factor

Hi, Sis

My handwriting is terrible, I have no printer, and so snail mail is tough on longish letters. And, there is another consideration, which is I might be told to publish this letter.

Thanks for the updates, hope they helped you.

As for your thanking me for sharing my wisdom, concern & love over the years …

Only God can help me. I came to that conclusion early 1987, prayed for help, and as an afterthought, offered my life to human service. Had no idea, not a clue, how God viewed help and human service. From time to time thereafter, I met a few people who could relate to my experience, some more so than others, but now it’s just me – and the angels, as I have come to call my overseers.

The Joseph analogy reminded me of a dream Aubry Loftis had in late 1996. He and I were walking down a dusty road in in Egypt, talking about stuff. He kept looking back at a mummy in rags following us, which was really bugging him. Finally, he told me about the mummy, I looked back, chuckled, said, “That’s just old Joseph following us.” Meaning, don’t sweat it, Aubry.

I wondered, though, if the dream meant I would have a Josephesque experience?

Aubry dreamed for me from time to time back then, and did so through late 1998, when he no longer was comfortable with me. He was one of my brothers and sisters who cast me into the pit. As did my father and my daughters.

Don’t worry, Sis. I ain’t mad at you, or at or at Aubry, or at Nelle and Alice, or at their mother, or at Major, or at your and my father, or even at Joann. Staying mad at someone only fucks me up. And, I have way too much heaped on me to have the energy to stay mad at anyone. And, the angels clobber me when I slip into it anyway.

Am reminded of a conversation with a country lawyer I was getting to know in north Georgia in mid-2001. After I’d told him a few stories about my peculiar experiences, he asked if I attended church? I looked at him, said, “When am I ever not in church?” Last year, one of his and my mutual north Georgia friends told me that he had recently talked with the lawyer, who had recalled that conversation and had said it had really stuck with him. Neither of them attended church in the regular sense. It didn’t appeal to them.

About a week ago, Cuz Leo sent me this:

Bash-This is from a sermon at St. Luke’s last Sunday. I got a chuckle out of it and thought you might too.

Leo

Preacher: When we lived in Prattville, I was approached one day by a prominent citizen of that town, a man I really didn’t like, who said to me, “The reason I don’t go to your church or any other is because the churches are full of hypocrites.” Without thinking, I replied, “Oh, come on, Fred, there’s always room for one more.” I had to ask God’s forgiveness for that one, but it felt good. Yes, we are imperfect.

I wrote back to Leo that it looked to me the preacher had missed the point entirely.

There was a Methodist minister in that north Georgia community, who was known to the lawyer and the redneck, who was from Montgomery originally, attended Alabama, did Alabama National Guard with Major and Luke Evins, which was how he got to know Major. He agreed that Major killed himself and tried to make it look like suicide to protect his image. As did Gail. [Major's first wife]

Anyway, the north Georgia minister kept pushing the redneck from Montgomery to attend the minister’s church. The redneck kept begging off. I kept telling the minister, who also was a friend of mine, that the redneck was doing God in another way. The minister kept having a hard time with that because he was convinced going to church was the only way to get into heaven after you died. Before he was a minister, got the call, he was a successful homebuilder.

Finally, I asked the minister, “If the devil wanted to hide some place nobody would never think to look, where would that be?” By then, the minister had taken a sabbatical from having a church. I had a dream that he had a heart attack. He was trying to get back into church ministering again. I gave up trying to reach him and wrote to his wife about my dream, and urged her to try to talk him out of getting himself another church.

Did you ever see the movie, Brother Son, Sister Moon”, about St. Francis of Assisi? A wonderful treatment of church and Church. As was, although it was much rougher, the movie “Stigmata”.

In late 1995, I ran into Eddie one night in the funky coffee shop below the apt building on Highland Avenue, between the two parks.

Eddie told me of something he and a friend had experienced in Lebanon.

They took refuge in the basement of a shot-up building, and in the back the basement was a small, old man sitting at a table with two empty chairs beside it. On the table was a coffee or tea pot, and cups, and the old man asked them to join him. After some conversation, he told them, “There is only one God.”

They left soon after that, but then they thought they shouldn’t have left and went back to speak further with the old man, but he was not there. Nor, as I recall the telling, were the table and chairs and pot and cups.

I told Eddie it looked to me that he needed to go back over there. That night in a dream, our father came to me and chewed me out for telling Eddie to go back over there. Then, our father did something, I don’t recall it now, to override what I had told Eddie.

Our father was not upset about what Eddie told me, but with my advice to Eddie to go back over there. Eddie had been told what he needed to hear, there was no need to go back. And, he needed to be geographically close to you and his children.

Our father probably has come to me in a hundred dreams, telling me stuff I need to hear, asking me to do things. My take is, it’s his soul, and also he represents God the Father.

Lots of people come to me in that way in my dreams. I would be lost without my dreams.

In mid-2004, I was going through a terrible rough internal passage, my dreams were horrific. My north Georgia redneck friend, and another friend up there, native to north Georgia, both tried to talk me into going to a doctor to get a pill to stop me from dreaming. They were pushy about it, and finally I asked God to weigh in.

What did I know? Maybe they were messengers from God?

That night in my sleep, a voice I’d heard many times by then, said to me, “You need to dream, Sloan, so you will know what is really going on.” My friends seemed a bit rattled when I told them what I had been told.

After our father died in late August 2005, I was told in a dream, “Chips going to heaven.” Then, I saw our father walking and talking with other people, who seemed to be orienting him to his new environs. I awoke, thought, well, if he got into heaven, maybe it’s not such a hard place to get into as I had been led to believe.

He then started asking me in my dreams to try to clean up his unfinished business on this world.I was not happy about being asked that, but I did it anyway because I was terrified of what the angels would do to me if I didn’t at least try. I did what I could, but it was futile.

A few months later, I was told in my sleep, “Remember Daniel.” I awoke knowing that was Daniel in the Old Testament, the dreamer, the dream interpreter, and the fellow the lions had not eaten. Then, came a series of dreams in which I was told what was in play for me, no details, just the general trajectory. I awoke in the morning knowing I probably would not have human company.

It was around 1998 that I came to understand there is a life review after we pass over, but we can have it in this life and I was having it in this life. I wrote once to our father about that, and perhaps to you. I wrote to Nelle and Alice about it, and lots other weird stuff. Never got a reply. My sense is, religion only has a hold of a small part of something very big, and there is much confusion in religion.

Circa late 1998, I bumped into Eddie at PT’s sports bar below old Lakeview School. I joined him at the bar and we talked a while. He sounded really goofy, more than alcohol goofy. I said so. He agreed. He said he was broken inside.Busted. I asked if it was over breaking up with you? He said he was broken long before he met you, and you and him breaking up had finished him off.

The Krebs broke Eddie, which you know. He was not like them, but he loved them so much that he wanted to be like them. I felt for him. I had the same problem with the Bashinskys. And it had broken me, too. But it was being repaired. Not the same thing as fixed. I don’t suppose something like that can ever be fixed. Or maybe it can, but God’s view of fixed is different from mine.

Am reminded that somewhere in the Gospels, Jesus said no man could be his disciple who did not hate his father and his mother, and his brother and his sister, and his wife and his children, and even his own life. Peculiar perspective, I finally came to see it as hating the influence other people have over us, which disagrees with God’s will for us. And, I had to hate my own life before I was ready to let God give me a life God wanted me to have.

Not my will, but thy will be done, O Lord, so to speak.

Sometimes it’s fun, but mostly it’s very hard work. I never go to sleep at night looking forward to the next day.

Somewhere in Matthew and also, I think, in Luke, Jesus told people to take no thought for tomorrow, because each day has enough trouble of its own.

Elsewhere, Jesus said he brought not peace, but a sword to divide; and he came not to baptize in water, but in fire; and steep is the way and narrow the gate, and few enter therein; and the work is great and the laborers are few; and you do not do this work to be thanked, but because it is your duty.

Charlotte Washington was a living saint, a disciple who became an apostle. She is the second portrait in the little book, A Few Remarkable People I Have Known, at goodmorningbirmingham.com.

Cuz Leo’s father is another portrait. Lee Graham is another. Leopold Bashinsky is another. John Gillion another. US District Judge Clarence Allgood, the most godly man I have known in this life, is another portrait, the first in that little book.

A Few Remarkable People I Have Known is a bit easier to digest than what I normally write about such matters.

For various reasons, including his own soul’s reasons, Major could not be allowed to get away with what he did. When the BPD detective and the Jefferson County Coroner both concluded Major killed himself and tried to make it look like someone else did it, which same conclusion I had published before Major’s body was found, you could have taken that as God telling you that your brother, Bash, was writing what God wanted him to write.Instead, you had your daughter email me to stop doing what God had me doing.

In 1999, I found St. Luke’s rife with my will, not God’s will, be done. John Claypool and I were very close. We met privately in his office, with the door closed, and talked about really serious matters which did not get aired out in Sunday sermons. We parted ways, however, over St. Luke’s using, “Be a generous giver, good measure pressed down,” to mean St. Luke’s parishioners should give more money to the church. I told John, he and the other the ministers should be asking God why the parishioners were not giving the church enough money to pay all the church expenses?

Our mother told me that Lee Graham hated dunning parishioners for money, and only did it once a year, when the Diocese made him do it.

I publish what I’m told to publish, Sis. Blame me, if you wish, but if it had been my call, all that I published, which offended you, would not have been published. You have far more to be offended toward me than what I write.

Later…

I lay down for a nap, thinking my reply to yours was finished. Then, I awoke from a dream thinking otherwise.

Do you remember emailing me in perhaps August 2000, “I love you again …” and in my reply I told you I had never stopped loving you, and I was broke and living on the street on Maui? Do you remember that you did not ask me if I needed help?

Do you remember sending me an email Christmas card in 2002, and I wrote back something nice, then I wrote again that I was getting pounded for being nice when you knew my straights and all you sent was an email Christmas card, and you wrote back that you were doing the best you could?

Did you forget everything Jesus said about being a generous giver?

I can tell you I forgive you for that, but are you forgiven by God for it? You know the answer by how you feel right now.

Bash

I sent this post to my sister by email. She replied by email, copying three other people, one of whom I might know:

She wrote:

two things:

i did not ask neily to write you about anything concerning me or major’s death….i told her she was not to speak for me.

i did not use her!

you did not ask me directly for money.

why do you think i have money to give away?

i will not respond further to email.

you are welcome to write longhand; i can read most writing.

love, sis

I replied:

In her email, Neily said she wrote for you. I thanked her for writing to me, and said you, her mother, needed to write to me, if you had something to say to me. Take it up with Neily.

No, I did not ask you directly for money. You wrote to me out of the blue, said you loved me again. You were chatty. I told you I was broke and living on the street, on Maui. And other things. After some back and forth, you got mad and quit writing to me.

You had done that before. The last time was when I told you about our older half brother, and how our father had reacted to my writing to him about that. An older half brother I had learned about in a dream, and in maybe a dozen dreams Aubry Loftis had, and in dreams another friend had. I explained that when I wrote to you about it.

You would come onto to me later on and then get mad at me and go silent.

Last time was when you wrote to me in early 2010, wasn’t it?, bubbly about having done a memorial service at St. Luke’s for my dead son a year prior, with his mother attending, without my knowing anything about it until you wrote to me about it. I was not pleased, asked if your minister knew how you had gone about it? You got bent out joint. Clammed up.

Not long after, Major killed himself.

Now here we are somewhere in between, perhaps.

In my life, I gave away close to $1.5 million to other people. I got that money from the same place you got your money.

I imagine you give money to people, or at least to St. Luke’s and perhaps religious-related charities.

Our father came to me in a nap dream three days ago, and said he didn’t know how to handle it. I said I didn’t know how to handle it, either. I awoke wondering what that was about? Fell back asleep and dreamt of Eddie’s parents. Next day, your letter arrived.

Are any of the people you drew into this email your minister at St. Luke’s, whom you described, I think, in your letter? If not, perhaps you might wish to share all of this with him. Tell him why you are really mad at me, which is far, far bigger than any of this. Maybe he will have further advice for you.

I will write longhand to you, if the angels tell me to do it. One of them is Jesus. Another is Michael. Another is Melchizedek.

Bash

sloanbashinsky@hotmail.com

　
From someone who had stumbled across the Love Affair page (click on the link to see it) at goodmorningfloridakeys.com, which is about my love affair with the Florida Keys, launched from Birmingham several of my lifetimes ago:

I love this story. You’ve captured how I feel about the Keys, but my love affair starts and ends with its visual beauty. Heaven on earth.
　
From Sancho Panza the other day, on something entirely different:

Didn’t know you had surgery… that’s why I hadn’t heard from you! Hope everything will be OK, I friend of mine had growth removed from his larynx/throat early this year and unfortunately his voice is not much better(kind of strained and low) than it was before the surgery, but he says that his breathing improved significantly… I don’t know if it was malignant because he told them(the doctors) he didn’t want to know and it was a big long drawn out thing finding a surgeon that would agree to do the surgery without doing a biopsy first! My friend is around 70 and has smoked all his adult life, Camels of all things! He picked the habit in the service, Vietnam… so he says!

Anyway, C’est la vie. mom ami!

I replied:

I didn’t have anything to report beyond Keys dramas, which is why you and lots of mainland folks did not hear from me.

I kept writing and posting daily, two posts daily for a while, even on the day of surgery, which was last Tuesday. The angels got me up an hour early to make sure I got out what I had scribbled down the previous day. Then, my ride arrived to take me to Fisherman’s Hospital in Marathon, about a half hour drive from here. Had to be there by 6:30 a.m., was released about 12:20 p.m., with orders not to talk for three days.

My breathing does not seem changed, but am left with about 1/3 of a voice. The owner of the local health food store put me on propolis tincture drops in raw local honey yesterday. The honey helps the propolis coat the throat, if you take it down slowly and don’t eat or drink afterward. She said that has helped other people after throat surgery, including her husband who had a tear in his larynx, which was surgically repaired twice before they fixed it.

I never once smoked a tobacco cigarette, my mother smoking two packs of Pall Malls daily cured me from going in that direction.

Maybe two years, after I started practicing law, I was a pipe smoker, then gave that up. Was burning up my mouth.

Smoked some MJ, before and after that, maybe five years total, not habitually, and gave that up after realizing it was giving me a migraine the next day. Didn’t matter who grew it or where, it gave me a migraine the next day.

Gave up morning coffee after realizing it was giving me afternoon headaches. I started drinking coffee when I started practicing law.

That was 1973. Before I became a health food and supplements fanatic.

Now, I eat whatever is put in front of me but mushrooms, eggplant, hot peppers, and the really pungent cheeses. And I take 2 lecithin gel caps and 2 calcium-magnesium-zinc tabs, and a fresh key lime or lemon’s juice daily. And raw beet and raw papaya on rising each day. And cabbage and/or collards and/or mustards and/or turnip greens daily.

White loaf bread, or any store bread with white flour in it, and I don’ get along, but I can eat Cuban bread, biscuits, tortillas made from white flour.

Before the surgery, the Family Practitioner drew three vials of blood and sent it to a lab. Came back good. All organs showing good function, the good and bad cholesterols about 100 combined, about half normal count. Chest X-ray clear.

See the ENT doctor tomorrow morning. He should have the pathology report back. He thinks it’s malignant, but said it was not entirely typical when he took out 90 percent of it. Maybe the angels remitted it. I ain’t looking forward to radiation treatment. Last wife Patricia had surgery, then radiation, for one breast tumor before I knew her, and the radiation caused all of her back teeth to rot out, leaving only her front teeth.

If what remains of the larynx growth is not malignant, will need laser surgery to remove rest of it. Have to go to Miami for that, a clinic in Key West can do the radiation treatment. Glad I am on Medicare.

The surgery turned out to be the easy part. All sorts of physical distress set in afterward. Lots of soul stuff was addressed, I think, besides the karma that caused the growth on the larynx.

Teach me to make promises to a 17-year-old girl who loved me, and I didn’t love her and didn’t intend to keep the promises, and didn’t keep them, and it really messed her up and sent her down a trail that messed her up a lot more.

I was shown that a few days before the surgery, after I asked to be shown the karma.

Can’t fix any of that with health food store products, but hopefully they will aid the recovery.

The word “rest” ain’t in the angels’ dictionary.

Ciao

Sancho replied:

Marshmallow root and DGL are also good to sooth the mucosa… you can ask the Healthfood guy about it! Medicinal cannabis is allowed in many states for the nausea of chemo and in Canada some oil extract of cannabis is being used clandestinely to “cure” cancer! Not everything that happens to people in terms of disease is the result of ancient Karma… more like present or continuous karma … sometimes it is mere statistics(group karma). The surprising thing to me is that we are not all dying of cancer(mindless growth) given the condition of our environment these days and the lack of integrity in our bodies/minds/hearts.

I replied:

Don’t recall mentioning chemo. Doubt I could be persuaded to have it for any reason. Don’t know of cannabis curing cancer, but I know plenty of cannabis lovers/worshippers who probably would make the argument. Don’t need the migraines, and don’t like acting stupid and passing out.

You went off into outer space. I imagine quite a few diseases, including cancer, carry group karma. Spiritual cancer very pervasive, but not treatable by medicine or health food products. Not fun to treat, especially if you are the patient. This thing in my throat is personal karma created all by my lonesome. Don’t have to go into outer space or into an herb shop or into the collective human SNAFU to discuss it.

The afternoon of the surgery I had a giant sneezing attack, and the next morning it felt like all the rib cartilage behind my lungs was torn. Hurt like hell every time I coughed, which was often because the surgery was on the larynx.

Oddly, by nightfall, the torn cartilage seemed healed, even as the coughing had deepened. I told someone at the health food store today, no way anything in that store could have healed the torn rib cartilage that quickly. She said, the angels could have done it. I said, right. That was the point of my telling her about it.

Had a dream night before last, which left me hoping it meant the cancer on the larynx had been remitted by the angels. Will find out when the pathology report comes back. Perhaps will know by tomorrow morning.

Doctor visit report, a few days later:

Saw the ENT doctor this a.m. The pathologist’s report showed no malignancy, the growth on the larynx was/is a kind of squamous caused by viruses usually. Will have to be monitored from time to time, but no further surgery indicated for now.

As I mentioned the other day, had a dream three nights ago, which caused me to wonder if I was going to get a good report from the pathologist. I told the ENT doc about the dream, and about the dream several weeks ago, in which a duplicate bridge amiga in Marathon had asked me, “Did you get tested?” I told the ENT doc that the first dream caused me to go to the Family Practitioner, who sent me to him, the ENT doc.

I told him that I dream a lot about stuff that hasn’t happened yet, and when it does happen, I know the meaning of the dreams. The ENT doc seemed mildly interested in that, but when I said I would not tell him what all I was going to do non-medically to deal with viruses, because I didn’t want him not to be able to sleep at night, he thanked me for not disturbing his sleep.

Dropped by Good Food Conspiracy on my way home, and talked with Marnie [the owner], who then went and fetched a tincture off the shelf made out of olive leaf, which I will start taking that 3 times a day in water. As I wrote the other day, she has me on propolis tincture in a spoon of raw honey which coats the throat. She said today, propolis also is anti-viral. Bees make propolis. I got the honey from Marnie, too – raw local mangrove blossom honey.

I did not tell the ENT doc about tearing rib cartilages in a big sneezing attack a few hours after the surgery, which I didn’t know had happened until the next morning, when I woke up barely able to breathe and coughing was so hurtful that maybe it would be better to run out into the traffic on US 1 and get myself run over and shutted the fuck up for good.

I wanted the ENT doc to be able to sleep at night, although maybe I will drop that one on him when I see him next week, and say, since there was no way the cartilage could heal that fast medically, it had to be angels what did it. You have to be careful with doctors, some are somewhat open to non-medical procedures, some are prone to go into apoplexy and even into cardio-arrest. Then, it’s necessary to call the local EMT folks, which never is good for a doctor’s practice when he has a full waiting room.

I can’t talk worth a shit, but I still can write okay. I shook the ENT doc’s hand for fixing my voice so I don’t have to run for office again. The son of a bitch then had the gall to say he was hopeful my voice would get better. That was the worst part of the patient-doctor visit.

Sloan

Sancho replied:

First of all, thanks; it is a relief to hear good news for a change! Also, thanks for the comedic way you seem to brush things off that would make other people fall apart. I agree with you about the ribs… they definitely don’t heal that fast, specially as you get on in age. Olive Leaf is a good immune system support, Reishi mushroom is good for overall vitality/support. Raw Manuka honey(New Zealand) is the best for antimicrobial applications and would healing(used for bad bedsores for my Mom).

I too, am hoping that your voice returns and even improves considerably so you would be force to do your thing!

Later!

==============================

I told Marnie at Good Food Conspiracy the other day, that what I do now is breaking rusty locks with a hammer compared to what I did when I first met her in early 1995. I said I used to be a real space cadet. But back then, there were quite a few other space cadets in my life. Maybe they all went back to the mother ship. I didn’t know space cadets existed when I fell in love with the Keys in 1954. Now I call the Keys, The Asteroid Belt … and … The State Mental …

sloanbashinsky@hotmail.com