled to them. 

This is what happens whenever we neglect to appreciate and improve the light and privileges which God bestows. Unless we follow on in His opening providence, accepting every ray of light, performing every duty which may be revealed, religion will inevitably degenerate into the observance of forms, and the spirit of vital godliness will disappear. This truth has been repeatedly illustrated in the history of the church. God requires of His people works of faith and obedience corresponding to the blessings and privileges bestowed. Obedience requires a sacrifice and involves a cross; and this is why so many of the professed followers of Christ refused to receive the light from heaven, and, like the Jews of old, knew not the time of their visitation. Luke 19:44. Because of their pride and unbelief the Lord passed them by and revealed His truth to those who, like the shepherds of Bethlehem and the Eastern Magi, had given heed to all the light they had received. (The Great Controversy 316)

Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” - Luke 19:41-44 NKJV

[dailyaudiobible]

10/22/2020 DAB Transcript

Jeremiah 39:1-41:18, 2 Timothy 1:1-18, Psalms 90:1-91:16, Proverbs 26:1-2

Today is the 22nd day of October welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I'm Brian it's great to be here with you today like every day. It's always, always a joy to be here with you as we take the next step forward and that next step forward….well…that will continue our journey in Jeremiah but when we get the New Testament we’re moving into the middle pastoral epistle known as second Timothy, and we’ll talk about that when we get there but let's…let's dive into Jeremiah. We’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week. Jeremiah 39, 40 and 41 today.

Introduction to second Timothy:

Okay. As we said at the beginning, we are moving into another of the pastoral epistles. These are letters that are personal in the Bible, not like circular letters written to entire churches to be read and performed before a congregation and then past to another church. They are personal letters. They are attributed to the apostle Paul although as we talked about, these pastoral epistles are highly disputed and have been for centuries. And there are, you know, very few biblical scholars these days who would say the pastoral letters were actually written by the apostle Paul. That mostly comes because historians, church historians, who have watched like the development of church structure have been able to kind of observe that these pastoral epistles, they seem to have developments within church structures that came after the apostle Paul's life. Nevertheless, the letters are like Pauline in…in nature and are…are written to be from the apostle Paul to these two pastors Timothy and Titus as personal letters that contain a lot of church structure instructions, yeah, that still provide controversies in certain sections and segments of the church today. But this letter, second Timothy is written in the name of Paul, may have been written by Paul, and would be the final of the pastoral epistles. And as its later, like a late letter, if the apostle Paul did write this letter than this is the last known writing of the apostle Paul's life. And if Paul didn't write it then somebody familiar, somebody of the Pauline school, somebody who’s theologically under Paul or under one of these pastors of the churches was…was indeed kind of counting the last days of Paul. And, so, Timothy who this letter is written to, like the last one that we read was the pastor the church in Ephesus. And this is a church that Paul spent a lot of time in. So, these people knew Paul and they know Pastor Timothy pretty well. And Paul at the time is in prison in Rome. He had appealed to Caesar. He’s waiting to find out whether he’s gonna live or die and as it turns out he's…he's gonna die. And Paul's imprisonment is also a matter of scholarly debate, not whether it happened or not, but it…it seems like laying out the timeline of Paul's journeys that he may have been released for a time, and had freedom again for a time. So, when he first came under arrest when he was first imprisoned in Rome, he kinda had some freedoms. We see that written in the Scriptures. It was kind of more of a house arrest. He was under guard, but he had some freedoms. Like he wasn’t just in dungeon and then as the timeline kinda lays out it seems like he was released from custody and then he traveled again for a period of time, and then it would be during those, that small time of freedom that he wrote first Timothy and Titus, which we’ll read next. And then Paul was incarcerated again, and this would be A.D. 66. And not to get to technical, but this is some of the reasons like dating Paul's life, you can't date right down to the days on things, but you can get pretty close in when his wife would've been. And then looking at church structures etc. etc. knowing like some of these things came to be later that's why a scholar would think about these letters being later than Paul's life. But around 66 A.D. Paul then was arrested again, and this was under Emperor Nero who just was …was a savage to Christians and persecuting them and executing them and denigrating them. It was a…a bad time. And, so, when Paul was arrested again, he didn’t have the kind of freedoms that he had before. He was then at that point in a cold dungeon waiting to die pretty much. That’s the…the writing was on the wall. So, the idea then is that from this imprisonment, and we’ll see in the letter, that it’s full of melancholy, like it's full of the type of hopeful language we would expect from a letter like this, but also just sobering realities of the circumstances and the likely outcome being martyrdom. This is the tone of second Timothy. And, so, we can take second Timothy as the last things we would hear from this apostle, sort of like the…the period at the end of the sentence, the last things that get said. So, I mean, the marginalization that was happening among the church, people would identify as Christians being completely set aside and really, really pressed in on and persecuted, most everybody had deserted Paul. Like people were waiting for Jesus to come back. He wasn’t coming back. Paul, the guy that had showed them this way, is imprisoned. The Empire has got a vendetta against people of this faith. So, there just like, “yeah. That’s not gonna work for me” and just went back into the wall work and back to whatever they were doing before. And, so, Paul is alone. Only Luke the physician who we believe to be the author of the gospel of Luke as well as is the book of Acts stayed in Rome with Paul. Paul knew that he was probably gonna die. From the tone of this letter he was hoping to see Timothy just one more time, like one more time in this life face-to-face and that he had some final counsel just in case that face-to-face couldn't happen, some final words of encouragement, some final words of instruction. And given the backdrop that I just, you know, that I just said for us, that's why we find famous verses in this letter, like “I have fought the good fight of faith. I have finished the race.” And, so, we begin. Second Timothy chapter 1.

Prayer:

Father we thank You for Your word. We are so, so grateful for Your word and Your direction and Your counsel and Your comfort in these days. And I…I'm sure the generations before us trailing back to the very day that these words were penned, that those who read them felt this way. Thank You, thank You, thank You for being here for us when things are confusing. Thank You for taking us back into this melancholy territory in the early formation of the church as we are reading a letter that…that gives us language for the end of the apostle Paul's life and the convictions that were held intact, even as he faced…even as he faced like…like that his head was going to be severed from his body. That's a pretty stark thing to think about. And, so, Holy Spirit, as we continue our journey through the New Testament, as we continue our journey through…through the books of prophecy. Come, lead us into all truth. Lead us in the way that we should go. Lead us on the narrow path that leads to life. Lead us deeper into our relationship with the Savior. And we ask in His name, the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, yeah, it’s home base, its where you find out what’s going on around here. It’s where the Global Campfire lives. It's home for the community that we are. So, like I say most every day. Check it out. Stay connected. Check out the Community section. Check out the Prayer Wall that’s at the Community section. You can always, always, always pray for each other.

And if you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com as well. There is a link on the homepage. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address, if that's your preference, is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement, you can hit the Hotline button in the app, which is the little red button at the top or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that's it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hello my fellow DABylonians this is Kevin in California checking in and real quick just want to ask that you would continue to pray for my three sons - Levi, Moses and Tekoa - that God would give them peace and wisdom and courage. But my main call is I wanted to call Chris in Florida. Wow man. That’s…that’s some heavy stuff. Thank you so much for calling in and reaching out. I’d be honored to pray for you and your 12-year-old daughter. So, let’s pray Familia. Holy Father, Son and Spirit thank You for this man Chris. He’s calling in for his…his beloved daughter and the mourning and grief and healing that she will have to go through with such a difficult thing as losing a mom. And I just pray God that Your Holy Spirit would fill this man Chris with great love and courage and wisdom to love and guide and comfort his daughter through this time of grief. May he and his daughter grieve well together. And I pray God that You’d give him great opportunities to let the tears flow Father. Give them places and opportunities to feel their grief and let it flow and heal through that God. Thank You, Father for what You’re going to do in this man Chris’s life and his 12-year-old daughter. Thank You, God that You have a plan and those plans are for good. Thank You, God that this lady is now with You Lord and I…

This is from junk to treasure. I’m calling because I heard Joel Maddox reach out for help. He was the first caller on Monday, October 19th’s broadcast. Joel I just…you said you can’t stand to look at yourself in the mirror and you’ve lost everything and you’re ready to give up and you don’t know what to do. This is when you look at yourself in the mirror as a child of God and you start from where you are. You call upon the Holy Spirit and you ask for help and direction and you start by setting small goals each day of what you can do until you can get back on your feet and regain. I don’t know whether you lost possessions or what it is you lost but we just pray over you and we ask the Holy Spirit to circle around you and uplift you and we praise God that you called out for help because it’s not too late when you ask for help and just pray that God will hold on to you in a mighty strong way so that you can get your eyes set back on the right path. We pray these things in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Hello DAB family this is Shantay calling from Metro Detroit and I wanted to call and share some good news with you all. I just received a call from a company that I’ve been interviewing with and I hadn’t heard from them in a good while. And, so, I thought they just forgot about me. But anyway, I found out today they offered me a job in Florida. And, so, I am like so…so many emotions. I’m so grateful and thankful to God for just working everything out. I’ve been furloughed since April. It is now October and I have a job offer and I’m…I’m just…I’m so amazed and it’s just…ahh…thank you to each and every one of you that have prayed for me over all these years. This month, October marks my 10th year of listening to the Daily Audio Bible and you all have seen me through so many ups, so many downs, so many back up’s, like just…you guys have been praying for me since the beginning and I just…I thank you all and I love you all so much. I’m so grateful for each and every one of you, for Brian and Jill I’m so grateful for you too…you…you have just blessed my life, your saying yes to doing the Daily Audio Bible and…and reading the Scripture in and out, day in and out, rain or shine has just blessed my life and so many others and I’m just…I…I’m so very thankful, so very thankful. So, I just want to call in with that praise report to everyone. Thank you for your prayers. I love each and every one of you. And, yeah, okay I know I’ve been cut off so I’m just gonna stop now. But if anyone else is still listening, I love you all so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for all that you do…

Hi, it’s Sherry from Kansas. I would like to ask you to continue praying for Jennifer. She’s the 13-year-old girl I told you about that her dad is super morbidly obese and her mom has mental issues and is very abusive. The dad can’t even get out of a chair or anything. And Jennifer started cutting herself and lying and doing a little stealing as well. But Jennifer’s mom told Jennifer that if she wasn’t dead before her 18th birthday then Jennifer’s mom said she would kill herself, which is a horrible thing to say to a child. But this is the kind of things that Jennifer’s mom says. Anyway, CFS, child and family services has gotten involved and I’m just really praying for them for wisdom and for something to happen, but I don’t know what at this point. So, I just want to ask you to continue praying for her because Jennifer is really a wonderful girl and she’s acting out and doing the things she’s doing because of the abuse that she’s suffering. Anyway, thank you all for praying and God bless you.

Hello Daily Audio Bible audience I’m calling on October 17th I’m a listener in Maryland and I’m calling for two people who call this week. One was a lady and I’m sorry I don’t remember your name, but she was very upset because she was alone, and she desperately wanted to be married and she had no children and she was 62. It spoke to me because it was near my birthday and I turned 64. I too have never been married and I have no children; however, I don’t feel alone in that I do know that the Holy Spirit watches out for me and makes it possible to for me to move through this journey. The other person whose name is James, he had sort of the same problem except he was a young man and he had been in foster care and he was alone, and he was going through rehab. James, your strong, I could tell it in your voice and you’re a good person. You were asking for prayer and hoping that your parents were still alive and well. You also have the Holy Spirit that is taking care of you. So, both of you, make it…you will make it to through the loneliness. You just have to get it in your heart and in your mind and in your spirit. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Jackie and I’m asking prayer for my brother Sonny who’s in the hospital with chest pain and stomach pain possibly due to stress. He has lost his job and battling with some financial __. Also for my sister, she’s a single mom, she’s not working, she has a college aged son in need of a financial blessing, in need of scholarships she’d applied for but due to COVID-19 everything is closed down. I’m also asking prayers for my son who’s single, hasn’t been married, has no kids, and is __ and lonely. And I’m asking God to cease the loneliness and I’m also worried sometimes, worried about my future, what’s gonna happen. I feel stuck __ that God would just relieve my stress, relieve the loneliness. __ pray for my DAB family I greatly appreciate it community. I love you all. I love you Brian and Jill and there are so many I keep praying for you. I thank God for this community. Have a blessed day.

[antinonymous]

Hey Guys, it’s Judas Iscariot, part of the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. Comin’ at you with a bit of an unorthodox video here from a Jerusalem dumpster.

I got me fucking Matthew’s shoes; he must’ve left them here.

not quite sure when this is gonna get to y’all. This is gonna be really controversial; not sure how any of y’all are gonna respond to this. Ok I know this is a really bad idea but... I’m already here so... here we fucking go-

I’m getting Jesus arrested tonight at Gethsemane.

Now before the true believers start coming into my mentions and calling me ‘Christ-killer’ or some other slanderous nonsense, I wanna explain myself, because I love Jesus. I follow him genuinely, not just for a neat trend of being picked by some wacky Galilean; please hear me out.

Jesus is gonna get arrested on terroristic grounds from Roman authorities, because, when in Jerusalem, self-righteous Romans rage ravenously.

I don’t want to make this too blunt: One of the more commonly known aspects of our ministry is our sense of community and friendship, of the comradery created in a society of the oppressed poor. Jesus, myself, and the rest of the twelve are all fucking poor as hell. Magdalene is actually the one who pays for most of our shit. This video’s gonna be unmonetizable; I ain’t given money to god or Caeser!

I want to the ministry to continue, and you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggshells. In exchange for handing Jesus over to the authorities, I’ll receive both thirty pieces of silver (which I’ll use to cover our ministry’s expenses) as well as the reassurance that the religious leaders will be off our asses for at least one weekend. I’m handing Jesus over to the Romans because I want him to be as safe as he can be, and for the time being, that’s in jail.

Our ministry is in a unique position of being simultaneously hated and loved by the religious officials and officials of the state. He’s kinda dangerous because of how convincing he is.

The religious leaders hate Jesus because he’s kinda a heretic and a blasphemer and a contrarian for its own sake and saying he’s the messiah without doing any of the shit that the messiah was prophecised to do...yeah? And the Romans hate him because he’s kind of a communist.

I don’t know if you Americans know what’s been going on in Roman-occupied Judea in the year of our Lord 33 A.D., but the overall consensus of our situation is that imperialism never creates, it only ever scatters and destroys and it really sucks for the natives.

And here along comes Jesus saying he’s the King and that Rome is gonna fuck off and die. He’s not exactly doing nothing to change our situation.

Some of the religious officials like the ideas Jesus has said about religious reform and several Roman officials have been won over by him as well- even if he’s not the messiah, he’s powerful.

I hope I’ve made my point very clear- Jesus is gonna get thrown in jail during passover, and the state/religious leaders will have the assurance he won’t be able to speak for that time. All the while, I’ll cover our expenses with all that silver and by the time he’s released, our ministry’s gonna be twice as strong!

Now, I’m no moron. I’m well-aware that my plan isn’t foolproof; the Romans could very well be convinced to kill Jesus because it’d be an easy way to appease the rest of the angry masses who, nevertheless and despite their similar views to Jesus, just don’t like him.

They’ll probably just get him stoned to death, it’s not like they’d take the time to crucify him or anything. But I wanna make one more tiny point clear- if Jesus dies, it was the Romans that’d kill him, not the pharisees or the zealots or fucking any of Judah.

I’m only saying this because I have a feeling that if Jesus does end up dead because of me then y’all will try to blame the religious leaders so that the romans will go easier on you in the future. That’s a cop-out and incredibly deceitful; please know better.

Don’t blame them. blame myself and the romans. Actually, also, blame yourself. If he is to die then all of the sins of the world will fall on him and nobody has to worry about getting into heaven anymore.

They’re a savage people from those italian hills, those Romans, and they’ll be the ones who will have to put in the effort to kill him. It will also be because of me, and that’s why I made this video; as a pre-emptive apology if that turn of events is to pass. It may be risky, but this risk is what Jesus taught me about faith, and I pray that I be not a murderer.

But if not, I apologise. I am a murderer, wash me clean.

[brandytusk]

Predictions for PKMN: Sword and Shield

MAGIC type—Strong against Fire, Water, Electric, Flying, Rock/Ground. Weak against Fighting, Metal. Neutral to Ghost, Dark, Fairy, Dragon. Re-type moves like Swift, Perish Song, Secret Power, claim some Psychic moves. Fun twist: Weak also to Normal. A good reason to use your normies! The biggest bane to Magic should be the most ‘mundane’, imo.

Eeveelution - Fighting or Metal, something scrappy and less mystical, more grounded. Or even, a Ghost Eeveelution. Your Eevee is no more, it has CEASED to BE.

Pokémon predicted, by Animal:

Fox — I cannot even fathom them not introducing a new fox Pokémon. Hunting the fox Pokémon could be controversial, comes with a new dog Pokémon. Harvesting slowpoke tails, huh? How about hunting foxes for sport?

Dog - Another dog, we can never get enough. A smooth, hound-like one, a ‘versus’ for the predicted fox pokemon. Preferably Ghost, let’s go ‘black dog’ let’s go! Death dogs are so prevalent in european spooky folklore, you can’t ignore it!

Badger - European badger, come on! Nothing screams English countryside more than a striped face, round, scruffy good boy!

Chicken - We need a decent rooster Pokémon that stays chicken-like, make this our early game bird.

Mouse - Definitely feel like this gen will give us a new mouse Pokemon, though maybe something new apart from Rattata or a Pikaclone. I mean, I saw a clock tower. Hickory dickory dock, amirite?

Farfetch’d evolution w/ special requirements or mega. This is the hill I die on.

Sheep - We have an electric sheep, a grass goat. A new sheep would be nice, maybe one that’s just fluffy, good and Normal for a change.

Wolf - Ice type, big shaggy wolf. Probably find it in the north of the map, I spy a snowy area. There’s a wolfhead in the games’ logo symbols. Could also be an Ice-type variant of Lycanroc.

Spider - Unpopular opinion, some new, elegant barn spider Pokémon. Or maybe an Ariados variant. New patterns!

Crab - Predicting a small fishing village rather than some fancy sea resort area. Crab fishing boats. Crabs. New krabbys/krabby variant.

Cat - There’s always more cat Pokémon, and we already have a Meowth variant. This time I’m thinking some kind of alley cat: urban, mysterious. Fairy type, pest cat.

Horse - Ponyta/Rapidash variant, Water-type. Kelpie, drowns intruders. Fun times.

New Pokemon We’ll Get Most, By Type:

Ghost - UK-like region, tons of spooky story potential. Creepy folklore, grim things you tell your children to make them stay inside. 1st guess, the dark forest on the map has potential.

Grass or Fairy - Torn on which we’ll get more of, maybe even MORE Grass/Fairy type Pokemon. Little gnomish creatures.

Dark - Goes hand-in-hand with the Ghost guess, similar reasons. I am very much looking forward to that ‘dark glade’ area!

Version-Exclusive Legendaries:

This is the version I would have guessed a ‘lion’ legendary for, but we JUST got that. Recent past, not gonna happen. In this case, instead of a Dragon always bringing you your big, nasty group of pseudo legendaries...you now just HAVE a Legendary Dragon-type Pokemon. Big ol’ winged wyvern dragon. Big Smaug boy. Alternative: Gryphon, also a popular coat of arms-type figure.

Unicorn. No, not Rapidash. Something impressive, some lovechild between Xerneas and Rapidash, graceful like Suicune. Uses new element type. Maybe it’s Fighting type, beats you with its hooves. Also good.

Anyway, those are just my predictions, it’ll be fun to see if I get any right!

[mangacat201]

Apart from the fact that being geopolitical enemies does on its face mean that one's goal is to erase the opposing forces country and identity from existence (although it is ironically in fact the stated goal of the agressor in this conflict).

I find it incredibly patronizing and disingenuous to state that "many people will die on the hill of USAs right to military intervention" in Ukraine as if the fact does not extist that

1) Ukraine was ATTACKED unprovoked and against all common decency (and they continue to be attacked in ways that defy all purported tenents of human rights)

2) They should absolutely have the right to ask for aid and to receive it to facilitate their survival as a nation if they so choose

And 3) they DID, in fact, choose.

They chose the revolution on maidan.

They chose to send corrupt politicians packing.

They chose to built a beautiful and modern and yes western values oriented cultural and architectural landscape.

They chose to elevate their language and identity as a people.

They chose openness and personal freedom and free expression and queer pride.

And they elected a leader from whom they expected that he'd continue that work of change.

And why?

Because living in a society like that, a society that can be generally summed up as adhering to "western" values (warts and all, and there are... so many warts) is ATTRACTIVE.

We're in this war because a small, weak, corrupt, cruel, self-absorbed wannabe emperor felt threatened by that to the point he chose to go HULK SMASH all over the place. (instead of thinking about how "huh how can we make OUR system more attractive so they come back to us voluntarily", ya know?)

And to only look at it through the lense of the US American hegemonic agenda (that DOES absolutely exist and has caused so so much harm) is incredibly self-centered, reductionist and again patronizing the very people who are dying on those battlefields (and beside them). Not everything that happens in the world is about America first.

PS: Btw, I am GLAD we got bombed into oblivion in WWII. Did it suck for my grandparents and great grandparents generation? Ohhh, yes it did, horribly so. Would i probably be one of the people who died if I'd lived in that time? Entirely too likely. And I have stood in front of War memorials, in soldiers graveyards, on the grounds of concentration camps and tripped over stumbling stones where i read the names of people who lost their lives and felt awful, truly agrieved over those violent, cruel, senseless deaths and their cut short stories. But the act that razing everything growing that toxic sludge of humanity into the ground also left fertilizer for us as a German nation to decide who we wanted to be, going forward. We rebuilt ourselves along the template of American democracy and with the generous help of the American people (and yes we did some things different cause we LEARNED from past mistakes and we incorporated our unique culture and we still got a lot wrong and are working on it) so that I as a millenial queer woman almost a century later can live a life of security, peace, acceptance and incredible privilege that is not found on par in most of the rest of the world. So I will be damned if I tell people that my people have wronged gravely that I'm not willing to help them aspire to the same.

PPS: and to cap off all that with a nice controversial piece of foreshadowing, the fact that the kind of isolationist appeasement policy in the same vein of the doctrine that let hitler roll through half of Europe on tank chains before someone went "huh, maybe we shouldn't like... let him do that, just invade other sovereign nations and pretend he owns them because history yada yada" is now becoming part and parcel of US American neo facism (that has an ACTUAL chance or gaining back significant power in the seat of government)? Should scare the everloving Fuck out of people.

You're assuming that the fact the US is intervening for self-interested reasons means its intervention will make things worse.

the USA's interests only align circumstancially with the interests of the ukrainian state which in turn align only circumstancially with the interests of the ukrainian people. the USA does not care if ukraine wins or loses the war as long as the damage to russia is maximised. the USA prima facie prefers a longer bloodier war where more people die regardless of the outcome. ridiculous how many people will die on the hill of the USA's right to make military interventions all around the world just because sometimes those interventions are on the side of the '''good guys'''. unserious analysis!

[batdaisyus]

Parks and rec did an amazing job

Parks and rec did an amazing job . 4th quarter frankfort schuyler trailing by two charlotte rodio comes up with the steal throws it up and banks it home to knot things up at 42. Makers are at an early stage of learning how this can be valuable to them, Kelly says. "They've all ended up in the environment or in landfill. However, there is still a level of confusion for developers over the adoption of the right business model for the apps. You can't completely suck the life out of the Kangaroos' cast of millionaires in a Test match. Oil asset could be used as a hedging tool to minimize risk and also to improve overall risk adjusted returns. Is a career coach and founder of A Path That Fits, a boutique career and life coaching company in the San Francsico Bay Area. The trial judge found that the plaintiff used the intersection of Hill Street and Route 44 a regular basis and that there was credible evidence that the Wal Mart expansion would result in at least some increase in traffic on Route 44. As good as last season was for Ormerod, it ended badly at the World Championships in Sierra Nevada in March. Dave lives here. You know what to do in an emergency, right? You'd probably grab the photo albums, gather the pets and make a run for it. The colorful cord features buttons for volume control, voice commands, and phone calls. These rods are predominately used as GT rods up north but are perfectly suited to our waters for this purpose. Then the action of the wax is centered on the corn. "What we're trying coach outlet online to do is help unemployed Greeks and give them opportunities this is the positive side of a crisis," Mexis said. This clarifier uses the principle of adsorption of solids onto a solid surface. Not to mention, Jelly Belly soda flavors that range from grape and cherry to strawberry. I'm expecting big things tomorrow night. Trains: Warrnambool Model Railway Club presents their annual model train exhibition at St Josephs Primary School from 10am to 5pm. Finally, he spotted his teammates in the stands and made a run for it. Saint Louis FC opened the scoring just before halftime as Kyle Greig headed home Masta Kacher's cross for his fifth goal of the season in the 41st minute. To get experience coaching, you might have to start out volunteering (as was the case with middle and high school). Dean is also a Fort Smith fire truck operator and a swift water rescue technician. "David Nadler: "Niemand hat die knallharte Wahrheit so ntig wie der Chef." 24. Less waste flowing into the landfill means reduced waste disposal costs. There is also a new class being taught by Sifu Tiefer Yao at Thunderbird Community Centre in the fall too. Some spendthrifts may point out that there are cheaper headphones with less name recognition available for sale online. SO BB: Sims 2 4 ; Gebler 3 3, Ketterman 1 1. Thunder Bay Hydro energy experts also recommend customers use outdoor timers to turn on their Christmas lights. They can be troubled by the weight of the world a weight that keeps them from doing all they want or would otherwise be able to do. Riverside Olympic coach Alex Gaetani afforded himself a rare treat after watching his side beat cross town rivals Launceston City 2 1. We ran a freight train through local news, politics, government, you name it. Felipe Gutierrez won possession in Sporting's defensive third and threaded an inch perfect, 40 yard through ball into the path of Croizet, who slotted low past onrushing goalkeeper Kenneth Kronholm for his third goal of the 2019 MLS campaign.. Will have a hard team repeating its upstart showing in Sydney.. Whether it the runways not being plowed, whether it the baggage machines that transport the baggage freezing, whether it not notifying people what going on. If it didn't refreeze even at the top, just don't go.. "She will be bringing these skills to assist our clients," Chirello said. This will ensure your food does not get contaminated and help cut down on the risk of contracting a disease. It was the start of a 31 11 run that produced Nevada's largest lead, 65 46. After the scuffle, Bailey threw out a leg and was controversially given a straight red card which on first glance appeared to be a tough decision. Tennis Association player development manager Martin Blackman said the five winners coach outlet clearance of the 2016 USOC Award represent best of Team USA. Trung Nguyen, 32, of Melbourne Cairnlea, was sentenced to jail and placed on a 24 month community corrections order on Friday after pleading guilty in Warrnambool Magistrates Court to trafficking and possessing methamphetamine. 30 and Oct. Added sugar is 11 times more potent at causing diabetes than general calories.. Definitively discovered the molecule, vinyl cyanide. He appeared in court in December and was denied bail after failing to show compelling reasons why he should be released from custody. Most of the global H2 production is derived from hydrocarbon based fuels, and efficient H2/CO2 separation is necessary to deliver a high purity H2 product. Romanenko. It's very humbling, and it can honestly be terrifying when you really think about the scope of how massive things are.

[virtue-and-beneviolence]

I also get vibes that Shuji came from a single mom household. But I headcanon that she was probably very neglectful and maybe a possible narcissist? As a little boy she left him alone in their dingy apartment to fend for himself for days and he had to feed himself and raise himself on the streets. And part of his goofy upbeat behavior along with being violent is a coping mechanism (besides that some of it might be his natural personality. I believe he is an ESTP of Myers-Briggs) He seems kinda comfortable with Kisaki's coldness and narcissistic behavior and I think maybe there is something to that? His own mom mightve been that cold. I also think that he seeks adrenaline and risky behavior as a way to get a strong dopamine hit and to feel something. Like he's repressing a lot of negative emotions but just handles them different than compared to Mikey (who is a different kind of mess) I think Shuji's apathy in his timeskip is fascinating because you can tell he isn't a teenage boy anymore, his eyes don't shine with mischief as they did and I'm thinking there could be some depression? He uses his vices as a distraction as well. Because I seriously don't think he is a sociopath which might be a controversial thing to say. And apathetic behavior could be result of burying things so deep you don't even know where you buried them if you ever wanted to bring them to the surface. One more thing I remembered, when hes visiting Kisaki's grave, he looks like he's been depressed and his eyes also lost that same shine as well. I might be looking too much into it and making a mountain out of a mole hill but I love his character and I love deep diving into everything about him

Dark head cannons for days. I don't think you're making anything too big dude life is hard and it's satisfying to think about how ppl get to where they are.

Fren, it hurts so bad. I hate how an overtly neglectful mom fits his relationship with kisaki so well but I hate even more that shuji seems to value that relationship so much. Destroys me a Lil to see baby shuji with a whole ass disorganized attachment to his mother, but it fits like a fuckin glove. I think most of us agree he just wouldn't believe he can be loved as is. And thats almost an expectation based on that background.

(I prob selfishly wanted her to not expressly intend to be neglectful bc I imagined more as like an extremely anxious/depressed-maybe even bipolar- overworked lady who wasn't planning on a kid dabbling in self medication (that he adopts wittingly or not) kinda leading to a wildly insecure relationship from a real young age.)

ESTP is perfect and I'm with you-if anyone is a sociopath it's kisaki, full stop. I mean. I think our boy struggles w shit but I don't think he lacks the intuition or understanding of emotions. Also I think he's rather honest and upfront about his intentions.

Love your note on adult shujis eyes (I'm not broken up after reading it not at all I'm an a d u l t) yeah its like we're finally seeing that depression that I think has been there since damn near childhood. He's team "don't wanna kms but if I die I die."

Tldr I'm all over the place but you're really fukin onto him. Wakui pls take notes from this lovely person.

(also real quick what happened to his dad in your mind? )

[tamhonksss]

Review 1/?? Of ‘What Happened’ by Hillary Clinton

YALL THIS IS GONNA BE LONG

So the beginning started off fine, it basically involves her talking about how she had an obligation to be there for Trump’s inauguration even though she initially had doubts about going. She laid out her feelings about Trump winning the election and her grievances with showing false humility when it came to losing against Trump. It’s clear as you read further into the book (I’m 155 pages in, at least that’s what it says on the pdf file), you’ll start to see her unravel and show her true colors which is inevitable with a “tell all” book like this. Yes, she does occasionally acknowledge faults within her campaigning (from 2008…and then 2016) and I quickly assumed she wouldn’t, I don’t disagree with her on Trump for the most part either, but she still comes across as entitled considering that she still glosses over a lot of legitimate criticisms that people brought up or severely downplays them.

anyways I’m gonna cover some parts that had me going “wtf??” with some more serious material

A lot of people covered this part, but this still has me fucked up

“Absolution I cannot give” is she some sort of priest now??

It’s your job to earn the votes of people and win key states, you’re not entitled to people’s votes – which I get a strong impression from her. It was so unnecessary for that mother to force her daughter to apologize.  

 Yeah, okay sure. Warhawk Hillary is the paradigm of peace.

Also, you’re in for a whole lot of mess if you think women as leaders automatically equate peace; that’s not the hill you want to die on.

An important part about viewing women as equals to men, is seeing that they’re capable of doing (and have done) disastrous things we normally associate with men doing.

 ok keep telling yourself that

 Over here Clinton apologizes for her paid speeches because she didn’t think Americans would disapprove of it. Hasn’t it been kinda obvious for a while that people aren’t keen on the fact that politicians and former politicians regularly accept large fees for speeches? Damn right it’s on you; Clinton isn’t clueless about how paid speeches reflect on her as a politician, she’s well aware of that. She’s only sorry cause she got caught doing it.

Anyways, here’s a very long list of speeches she got paid for, from 2013-2015. 

HHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhdhhsh

lmao what kind of whataboutism is this; you were still accepting $$$$ from those people

Here’s a pretty long thread which goes above and beyond addressing the above – and those are reasonable criticisms. 

She did draw modest crowds compared to Trump and Bernie; that IS the point people are trying to make when it comes to the enthusiasm or lack thereof she received.

Then Hillary softens the possible consequences about her email controversy. She automatically assumes that the all the people who bring it up are clueless to the implications of those. First of all, the ability for content within those emails to be encrypted on a secure device/server is vital to our national security; there’s also the issue of record-holding. What happens when someone submits a FOIA request to view records pertaining to her tenure during Secretary of state and one of her emails has crucial information they need? As an employee of the government Hillary is obligated to maintain as much transparency as possible and she fucked up here. This shouldn’t be brushed under the rug, especially since this would probably get any regular person jailed.

people who sit down on their cold protein bars to warm them up are valid  

[giarts]

Celebrating Juneteenth with Black Artists!

Submitted by admin on June 18, 2020

<!--/*--><![CDATA[/* ><!--*/ <!--/*--><![CDATA[/* ><!--*/ <!--/*--><![CDATA[/* ><!--*/ h3 {margin-top:3em;} /*--><!]]]]]]><![CDATA[><![CDATA[>*/ /*--><!]]]]><![CDATA[>*/ /*--><!]]>*/

It’s a great holiday to be sharing with each of you today, Juneteenth! As we gather – remotely – to honor and celebrate the power and jubilation of this day, liberation for ancestors and elders, we hope to echo the voices and experiences of Black artists who have brought us joy, made us feel seen, challenged, supported, and taught us so much. We come here with deep gratitude and deeper commitment to investing in a future of liberation for Black peoples everywhere.

Today, we join many of you commemorating the emancipation of enslaved folks in the U.S. and working toward an equitable and just field and future. This Juneteenth, the GIA team offers some reflections on personal experiences with a Black artist who has contributed to our lives.

We hope our reflections inspire sharing of your stories with Black artists who have been central in your life.

From Sherylynn

I could write an entire book on Black art, art while Black, and how inspiring it is.

Black artists continue to create despite the fact that creating art while living in a Black body will always be “a political statement.” If your art leans too much into the Black experience or is too Afro-futurist, it’s radical or controversial. If it leans too much into the Eurocentric style, it’s political because “what makes you think you belong in this space?” Yet still, we keep creating art to teach, heal, entertain, find solace and fulfillment, and spread joy. I love that.

Jean-Michel Basquiat said it best, “I don’t listen to what art critics say. I don’t know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is.”

Thank you, Black artists. Keep creating unapologetically. Here is to more life and more freedom, (raises glass), Happy Juneteenth!

From Carmen

As I write these words, Prince and Janet Jackson take turns in my Spotify. I can’t decide which of them has been more influential in my life, since as a die-hard music lover, I grew up with both as MTV and VH1 filled my after-school hours.

Video after video, Janet taught me many dance moves and, in doing so, she taught me so much about confidence and joy. In my senior year, I took many of those lessons and translated them to an interpretation of one of her classics, “If.” Back then I asked four friends to dance with me and we spent many afternoons rehearsing our choreography. I remember feeling that Janet’s strength and energy got directly into my soul when I took the stage.

Queen Janet is still queen Janet in my life. I would have seen her for the first time this year, but her Black Diamond tour is one of those that lost to the cancellations due to the coronavirus pandemic. I’m still heartbroken (insert “That’s the Way Love Goes” for this moment in my life’s soundtrack), but I’m hopeful I’ll be able to dance with her someday, even if it’s from a very far away seat.

Photo by Manu Kumar on Unsplash

Songs from Prince like “Nothing Compares to You,” on the other hand, are equally integral to my soundtrack. I would daydream thinking that the love of my life would dedicate lyrics to me like the ones in “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World.” I still love that video and its diverse cast of women because I saw myself in many of them!

His death in 2016 left me with a void (similar to how I felt when David Bowie died earlier that year), but Prince’s memoir, “The Beautiful Ones,” has provided me a special way to connect with that beautiful – and complex – mind.

As I write this brief love letter to two of my greatest inspirations I cannot help wanting to sing and dance my heart away (in a very fashionable way, of course).

From Sylvia

I AM (HEAR), directed by Olympia Perez

Black Trans Media is an organization run by Sasha Alexander and Olympia Perez for the Black trans and gender nonconforming community – one of the few organizations run by, and in service and support of the Black trans and GNC community. Sasha officially founded the organization in 2013 to shift and reframe the worth and value of Black trans people everywhere through media, art, advocacy, and community organizing, but I have known Sasha since 2004, and they were making space and time for racial and gender justice and liberation long before we even met. Thank you for being part of my family and for the adventures through the years and always driving me home because I don’t have a license (I will not give away more dates because Sasha and I have aged very well and we have reputations to uphold).

From Yessica

circa 2005.

I was so fresh, I mean perm fresh (really a relaxer. IF you know, you know).

I entered a lecture hall in a college, not my own, in upstate NY somewhere. I listened to the words of Professor Kaba Hiawatha Kamene, words that would bend my world, and force me to forge a new path. Teaching me that unlearning is only the beginning and probably the hardest to do. Realizing what I had learned in so many classrooms before this one didn’t stick because it wasn’t our truth. You said to never fear and continue to plant seeds for we do not know which ones will sprout. 15 years later, I still remember the conversations we had in that room, and look at how far I’ve come. I am eternally grateful. The warrior in me honors the warrior in you. Onward and forward, with love and light, Professor Kaba Hiawatha Kamene, Meta Netur Scholar.

From Champ

“Christ You Know it Ain’t Easy!!” was the title of the show that introduced me to Deborah Grant’s work in 2014, but it could be a mantra for many of us – any of us – and you know what I mean by that. She contains multitudes, and everything is grist for her mill. “Everything in life is accessible and it needs to be looked at over and over and over again” she says, and “The key is how well you transform those aspects into something that is unique and of your own hand. If you are going to steal, then DO IT WELL!” Her sources and allusions and motifs range everywhere through art and culture and history; she breaks down the labels that are used to segregate one set of experiences from another. I can’t say it better than John Yau: “There is nothing essentialist about Grant’s investigation of identity, but what she does is essential.”

Installation view, Deborah Grant, The Birth of a Genius in a Midnight Sun, 2012. Photo by Tyler Green, Modern Art Notes Podcast.

From Steve

John Coltrane was the last giant of jazz. But he was my first meaningful touchstone. I arrived in college with plans to eventually get a seat in a symphony, pull together a basket of students, maybe a find a steady teaching job. I was well-versed as I could have been in the classics. My jazz experience was limited to the big bands my parents enjoyed from their youth. And that didn’t conflict or expand upon my notion of musicianship as a virtuosic effort. Hit every note, nail the auditions, win the seat. Perfection.

So it was a surprise to me that I quickly began to gravitate toward the jazzers. They spoke a new language around music that elevated expression and feeling and connection. So I jumped in and John Coltrane was the first landing.

He wasn’t a revolutionary, though he recorded with Cecil Taylor. He wasn’t a be-bopper or a hard-bopper, though he came into himself through those musics. He was a devotee and a tenacious seeker. The patriarchs of his family were preachers, and he internalized their cadence and modulation and made that his music.

He was spiritual and humble, so confidence was difficult for him even though he was playing next to Miles and Monk in their respective bands which were at the top of the jazz world. He couldn’t immerse himself in spectacle of stardom because he felt that he had to work on his own thing. Following a performance, Miles and the guys would find the party and come back to their hotel the next day to find Trane asleep with his horn in his mouth.

On Kind of Blue, you can hear him finding higher gears in the sublime modal music of Miles and Bill Evans. On Giant Steps you hear him shift into those gears. He would speed through the last seven years of his life recording what seemed like an album every month. By the release of one he was disappearing over the horizon. In 1964, he disappeared to his home in Dix Hills, New York, and emerged a few weeks later with A Love Supreme, the record that was my introduction to Trane. It is reasonably considered the greatest jazz record ever made. Everything that followed would challenge and divide the critics and fans. His music was entirely a personal and spiritual endeavor.

He barely noticed when the critics complained that he was riding on his previous fame while making “unlistenable” music (a widely-held perspective that I don’t agree with). He barely noticed that he was terminally ill.

He’s called the last giant because the music called jazz became a niche in the cultural landscape; African-American folklore to be studied in music school. His genius was undeniable. But his important late-period work could be hard to digest. For most, it took an act of faith to sit through 40-minute doses of group improvisation. After Trane’s death, Miles went towards Rock (a scandal of its own) and the music seemed to lose most of its casual audience and mainstream exposure.

My exploration of his music was not casual. I grabbed anything I could get and once or twice I took it in from start to finish. It is a remarkable trajectory over a short period of time. And it changed me. I saw the act of artmaking very differently after finding Coltrane.

From Eddie

Fred Wilson is an artist who changed my life through his work. Fred interrogates unspoken assumptions that inform museum display – what we choose to reveal and what we choose to conceal – as his artistic strategy. Using existing objects – oftentimes objects that are not displayed to the public – and placing them in relation to objects that are often displayed, he reveals how institutions conceal histories of racialized treatment of people. In this way, Fred’s exploration of race and racism is through revelatory critique of institutional practices.

In the words of Angelique Power, president of the Field Foundation of Illinois, “People use racial equity as a substitute for diversity… Racial equity is about shifting power and resources. It involves dismantling AND rebuilding systems. This is an important point since for many of us it stops with dismantling; rebuilding involves shifting resources and power, acknowledging history, and in some ways rethinking history that you have been told and, from that lens, building something new.”

My first real exposure to institutional and historical critique – and critiques of systems – was through Fred’s art.

Fred changed my life in another essential way. He was the first director of Longwood Art Gallery, located in the South Bronx. After years of his leadership, he stepped aside for a new era under Betti-Sue Hertz (who hired me as her gallery manager when I was still a college student). Fred continued to periodically visit to see exhibits as well as lend his name and his work to our efforts to raise funds and increase our profile.

Through Fred, I had a model of a person of color from the Bronx who engaged the art world on terms that were his own. I am humbled and grateful to know him. Thank you, Fred.

From Nadia

I knew of Kara Walker’s brilliant and critical work, art reshaping narratives, meanings subtle and bold, long before I saw it in person. The first instance was upon arriving at graduate school. I was met by Walker in a two-story tall mural transcending the open stair. It was a piece that provoked dialogue amongst students in a private, (self-identified) Marxist institution (quite a juxtaposition to navigate already) about race (the besieged topic of non-discussion amongst solely-class-based social analysis). The space Walker’s piece created was unlike the other white-walled boxes where “Art” was made. It was a space pressing us with histories politely avoided and self-reflections sidestepped.

Photo by metacynic, Flickr, Kara Walker’s “A Subtlety,” 2014.

The second time I got to experience Walker’s art was closer to home. Living adjacent to the in/famed Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg (both North and South, there is a difference), I got to visit the former Domino Sugar Factory where “A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby” was installed for a several weeks in the midst of local struggle around gentrification, privatization, fare wages, and the fight for self-determination in Black and Brown communities, among others.

I share these stories of my time with Walker’s art because it feels like no coincidence that the timing corresponded with my learnings about systems change. The physical embodiment of that work was so apparent in Walker’s forms. The inescapability was palpable. The lessons still ongoing.

Posted by admin on June 18, 2020 at 03:04PM. Read the full post.

[xtruss]

Is Old Yeast OK? The 17 Rules of Expiry Dates – From Eggs to Meat to Oils

Use-by dates are a food-safety matter so you should always take them seriously. Here’s a guide to where you do – and definitely don’t – have some leeway

— Guardian USA | Zoe Williams | Thursday 23 April, 2020

Breaking the mould ... is Theresa May’s approach to jam-eating a good rule of thumb?

One news event you may have missed this month was that Tesco lost a judicial review over selling foods past their use-by date. The company had been taken to court by Birmingham city council, and was launching a challenge using the evidence of the food microbiologist Slim Dinsdale, a swashbuckler of the pathogenic world, who favours the “smell it and see” approach. All of this was over-ruled by judges, who decided that use-by dates were, overall, still important enough for public safety to be observed.

This was, of course, all overshadowed, by the coronavirus outbreak; but the use-by date controversy has never been more up to date. The cook, author and campaigner Jack Monroe runs ad hoc advice sessions called Lockdown Larder on Twitter, and says: “Since I’ve been doing it, by a country mile the most-asked question I’ve had is: ‘I’ve got this yeast, it went out of date two months ago, can I use it? I’ve got these sardines, they went out of date a year ago, can I use them?’ People want someone they perceive to be an expert to reassure them. As a species, we seem to have lost the ability to trust our own senses.”

This gets to the core of the matter. If you want a blanket rule for everyone, the use-by date is that rule. I can only tell you what I would eat. If it happens to be the same as Theresa May (who famously admitted to scraping the mould off jam), that’s just coincidence.

Erik Millstone, emeritus professor of science policy at the University of Sussex, lays out the ground rules: ignore sell-by dates. “Those are a guidance by the retailers for the retailers, so they can manage their stock. The indications concerning food safety, particularly microbiological food safety, that’s use-by dates.” But are all use-by dates created equal?

Eggs

Eggs, strictly speaking, don’t have a use-by date but a best-before-end (BBE), which is mostly to do with quality and taste rather than safety. Either way, this is a hill I’m prepared to die on: dates are irrelevant to eggs, because of the float test. Drop the egg in a glass of water. If it floats to the surface, it’s definitely off. If it sits flat on its side, it’s definitely fresh. If it sits vertically, it’s somewhere between fresh and off (I would still eat it). A fully off egg will also smell disgusting, but you can save yourself that trauma by conducting this test.

The sulphurous smell of an off egg triggers a useful disgust mechanism, because the bacterium causing it – Pseudomonas – can be injurious. Salmonella is far more dangerous, being undetectable, but British hens are inoculated.

Bread

If a bread past its BBE date is mouldy, or smells of mould, don’t eat it. Don’t just chop off the mouldy bit, because there is a twilight when mould spores are present but not yet visible. Mould on bread isn’t the most dangerous of the fungi, but it’s still revolting.

Spices

I remember being astonished to read (in Delia) that you should do a complete spice overhaul every year, because they won’t taste as good. As I have spices that are older than my children; this seemed extremely wasteful. There are spices that most cooks won’t get through in a year (za’atar) unless you live with Yotam Ottolenghi. But Delia’s right, if you want them to last longer, buy them whole and grind yourself to order, or go back in time and store them in brown rather than clear glass.

Nuts

Ah, this is where things get interesting. Millstone says: “Some of the compounds formed from mould can be seriously toxic, especially aflatoxins, which can be carcinogenic.” These are found on mouldy grain and nuts.

You can’t buy dangerous grains and nuts (because of that blasted EU), but you should take very seriously the use-by date on what you have bought. There is no meaningful trade-off between risk now and cancer later. It’s not like pharmaceuticals; it’s just a bar snack.

Harissa, Wasabi Paste and Other things That Discolour

Some time before anything goes mouldy, it may go a bit grey (if it started out green) or just a murkier version of itself (if it started out red). This is plain pigment oxidisation and is not dangerous, though it is a bit unappetising – if the fat has oxidised, you will be able to smell it.

Yeast, Baking Powder and Other Things That React

Monroe raises the stakes here: “I’ve personally used yeast that is 10 years out of date. But it’s not been opened, and was stored away from direct light in cool conditions. It didn’t rise as well as normal yeast would. If you’re using old yeast, I would always recommend using 1.5 times the amount the recipe states, leave it for an extra hour, and if you’re really running low on flour, make a quarter batch, then if it doesn’t rise, or doesn’t go so well, you can work it into a soda bread and you’re not going to waste half a bag of what is currently quite a precious resource.”

Baking powder and bicarbonate of soda typically have shelf lives of one to two years, but storage is more important than numbers, and there is a school of thought that says bicarb lasts for ever. Yup, for ever.

Fresh Meat and Fish

These are “particularly vulnerable to bacterial spoilage,” Millstone says, “and if it smells off, it’s definitely off.” However, some forms of spoilage are smellier than others, so just because it doesn’t smell doesn’t mean it’s safe. “If I had a piece of chicken one day past its use-by date,” Millstone continues, I wouldn’t simply barbecue it and eat it, but I might put it in a casserole and cook it at a high temperature for quite a long time.”

Vulnerability to rottenness is partly about surface area – how much the meat has come into contact with the outside world, and how much of it is subject to direct heat while you’re cooking. This is why mince is such a minefield, because it has a huge surface area, and if you’re cooking a burger medium rare, the middle won’t have been thoroughly cooked. A whole bird has a much smaller surface area. Game birds are a subtle enterprise, the window between how it’s supposed to smell and “off” being so narrow. It’s eater-beware in this case.

Cured Meat and Fish

Salt, naturally, has a preservative effect, and the sniff and overall appearance test should work with things such as salami. These things have a pretty good shelf life to begin with, and are very low effort (you don’t have to cook them, you just have to pop them in your mouth). So there is something to be said for using your memory rather than your judgment. Eat them before the use-by date, and you won’t have to play ham-roulette.

Pesto, Jam and Other Jars Full of Mould

The food safety scene is united on this – nothing with mould should be consumed, except where it has been introduced deliberately (blue cheese). It does, however, seem a bit absurd, if you have a jam with a bit of mould on, stuffed with sugar so you know it’s fine underneath, to have to chuck the whole lot out. Millstone is slightly forgiving on this. “If there’s a bit of mould on the top surface of jam that can be safely removed, then the jam lower down might well be safe. But if the entire top surface is covered in mould, you should discard it.” Pesto will taste rank if it’s mouldy as pine nuts go rancid very fast.

Dried Fruit

Again, frozen, tinned and dried food gets a BBE date rather than a use-by date. You can sail past the BBE on dried fruit by as much as a year, though the higher the water content, the less time you have – figs and dates won’t last as long as currants and raisins. Do yourself a favour, though, and taste these things if they are very old. If they no longer taste of themselves, that’s just a waste of calories.

Oils

Certain oils (walnut, sesame) seem to go off much faster than others (vegetable, olive oil) but this is usually because we don’t use them fast enough. The smell and taste of a rancid oil is subtle but very insistent, and you can easily ruin a whole dish with a very small amount of it. Don’t give it the benefit of the doubt; smelling it, tasting it, smelling it again, not wanting to chuck it out because it was expensive. It’s much more wasteful to ruin more food than to throw it away.

Dried Pulses and Beans

We think of these as forever foods, but by the end of the best-before date, they will be tough and won’t taste as good. Vexingly, they will have toughened at different rates within the packet, so it will be impossible to adjust your cooking times for toughness without some of them going mushy. Stick with the guidelines.

Flour

Your real enemy is the weevil. Some people say just sift them out, others (Millstone) remind us that you don’t know what else those bugs have been crawling over.

Cheese, Milk and Yoghurt

Hard cheeses are less vulnerable to mould and bacteria than soft ones, since their higher salt content has a protective effect. All bets are off for cheeses in which the mould is deliberate. Those are delicious. I would happily saw the mouldy end off a cheddar and eat the rest. Milk has the fabulous trait of smelling awful – and shortly after that, separating – to warn you that it’s off. Yoghurt is the great unknown (I have never met anybody who takes yoghurt use-by dates seriously). Monroe will eat a yoghurt a week after its expiration. I once found one at the bottom of my daughter’s school bag, decided it would probably be fine, and it exploded. So don’t listen to me (on this one occasion).

Oat and Almond Milks

These new fangled milks will keep in pantry conditions for several months, then for seven days in the fridge. There hasn’t been a huge amount of consumer experimentation; the best anecdotal evidence is that they lose their flavour, rather than becoming disgusting. Oat milk is lower in fat and higher in sugar, so will last longer. Almond milk won’t have a very strong smell, even if it’s off, so taste it tentatively.

Crisps

Best-before dates on crisps are so long, and crisps themselves so delicious, that it’s actually quite hard to find any that are out of date. Monroe got some two-year-out-of-date Doritos from a vending machine the other day (“Were they the best Doritos I’ve ever had? Probably not, but they were fine”); I had some Quavers this morning that should have been eaten by February. They are loaded with salt and preservatives. Probably the worst they can bring is disappointment, of not being crunchy enough.

Tins

The best-before dates on cans range between three and five years from purchase, but this is essentially a way of saying “for ever, all things being equal” – if you’re dealing in units of half a decade, you’re not really talking about the food perishing, but rather the tin. Acidic foods such as tinned tomatoes can attack the can from the inside. Otherwise, rust, dents, any attack on its structural integrity can interfere with its powers of preservation. If you have a tin with a dent in it, even if you can clearly remember the time you dropped it, it’s still better not to eat it. I once had some Swedish anchovies that swelled up like a bloater fish. I don’t know how that happened, but I didn’t try to eat them.

Jack Monroe’s Good Food for Bad Days is out at the end of May

[dailyaudiobible]

09/15/2020 DAB Transcript

Isaiah 19:1-21:17, Galatians 2:1-16, Psalms 59:1-17, Proverbs 23:13-14

Today is the 15th day of September welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I'm Brian it is…it's great to be here with you today as we continue this journey, the journey of this week and the journey of a lifetime through the Scriptures day by day step-by-step. And, so, glad that we can be together, glad that we get this time together, glad that I can be here in the rolling hills of Tennessee and you can be wherever on this big blue planet that you are and that we can still be together. And it's not just me and you. It's all of us. We’re all in this together on this journey. And, so, what a joy, what a privilege, what an honor, what a miracle even. Like what a crazy thing is this that we live on this earth and something exists called the Internet and it allows us to be together like this. So, feeling grateful today. But let's dive in. We’re reading from the English Standard Version this week. We’re in the book of Isaiah in the Old Testament and we've just gotten going in the letter to the Galatians in the New. So, today Isaiah chapters 19, 20 and 21.

Commentary:

Okay. So, today is a bit of a context day as we move further into the letters of Paul and specifically into this letter to the Galatians because although there's really important theological things to be said in the book of Galatians that inform our understanding of our faith, the context for why these things were said in the first place is actually really super-duper important and we’ve touched on some of this in the other of Paul's letters, and we touched on this a little bit yesterday when we were just getting going into the…the letter to the Galatians.  But basically, today we kind of get Paul's testimony about how his…how the gospel had come to him in the first place. And, so, I guess it's…I guess it's important to note that Paul's version of how that happened in Galatians is a little bit different than how it's portrayed, for example, in the book of acts, but this is in Paul's own hand. This is his own testimony. And we have this Damascus Road experience where a bright light send him to the ground, right, and he can't see and it’s Jesus talking to him and he’s on his way to persecute the church. And that holds true throughout all of the testimonies of Paul's conversion but Paul says in Galatians that he…he wasn't really influenced by the people in Jerusalem, like he had essentially been living into the faith for 17 years, for more than 17 years and that he had not received the truth of the gospel from any person, that he received it as a revelation from Jesus. He'd only met Cephas or Peter once and I mean that was like 14 years ago. And the only other like important leader in the Jerusalem church Jesus ever met was or that Paul ever met was Jesus brother James. So, Paul's claiming that the gospel he's preaching is a direct revelation from Jesus himself. This creates some problems, especially the Jew / Gentile problem that we…we have talked about it on a number of occasions. So, I don't need to go back into it again. We probably understand that territory but in Galatians today we hear about people sneaking into this spy on…on the meetings that Paul's having and these are Judaizers, these are people who believe that…that you have to convert to Judaism in order to follow Christ. In order to be a disciple of Christ you have the first follow the Jewish religion. Paul is obviously adamantly against that notion. And it seems from the Scriptures that God was doing a new thing because the Holy Spirit was coming upon the Gentiles. And, so, that's how they finally had to agree, like “we’re not making a decision here. God has already made the decision. We just have to support what God is doing.” This is a big deal because in so many ways it kinda renders Judaism obsolete. Paul is saying the law the Torah is fulfilled, the old covenant is done, a new covenant has been ratified through the blood of Christ, we are living in a different time under different circumstances, we’re going forward in a different new direction that God is leading. I mean it's hard to take that leap. It's a huge leap of faith, especially if you're a Jewish person who has only known it one way. To take that leap is difficult. To understand that Christ fulfills the obligations of the law and that through Him so can we. That's good news, but it's difficult news to embrace. So, that's like the theological or spiritual thing but it's…it's deeper than that. Like Jews and Gentiles did not like party together at all. They…they weren't social in any real way. Jews were separatists. They were thought of as strange by the rest of the Empire and they wore it as a badge of honor, to be separated, to be set apart as holy. So, a Jewish person looked at a Gentile person, a Roman, essentially as an occupier, as their oppressors, the people that were marginalizing them, the people that were pushing them to the outskirts of society. So, it would be difficult for them to just open their arms and embrace the people that they felt were oppressing them. It would be hard for them to have any sort of meaningful relationship because there is inherent prejudice there, right? There’s inherent fear of those with the privilege of being a Roman citizen. Like, they could do things that would be detrimental to the Hebrew community if they all got together to be happy together and then something goes sideways. And, so, Paul in his letter to the Galatians is basically like, “I had to even confront Peter, the apostle Peter, like the one who got out of the boat and walked on the water to Jesus even though he went underwater.” Like Paul's confronting him because he…he's not being consistent. He’s coming around Gentile believers in churches and fellowshipping with them and having really open community with them until people in the Jerusalem church are around and then he's being all separatist and all ‘follow the law’ and…and…and not being hospitable. So, we’re seeing…we’re seeing the tensions that existed as the faith began to grow and flourish. We’re seeing what was going on here through these letters. And we can wonder like, “why such…it just doesn't…like now 2000 years later we’re mostly Gentiles. Like some of these things don't seem like that big of a deal. Like it all got settled somewhere along the line and here we are.” But these kinds of tensions still exist. They just have different iterations, there just from different perspectives, but they still exist. And why is Paul being so defensive? Like, what's he after? Ultimately, well, first of all he’s defending the revelation of Jesus Christ that he received. This is what he believes. This is what he is convinced of. This is what he will die for…and he does. He did die for it. But beyond that it's freedom. He, as a Pharisee, had done everything he could possibly do to live up to a relationship, like to get himself in a position to have the knowledge and awareness and relationship with God. And no matter how hard he tried he failed. And then Jesus is raised from the dead and reveals himself to him and he begins to realize we’re free, we’re free from all of that. Like there’s a whole new thing going on. Freedom is given to us, spiritual freedom to be in direct contact and in relationship with God. This is a big deal. This isn't going to happen the ritual and adherence to some sort of ethics or law. Christ has done it all and restored us to God, and now we can call God Father, Abba. We can enter His presence. This a big deal. This is his conviction. Like I said just a second ago, then that renders that whole culture the…under Torah, the whole culture, the way the whole thing was set up becomes somewhat obsolete. And that's a difficult controversy. This is why people want to kill Paul. This is why Paul ultimately gets killed. This is also ultimately why we believe what we believe as Christians, that freedom has been given to us, that we have been…been made right, we have been justified because we have faith in Christ and freedom comes from that. Freedom, that a set of rules, even if we could live up to them can’t provide. So, this gives us some context. They were wrestling, which explains why we often are wrestling. Ironically, we’re wrestling over freedom. And in the coming days as we move through Galatians, we’re gonna get a good glimpse of that. And as we continue through the letters of Paul, some of like…some of the stuff is unbelievable when we are told what Christ has done, and who we are, and what that means. But those are in the days ahead.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You that we can look into it and we can see an honest view of the struggle. We…all we have to do is just look around in the world and see that there is an honest struggle continually going on in some direction and what we are grateful for is that You are the sovereign God, You are the Lord of all, no matter what we think. No matter what we think You are the most-high God, and You will have Your way. And our desire is to be in the middle of that, what You are doing in us and in this world. And, so, we open ourselves to You, Holy Spirit. We open ourselves to Your leadership, to Your comfort, to Your correction, to Your guidance. Come and do what You’ve promised. Lead us into all truth we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base and it is…yup…it’s indeed how to find out the different little things that are happening around here, around this rhythm of life that we share in community.

So, check out the resources that are in the Shop - reading resources, writing resources, wearing resources, drinking resources. Check out the coffee that's in the Daily Audio Bible Shop. We’ve been…well…we've had our own Windfarm brand. We’ve been roasting coffee for a decade…more than a decade now. And, so, all of those varietals. And this is from one coffee snob to another, like it's…it's there. So, check it out as well as tea that over the years we've collected together and imported in and these things are all available. You can even have them sent to you each month and they arrive fresh roasted, way, way fresher than what you can get at like a grocery store. Definitely check it out it. It…it…it definitely works to support the Daily Audio Bible in our efforts here to bring God's spoken word every day no matter who's listening. Sao, check out the resources that are available in the Shop.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com as well. Thank you profoundly. There’s a link on the homepage. If you’re using the app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner, or the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement, you can hit the Hotline button in the app, or you can dial 877-942-4253

And that's it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hey DAB family this is Allie from Oregon. Hey, I’m just calling to ask for prayer for all of the communities around the Pacific Northwest and California area that are currently being affected by fire or the threat of fire. Just ask that YTou would, Lord that you would help provide peace and provide safety to the families that are in jeopardy or the families that are already lost their homes as well as for all of the first responders, firefighters, volunteers that are coming together to help with this. It’s been…it’s been a long week and I know that there’s a lot of people that have lost their homes or their homes are in jeopardy. So, we just pray for peace and through all of this that Your will be done and that You would cause people to come together. And Lord I also pray for work in progress. I know he called as well for California and we lift California up as well, that You would just touch them and bring these fires to an end. Thanks guys.

Good morning Daily Audio Bible family this is Kelsey from Washington state and I am new to Daily Audio Bible but I’m so thankful to have this opportunity to listen and hear God’s word together. Thank you, Brian. Right now I’m sitting on our back porch looking up at the sky and it’s a little bit hazy with smoke from all the wildfires but I wanted to call in to ask for prayer for a family that I know who has been deeply impacted and is going through tragedy due to the wildfires here in Washington. I want to lift up Jacob, Jamie, the Highland family who, you know, they’re in the hospital in critical condition right now and they lost their little one-year-old, Arielle to the fire’s here in Washington. And please just pray for their recovery, pray for, you know, this long journey that they have ahead and for just comfort from the Lord, you know, in relation to the loss of their son. He was beautiful. And also, for I…I…heard also that Jamie is pregnant and for this baby and just protection and protection from…for both of them from infection because their bodies have…have severe third-degree burns. Thank you so much, your prayer’s means so much. God bless you all. Thank you.

Hey family this is John the Prodigal. Hey, I’ve got a celebration actually believe that or not and a couple of prayer requests. Number one my son who was on heroin, we went through 25 doctors and finally found a doctor to work with him. Got him on the prescription that they took him off of after seven years cold turkey. He has no knees, blew em’ out skateboarding and he’s in constant pain. So, he turned to heroin. Anyway, he’s in good shape now, he’s happy now, got him turned around and that’s has everything to do with your prayers. I also ask for your…so I said it’s a celebration. I also ask for prayer for…for Jane a friend of mine who’s living in London. She is living in a church there and every night she runs in fear of being stabbed or raped. A good friend of hers was attacked…was shot in an attempted rape there. And, so, I tried to help her out as best I can but I, as you know I am totally broke, but I’ve done what I can. To that end I’d also ask your prayers for me. I’m trying to reinvent myself, rebuild my business, build back and the love of God and with God in my sites instead of me. And, so, my pride is broken. I’ve been humbled. I am a Job and trying to rise again. And with that I’d ask…I’d ask any more prayers for me I feel selfish when I do but I just wanted to let you know that I’m praying for you all and the man who called for the son with muscular dystrophy to people who are divorcing like me yo all those who are suffering and praying with depression. I feel for you all. I’ve got it all and I’ve got your facts. And so does God. So, you make a blessed day. Know I love you, know I pray for you all every day even though I don’t say your names. You’re in my heart. God bless you thank you Brian and Jill. Have a good day. Bye.

Good morning everybody hey this is Annette Allison from Oklahoma City. Get your seatbelt on girl. Hey isn’t the Lord cool? I’ll tell you what he is just amazing. __ inspiring stories of hope here recently that He is just amazing. My son, my stepson who is in the Air Force, his career has been tried to be put down and destroyed by a guy who is just like new in command and trying to make a name for himself and my stepson who’s just as straight as an arrow, I’ll tell you he is such a good good young man. It’s a truly amazing to me. The Lord has just taken this whole situation and turned it for the good and has really shown my stepson what the path of faith really looks like. And I’m just so proud of how he has stayed the course and how the Lord has turned all this around and for good. He even got a promotion and a recommendation out of this. It’s amazing. And my stepson James is doing excellent. He went to a…a little prison camp situation where they teach the kids how to behave basically and has come out smelling like a rose, top of his class, and is working and doing very, very well. I’m so proud of these kids. Anyway, I love you guys. Have a wonderful day. Bye-bye.

This is BB in Florida I’m requesting prayer for my niece Nancy who at the present time is in the hospital battling cancer. The cancer has traveled through her spinal column into her brain and the prognosis that the doctors are giving them is not good. I’m asking for prayers to come against the excruciating pain that she is under with severe headaches and backaches. She has not been able to eat or to keep medicine down. I’m asking that for prayers for the pain management team to find the right combination of medicine for her that they will no longer be chasing the pain, but they will be able to stop the pain completely. She’s been in the hospital now for about two weeks and it’s very hard on the family as only one person can be in her room with her at a time. Just pray, Father God that He would grant this family and all those of her friends, peace and strength, that the doctors would have words of encouragement today for this family. We serve a faithful God and a loving God, and I just pray for His mercy, Your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

Hi this is my first time ever being on this site asking for prayer. I have been actually reading since almost the first of the year and so love this site. And I come to you burdened about my children. I have two sons who are not serving the Lord at all, as far as they could possibly be from the Lord. And it’s such a burden. And I just pray that my brothers and sisters in Christ can uplift my two sons Lee and Austin. And my prayer is that I’ll be able to spend my days worshiping with them and that we can be one in spirit. And I pray for my husband to be strong as a leader so that he will be able to show these sons of ours what needs to be done in order to be a child of God and a man of God. My name is Sherry and I look forward to seeing the results of these prayers. Thank you so much.

Hi everybody this is Stephanie. I’m the Lord’s Chic from Oklahoma. As many of you know my son passed away about three months ago and my mom the year before. I am 55 years old and after decades of being clean I have fallen back into bad habits. It started with food and then it went to tranquilizers and painkillers and diet pills and I’ve had a drink for the first time in literally decades. I picked up a pack of cigarettes last week. I just…anything I can do to make the pain go away but it doesn’t go away. So, I’ve been a Christian for a really long time. My husband has absolutely zero knowledge of all this. So far I’m completely functional with my job and family but I…I need to stop completely. And, so, today is day one. I just really need for you all to pray for me before I completely ruin my career and my family. Nobody knows about this. I have a best friend in Oregon that I’ve confided in, but I mean if they were to pull a tox screen at work would be cooked and my nursing license would be gone. So, you know, some of this is prescription some is not. I just need a lot of prayer please. I need to get back and trust God the way they used to. Thanks.