“sexually transmitted disease” – the sins of the mothers and the fathers go down their bloodlines 3-4 generations

holy fire

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Excerpted from the end of yesterday’s dumb blonde American teaching model – pure testosterone, with Key West twist provocation …

My oldest second Bashinsky cousin sent this today:

Bash-Thought you might use this sometime in your blog
 
Everyone talks about leaving a better planet for our kids
 
Let’s try to leave better kids for our planet
 
On the lighter side…
 
Forget the whales-Save yourself
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My kids don’t want to have anything to do with me, but when we still were in love I did my best to try to teach them to be good people, follow their hearts, and be kind to the environment and to other people, after those topics became of interest to me. Today, it’s all I can do to get up each morning and deal with what the angels put in front of me to engage today. Dreams last night alerted me to something different about education for today’s post.

As for Vietnam …

No, I did not dodge the Vietnam draft. God dodged me out of it after I had signed up to be drafted. That’s another story I would love to tell Keys first graders. Lots of luck, unless they read it on my websites.

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As yesterday progressed, I felt more and more poisoned in my liver, gall bladder, intestines and body fluids. Nap dreams pointed me toward my relationship with my daughters, something big there I needed to engage, do. Several dreams in the past week pointed in the same direction.

When my old friend from Wisconsin Mark was with me two weekends ago, he was very concerned and encouraging that I need to do something about my relationship with my daughters. I told him I didn’t know what to do, it seemed out of my hands. I told him a good bit, and finally he seemed to accept that it indeed was out of my hands.

In one of my dreams this week, Mark urged me to ask the angels for help with it, and I replied in the dream that it doesn’t work that way. But on waking, I didn’t see it that way, and I prayed for help with it, if such was available.

In another dream, my second daughter showed up. She is an eye doctor, she does eye surgery, she has taught in medical school. When she is in a dream, it means she is helping me see something better than I am seeing it. Or, there is something I am not seeing, which I need to see.

Several years ago, she told me in a dream, “I will always be with you, I will never leave you.” I understood on waking that she meant she would be there to help me see what I needed to see. I wrote to her about that dream, heard nothing back.

As I write this Saturday afternoon, 4 May 2013, I still don’t see what  I need to do. The video on my TV went out today, while the audio is still working. My daughters and I do not talk with each other in human ways, sometimes we do in dreams. So, the TV video going out is equivalent to a dream; there is something I need to see, which I am not seeing.

My first daughter’s conception caused me to go back to the Draft Board to try to undo a student deferment I had taken to allow me to   finish out law school. Taking the student deferment insured I would be drafted upon graduation. That was the trade-off.

I had become exposed to the draft when my son died of sudden infant death syndrome just before the start of my last semester in law school. After maybe two months of worrying, I applied for the student deferment. A week or so later, my wife, Dianne, learned she was pregnant. Thus my trip  back to the Draft Board.

The same nice woman who had taken my application for a student deferment waited on me again. She said the student deferment was irrevocable. She opened a filing cabinet and pulled out my file to get the application for the student deferment and show it to me.

But before she showed me the application, she frowned, said, “There’s been some sort of mistake.”

“What sort of mistake?”, I asked.

“You made the application on the wrong form; the application is void, you will have to do it again to get a student deferment.”

I laughed, said, “No thanks, I will go back to having a father deferment,” and I walked out knowing it was a miracle; God had saved me.

About a year ago, I learned from one of my Facebook friends, who is a daughter-in-law, or maybe a daughter, I don’t now recall, of a lawyer about my age, whom I had known in Birmingham, and had had some legal dealings with.

After reading in one of my posts what you read above, she had messaged me that she’d heard other stories like that about that draft board. Her father, or father-in-law’s mother had worked at that draft board, and it was said she helped quite a few young men avoid Vietnam.

I was blown away, again.

I had done nothing to try to avoid the Vietnam draft. I was in college. They didn’t draft students. I got married. Then, they started drafting students, but not fathers. They never drafted fathers.

It never entered my mind to get married, to avoid Vietnam. It never entered my mind to have a child, to avoid Vietnam. In fact, I applied for a student deferment knowing it meant I would go to Vietnam after I was out of law school.

I applied for the student deferment not knowing Dianne was pregnant again, or soon would be. I applied for the deferment because I was going crazy with worry over the draft uncertainty, and because I was already crazy over the death of my son. I felt like my heart had been ripped out of my body; I wanted to go with him. Maybe applying for the student deferment was a subconscious death wish, so I could go to my son.

Yet, I had told Dianne that I wanted to have another baby, and she went along with it and she got pregnant with our first daughter, who would be named Nelle Major, after my mother, who was born Nelle Frances Major. Two years later, Nelle’s sister was born, whom we named Alice Lawson Bashinsky. Lawson was Diane’s family name. I think I came up with Alice, it was name I’d always liked.

I was no more ready to be a father, than I was ready to go to Vietnam.

My unreadiness had nothing to do with Nelle and Alice, whom I loved dearly, as anyone who saw me with them well knew. It had to be with my soul being shredded, and with a horrible physical disturbance which had suddenly onset almost a year after Nelle was born, during my clerkship for a US District judge in Birmingham. An affliction I knew even then was a God thing, because of the suddenness of its onset; no way could it have been medical in origin.

On top of that, my my goals were scattered. I was hiding out working out in the YMCA, and playing 4-wall handball, which I had picked up and fallen in love with after moving back to Birmingham from law school in Tuscaloosa. Working out and playing handball were more important to me than anything; it was my way of trying to prove to myself that I was okay, a man, worthwhile.

The illness seriously disturbed that jock (testosterone) program. The illness destroyed my self-confidence and pushed me to to to work for my father’s company, which I viewed as safe, as opposed to going into the private practice of law. All of that seriously disturbed my family life. The illness spared nothing, and nothing I tried medically, workwise, or relationshipwise had any effect.

I knew it was a  God thing, but I tried to treat it with ways of this world, and I continued to try to do that even after Dianne and I were divorced, and nothing I tried had any effect on the illness. And believe me, I tried everything this world had to offer. Western medicine, natural medicine, religion, eastern methods. New Age methods, shamen, spiritual healers. And I tried prayer. And begging. And crying. And screaming. And nothing affected the illness.

Three years ago, I was told by the angels that the illness was karma for when I molested my sister when she was 5 and I was 15, before I had reached puberty. I was silently going insane because I had not reached puberty. The incest didn’t go on long, maybe a week or two,  but it really injured my sister. It really injured me, as I would later come to see.

The illness is what propelled me to seek other ways to deal with it. The illness is what eventually propelled me, in early 1987, to ask God to help me, because I did not want to die, failed, as a man. I offered my life to human service, as if that would make me feel better, as a man.

None of the ensuing angel-directed spiritual training and healing had any effect on the illness, other than to aggravate it during different seasons of my ensuing life. The illness was on its own trajectory, and I was on my own trajectory, and I did my best to endure.

The spirit training led to my seeing things very differently, much of which I shared with my daughters as it came to me. By letters, I continued to share it with them after they stopped talking with me in early 2000. I told the angels many times that some of what they moved me to write, which I shared with my daughters, guaranteed they would not want to have further conversation with me. As did some of what else the angels moved me to write concerning their mother, which had to get back to my daughters.

Were I my daughters, I would think my father was insane, and worse, mean, evil, dangerous. I don’t see how they could see me any other way.

As much as I loved them; as many times as I wept for and over them, as much as I still love them and still sometimes weep over them; as often as I have admitted to myself and to God that I was a lousy father, because I was not really there for them, I still don’t see what I am not seeing. I am clueless.

I will set this writing aside, maybe something will come into my thoughts; or maybe a dream will come with information.

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Later today, nighttime now.

I don’t know my granddaughters. I wouldn’t recognize them if they were standing in front of me. I wonder what world they will face, are facing? I wonder what that’s like for them? I wonder if they see how mad this world is? Or are they wrapped up in their lives and don’t see the pandemonium I see, the no end in sight, the inevitable  doom facing America, perhaps even humanity.

I wonder how their mothers are getting along? I wonder if they see what I am seeing? I wonder what I would have to say to them, if we were face to face? I wonder if I would be afraid to say anything which was not responsive to what they said to me?

If someone had told me 20 years ago that I would have no human relationship; with my daughters and their husbands and their children, I would have gotten angry, said there was no way that was going to happen!

I feel my heart breaking, tears welling. I feel like screaming. Damn. I still don’t see anything I didn’t already see many times. I still don’t feel anything I didn’t already feel many times. I still don’t hear anything I didn’t already hear many times.

I’m still asking the angels to show me what I don’t see. I figure it’s up to them, since they put me up to doing so many things that surely made my daughters to never want to have anything more to do with me.

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Sunday morning.

Wild rough powerful dreams. I’m still all jumbled up and poisoned inside. One thing jumped out at me this morning, an editorial in The Key West Citizen. Especially the ending. Monroe County is the Florida Keys, where I live.

Statistics show a crisis; grant offers solution
A 2012 state study showed Monroe County teenagers significantly more engaged in alcohol use, binge drinking and marijuana use than their counterparts elsewhere in Florida, and at a rate more than double that of a national study.

And sexually transmitted diseases among Monroe County teens have soared more than 400 percent since 2006, according to state data.

Education is clearly one of the best tools we have for opening young eyes to the consequences of poor choices, but until 2011, the Monroe County School District was restricted to teaching abstinence as the means to avoid unpleasant consequences of sexual activity. The statistics show us how ineffective that curriculum has been.

Now, Womankind, a Key West-based nonprofit that provides health care services, has been awarded a three-year, $600,000 grant to address the county’s sex-education shortcomings with what’s being called an “abstinence-plus” curriculum. The grant will be used to offer this curriculum to students in the sixth through 10th grades.

The curriculum, which has a proven track record, takes a common-sense approach of teaching not only “safe sex,” but also skills to make better choices when it comes to sex and other risky behaviors.

The lessons are age-appropriate — with lower level studies focused on making good choices.

For instance, sixth-grade lessons focus not on sex, but on how to set boundaries and deal with social challenges. As students progress up through the grades, sex becomes part of the discussion in the context of the decision-making lessons that it preceded in earlier grades.

We are glad to see an education effort to deal with what is clearly a crisis among our teenage population, and we applaud the district and Womankind for making it happen. Education consistently pays good dividends on the investment.

But we can’t help from adding a footnote about the 800-pound gorilla in this room.

That would be us, the adults in this community who intentionally or unintentionally are the role models after which children and youth pattern their behavior.

There is no grant that can mitigate the damage done to our children when we behave irresponsibly.

– The Citizen

The 800 pound gorilla in what I wrote yesterday is, my mother molested me in my crib. The Bible speaks of the sins of the fathers visiting the sons for 3-4 generations, but not of the sins of the mothers.

Another 800 pound gorilla in what I wrote yesterday is, my father was a womanizer. I did not know this when I was young, but my soul knew it.

I don’t use those two 800 pound gorillas to excuse what I did to my younger sister, but my spiritual training and experience provided by the angels who run me, Jesus, Michael and Melchizedek, say those two 800 pound gorillas cannot be ignored, either.

Nor can it be ignored that at the level of soul my daughters and their mother and  children know what I did to my younger sister.

Nor can it be ignored that I myself became sexually promiscuous toward the end of Dianne’s and my  broken marriage, which carried forward a couple of years after we were divorced and I got it out of my system. That, too, bled into and affected my daughters.

While on this very grim subject, here is something I put together almost two weeks ago, on which I have been sitting.

holy fire

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Morticia, of Locust Fork, Alabama, about 30 miles north of Birmingham, replied to yesterday’s Sunday homily: child sex trafficking cure – Key West initiative post:

Dear Sloan:

Last year we were at the Gaylord Hotel and I was channel surfing and I saw a story about young women that were lured over here to Atlanta with the promise they would get a college education and get a job when they finished. Well they got a job alright. They were put on a bus as soon as they landed and ended up North in a slave house.

The ladies were sent to work in a strip joint and then they were escorted home and locked in the apartment with no phone and no way to get out. Customers one right after the other. The lady telling the story was just a beautiful innocent young woman wanting to come to the USA for a better opportunity and she told as soon as one man was finished with her they had another waiting.. She did say that in the town she came from that the owner of her here in the USA had men there that worked for him “recruiting” girls and then if they caused any problems their families were hurt or even killed. So they used terror tactics on these ladies.

Well one guy she began to trust and she told him her story.. He went to the authorities and they busted the place. The guys that owned her and the other lived in a huge mansion worth millions, drove cars around like Rolls Royce and lived like Billionaires.

Then here in Bham on our local Fox 6 we had a woman who runs WellHouse in Bham who was trafficked at age 17 from Atlanta to Bham. She opened my eyes. I see the women standing on the street and I just thought they were prostitutes that chose that but she said that is not the case. That if you ride around and look you will see their owners sitting in cars watching them. Her organization rescues young women and I guess men also and when she gets a call from the police that they have been found she gets them back to their families. They come to the Wellhouse for a while to have help and treatment before they go to their homes. I was trying to find the video so I could send it to you. She said the hot spot for picking up new girls is Pelham, AL and that I-20 to Atlanta is a big hotspot for transportation. It is also a 30 billion dollar a year business.

I just was not aware this was going on.. As a young person all of our parents told us to be careful not to end up in “white slavery” I just figured it was a way to scare us not to get in any situations. To keep us under control.

The lady that runs the Wellhouse was sent from ATL to Bham. I forgot how she finally got away.. She then went to UAB and got her masters degree and started this program to help young women.

I never in my life would believe this was going on in the USA.. Yes other countries but not our country.. I have always believed that is what happened to Natalie Holloway and some of the other ladies that have disappeared on cruise ships but I-20 to Atlanta is the most traveled to transport young ladies. She put a plea out to anyone that saw a young person that looked like they were in a strange situation to call the authorities. She did say they took children to women in their early 50′s.. that was the most popular. It is scary and there is something that should be done to stop this. So not all runaways are just that and not all prostitutes are there because they want to. We have had several bust of slave houses in the Bham area in the last few years. I hope we have more and they get this type of activity stopped. You know I probably rather be dead as to be held captive and forced to do these kinds of things.. it is just horrible. Thanks for you posts. I enjoy them. Morticia

I replied:

Hi, Morticia – You sent me some stuff on this horrible racketeering in Alabama and Atlanta a year or two ago, and on the woman who was helping the sex slaves get away and recover, which I posted. If ever a special place in hell is needed, it is for these evil doers who prey on children and on young women and men. I agree, I’d rather be dead than trapped in this evil business. Maybe God will put the fear (terror might work better) of God in the racketeers. Having the terror of God put in me certainly caused me not to want to go against God ever again. Surely, though, there must be an easier way. Surely, the angels can wiggle their wings, or noses, or wands, and presto, the evil doers see the evil of their ways and like that fellow who gave up slaving and wrote “Amazing Grace” about his transformation can happen, the sex trade and sexual molestation of children stops and the victims are healed and live peaceful, happy, productive lives. Maybe if it went that way, it would bleed into how it’s going for me, which has been one very rough ride. Sorry to send you such awful reading on a Sunday morning, hope you and your hubby are doing well and happy. Sloan

Morticia wrote:

We are fine.. blessed… and I forgot I sent you the article before. It is so sad. I just wonder if our country has gotten to the point that it can not be turned around. Like a roach infestation. if you let it get out of control you never can get rid of them. Yes I agree I hope there is a really horrible hell for these type of people that take innocent young folks and destroy them. I have been through a lot in my life growing up in a horrible house with two crazies for parents but I never have been through anything like this and I’ll take the beatings and mental abuse any day over the sexual abuse. That has to be just terrible. There was a man just arrested near by for sexually molesting a 4 month old. I do not understand why we have to have trials on things like this if you know they did it… Why can they just not take him outside and cut his privates off with a chainsaw right before they shoot him in the brain. I think our laws here in the USA are to lenient. But then I am not in charge so that is just my opinion. I am glad you sent the article made me aware again of this situation. Thanks for all the good articles.

I replied:

So much for angels wiggling their noses, wings or wands and making everything easier and wonderful. Maybe instead of shooting sex traffickers in the brain, after cutting off their privates, crank the chainsaw back up and cut off their hands and feet, so it will be really hard for them to ever do anything bad to anyone every again. Maybe that’s too mean, but it’s kind compared to enslaving kids and young adults in sex racketeering.

Morticia wrote:

I concur.. I have always said the ones you know are truly guilty like the Menendez brothers in CA guilty of killing their parents never should have had a trial. Killed in the courtyard. Then people who are thieves.. hands cut off. Sex offenders just what you said. If I knew that when I got in a car and ran a redlight I would be punished severely just say a month in jail. I ‘d be riding a bicycle everywhere I went. Our laws are too lenient. I would love to see ALL the prisoners in ALL the prisons loaded up on a plane dropped off in Afghanistan and given a gun. If you survive you are free.. If not.. we wont have to bury you.. But you know.. honest people like we are are the ones punished.. The criminals get by and get a slap on the wrist. But then you know prison is a big money making business for the private sector.

I just do not understand. But then with my 59 years here on earth I do not understand a lot of things.. I live not even a mile from a sex offender. Rape, sodomy, kidnapping. He did his time.. Got out and lives with a woman that her son is in prison for helping cover up a doctor’s two sons that killed the doctor. He tried to lure a woman in Anniston, AL a couple of years ago to a motel. Said he worked for her company and he needed to interview her. Yea with what. Plus he had a wreck drunk driving and they covered up the wreck and the police was never called. We are actually afraid of him being in our community but Anniston let him go and never charged him. But his victims and all of us ladies in my community are locked up because we are afraid of him. I just do not understand our justice system. I hope in my next life I come back as a Judge.. let me warn all ahead of time.. You will not want to come before me in my court!!!! This creep of a sex offender works at a bowling alley in Tarrant. I wonder how he is allowed to be around all these young folks that come to the bowling alley? It is funny to pass the house and see him out in the yard on Tuesdays with his white shorts and white tshirt on cutting the grass. I guess he is having a prison flashback. When hubby is driving and I see him outside I get him to go slow and I look at him , stare him down with a look “like you better keep your sex offender ass in your own area and do not come down my road.”

I replied:

There was some tongue-in-cheek in my aggravation of your chainsaw execution. Maybe such a punishment for sex traffickers would have a deterrent effect, but maybe not. The death penalty and long prison sentences with folks who look forward to having sex with new inmates for a long time doesn’t seem provide a deterrent effect. This is dicey terrain for me because of how I treated my younger sister. The karma from that has been awful, but there was no understanding of karma when I did it. The karma had at me for just over 40 years before I knew what it was and where it came from. Here’s something I wrote the other day, then tinkered some with, which I have covered before in posts from time to time.

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In June 2000, Jesus and his mother came to my sixth wife and me and told us his mother had molested him in his youth. I was enraged, not over what had happened, but over the news of it being kept secret, for I knew the havoc keeping it secret had wreaked in the subconscious of Christendom and humanity. This revelation came about after I kept telling that wife that I was hearing there is an evil greater than Lucifer, and finally she told me that Michael told her, if Sloan can conceive an evil greater than Lucifer, it exists. Shortly thereafter, Jesus and his mother came with the news that she had molested him. They came to two people who had been molested, I by my mother, my wife by her father. Two people who had been healed of it by Jesus and Michael. Healing unknown to religion, mental health and spiritual development circles today.
Shortly after Jesus and his mother came to us with the news, maybe a dozen awful open boils sprung up on my wife’s inside thighs. Proof that what had been told to us was being processed through her, and through me – I felt so sick that I wondered if I would die. After several days I was moved to tell my wife that we needed to make love, which was the very last thing she wanted to do with those nasty boils still in full bloom. I said it would help her move past it, if we made love. She saw what I meant, and slowly we moved into it and she had a very powerful orgasm. The next day the boils were receding, and in a few days the boils were healed over, and in a few more days the blemishes were gone, as if it had not happened.
I connected the dots back to the pejorative way Jesus spoke to and of his mother in the Gospels; and back to the first miracle Jesus made in the Gospels: he turned water into wine after being badgered by his mother to do it. I saw the linkage from the first miracle back to when Mary dominated Jesus sexually. I saw the linkage back to the three temptations in the wilderness, where Jesus was taunted to make miracles and did not, so the devil left him to return at a more opportune time. I saw maybe but for the incest that opportune time might never have come and Jesus might not have used miracles to sway people. He might have just taught people the correct way to live on this world. Maybe Christendom might not have become a religion based on miracles, including the miracle salvation formula it claims provides eternal life in heaven.
Later, the angels told me when Jesus finally told his father what his wife was doing to their son, Joseph’s heart failed and he collapsed and died in Jesus’ arms. That’s why Joseph disappeared from the Gospels.

Morticia wrote:

OH my that is heavy duty.

Thank you for this email. I am very sorry about you and your ex wife being molested. That is so sad.. VERY VERY sad.

As far as Mary that is very interesting. I never thought anything like that.. I will now.

I replied:

I had never thought anything like that about Mary, either; it came as a total shock. However, I had long wondered why Jesus spoke poorly to and of his mother in the Gospels, when it was said Jews should honor their mother and their father so their days would belong. The more time distance I have had since being told that, the more it says to me that child molestation is very old and it is in all strata of society. In fact, when it was revealed to us, we were told it was not all that uncommon back then; people lived in close quarters, etc.

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Same day post-script, not sent to Morticia:

Jesus and Mary came to Cathy and me in June 2000, when we were laying over on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, west of Madagascar. We had come there from South Africa, and before that we were in Costa Rica. From Mauritius we went to India, Mumbai (Bombay), and from there we flew via Tokyo to Hawaii. During the entire trip we did very heavy spirit work, even as it look to people around us that we were vacationing.

We ended up on Maui, where the credit card companies finally cut us off. After the remaining cash we had used the cards to get from banks ran out, we lived on the street until finally a family who owned a lodge where we had stayed a few days let us live on their land in a tent. I did gardening work, Cathy helped clean rooms and babysat the couple’s children.

I told the angels yesterday that was a hell of a reward for bringing down and processing through us the incest Mary inflicted on Jesus, and no wonder there were so few God workers on this planet, if that’s how it goes for them.

It finally went south between Cathy and me on Maui, when I was told to ask her, at what point during the time from when she was 3 to when she was 18 did she become a knowing accomplice in her father having sex with her? Even after the incest had been shown to her by Jesus and Michael, and even after the really volatile healing they did inside of her, Cathy did not recall the incest. All she recalled was when she was 18 she knew she had to leave her parents’ home and never go back there again.

I did not recall what my mother had done to me in my crib. But the internal healing work done in me by Michael and Jesus, in the fall of 1998, was so caustic and so volatile and so terrifying that there was no doubt in my mind what they were working on in me. They told my then best male friend, who was following all of it psychically, that what was done to me was “the work of the Devil.” There were 2-3 terrifying internal healing sessions a day for 6 weeks.

Cathy’s internal healing was 3-4 sessions a day, for about a month. She lived in another state and I held her hand on the telephone as she went through each tumultuous healing session. Who else could have held her hand but me, who had already been through it himself? At that time, Cathy was only someone who had come to me for help. We did not know we would end up together.

Cathy was referred to me by a professional psychic in the Mid-West US, whom I had known since 1990. The psychic wanted me to teach Cathy the soul alchemy ritual St. John of the Cross had used to trigger the dark night of the soul alchemy in himself. The psychic had not picked up the incest with Cathy’s father. However, when Cathy called me, she said she felt she would die if I could not help her. Could I help her? I said yes, with God’s help, but she would have to die. Did she know what I meant by that? She said she understood.

I did not teach Cathy the soul alchemy ritual. Jesus and Michael took her over and she died to everything she had been and known. It took about two months. I never saw or heard of anyone changing that fast. It helped that Cathy had not been raised in any religion and did that have that to shed.

However, Cathy had been a follower, no sex, only devotion, of a yogi from India, and he was shed in a spirit dispossession ceremony conducted for her by Michael and Jesus. That came about after Cathy dreamt of seeing her old then deceased guru sitting in the lotus position over her head, sucking her energy out of the top of her head. She tearfully watched Jesus and Michael escort her old guru off to wherever he needed to be instead.

Cathy became violently ill in South Africa, after we went to the Indian embassy in Durban to apply for visas for India. As a result, we reversed the time we had planned to spend in Mauritius from 3 days to 30 days, and we likewise reversed the 30 days we had planned to spend in India from 30 days to 3 days.

On the ride to the waterfront from the Mumbai airport, Cathy, who had excellent spirit vision and hearing, said all she could see in the air were serpents. I said, not the nice friendly kind of serpents on the Saturday morning cartoons. Cathy said, no, not those kind of serpents.

We both felt awful the three days we were in India, and we were very happy when we left for Tokyo. There are worse things than being homeless, and for us being in India was one of them.

After it went south between Cathy and me on Maui, I was told in my sleep at dawn one morning to go to Big Pine Key. I woke up, said okay, but I have no money. In three days time I was on a flight to Los Angeles. After laying over a few days with my old friend who had held my hand during the healing of what my mother had done to me, I was on a Greyhound bus headed to the Florida Keys. I did nothing to cause any of that to happen. It just happened and I went along with it.

As the bus reached the outskirts of Tallahassee, I fell asleep and dreamt of the US District Judge for whom I had clerked. He had run the Democratic Party in Alabama. No Democrat in Alabama ran for state or national office without his blessing. He told me in the dream that he thought he might get into politics. I replied that I didn’t think that was a good idea, but knowing him, he was going to do it. I awoke in shock. I hated politics.

That’s how I ended up in Key West in December 2000, living on the street. That’s how my involvement in homelessness, and in politics, began. I would advise people who, as I did in early 1987, tell God they want to be used for human service, that they don’t have a clue what all that can entail.

Today I live on Little Torch Key, about a mile as the seagull flies below Big Pine Key. I’m on Big Pine Key doing something almost every day. In spirit, I am working all the time, even when I’m asleep.

I told someone the other day that I am a human Waste Management operation. Human spirit waste is run through me. It makes me sick physically. There is nothing I can do about it but write what I am given to write about it, and endure. The angels healed me of the sex sins of my mother and my father, but the angels did not remove the karma from what I did to my sister.

Sloan Bashinsky

sloanbashinsky@hotmail.com

dumb blonde American teaching model – pure testosterone

dumbe blonde

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There is a

Down Key West way …

Former homeless woman Pam Eden’s water colors at the Frangipani Gallery on upper Duval Street are spectacular. Drop by and see for yourself, if you live in or are in Key West.

Meanwhile, a friend of Erika Biddle, who had loaned her car to Erika to drive over to west Florida to pick up Pam Eden’s art and bring it back to Key West, told me at the gallery last night that she used to read what I published on my websites, and I explained things so well that people didn’t have to think for themselves. I asked, sort of half joking, “So I made you into a dumb blonde?” She looked at me, and I said, “You stopped thinking for yourself because of what I wrote?” She said no, she didn’t stop thinking for herself, and what I wrote was too long, she would have covered the same subjects much quicker and more concisely.

I asked if she knew Naja Girard? No. I asked if she has been reading the new Key West the Newspaper? No. She didn’t know there was a new Key West the newspaper. I told her to check out this week’s edition at www.thebluepaper.com, and then she should write to Naja and tell her she wanted to write a weekly column for the blue paper. “Tell Naja I sent you,” I said. She said she preferred to write about Washington politics. I repeated my suggestion. She had a British accent. I imagined she might have some interesting unAmerican thoughts to share with The Blue Paper’s readers.

Meanwhile, received this forward yesterday from Tim Gratz of Keys Coalition, which was formed to resist child sex trafficking in the Florida Keys:

From: keyscoalition@live.com
To: keysmyhome@hotmail.com
Subject: You might appreciate this
Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 11:22:59 -0700

Tim:

The wisest words I saw this week…

They came in an important, thought-provoking piece by a Stanford University professor named Sean Reardon, and ran in The New York Times:

“There is a lot of discussion these days about investing in teachers and ‘improving’ teacher quality,’ but improving the quality of our parenting and of our children’s earliest environments may be even more important. Let’s invest in parents,” he says, “so they can better invest in their children. This means finding ways of helping parents become better teachers themselves…. It might also mean greater business and government support for maternity and paternity leave and (child) care so that the middle class and the poor can get some of the educational benefits that the early academic intervention of the rich provides their children. Fundamentally, it means rethinking our still-persistent notion that educational problems should be solved by schools alone. The more we do to ensure that children have similar cognitively early childhood experiences, the less we will have to worry about failing schools. This in turn will enable us to let our schools focus on teaching the skills – how to solve complex problems, how to think critically, and how to collaborate – essential to a growing economy and a lively democracy.”

When, oh when, are we going to act as though we really know that?

Dave Lawrence
Chair
The Children’s Movement of Florida

P.S.: To read the full article, just click here.

My stomach turned and soured over teaching tots reading, writing and arithmetic, when they are still supposed to be playing and exploring and learning in that way. Unimaginable harm is done to children forced into a grade school curriculum before their minds and souls are ready. Unimaginable harm also is done to children forced to learn by rote, instead of through applied hands-on experience. The entire dumb blonde American teaching model is soul destructive.

Here’s the full article, it’s pretty long. My interjected thoughts in italics:

No Rich Kid Left Behind

By SEAN F. REARDON
Javier Jaén

Here’s a fact that may not surprise you: the children of the rich perform better in school, on average, than children from middle-class or poor families. Students growing up in richer families have better grades and higher standardized test scores, on average, than poorer students; they also have higher rates of participation in extracurricular activities and school leadership positions, higher graduation rates and higher rates of college enrollment and completion.

There it is, the premise (myth) for all that follows: college education is the Holy Grail for all children in America.

Whether you think it deeply unjust, lamentable but inevitable, or obvious and unproblematic, this is hardly news. It is true in most societies and has been true in the United States for at least as long as we have thought to ask the question and had sufficient data to verify the answer.

What is news is that in the United States over the last few decades these differences in educational success between high- and lower-income students have grown substantially.

One way to see this is to look at the scores of rich and poor students on standardized math and reading tests over the last 50 years. When I did this using information from a dozen large national studies conducted between 1960 and 2010, I found that the rich-poor gap in test scores is about 40 percent larger now than it was 30 years ago.

To make this trend concrete, consider two children, one from a family with income of $165,000 and one from a family with income of $15,000. These incomes are at the 90th and 10th percentiles of the income distribution nationally, meaning that 10 percent of children today grow up in families with incomes below $15,000 and 10 percent grow up in families with incomes above $165,000.

In the 1980s, on an 800-point SAT-type test scale, the average difference in test scores between two such children would have been about 90 points; today it is 125 points. This is almost twice as large as the 70-point test score gap between white and black children. Family income is now a better predictor of children’s success in school than race.

The same pattern is evident in other, more tangible, measures of educational success, like college completion. In a study similar to mine, Martha J. Bailey and Susan M. Dynarski, economists at the University of Michigan, found that the proportion of students from upper-income families who earn a bachelor’s degree has increased by 18 percentage points over a 20-year period, while the completion rate of poor students has grown by only 4 points.

In a more recent study, my graduate students and I found that 15 percent of high-income students from the high school class of 2004 enrolled in a highly selective college or university, while fewer than 5 percent of middle-income and 2 percent of low-income students did.

I cannot imagine that our school board and schools superintendent and principals and teachers do not know of these statistics and trends. Yet they continue to force all students into a teaching model which clearly is not working well for at least half of their students. A teaching model Europeans do not use. They measure students, rich and poor, and put them into curriculums where they have the most aptitude and best chance of using in jobs. Yes, rich Europeans can bypass that teaching mode by sending their not college ready or able students to colleges which accept their parents’ money. Over all, though, European students, rich and poor, end up where they have the best chance of moving forward in life. An alien concept in America, and in the Florida Keys school district, even though our school district’s vision statement for many years has been to have high school graduates college and/or career ready. 

These widening disparities are not confined to academic outcomes: new research by the Harvard political scientist Robert D. Putnam and his colleagues shows that the rich-poor gaps in student participation in sports, extracurricular activities, volunteer work and church attendance have grown sharply as well.

Did the Harvard political scientist consider that the reason for this gap might be a dumb blonde teaching model, which does not examine each student and guide that student toward his/her most suited courses? Does the Harvard political scientist consider that the dumb blonde teaching model itself needs to be seriously studied and changed? 

In San Francisco this week, more than 14,000 educators and education scholars have gathered for the annual meeting of theAmerican Educational Research Association. The theme this year is familiar: Can schools provide children a way out of poverty?

We are still talking about this despite decades of clucking about the crisis in American education and wave after wave of school reform.Whatever we’ve been doing in our schools, it hasn’t reduced educational inequality between children from upper- and lower-income families.

How about teaching children trade skills from the first day of school? How about teaching American children children hands-on skills from the first day of school? How about teaching American children music from the first day of school. And art? And mechanics? And poetry? And dance? And drama? And creative writing? And story telling? And typing? And a conversation only second language, Spanish? How about engaging the whole child from the first day of school, instead only a small part of the child’s left brain hemisphere? Do you think that method might produce better results for kids generally, than the dumb blonde model now in use?

Part of knowing what we should do about this is understanding how and why these educational disparities are growing. For the past few years, alongside other scholars, I have been digging into historical data to understand just that. The results of this research don’t always match received wisdom or playground folklore.

The most potent development over the past three decades is that the test scores of children from high-income families have increased very rapidly. Before 1980, affluent students had little advantage over middle-class students in academic performance; most of the socioeconomic disparity in academics was between the middle class and the poor. But the rich now outperform the middle class by as much as the middle class outperform the poor. Just as the incomes of the affluent have grown much more rapidly than those of the middle class over the last few decades, so, too, have most of the gains in educational success accrued to the children of the rich.

Before we can figure out what’s happening here, let’s dispel a few myths.

RELATED
A Look at the Data

75 ThumbnailGraphs highlight some of the trends described in this article.

 

The income gap in academic achievement is not growing because the test scores of poor students are dropping or because our schools are in decline. In fact, average test scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the so-called Nation’s Report Card, have been rising — substantially in math and very slowly in reading — since the 1970s. The average 9-year-old today has math skills equal to those her parents had at age 11, a two-year improvement in a single generation. The gains are not as large in reading and they are not as large for older students, but there is no evidence that average test scores have declined over the last three decades for any age or economic group.

The widening income disparity in academic achievement is not a result of widening racial gaps in achievement, either. The achievement gaps between blacks and whites, and Hispanic and non-Hispanic whites have been narrowing slowly over the last two decades, trends that actually keep the yawning gap between higher- and lower-income students from getting even wider. If we look at the test scores of white students only, we find the same growing gap between high- and low-income children as we see in the population as a whole.

It may seem counterintuitive, but schools don’t seem to produce much of the disparity in test scores between high- and low-income students. We know this because children from rich and poor families score very differently on school readiness tests when they enter kindergarten, and this gap grows by less than 10 percent between kindergarten and high school. There is some evidence that achievement gaps between high- and low-income students actually narrow during the nine-month school year, but they widen again in the summer months.

This snake seems to have turned around and swallowed its own tail.

That isn’t to say that there aren’t important differences in quality between schools serving low- and high-income students — there certainly are — but they appear to do less to reinforce the trends than conventional wisdom would have us believe.

If not the usual suspects, what’s going on? It boils down to this: The academic gap is widening because rich students are increasingly entering kindergarten much better prepared to succeed in school than middle-class students. This difference in preparation persists through elementary and high school.

Okay, you pass a law saying rich kids cannot be taught in their homes? Rich kids cannot be given computers, I-Pads, video games, Rubick cubes, Legos, tinker toys, erector sets, model electric train sets, etc? You create a department in Homeland Security to enforce that?  Or, do you use a teaching model geared to engage young students as human beings with their own inclinations and abilities waiting to be discovered and encouraged and developed?

My research suggests that one part of the explanation for this is rising income inequality. As you may have heard, the incomes of the rich have grown faster over the last 30 years than the incomes of the middle class and the poor. Money helps families provide cognitively stimulating experiences for their young children because it provides more stable home environments, more time for parents to read to their children, access to higher-quality child care and preschool and — in places like New York City, where 4-year-old children take tests to determine entry into gifted and talented programs — access to preschool test preparation tutors or the time to serve as tutors themselves.

This Stanford author is getting repetitive. Redundant also comes to mind. And boring. This Stanford author also is sounding like he is not in touch with reality. What’s he gonna do, take money away from rich families and give it to poor families, and then he’s going to have a legion of overseers to make sure the poor families spend the rich families’ Robin-Hooded money to give their poor kids the same things the rich kids have? And, he like’s testing 4-year-olds? And preschool test preparation tutors? Is he freaking serious? By the way, Standford is the west coast’s answer to Harvard, Princeton and Yale. My father and his father both went to Princeton, and as far as I can tell, it didn’t help them one bit in the rest of their lives. They made their fortunes by their wits and lots of hard work. My father’s fortune depended heavily on his knowledge of mechanics and electronics, which he learned on his own when he was a kid. My grandfather’s fortune depended heavily on his business savvy, which he learned from his father, a self-educated Polish Jew who came to America when he was 15, alone.

But rising income inequality explains, at best, half of the increase in the rich-poor academic achievement gap. It’s not just that the rich have more money than they used to, it’s that they are using it differently. This is where things get really interesting.

High-income families are increasingly focusing their resources — their money, time and knowledge of what it takes to be successful in school — on their children’s cognitive development and educational success. They are doing this because educational success is much more important than it used to be, even for the rich.

What about job success? What about life success? What about relationship success? What about mental health success? I bet rich families spend heaps more per kid on psychiatrists, psychologists, clinical social workers, rehab centers, than do poor families. 

With a college degree insufficient to ensure a high-income job, or even a job as a barista, parents are now investing more time and money in their children’s cognitive development from the earliest ages. It may seem self-evident that parents with more resources are able to invest more — more of both money and of what Mr. Putnam calls “‘Goodnight Moon’ time” — in their children’s development. But even though middle-class and poor families are also increasing the time and money they invest in their children, they are not doing so as quickly or as deeply as the rich.

Maybe the rich Americans today should start their own country with its own school system, or maybe poor families should be deported to Mexico or wherever.

The economists Richard J. Murnane and Greg J. Duncan report that from 1972 to 2006 high-income families increased the amount they spent on enrichment activities for their children by 150 percent, while the spending of low-income families grew by 57 percent over the same time period. Likewise, the amount of time parents spend with their children has grown twice as fast since 1975 among college-educated parents as it has among less-educated parents. The economists Garey Ramey and Valerie A. Ramey of the University of California, San Diego, call this escalation of early childhood investment “the rug rat race,” a phrase that nicely captures the growing perception that early childhood experiences are central to winning a lifelong educational and economic competition.

It’s not clear what we should do about all this. Partly that’s because much of our public conversation about education is focused on the wrong culprits: we blame failing schools and the behavior of the poor for trends that are really the result of deepening income inequality and the behavior of the rich.

I always heard that money is the root of all evil, but I wager the dumb blonde teaching model used in America is  giving money a serious run for that distinction. 

We’re also slow to understand what’s happening, I think, because the nature of the problem — a growing educational gap between the rich and the middle class — is unfamiliar. After all, for much of the last 50 years our national conversation about educational inequality has focused almost exclusively on strategies for reducing inequalities between the educational successes of the poor and the middle class, and it has relied on programs aimed at the poor, like Head Start and Title I.

Aiming a learning a trade, typing, and another or other languages would work a lot better.

We’ve barely given a thought to what the rich were doing. With the exception of our continuing discussion about whether the rising costs of higher education are pricing the middle class out of college, we don’t have much practice talking about what economists call “upper-tail inequality” in education, much less success at reducing it.

Meanwhile, not only are the children of the rich doing better in school than even the children of the middle class, but the changing economy means that school success is increasingly necessary to future economic success, a worrisome mutual reinforcement of trends that is making our society more socially and economically immobile.

Darn, is this Stanford author going nowhere but in circles.

We need to start talking about this. Strangely, the rapid growth in the rich-poor educational gap provides a ray of hope: if the relationship between family income and educational success can change this rapidly, then it is not an immutable, inevitable pattern. What changed once can change again. Policy choices matter more than we have recently been taught to think.

So how can we move toward a society in which educational success is not so strongly linked to family background? Maybe we should take a lesson from the rich and invest much more heavily as a society in our children’s educational opportunities from the day they are born. Investments in early-childhood education pay very high societal dividends. That means investing in developing high-quality child care and preschool that is available to poor and middle-class children. It also means recruiting and training a cadre of skilled preschool teachers and child care providers. These are not new ideas, but we have to stop talking about how expensive and difficult they are to implement and just get on with it.

No way America can afford this author’s plan and have a military which is bigger than and costs more than all other countries’ military combined, and when America fights stupid wars when I doesn’t have the money to pay for same, using soldiers who came from middle income and low income families. It would go a long way toward solving this author’s concerns for kids from rich families to have just as much exposure to American military adventures as kids from middle and low income families. If that method had been used when George W. Bush was at Yale, instead of his rich Yale alum Texas father getting his kid into the Alabama Air National Guard unit in Montgomery, even thought G.W. did not live in Alabama,  from which unit G.W. went A.W.O.L.

But for his rich father’s string pulling, G.W. A.W.O.L. would have gone to federal prison like a dear friend of mine in Key West from a middle income Idaho family did when he was 18, because he refused to be inducted and be sent to Vietnam, which was a US Military-Industrial Complex intervention into a Asian civil war which had nothing to do with America. My friend served all of a 3-year sentence, and he has been screwed up ever since. Or, G.W.A.W.O.L. would have been sent to Vietnam where he might have been killed or maimed and terminally battle-shocked like my dear Key West friend due to being in federal prison from age 18-21.

Maybe if G.W.A.O.L. had gone to federal prison or Vietnam, America would not now be so broke from G.W. A.W.O.L.’s two seriously stupid ruinous wars that it can’t afford its own military any more, so it prints money to pay for its military and wars, which shambles the American economy even worse, and widens the rich and poor gap even farther. Maybe if G.W. A.W.O.L had gone to federal prison or Vietnam, America’s military would not be the only real trade school option for kids from middle and low income families. Real, because it’s free. I wonder if this Stanford author backed G.W.A.W.O.L.’s two seriously stupid wars? I don’t wonder if this Stanford author fought in either of those two seriously stupid ruinous wars.

But we need to do much more than expand and improve preschool and child care. There is a lot of discussion these days about investing in teachers and “improving teacher quality,” but improving the quality of our parenting and of our children’s earliest environments may be even more important. Let’s invest in parents so they can better invest in their children.

This means finding ways of helping parents become better teachers themselves. This might include strategies to support working families so that they can read to their children more often.. It also means expanding programs like the Nurse-Family Partnership that have proved to be effective at helping single parents educate their children; but we also need to pay for research to develop new resources for single parents.

It might also mean greater business and government support for maternity and paternity leave and day care so that the middle class and the poor can get some of the educational benefits that the early academic intervention of the rich provides their children. Fundamentally, it means rethinking our still-persistent notion that educational problems should be solved by schools alone.

Where’s the money gonna come from to pay for all of this, assuming poor families want their lives run by government workers?

The more we do to ensure that all children have similar cognitively stimulating early childhood experiences, the less we will have to worry about failing schools. This in turn will enable us to let our schools focus on teaching the skills — how to solve complex problems, how to think critically and how to collaborate — essential to a growing economy and a lively democracy.

You want to stimulate first-graders cognitively, and in all other ways, teach them to fix a washing machine. Teach them to play a harmonica. Teach them to type. Teach them another language in a course where they only can speak that language. Teach them to sew. Teach them to create a website. Teach them to write a computer program. Teach them to tell stories, and let them write down their stories in their native language and in their adopted language. Don’t grade them on spelling and grammar.  Don’t grade them at all, but show them the correct spelling and grammar, and encourage them to keep telling stories and writing them down, and watch how quickly they learned to read and write. There are so many ways to teach young children, which help them. The dumb blonde teaching model hurts them, and worse.


Sean F. Reardon is a professor of education and sociology at Stanford.

I wonder if Stanford professor of education and sociology Reardon has figured out yet that America can’t provide affordable health care coverage to most of its citizen because of how much America spends on its military and wars? I wonder if Reardon ever read Ayn Rand’s ATLAS SHRUGGED? There’s a Reardon in that tale, who excelled in business, and going to college had nothing to do with it.

My oldest second Bashinsky cousin sent this today:

Bash-Thought you might use this sometime in your blog
 
Everyone talks about leaving a better planet for our kids
 
Let’s try to leave better kids for our planet
 
On the lighter side…
 
Forget the whales-Save yourself
My kids don’t want to have anything to do with me, but when we still were in love I did my best to try to teach them to be good people, follow their hearts, and be kind to the environment and to other people, after those topics became of interest to me. Today, it’s all I can do to get up each morning and deal with what the angels put in front of me to engage today. Dreams last night alerted me to something different about education for today’s post.

As for Vietnam, a fellow who used to live in Key West put this onto Facebook today:

We actually have quit a list.. Waco, Ruby Ridge… ATROCITY’S R U.S. and on…
I never forget…a very sad day…in the annals of free speech, a day of infamy. National Guard troops open fire on unarmed college students (including some who were simply walking to clas and not in the protest) killing four…at Kent State University in Ohio, May 4th, 1970. Four dead and no one was arrested and no one was punished…and many “man in the street” interviews expressed that they “got what they deserved”…BUT no one should ever be shot by our government for speaking their mind.
Kent State
My sixth wife was one of the Kent State students on whom the Ohio National Guard opened fire. She told me that she and a bunch of the students jumped up and ran away, and when they reached a knoll she veered left and the rest of them went ahead together and were caught up with by pursuing national guardsmen who shot some of the fleeing students. Unarmed students, protesting US bombings in Cambodia or maybe it was Laos. Protesting Democrat President Lyndon Johnson’s expansion of the war in Vietnam without Congressional approval. When they would not disperse, when they would not quit calling out Uncle Sam, when they would not quit taunting the national guardsmen, they were shot at and many of them were killed. No national guardsmen, nor their commanding officer, were prosecuted. My wife never got over it. She never trusted American government again. I didn’t blame her. I didn’t thrust America’s government either. Hadn’t since Vietnam. That’s something else first graders should be taught – Vietnam and Kent State, and G.W.A.W.O.L and how going to his father’s Ivy League alma mater later got him elected President of the United States of America. LOL that being taught to American first graders.
Sloan Bashinsky, B.A. Economics, Vanderbilt. J.D, and L.L.M in Tax Law, University of Alabama School of Law
keysmyhome@hotmail.com
No, I did not dodge the Vietnam draft. God dodged me out of it after I had signed up to be drafted. That’s another story I would love to tell Keys first graders. Lots of luck, unless they read it on my websites.

 

God and the Bible in American public schools jihad? Be careful what you ask for

Gethsemane

Gethsemane

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For two days and nights I have been getting slammed by the angels over not publishing something they wanted me to publish. I was clueless what it was until I awoke before dawn today and the many different dreams and characters therein pointed me to this email. My interjected thoughts in italics:

SINCE THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE AND THE LORD’S PRAYER ARE NOT ALLOWED IN MOST PUBLIC SCHOOLS ANYMORE!!!!?

From: Eddie Fleming (doctoreddie@hotmail.com)
Sent: Sun 4/28/13 3:29 PM
To: sloanbashinsky (sloanbashinsky@hotmail.com)
Be careful! This sender failed our fraud detection checks.

This sender failed my fraud detection checks, too, which is why I sent his propaganda to junk mail, against the angels’ wishes I later learned.

———————————————————–BY A 15 YR. OLD SCHOOL KID WHO GOT AN A+ FOR THIS ENTRY(TOTALLY AWESOME)! SINCE THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE AND THE LORD’S PRAYER ISN’T ALLOWED IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS ANYMORE BECAUSE THE WORD ‘GOD’ IS MENTIONED…..A KID IN ARIZONA WROTE THE ATTACHED NEW SCHOOL PRAYER:“NEW PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE”

 

I first saw this poem maybe two years ago and wondered even then if the kid was given an A+ for it by one of his teachers, or if one of his teachers even ever saw the poem, or if a kid even wrote it? I have never seen any forward from the Tea Party, nor from the Republican right, that I felt was not severely doctored. I seldom receive propaganda from the Democrat quadrant, but in its own way it’s just as doctored.———————————————————-

NOW I SIT ME DOWN IN SCHOOLWHERE PRAYING IS AGAINST THE RULE

Wrong. Anyone can pray in secret anytime in school, like Jesus said in the Gospels, and be rewarded by God in secret.

FOR THIS GREAT NATION UNDER GOD FINDS MENTION OF HIM VERY ODD.IF SCRIPTURE NOW THE CLASS RECITES, IT VIOLATES THE BILL OF RIGHTS.

The Bill of Rights, specifically Amendment I, calls for freedom of religion and also for separation of church and state. If you want to quote scriptures in public, like the Pharisees of Jesus’ time did, you are free to do so anywhere, including in a school, but you are not free to turn your classes or your school into a Christian church service. By like token, you are not allowed to turn your classes or your school into a Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Shinto, New Age, Pagan, or Native American church service. 

AND ANYTIME MY HEAD I BOW
BECOMES A FEDERAL MATTER NOW 

You can bow your head anywhere you wish, including in a school. You just can’t make or ask other people bow their heads with you in contradiction of how Jesus said to pray, in secret, and be rewarded by God in secret.

OUR HAIR CAN BE PURPLE, ORANGE OR GREEN,

THAT’S NO OFFENSE; IT’S A FREEDOM SCENE..

THE LAW IS SPECIFIC, THE LAW IS PRECISE.

PRAYERS SPOKEN ALOUD ARE A SERIOUS VICE.

FOR PRAYING IN A PUBLIC HALL

MIGHT OFFEND SOMEONE WITH NO FAITH AT ALL..

You would not be offended if a Jew, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Shinto, Pagan or New Age person prayed aloud in your classroom?

IN SILENCE ALONE WE MUST MEDITATE,

GOD’S NAME IS PROHIBITED BY THE STATE.

Jesus said in your own scriptures not to pray in public like the Pharisees, but to pray in secret and be rewarded by God in secret.

WE’RE ALLOWED TO CUSS AND DRESS LIKE FREAKS,

AND PIERCE OUR NOSES, TONGUES AND CHEEKS…

THEY’VE OUTLAWED GUNS, BUT FIRST THE BIBLE.

TO QUOTE THE GOOD BOOK MAKES ME LIABLE.

The way you are going about it makes you liable to Jesus, who told you in your own scriptures not to carry on like that in public.

WE CAN ELECT A PREGNANT SENIOR QUEEN,

AND THE ‘UNWED DADDY,’ OUR SENIOR KING.

IT’S ‘INAPPROPRIATE’ TO TEACH RIGHT FROM WRONG,

WE’RE TAUGHT THAT SUCH ‘JUDGMENTS’ DO NOT BELONG..

WE CAN GET OUR CONDOMS AND BIRTH CONTROLS,
STUDY WITCHCRAFT, VAMPIRES AND TOTEM POLES…

BUT THE TEN COMMANDMENTS ARE NOT ALLOWED,
NO WORD OF GOD MUST REACH THIS CROWD.

In the Gospels, Jesus said on the Two Great Commandments, Love God and Love Your Neighbor As Yourself, hang all the law and the prophets. Love even your pink, purple, red, green or orange-haired neighbor. Love even your Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Shinto, Pagan, New Age or Christian neighbor. Love even your Mexican, Asian, African, Native American, Anglo-Saxon neighbor. Love even your enemy neighbor.

IT’S SCARY HERE I MUST CONFESS,

WHEN CHAOS REIGNS THE SCHOOL’S A MESS.

SO, LORD, THIS SILENT PLEA I MAKE:

SHOULD I BE SHOT; MY SOUL PLEASE TAKE!

It indeed is scary, and chaos certainly reigns. Nothing silent about your plea. If shot in your school by a card carrying member of the National Rifle Association, your soul will be taken, but by what?

AMEN

IF YOU AREN’T ASHAMED TO DO THIS, PLEASE PASS THIS ON..

JESUS SAID, ‘IF YOU ARE ASHAMED OF ME, I WILL BE ASHAMED OF YOU BEFORE MY FATHER.’

Do you think Jesus is ashamed of you, Doctor, for advocating praying in public like the Pharisees prayed?

THANK YOU,
DR. EDDIE FLEMING

Disclaimer:  Opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Dr. Eddie Fleming.

Whose opinions do these opinions you expressed herein represent, Doctor? God’s? Jesus’? 

Dr. Fleming provides the electronic email program for the benefit of the Saint Augustine Tea Party

(www.saintaugustineteaparty.org), the voters of St. Johns County and the State of Florida. 

Dr. Fleming reserves all rights and privileges.

I wonder, Doctor, what all rights and privileges you have reserved for yourself? Do you think all Christians should pledge allegiance to God via Jesus in the Gospels, whose regimen for walking with God is laid out in plain view in the Gospels.

Jesus taught the true jihad in the Gospels. The true jihad is between us, the Devil in us, and God. If you want that God, Jesus and jihad taught in American public schools, Doctor, then I’m all for it.

Sloan Bashinsky

Little Torch Key

Florida Keys

sloanbashinsky@hotmail.com

Sunday homily: child sex trafficking cure – Key West initiative

 

child sex traffickingchild sex trafficking 2

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Since yesterday, the child sex trade topic grew in size and shape, so today I first bring forward the child sex trafficking part of yesterday’s homeless former Key West woman’s art gallery opening, and child sex trafficking seminar post, then I include later developments.

Tim Gratz of Key West wrote:
From: keyscoalition@live.com
To: keysmyhome@hotmail.com
Subject: Can you help broadcast this?
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2013 08:11:22 -0700

I am not sure whether Vicky sent this info to you.

*****************************************************

The Keys Coalition against Human Trafficking invites community members to its annual meeting Sunday, April 28th, 2013 at 3 pm, which will be hosted by Monroe County Mayor George Neugent and Ginger Snead, former Marathon Mayor and current member of Marathon City Council. The meeting will be held at the Marathon Firehouse, 8900 Overseas Highway, and Gulf side.

Greg Feldman, Regional Criminal Justice Coordinator at Florida Department of Children and Families, will speak. (See the attached biography.) He has advised the coalition previously and assisted in the development of work in the Upper Keys. Special music will be provided by Keys recording artist/songwriter Adrienne. A State of the Coalition report will share successes and challenges of the last year. Members will also be asked to elect officers for the next six months.

The Coalition’s efforts have focused primarily on the sexual exploitation of minors. At a recent program meeting in Key West, Tyson Elliot, Human Trafficking Coordinator for the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice said, as quoted in the Key West Citizen, “Human trafficking is a very real problem, and it’s ‘definitely’ going on in the Keys.” Details and sources are available on the KC website, www.keyscoalition.com.

For information about the meeting or about membership, please contact Vicky Fay at vickyfay@terranova.net or 451-5517

I replied:

Maybe, but I don’t care of the last paragraph, because Elliot is not working in the Keys as per what was quoted in The Citizen along with his quote in what you sent to me; and my impression, from what you send me to read is, your focus is 90 percent outside the Keys.

Tim replied:

Feldman who does work in South Florida and Monroe was on the Becker show this a.m.

Did you get a chance to hear him? If not you can on the Net this late afternoon as you know.

******************************************************

The focus of KC is definitely on the Keys although frankly I do not think we should be so provincial. A child trafficked in Africa is as much a travesty and deserving of justice as a child trafficked here. Now I am not necessarily talking about child sex trafficking because other than donations to organizations fighting that overseas there is not much we can do about it.

What I am talking about is slavery in the manufacture of goods we purchase, including chocolate and components of cell phones and perhaps even produce harvested in Florida.

This may be too much for us to take on now but education to ensure we purchase products not made by slave labor can be important,

But back to child sex trafficking:

Elliott, an expert, believes trafficking likely occurs here but has not yet surfaced because there has so far been inadequate training in recognizing its signs. So one of the programs we are developing is awareness training for those whose profession may put them in contact with traffic victims.

More important, really, is the development of training/awareness/prevention programs for targeted youth.

Here is one of several programs we are investigating:

http://www.liarsandposers.com/

Far better to prevent victimization than to rescue a child after she (he) has bben victimized.

Best

Tim

P.S. Do you recall the labor trafficking case that went down about five years ago (before the issue was on my “radar screen”)?

I replied:

I listened to Becker’s interview of Feldman. Feldman did not really answer Becker’s question, is child sex trafficking/slaving happening in the Keys. Rather, Feldman talked generally about how it is in cities and rural communities. However, Feldman sound a thousand times better than that fellow I heard in the church in Marathon maybe a year ago. Feldman works for the state, is not trying to push his own private business geared toward making money from putting on child sex trafficking/slaving workshops and attracting paying clients for training and/or advice. I continue to think and say you and Connie and others/Keys Coalition need to focus here in the Keys, and on child sex trafficking/slaving, and it is not on your plate to drag into adults in the trade. Nor African slavery. Nor anything not directly relevant to child sex trafficking/slaving in the Keys. Duval Street’s sex dens remain your primary traffickers and your primary target in the Keys.

————————————-

Given how many times I have told Tim that he, Connie Gilbert and Keys Coalition need to take on Key West’ sex trafficking/slave magnet, and given I have not Tim, Connie or Keys Coalition do that, it looks to me that there is too much in Key West for Keys Coalition to take on. That aside, I agree with Tim: education is the best preventative, for once a child is lured into, or intentionally foes into sex trafficking, it is very difficult to undo it.

It remains my view that in the children Tim sees himself, and that drives him to eradicate all forms of child slavery world wide, which cannot be done. Nor, in my opinion, can even a dent be made it child slavery even in America. I have told Tim this several times, and I have also encouraged him to do what he can to head off children going into sex trafficking in the Keys, where he lives.

——————————————————————

That part of yesterday’s post ended there.

From Tim Gratz later yesterday:

KEYS COALITION (keyscoalition@live.com)
To: Sloan Bashinsky

Assuming you publish this tomorrow:

Keys Coalition thanks you for the coverage you have provided re the human trafficking seminar at the Marathon Fire Station at 3:00 p.m. this afternoon.

You wrote yesterday:

“It remains my view that in the children Tim sees himself, and that drives him to [want to] eradicate all forms of child slavery world wide, which cannot be done.”

You are very close to the truth. My eyes were first opened to the trafficking issue in 2007 when I saw a program on Dateline NBC on child sex trafficking in third world countries. At the time my daughter Melody Joy was ten years old.

What I saw on that program was girls my daughters age being sold in brothels. It was the thought that many of those girls in third world countries were the age of my daughter that ignited my passion re the issue. I have not studied it but I have seen anecdotal evidence that many men have become involved in the issue because they too have young daughters.

But in 2007 I did not realize that child sex trafficking existed to any extent in this country. I first discovered that in 2011 and it was that horrible discovery that led to the formation of Keys Coalition.

You state that it will never be possible to “eradicate all forms of child slavery world wide” and I acknowledge that you are right about that. Many anti-trafficking organizations talk about ending slavery in our lifetime. Again I do not think that possible but that acknowledgement should not cause us to throw up our hands in despair. Our mission should be to do all we can within our means to minimize its incidence.

You also wrote:

“. . .Education is the best preventative, for once a child is lured into, or intentionally goes into sex trafficking, it is very difficult to undo it.” You are as so often right on in your analysis. Far better to prevent a child from becoming a victim than it is to rescue a child who has already been victimized. While we do not want to minimize the importance of detecting any victims that may be in Monroe County (primarily through spreading awareness of the “signs” that a person may be a trafficked victim) we want to prioritize the development and implementation of programs to train young people so they are not lured or forced in to sexual exploitation. That is why we are intrigued with the “Liars and Posers” program developed by anti-trafficking organization in Texas.

Again, thank you for publicizing the event and your counsel. Let me share with you this great quotation from Edward Everett Hale, that I suspect you may have heard before:

” I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. What I can do, I should do. And what I should do, by the grace of God, I will do.”

Because we cannot do everything to stop slavery does not mean we should do nothing about the problem whether locally or globally. What we can do, we must do. Our moral conscience so requires.

————————————————-

I was unable to copy and paste the attachment into this post. Summing it up, the combined attempt to rid this planet of human slavery in its various forms is impressive. But, this isn’t 1860, Tim isn’t Abraham Lincoln, and this evil is planet wide …

I replied:

Hi again, Tim -

Yes, I have to agree that all possible must be done by those called to stop child sex trafficking and other forms of child enslavement; and also to retrieve and restore children, and even adults who went into the trade as children. The world in which you seek to have an effect is the worst, nastiest, most evil world I can imagine on this planet. I hope a special place in hell is reserved for adults who profit in that world at the expense of their slaves. I hope the perps reach that special place in hell ASAP, which would make a serious dent in the business they are in. I still think, though, there is more to what drives you than seeing in the child sex trafficking trade your own daughters. I still think something in your past, which child sex trafficking reminds you of in some way, was triggered and is in play. And, I still don’t see human efforts making a dent in the sex trade, or in any slave trades; I think it will take a supernatural intervention such as I suggested above. And, I still think you, Connie Gilbert and Keys Coalition should restrict your efforts to what is going in the Keys, where there is a major child sex trade magnet operating in plain view, which is in Key West, mostly on Duval Street.

Sloan

Tim wrote:

We are in so much agreement. I agree that supernatural intervention is necessary to combat what you rightly characterize as one of the worst and nastiest worlds imaginable. Although Keys Coalition is secular, I am also involved in an organization which is working to fight trafficking through the power of prayer. Re the hottest places in hell being reserved in hell for those who so cruelly exploited minors for their commercial gain, I am reminded of Matthew 18:6 where Jesus says that if anyone causes one of His children to fall into sin it would be better for him to have a millstone tied around his neck and dropped in to the sea. Now, that being said, even of worst slave-trader is not beyond redemption. I am sure you are aware of the story of John Newton who wrote the words that became the song “Amazing Grace”, who was a slave-trader until he realized the evil of what he was doing. In the movie “Amazing Grace” it recounts the true story that Newton inspired William Wilberforce to continue his efforts to ban the slave trade in England.

Re what we can do to fight slavery in other parts of the world, we can work to ensure that the products we purchase were not made in part from slave labor. California recently passed a law that corporations doing sufficient business in that state must disclose efforts they make to ensure their supply chain is free of slave labor.

You might also like to look at the attached report that has some interesting and I believe worthwhile recomendations.

I am heartened by the fact that there are many very good minds working on this issue.

Best

Tim

I replied:

I dreamt about this hell in a nap today, before I replied to your next previous email. After replying, I had to run an errand for a friend, even as some thoughts came to me.

[I was told in the nap to steer this discussion toward sexual child abuse, and that there was another line of approach, prayer for Divine Intervention. I did not tell Tim those details in the nap.]

First, I still think you, Connie and Keys Coalition should lay off the global and even national and even Florida, and focus on child sex trafficking the Keys.

Two, I imagine perhaps most kids who end up in trafficking were were sexually molested and the schools are still the best place to try to intervene with such kids, via teachers spotting warning signs and reporting concerns to superiors and law enforcement. Pediatricians and family practitioners also are good for spotting kids who are being abused.

Three, several times I have mentioned and have written of an event the angels clearly had to have arranged, in which I was told by a Keys person of a prominent Key West man who this person said is said to have a chicken farm in the Caribbean. Code, for a place where he keeps a stable of young boys. Connie twice or maybe three times told me she knows this man well and would speak to him about that, but each time I bring it back up with her, she either does not respond to me, or she says she has not spoken with the man. If wrote the above in a post and named this man, there would be a major upheaval in my life, and probably in the Keys.

You have not responded today to anything I wrote about the Key West sex magnet. Do you and Connie speak of it in seminars and workshops you hold in the Keys? Do your mainland experts talk about it? Have you and/or Connie yet spoken out against it in a Key West City Commission meeting? People in the field, who physically rescue, or attempt to rescue child and adult sex slaves from their masters/pimps, put their very lives at risk. I am pretty sure, if you and Connie and other members of Keys Coalition went after the Key West sex magnet, and after this fellow described above, and you did it publicly, you might experience serious social and perhaps other repercussions.

I see no way to make a dent in sexual child abuse, just as, if not a more terrible, trade, either. The US Congress went to war against drugs in America and did not make a dent in the drug trade. If the US Congress goes to war against sexual child molestation in America, it will not make a dent against that trade. If the US Congress goes to war against child sex trafficking, it will not make a dent in that trade.

I’m sorry, Tim. We just do not see eye to eye on stopping what so bothers you, or even slowing it down. Where we see eye to eye is on just how truly horrible it is. That’s why I am glad to hear you are praying for Divine help with it. For, as I wrote earlier today, that is the only hope I see in making a dent in any and all of the above trades we are discussing today. That God has not already intervened and put a stop to it leaves me wondering if that’s a message such an intervention will not happen.

However, I think I can safely say, if what the angels have done and continue to do to me was done to all people, what we are discussing here today would stop very quickly. As would war. As would a lot of nasty, horrible things. Humanity would behave very differently, because, to be blunt, it would be terrified of not behaving very differently.

Sloan

Tim wrote:

Sloan, I know the man to whom you refer and do not know how to handle that. We know the good he has done here which of course does not justify things done in a foreign country if you are correct.

Of course we are going to focus on child sex trafficking in the Keys since that is where we may be able to make an impact, through raising awareness in the “target audience” of the pimps, hopefully through the school system.

Many trafficking victims are run-aways from foster care. I read the other day that there are 31,000 foster children in Florida. I do not know how many there are in Monroe County and doubt that their names are publicly available. But it may be possible to somehow get the information in to their hands.

I will ask Mr Feldman if he is aware of trafficking through the “adult clubs” on Duval. It is certainly true that in other cities such places are a breeding ground for sex slavery and I agree we need to discuss how to handle it here.

We totally agree that Divine intervention is needed. It certainly has happened before. Why it has not happened yet to a greater extent also troubles me. Perhaps God wants to se how serious His people are about it. That is why we want to work on putting churches together against it. It is obviously an issue that cuts across both theological and political differences.

I do think laws can help–not eliminate it, on that much we agree–but on greatly reducing it. One way is to cut down on the demand by imposing draconian sannctions on those who purchase sex with minors. I think reducing the demand is more important than punishing the pimps.

Tim

I replied:

You send me stuff all the time deploring what is going on in other countries, and this man is in your and Connie’s adopted hometown and neither of you have not spoken with him even yet, maybe two years since I first told Connie what I had been told about this man?

You and Connie have not done an all-nighter on Duval Street, surveying its various sex magnets?

You have spoken out against that at city commission meetings?

Sorry, Tim, your and Connie’s inactions in Key West simply do not jive with what you send to me.

I’m still sitting on what I don’t know whether to publish, even though I wager my life and soul it is prove positive of just how intractable sexual child abuse is in humanity. Sexual child abuse itself is child sex trafficking/slaving, as anyone who has experienced it surely knows, if he/she is not in denial.

I come at this from a position some people do not enjoy. As having been molested by my mother, and as having molested my younger sister when she was 5 and I was 15. It was before I had reached puberty, and it didn’t last long, but it messed her up for life, and it messed me up and I’m still enduring the karma it created.

Connie was molested, she told me it had happened [after I told her it had happened]. She said she was healed of it, but I have seen plenty of indication that she was not healed of it.

We have a county commissioner who was sexually molested in childhood, and I have seen many indications in her social actions and comments at county commission meetings and in her votes, which showed me she is being driven by that terrible soul wound.

The angels tell me one half of all Americans are sexually molested in childhood, and that translates into the Keys. That’s where most of the child sex trading starts. That’s where the main effort needs to begin. It still won’t make a dent in it, though. There is nothing you or anyone can do to make a dent in it, Tim.

Here’s a suggestion for a prayer you and Connie can make. “Dear God, do to all of humanity what you are doing to Sloan, and start with doing it to us.”

Sloan

Tim wrote:

Off to work so short. I like the prayer.

I replied:

I knew all along you wuz crazy, just not HOW crazy.

————————————————–

The prayer I suggested to Tim is the only possible solution I see for what Tim and Connie are trying so hard to stem. It’s up to Tim and Connie to make that prayer, and that it start in them. If their prayer is answered, their lives and perspectives will totally change. They will come to know the Jesus, Michael, Melchizedek and Holy Spirit I know, and they will  experience healing unknown in religion, mental health and spiritual development circles today. In fact, anyone can make that prayer, but whether or not is it answered is up to God.

Yes, I know that is not the view of perhaps anyone I now know. I have known one other person, my sixth wife, who made that prayer and who had done to her what was done to me. If she were with me right now, I bet she would say the same thing I just said about what it will take to stop child sex trafficking.

————————————

I pretty much put the above together before turning in last night. Around 2 a.m. today, this came in from Connie Gilbert, responding to yesterday’s homeless former Key West woman’s art gallery opening, and child sex trafficking seminar post.

Hi Sloan–

Thanks for the publicity for good causes (I adore Erika and wrote most of the Pam Eden press release, other than Erika’s commentary). You are absolutely right that Tim’s focus is far too broad, his attention, frankly, too scattered. We’ve had some changes recently in the structure of the Coalition, and I certainly hope it can direct our attention specifically to helping people in the Keys recognize trafficking and–if possible–rescue any children who are being sexploited. See attached resolution, which I hope will be passed by acclamation at Sunday’s annual meeting.

Would love to see you there.

Again thanks.
c

 

RESOLUTION RE KEYS COALITION ACTIONS 2013-2014
WHEREAS it is the mission of Keys Coalition, Inc, to keep human trafficking, and particularly child sex trafficking, out of Monroe County through both the prevention of victimization and the detection of any existing victims, and to accomplish that mission through raising public awareness;

NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that Keys Coalition shall work toward implement the
following programs in 2013-2014:

PREVENTION PROGRAMS

Prevention awareness shall focus on the targets of the sex traffickers, primarily children starting with those in grades 6-8. It shall be the primary goal to attempt to introduce awareness training in the public and private schools serving grades 8-12.

DETECTION PROGRAMS

Detection awareness shall focus on general awareness programs for the general public and specific training for groups most likely to encounter victims, to include educators; health care professionals; and those working in resorts and hotels. These programs shall stress the recognition of the signs of a possible victim and how to deal with a situation if a possible victim is encountered.

Methods of awareness shall include social media and a monthly newsletter; a rally in January with a speaker to be approved by the Executive Committee; presentations to churches and service clubs; training sessions in schools (if permitted) and/or to youth groups; and the development of training materials and presentations to groups such as educators; health care workers and those employed in the hospitality industry.

Approved by the membership ______________ By_________________________

Date

Secretary

—————————————

If you google Tim Gratz, you see all of his life he has been deeply interested in and involved in US and global politics. He has written political history articles for The Key West Citizen’s Solares Hill Sunday magazine. Looks to me he has tried to make Keys Coalition into something it was never intended to be, and I’m glad to see Connie recognizes that and is trying to get Keys Coalition to focus its efforts in the Keys, and leave for others to focus their efforts elsewhere.

sexual child abuse 2

Sexual molestation in infancy usually cannot be remembered. It is known in mental health circles that some adolescent sexually molested children block sexual abuse out, develop amnesia, to defend themselves. Tim was sexually molested in childhood, and like me and my sixth wife, he has no conscious memory of it. That terrible soul wound is what frenetically drives Tim to try to save every child and every person on this planet from sex and other forms of slavery.

That said, what I wrote about interviewing the prominent Key West gay man I was told has a chicken farm in the Caribbean, and what I wrote about taking on the Duval Street sex magnet stands, still stands. People who take on tough causes are asked to do tough things. People who wish to be healed of serious soul wounds are asked to confront people causing serious soul wounds in other people.

And, what I wrote about putting primary emphasis on recognizing children who are being sexually molested also still stands.

At most, there are only a few cases of child sex trafficking in the Keys, in the sense Keys Coalition views child sex trafficking. However, figure one-half of children in the Keys are sexually molested, and thus are sex-trafficked and enslaved in their own families. K-12 school teachers and pediatricians and family practitioner physicians are the best watchdogs for sexually molested children.

sexual child abuse

It is well known that family members cannot be relied on to report to the authorities family members who are sexually molesting a child, or children, in their family.

Project the Keys onto America, and project America onto the world. Sexual child abuse in families dwarfs in numbers the kind of child sex trafficking Keys Coalition and related groups seek to stop.

A Divine Intervention is the only thing that will make a dent in either form of child sex trafficking. All people called into that arena should ask for the Divine Intervention, and that it begin in them. As Jesus also said, First, take the beam out of your own eye.

Yes, the same let-it-begin-in-me-first prayer for a Divine Intervention can be made by anyone for any situation, and then it is up to God to respond. Be careful what you pray for comes to mind.

Sloan Bashinsky
keysmyhome@hotmail.com

Jesus’ baptism was not in water but was in spirit and in fire

holy fire

depress Ctrl and + keys at same time to increase zoom (font size), depress Ctrl and – keys at same time to reduce zoom

Mark and Sloan

Mi old dear amigo Mark (left) replied to yesterday’s  the scientist, the evangelist, the mystic – and attention deficit syndrome, religious fanaticism and most other human ailments cure – the Holy Ghost (aka the feminine)  post:

Sloan:

I see I’ve taken a starring role in todays post.  No problem for me;)  Will be curious if Doug reacts…

I flew the redeye Wednesday night, had a good night of sleep last night, but getting groggy about now…

Best,

Mark

I replied, with a copy to Doug:

Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2013 06:52:02 -0400

Hi, Mark – Yes, you indeed took a starring role. I have heard nothing from Doug since I started copying him with your and my email correspondence.

After I put the post up and sent copies to my email list, I took a nap and had a dream of a huge attack from the forces of Evil against a community where I was. You were in the dream, Jane was there. [Jane was my second wife, who met Mark after he moved to Birmingham, then she introduced me to him.] The demons were shaped like vile black tornadoes. The tornadoes at first looked huge, but on closer look, they were not nearly as huge as first they appeared. Something unseen behind them was launching huge fireballs of molten lava toward us. Some people with us were using garden hoses to shoot water back at the demons. Two smallish black kids were poking at me with smallish homemade harpoons sort of resembling what whalers used to throw at whales, but the points weren’t very sharp. I grabbed the harpoons away from them, and then I grabbed up one of the boys and dressed him down with I was on his side looking out for him, and didn’t he want to get out of my way because I knew about this sort of stuff, and didn’t he want to be friends with me? His face was distorted, only one working eye; he looked like he was mutated, perhaps like he’d been exposed to radiation or Evil. The dream ended.
[The boy with the mangled face had a right (male) eye but no left (female) eye, his left eye was grown over with scar tissue.]
I awoke knowing the dream was about what I had posted earlier yesterday; it was Evil’s response.
I then talked on the phone with a woman friend in north Georgia, with whom I’d already spoken before I put the post up. I met her in 2005 through a series of weird events only the angels could have arranged. She was hugely gifted spiritually, but was wild, no training. I told her after we’d talked a couple of hours, that if she kept running with me, she would come to rue the day she’d ever met me. She kept running with me and I lost count years ago of the number of times she blew up and blamed me for all of her problems and said she wished she’d never met me.
She said yesterday’s post was on target, she felt the Holy Spirit all over her about the post. I said the post was really important because Christendom believes being baptized in water, in Jesus’ name, saves them. She said she used to believe that, too, but she came to know that Jesus’ baptism is in spirit, which is what Jesus and John the Baptist both said of Jesus’ baptism in the Gospels. In fact, in one passage, a man asked Jesus to baptize him in water, and Jesus told man to go to John the Baptist for that, and then to return to Jesus and he would baptize him in spirit.
Your friend, Doug, and all but a very few Christians I have known, and heard of, do not comprehend  the baptism Jesus said in the Gospels that he brought and was anxious to get on with it.
The baptism in spirit is fiery. It burns. It purifies. It deepens. It expands. I changes a person completely, if allowed to run its course. Jesus dished out a lot of Holy Fire in the Gospels to his disciples, and to other people. He pushed them hard. He told them the way was steep, the gate was narrow, and few entered therein. He told them many are called, but few are chosen. He told them the work is great and the laborers are few. He told them it is harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God, than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. He showed and told them new ways to live and relate to other people, which new ways were totally counter to the ways they had been living and had been told to live by their ancestors and priests.
Yet today, Christendom proselytizes a salvation which ignores what Jesus lived and taught. A salvation which says, basically, if you believe Jesus was the only begotten son of God, who died for your sins on the cross and was resurrected on the third day and went to sit on the right hand of God, and from there he will return to judge the living and the departed, you are saved and will experience eternal life, as opposed to burning in hell forever. Very simply, Mark, that is not salvation through Jesus; it is what Lucifer influenced the early church to invent so it could attract lots of followers and their money. Jesus, on the other hand, peddled a salvation even the most devoted had trouble sticking with.
Unlike Paul, who seemed eager to recruit as many new Christians as possible, Jesus seemed eager to recruit battle-hardened God workers. Or rather, potential battle-hardened God workers. For the disciples he recruited were children in spirit, and he worked very hard to prepare them for when they would receive the Holy Ghost, who would grow them into God workers. Even at the end of their time with Jesus, the disciples were children. That is plain as day in the Gospels; they seemed to have learned nothing from Jesus. Yet he had planted the seeds, which the Holy Ghost then sprouted and grew in them, and out of them.
One of them, unnamed, scribed the Letter to the Hebrews, which scolded Jews, who had become followers of Jesus, for returning to their old Jewish ways, instead of sticking with the baptism Jesus had started in them. They were told they should be teaching, they should be eating meat, but they were still drinking milk. They were warned of the grave peril of turning away from the cleansing of the Lord, and they were encouraged to return to it. That is the definitive chapter in the Bible about initiation into the Melchizedek priesthood, in which that scribe wrote Jesus was High Priest. The scribe likened Jesus to the Melchizedek in the Old Testament, whom Abraham had known. An eternal being.
The angels told me that Mary Magdalene scribed Hebrews, and it was anonymous because it was known in those days that if she put her name on it no man would read it. The proof of that is seen in Jesus telling Magdalene outside the tomb to go to the other disciples and tell them the good news (the Gospel); that she had seen and spoken with him, and he would be with them shortly. Peter was furious that a woman was sent to tell them that.
But why would not Jesus send a woman, especially that woman, who had been with other women at the foot of the cross, while Peter and all but John of the disciples were off hiding somewhere? Especially that woman, who had publicly washed Jesus’ feet with her own hair and tears, and had put precious ointment she could scarce afford on his feet, preparing him for what was to come, which she very well knew was coming, while Peter was clueless. Magdalene very well knew because she was a Melchizedek in human form, and she was Jesus’ wife. Imagine what she washed and anointed Jesus with in private, if she did the above in public.
Christendom banished the feminine from its Godhead – the Trinity. Christendom made the Holy Ghost masculine, even though in the Hebrew theology the spirit of God, Shekinah, and Wisdom, were female gender, which Jesus, a rabbi, certainly knew. In the Gospels, Jesus told his disciples they could blaspheme against him, and they could be forgiven; but if they blasphemed against the Holy Ghost, they would not be forgiven. He thereby told them the Holy Ghost was above him in the spiritual pecking order, and if they did to Her what they had done and were still doing to him, they would be in serious trouble. Then, along came the early church and made God into a homosexual deity (all male), even though plain as day in Genesis, it says human beings were made in God’s image, male and female alike were they made.
Lucifer very much does not want Christendom to consider what stares them plainly in the face in the Bible. How many times have I heard what Doug preaches? I have long ago lost count of the times. It looks to me that Doug has bet his life and his soul on a baptism Jesus did not live or teach or administer. If so, Doug has lots of company. Christendom wants to hose down the forces of Evil with a little water from garden hoses, a baptism Jesus never used on other people. The only way to confront the forces of Evil is with spirit methods, and then very carefully. Jesus taught the ways of spirit living, which are the ways to confront the forces of Evil inside of ourselves, inside of other people, and in the spirit realms.
I am not speaking here of casting out demons. I am speaking here of deliverance from Evil, as per the prayer Jesus taught. Deliverance from Evil is something each human being, Christian or not, faces on this world. Someone who lives as Jesus lived and taught others to live, who has never even heard of Jesus, who has never even been in a Christian church, is a disciple of Jesus and is being delivered from Evil. Christians who do not live as Jesus lived and taught are not disciples of Jesus and are not being delivered from Evil.
It truly is all about how we live, which was the point of what Jesus’s brother James wrote in his letter in the New Testament. James told his audience, ask him not about his faith, but look to his works, and in his works they would see his faith. Yet how many times, I cannot possibly remember them all, have I heard Christians say salvation through Jesus cannot come through works, ie. how we live, but salvation through Jesus only can through going through the ritual of the magic salvation formula stated somewhere up above. Cheap salvation, Dietrich Bonhoffer called that salvation in The Cost of Discipleship.
Truly, Mark, to the extent we live as Jesus lived and taught other people to live, are we delivered from Evil and saved by Jesus, even if we never heard of him. Truly, to the extent we experience the baptism in Holy Fire, do we grow and deepen and widen in spirit. If we are not tested, if we are not challenged, we do not grow. If there is no pain, there is no gain. We must exercise our spiritual muscles for them to grow. We must train, and we need a personal trainer to train us. God was Jesus’ personal trainer. Jesus was his disciples’ personal trainer, then the Holy Ghost became their personal trainer. The Bible tells us so.
Sloan

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sloanbashinsky@hotmail.com

 

the scientist, the evangelist, the mystic – and attention deficit syndrome, religious fanaticism and most other human ailments cure – the Holy Ghost (aka the feminine)

holy fire

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Last weekend, a dear friend from my past spent the weekend with me, en route to Ecuador on business. As Mark, the scientist, who joined the Roman Catholic church because his wife was Roman Catholic, was headed to his rental car parked in my driveway, he took this photo of us in front of the bougainvillea bush I planted near my trailer in 2006. Behind the bougainvillea are buttonwood trees. Across from there, which cannot be seen, is a state wildlife refuge. Mark is around 55. I’m 70.

Mark & Sloan

Here is a chain of email correspondence, which led into Mark’s visit, which, along with related stuff, I was told in a dream before dawn this morning to publish.

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From: mark
To: sloanbashinsky@hotmail.com; keysmyhome@hotmail.com
Subject: FW: The Bible
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2013 08:41:40 -0500
Hey Sloan:
I spent the early part of this month on a nickel smelting project in New Caledonia, South Pacific, then last weekend with my daughter Lydia in Las Vegas at a soccer tournament. Haven’t been able to nail down a schedule to see you yet, but I am guessing next month our project in Ecuador will be ready for commissioning and I’ll plan to connect through Miami to spend some time catching up with you.
Below is a commentary on “The Bible” (Sunday nights on PBS) by a great friend of mine. I am in the process of kicking my faith exploration up a few notches and my friend Doug is quite a student to of scripture and holds projects such as this TV series to a high standard. I suspect you and he would have the same take on the production and story being told on TV. While everything he said may be true, all I know is that when my 18 and 23 year old are very interested to watch a biblical story weekly, that’s good enough for me ;)
Can’t wait to see you one day soon… I hope!
Peace,
Mark
Note: One year ago yesterday it was 79 degrees here in Wisconsin, the grass was already growing, and golf courses had opened. This year? We had a low of 9 degrees last night and will go up to a balmy 26 today. I can’t wait to grow up and move to Florida!

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From: Douglas
To: undisclosed recipients
Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2013 7:56 AM
Subject: The Bible
I purposefully spent a little time last night watching the TV series, The Bible. Since I don’t watch much TV in the first place, the series was brought to my attention by someone I know. He was gushing about how mesmerized his family was by it. Then I happened to read something about how the official viewership rating is phenomenal. So, I thought I’d take a look.
Well, here is my take:
The production is generally major motion picture quality. Typically, this is the achilles heal of most Christian themed movies I’ve seen. The casting, acting, direction, cinematography, art direction, special effects, etc. is far better than average.
The fast paced, vignette style script keeps things moving. This appeals to the short attention span most viewers possess. To help flesh out the storyline and save them time, they’ve employed a voiceover narrator.
The art direction in creating the scenes was a mega leap in Christian film believability. Streets scenes, aerial views, costumes, etc. are quite good and believable to say nothing of the special effects. The brutality and grittiness of those days was probably fairly well depicted and they made sure there was plenty of it.
BUT
We must remember that they are dealing with God-inspired revelation. If this were some adaptation of a fiction novel, or made-for-TV screen play, that’s one thing. But God Himself states quite clearly:
“I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in the book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city which are described in this book.” Revelation 22:18,19
The producers of this series have once again chosen to Hollywood-ize God’s Word. They follow the original “script’s” storyline but add and subtract to enhance the viewing experience. For those of us who hold holy scripture in reverential awe find this an abomination. Once tampered with, you don’t have the inerrant accuracy of divine revelation anymore.
They also made common assumptions based on church and popular tradition without blinking. For instance, the Three Kings did not arrive at Jesus’ birth, but rather close to 2 years later. Also, instead of giving the actors the actual words of scripture to speak, they paraphrased, or even invented dialogue. Most notable was not even what was spoken, but what was left unspoken from the Original Text. Of course, the creation of Satan, Gabriel, and other angelic beings was preposterous. This trend continued throughout.
Admittedly, I only watched an hour or so but I had to turn it off. The God I serve and worship was not in this production. Some may argue that this was a wonderful and powerful pushback to the world of secular, anti-Christian rhetoric and legislation that is becoming more and more the norm. I see their point. Yet, it is a dangerous thing to make the Bible a story book without clearly and precisely enunciating the deity and purpose of Christ as a Savior. Lesleigh Cushing, a Colgate University assistant professor commented in the Christian Science Monitor, “… it does not seem to be morally preaching Christianity or any other point of view, it’s just telling the adventure…”
In my opinion, that pretty much sums it up.

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On Mar 19, 2013, at 11:23 AM, Mark wrote:
Doug:
Not trying to inspire debate, just thought I’d share with a friend who also quotes scripture.
Me? I’ll read, attempt to understand, apply to my daily life, but do not have the “onboard hardrive” (aka “noodle”) to quote and debate scripture passages.
;)
Mark

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On Mar 19, 2013, at 9:50 AM, Mark wrote:
Hi Doug:
I shared your take on “The Bible” with my friend in the Florida Keys.
He commented accordingly;)
Mark

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From: sloan bashinsky [mailto:keysmyhome@hotmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2013 9:15 AM
To: Mark
Subject: RE: The Bible
Hi, Mark – well, I too am looking forward to seeing you after so many years, and I hope it is not too far down the road.
Your friend, movie reviewer, quoted this from Revelation, which is a New Testament book into which I have not been nudged, or shoved, by the angels who run me. I don’t recall that I ever wrote about Revelation, and I very seldom speak of it.
“I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in the book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city which are described in this book.” Revelation 22:18,19
I believe it is generally accepted that the Bible came about some centuries after Revelation was scribed. The passage Doug quoted looks to me like it refers to Revelation, and not to the Bible not yet in existence.
In any event, some of the views I have been given re various parts of the Gospels, Acts, Hebrews, and Paul, Jesus and Mary Magdalene, Jesus and his mother, and Joseph, and some Old Testament passages, probably would get me burned at the stake if I uttered them at The Southern Baptist Convention, or on the steps of The Sistine Chapel.
I was not told to change one word, but was shown the subtext behind the words.
Maybe some day the angels will put me into Revelation, which I have long felt bewildered the poor fellow who received it, and therefore had to be incomprehensible to later day prophets who preached it, unless they were told by angels of the Lord what it really meant.
Meanwhile, me, personally, — I sort of feel the angels who harass me, one of whom goes by the name, Jesus, another by the name, Michael, another by the name, Melchizedek-Magdalene, are of similar view — Jesus in the Gospels is the most misunderstood person in recorded human history. Misunderstood most of all in Christendom.
I was taught the salvation Jesus brought was how he lived and taught others to live, and to the extent people do that, that is the extent of their belief in and their salvation through Jesus.
The early church invented an easier to sell salvation through Jesus, which still sells well. A German fellow wrote something about that, although I imagine he also might view me as a proper candidate for stake burning.
The Cost of Discipleship - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Cost of Discipleship is a book by the German Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, considered a classic of Christian thought. The original German title is simply …
Share this rambling with Doug, if you like.
Sloan

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From: Douglas
Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2013 11:03 AM
To: Mark 
Subject: Re: The Bible
Hi Mark,
I’m not an apologist, that is, one to argue the Bible. I simply state what it says. It is up to each individual to understand and believe it. . . or not. That is between them and God. However, it is wise to understand the God of the Bible has high standards and does not suffer fools.
God states His people are duped continually, being manipulated because of their ignorance of the scriptures. “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” Hosea 4:6 The fact so few are “born again” of the spirit (as Christ demands – see John 3:7) compounds their ignorance, “The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.” 1 Corinthians 2:14 By this we understand there are two opposing methods of discernment, mental vs. spiritual . . . head knowledge vs. heart knowledge.
It is a grievous and fatal error to dismiss or believe in misrepresented holy scripture. That is why we must, “Study to show yourself approved to God, a workman that needs not to be ashamed, rightly dividing (getting to the heart and soul of what’s intended) the word of truth.” 2 Timothy 2:15 . . . boilerplate Christianity.
Sloan is a great thinker but is likely better versed in the perception of Biblical truth and than the reality of it. Christianity has a long history of man-made tradition and ceremony which has willingly been substituted for true spiritual, Biblical truth. . . religion vs. spirit-filled faith. The Bible is written by a Father to His children. Even though someone can open someone else’s mail and learn a great deal, it is impossible to understand the heart it is written with when you don’t know the heart of either person. To not have the God-given spirit within is to be without the vital ingredient to complete understanding.
The Bible is revelation (foretelling or forth telling) from start to finish , “. . .know this first of all, that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” 2 Peter 1:20,21 The fact it was written by many individuals over centuries does not negate the fact that it had one author, the super natural inspiration of God (a holy ghost writer, you might say).
As for Sloan’s understanding of Christ’s salvation, again void of understanding. The significance of salvation in Christ lies not in any earthly process or way of living, though this is an important by-product. Christ’s salvation lies in the eternal life of the individual. God created Man in His image, that is, Man was created to live for all eternity. . . forever. The concept or reality of death was absent before The Fall. Through disobedience, that is, sin, Man’s fate was sealed. Due to God’s justice he was bound for eternity in hell. Yet, by the grace of God, a way was made to regain this once lost state. . . through Christ, who willingly accepted the judgement of God for our sin nature in our stead. Through faith in Him and a heart-felt repentance, we substitute our will for His, and becoming “born again”, we pass from death to eternal life. That’s why true Christians consider this life temporary. They don’t fear death or hell, but look forward to eternal life in Paradise with Christ and Father God.
Pertaining to this subject, Sloan and I do have one thing in common, Jesus is certainly “the most misunderstood person in recorded history.” I would heartily invite and beseech him to seriously and diligently seek to “find” this Jesus, the real Jesus, the Son of God, while there is still time.
Doug

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The last day he was at my place, Mark sent me this:
Mark
To: sloan bashinsky
I don’t know if I sent this to you or not, but here you go.

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From: Douglas
Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2013 11:38 AM
To: Mark
Subject: Re: The Bible
Hi Mark,
I want to assure you it is not my intent to debate anyone. And definitely not you! Most all of my response was for Sloan since he brought up some Biblical issues that were misconceptions.
The only reason I quote scripture is because it is the Word of God. This can turn someone off or it can compel interest. If someone is interested in The Truth, they must look to God’s Word.
Otherwise, it is Man’s truth.
See? I’m a lightening rod, a freak, a fringe wacko. I told you.
But we all have to believe in something and what better thing to believe in and order our steps by the the words of the creator of the universe.
Please don’t let me scare you from talking to me. If you prefer, we can keep our conversations to the weather or whatever. : )
Take care,
Doug

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I replied to Mark, with copy to Doug:
No, Mark, you did not forward Doug’s response to my earlier reply to what you had forwarded from Doug. It doesn’t appear to me that Doug is being directed from the Spirit like Jesus was, like Paul and Peter were in Acts, like others in the Bible were, Old and New Testament. I have encountered many Christians who equate the Bible with the Word, but John says in his Gospel that Jesus is the Word. The Bible did not exist when Jesus, Peter, Paul, John walked this world. The Bible is a terrific instrument. But is not God. Maybe more later, as you are about to leave for Miami and I want to hug you goodbye. As I have told you, which Jesus, Michael and Melchizedek told me, to the extent we live as Jesus lived and taught, that is our salvation through Jesus.
Sloan

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From Mark same day:
FYI. From my photographer friend…
—–Original Message—–
From: Douglas
Sent: Sunday, April 21, 2013 7:31 AM
To: Undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: what to do, what to do..
“For we fight not against flesh and blood. . .”
Spiritual wickedness is at the root of all unGodly thoughts and deeds.
Christ didn’t waste his earthly purpose to rail against the Roman
government, which frankly could put to shame the brutality and wickedness of
most governments of today. He knew where it’s true authority came from*. and
that’s where He kept His focus.

The world is evil. We’ve been plucked out of it and given insight into its
workings. A Christian who is amazed and surprised by the policies and
mandates of any worldly government hasn’t been studying the Bible. That the
world is waxing worse and worse is expected and has been prophesied. This
all springs from the wickedness residing in the hearts of each individual.
It doesn’t take an organized group, government, or religion to instruct
people how to be evil.
That’s why you can have individuals like the Boston bombers act on their
own. They may have been taught how to make and deliver bombs but the
motivation was always resident within them, only to be nurtured.

That will not change. We cannot win or change anything playing by the
world’s rules. Perhaps a court win here, an election there, but in the end
it will all fail.

The question is. what can we as individuals do about it? Buy guns? Run for
office? Complain?

What did the Apostle Paul do?

He prayed and, “… determined to know nothing among you except Jesus
Christ, and Him crucified.” Then he lived it.

Railing against the Devil is fruitless. He has already been judged and put
under the authority of Christ (who now lives within us!) It is up to us to
claim this truth and exercise it. Don’t worry about the state of the world.
Rather, consider your neighbor who has never heard the simple, unadulterated
Gospel.

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I replied to Mark, with copy to Doug:
Hi, Mark – As you read Doug’s to me, I nodded agreement down to where he said how to do it. Many Christians quote Paul but seldom quote Jesus, whom Paul never met in the flesh. The simple unadulterated Gospel, to the extent it is reported in the New Testament, is what Jesus did and said in the Gospels. How he lived, and how he tried to show and tell others how to live. In sum, God’s will, not our will, be done on earth … Simple, but living it is something else altogether. Tough sell for the churches, compared to the salvation formula the churches peddle, which surely pleases Lucifer. As I said, if I had a church made of brick and mortar, I would preach to myself each Sunday, because I would be the only person there.
Sloan
Here’s the goodmorningfloridakeys.com link to what I was moved to post today, which you already read.
heaven and earth and below – Boston Marathon massacre and beyond
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While Mark and I were together, he told me that he apparently had suffered from attention deficit syndrome all of this life. He was drinking coffee and taking Adderall for it, which he said dealt with the symptoms but he wanted to get off the Adderall. I said I would ponder that, hear what the angels had to say.
Not long after, Mark told me again of a soccer club where he lives, in which one of his daughters had excelled, but now she was moving on. The club had been in shambles, and three years ago he had stepped in and taken it over and made something out of it. His term as President was ending, he was getting out of it, I assumed when he told it to me. Later, he said he would stay on another three years as Past President, and continue the work with the club he had begun, but on a much reduced time and effort basis. I said, no, he should finish out his term as President and resign. His daughter was no longer involved. He had done what had been given to him to do. He was a good steward, and now he should move on to something new. I compared the three years he had spent turning the club around to the three years Jesus had spent with his disciples, then he turned them over to the Holy Spirit and left them. I told Mark if he did that, the angels would help him with the attention deficit problem.
Mark wanted to go to the health food store up the road and talk to the owner about his problem. So we went there. The owner prescribed lots of vitamin B complex and flaxseed oil, and told Mark he needed to ween from the Adderall. I saw no way to treat a soul wound, which was the cause of the attention deficit syndrome, with Vitamin B complex and flaxseed oil, but I said nothing. Mark took both remedies when he got back to my place, and not long afterward the flaxseed oil capsule came back up out of his stomach. Hmmm. I told him there was no way to treat a soul wound with health food store products. I told him  to wind down his Presidency and move on. He wanted to explain his thinking. I said his thinking was with God, I was just the messenger and didn’t want to hear this thinking; I had given him the fist step of the remedy, and he would be given more steps he wasn’t comfortable with either, after he did the first step.
Attention deficit syndrome is a widespread problem in America. I had stepson who had it. I knew it was due to a soul wound. A wound to his internal feminine. I told Mark the same thing, his internal feminine was not working well and his internal masculine was overworking, and the program I had explained to him would deal with the wound to his feminine, if he did the program and stayed on the program, which he probably would not like because he would be asked to do things in new ways.

There are a lot of children in Christian homes, and a lot of adult Christians who have attention deficit syndrome, and being Christians has not healed them of it. In fact, being raised in Christianity, which acknowledges no feminine in the Holy Trinity, contributed in part, or wholly, to their attention deficit syndrome.

Doug is seriously injured internal feminine. He is operating solely out of his internal male. He reminds me of many Christians I have met and heard of. He reminds me of Muslim jihadists. He reminds me of revved up people who stand in front of abortion clinics, whichever side they are on. He reminds me of all fanatics. Their internal feminine is destroyed. They have not received the Holy Ghost, in Doug’s dialect, to rectify that soul wound. And because of that, they are incapable of introspection and subjective thinking. They cannot read between the lines. They are linear, one dimensional, like a sheet of school notebook paper.

Belief is just that, belief. Sometimes belief and reality coincide, but not usually.
God is thus that, God. Sometimes belief and God coincide, but not usually.
The only way humanity will turn around is for it to receive in all its members a massive infusion of the feminine. That is the first step. Just my opinion, it will have to be done to humanity, because humanity does not have the know how, nor the desire, to do it on its own.

The true jihad (crusade) is internal. As Jesus said to the disciples in the Gospels, First take the beam out of your own eye … As he also said to the disciples in the Gospels, If that which is inside of you remains inside of you, it will destroy you; but if that which is inside of you comes forth from within you, it will save you … As he also said to the disciples in the Gospels, If you abide in me, you will come to know the truth and the truth will make you free …

I copied Doug with several of my posts since including him in my correspondence with Mark. Doug will receive a copy of this post.

Sloan Bashinsky
sloanbashinsky@hotmail.com

the impending fall of the late great one nation, under God, or so it claims

upside down American flag

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A Republican snowbird friend I met playing duplicate bridge in Key West, now recently relocated to Naples, Florida, replied to the Boston Marathon massacre and US foreign war policy parts of yesterday’s lots more crash landings and one potential flight school bright spot – Florida Keys school district and beyond post:

AT least GWB tried to do something. Barack Obama led from behind and accomplished nothing. He tried appeasing Muslims by appearing in Cairo in 2009 and did not visit Israel in his first term. Liberals will never say that the terrorist problem is primarily that of Islamist extremists. The War on Terror is real and could go on for 100 years. The 100 Year War between England and France in the 14th and 15th centuries lasted 116 years. It was fought by something approximating the Marquess of Queensbury rules. There is no easy solution. Appeasing the Islamist radicals has not worked and will never work. We have to use more video cameras, intercept every email message and phone call, and actively infiltrate Islamist organizations. The FBI had some success doing that with the Communist Party in the 1940s and 1950s. It would help if the overwhelming majority of Muslim Americans would refuse to let their religion be taken over by fanatics. One way of doing this is by publicly condemning the violence. Another would be to pass on suspicious happenings to the FBI.

I replied:

GWB destroyed the American economy by starting two land wars in seriously hostile territory without the money to pay for the wars. Obama made the American economy a lot worse. I don’t see any way for the US to appease Islam other than to stop supporting Israel and to get all American troops out of that region, and even that may be too little, to late, and it isn’t going to happen. I see no way to prevent what happened in Boston or at Sandyhook School. I hope I’m not around when the stars and stripes walls come tumbling down; I already have enough on my plate as it is.

I meant to reply to your invitation to come by Naples next time I go back to Birmingham. That sounds good to me, maybe we can play bridge over there before I head north. No sense now when that might happen, though.

P.S. On CNN last night, a Muslim cleric and a parishioner at the mosque where the older brother, who was killed, were interviewed. The cleric said the older brother had twice protested in the Mosque statements by clergy. One objection was to Mohammed and Martin Luther King being used as examples of right living. The objection was it was blasphemy to compare a non-Muslim to the Prophet. A young woman parishioner said there was no way they could have known. Well, if they could not have known, then who could have known? The older brother was in their midst. Were they sound asleep like most Americans were sound asleep to George W. Bush, and then to Barack Hussein Obama? I agree, there is very little, if anything, that can be done, unless it is done by Muslims. Might help, too, if Christians started obeying Jesus’ advice to resist not one who does evil and to turn the other cheek and to do good to and pray for their enemies. Right, LOL.

sloanbashinsky@hotmail.com

heaven and earth and below – Boston Marathon massacre and beyond

holy fire

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I felt so poorly yesterday, that I cancelled a half-day fishing trip with a Key West guide amigo, which I had booked for me and my old amiga from Wisconsin, who arrived Friday evening after a long delay in the Atlanta airport due to weather. We got to do lots of catching up and philosophizing, and we took in the new Tom Cruise movie, “Oblivion” at the Regal Cinema yesterday afternoon in Key West. Then, we had a nice early Cuban dinner at El Siboney. By then, I was starting to rally somewhat. No way I could have spent 4 hours on the water under the sun. How far have I fallen – I used to be on the flats from sunrise to sunset, poling a skiff, chasing grey ghosts (bonefish). Maybe I chase them in another way now. Maybe I’m chasing my tail.

“Oblivion” is about planet Earth being invaded by ETs, who cleverly tricked Cruise and his compadres into believing humanity had defeated the ETs, and, because, the destruction was go great, humanity had migrated to Saturn’s moon Titan. All the while, the ETs were mining Earth’s water into the ETs space ships, which Cruise and his compadres thought were human space ships carting the water to Titan. Fortunately, other humans led by Morgan Freeman were not deceived and a “happy ending” finally resulted, although the ETs probably weren’t all that happy. What was left of humanity had a long row to hoe, but at least they had it to hoe.

Here is the last thing I wrote to an old amiga in a lengthy Facebook discussion we have had lately about spiritual healing and the future of humanity. She is a lot more optimistic than I am:

I see corrosiveness in me, too, and in everyone I encounter, and I write about that publicly a lot. I often say I am way too stupid to navigate this world and the spirit realms by my own wits and intellect, and I need constant input and correction from the angels, which they freely provide, often not to my liking. Sometimes I say I was the worst piece of shit the angels could find, and they took me on as an experiment, to see if the could do something with me, and if they succeeded, maybe they could help people less messed up than me. Just yesterday, I told them again that they really ought to find someone else to be their work mule, since I am so insufficient, based on the frequency of corrections and rebukes they give me in dreams. They got onto me again earlier tonight in dreams. It’s a whole lot of fun. I have no hope for the future of humanity, which looks totally lost to me. I have many friends about whom I care a great deal and wish well. I wish you well. I wish humanity well. I hope a true shift occurs in humanity’s consciousness, but, as I often opine, I don’t see it coming about through human effort. I think I will post something along that line today, which an email from an amiga in West Palm Beach area spawned.

From amiga Ginger in Jupiter Beach:

Sloan where do you live on PINE Island, are you near the ocean, on West or East Side. Are you safe if a hurricane comes? Is the ground high enough or could wave wash over? What is your address on PINE island. Is it big or Little Pine? I don’t see how it is possible to evacuate at the last minute on that tiny two lane highway.

Following the Boston situation. Incredible. he was hiding in a boat in the back of someone’s house. They just took him to the hospital. The technology involved in this search and the way they tracked him down. Amazing. Big Brother, all the cameras on the street, helped in this situation.

Ginger

I replied:

Hi, Ginger -

I live on Little Torch Key, just below Big Pine Key, on the west/bay side of the island, about a block from a lagoon which connects to both the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. My land is about 2 feet above sea level. The trailer sits on 2 ft. blocks. Hurricane Wilma’s high tide came up to just beneath the undercarriage of the trailer, according to the previous owner. There would be no defense to a bigger storm than Wilma, I don’t imagine. Lots of people on this island and in trailer parks on Big Pine in same situation. I would not evacuate ahead of a hurricane, unless I was told in a dream to evacuate. Some locals evacuate ahead of incoming hurricanes, some do not. Nobody can me made to evacuate, except tourists, who are forced to evacuate by mandatory evacuation orders which close hotels, motels, etc., so the tourists have no place to stay and they leave. A bad wreck on a bridge could seriously slow, or even stop, evacuation. Evacuation orders are issued some days before a storm might hit the Keys. Usually, whoever wishes to evacuate, who has the means/vehicle to leave the Keys, gets to leave, but then is where to stay on the mainland? And what if the hurricane hits there? It’s all a big guess.

The Boston Marathon massacre is a terrible thing. I was afraid it was Americans who did it. If, in fact, these two men from Chechnya did it, that is scary, because I don’t see why they would hate America and Americans, if it was the Russians who had made Chechnya a hell hole. Scary because it might indicate just how deep in Islam hatred is for America and Americans.

I told people after G.W. Bush invaded Iraq, that in Islam’s eyes, Bush, and America, had declared war on Islam. I understood Americans did not see it that way, but I also understood Americans did not understand Islam. Ross Perot begged G.W.’s father not to go to war with Iraq after it invaded Kuwait. Perot told Bush that Arabs do not think or behave like Americans, and America should stay out of that sibling fracas and buy oil from whomever controlled the Kuwait oil fields. Perot said that on Larry King’s TV show, before the first Bush got the British, French and UN to go into Kuwait.

I read that Osama bin Laden begged the Saudis to let him bring his mujahideen to Kuwait and drive the Iraqis back into Iraq and the Saudis rebuffed bin Laden and chose to go with Bush and the British and the French and the UN, and that enraged bin Laden, because it was forbidden to let infidel troops into Muslim lands. I read that had a great deal to do with bin Laden then declaring war on America.

It’s all a big horrible mess now, and the G.W. Bush war against Iraq, and in Afghanistan still raging, inflames many Muslims. As does US support of Israel. As does US policies against Iran. All understandable from secular perspective, I suppose, but there is something far bigger in play, perhaps akin to the Crusades, but much bigger even than that. Beyond that, are the spiritual components, which the religious components and secular components reflect. A big horrible mess.

It looks to me it will take a massive supernatural intervention akin to the infusion of the Holy Trinity, which Christendom does not really understand, into all human beings, for everything to start getting better.

Sloan

My Wisconsin friend asked me what did I think causes people to do something like the Boston Marathon massacre? I said Evil causes them to do it. I said Christendom generally recognizes the existence of Evil, while the New Age generally denies it exists. My friend asked if Islam recognizes the existence of Evil? I said yes, but it projects it away from itself, like Christendom does. I said neither religion has a grasp on Evil.

The angels have been relentless in making me look at my own reflection, at my own warts, at my own demonic twin, at my own tendency to project away from me what is inside of me. They keep chipping away, but apparently the internal ore deposit is huge, and who can say if they will ever get it all out of me? Or all out of humanity?

Sloan Bashinsky

keysmyhome@hotmail.com

The Alchemist: A Memory of Sloan from Twenty Years Ago, by Willow Arthur, accompanied by some responsive musings from the alleged alchemist

holy fire

Yesterday, I invited a woman I knew pretty well when I lived in Boulder, Colorado, to join the Mystics, Madmen & Muses open Facebook group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/223333164480200/  . Willow, whom I knew as Leaf in Boulder, but she grew older and had children and now they are her leaves, posted this, which I felt after reading it, I would like to have read at my wake:

Willow Arthur

The Alchemist: A Memory of Sloan from Twenty Years Ago
by Willow Arthur
Sloan was stringing plump apples off trees in the Boulder [Pearl Street] Mall and urging bewildered tourists to take bites from the forbidden fruit of Eve. His southern accent was beguiling, his manners impeccable, and, somehow, this bespectacled gentleman bewitched the crowd swilling about him. He claimed to have access to mysterious knowledge, dictated to him from angels, which he copied into pamphlets and waved provocatively before his spectators.
I was twenty-one, toothpick thin and sported a defiant stubble of bleached blonde hair. In the evenings, I walked down a mall that pulsed with youth and music and watched Sloan peddle his magic.
I enjoyed this middle-aged man with his apples, hippie apostles and poetry. He gesticulated wildly in front of the second-hand bookstore, where I cradled coffee, worn books and waited for love to strike. I remembered dissecting “Genesis”  in college and Sloan struck me as a genius. Only by biting the knowledge of the Sacred Feminine would we reverse human history and regain access to the garden of Eden. The fig-leaf was a metaphor for the loss of human telepathy, the beginning of lies and deception. Now humans were steeped in lies and, with the Bush years ahead, the worst was still to come.
I dreamed of a world of innocence, Oneness, where thoughts were transparent and co-existence with nature possible. Where humans loved one another and cherished Mother Earth. We could grab that apple again, reintegrate the divine feminine, lost in the insane excesses of the Patriarchy and be reborn whole.
Sloan had an assortment of male and female angels, some sublime, some terrifying, who would appear to him without notice. Sloan was occasionally transfixed in the Boulder Mall, murmuring urgently to apparitions and making orderly notes in his lawyer briefs. Swept up in angelic communion, Sloan abandoned his legal practice and dismantled the threads of his family. He lived a fierce, second adolescence among the rebels camped around Pearl Street Mall. This was the early nineties.
It was a enchanted spring. Lilacs scented inky nights, pregnant with sensual promise and vast constellations throbbed above the Flatiron Mountains. A growl of greed was detectable during the californication of Colorado. Boulder’s moral collapse had been predicted one hundred and fifty years ago by Chief  Niwot. He met the first onslaught of white settlers and made an wry observation, twisted by time into a curse: “People seeing the beauty of this valley will want to stay, and their staying will be the undoing of the beauty.” Our colorful, laid-back mall was haunted by the wails of a saxophone that reassured us that a lion would roar tonight. That Summer, Boulder began to buzz with a new vibration of need and speed. We watched her corruption reek like a corpse around us.  My homeless friends were arrested for laughable crimes, like blocking commuter traffic and leaning with intent to fall in the street.  Kids were bludgeoned by the cops for handing out free donuts.
In the middle of this mayhem, Sloan was irresistible. In his ecstatic state he convinced me that he knew the magic that would save humans. A spell to unite all sentient consciousness, to end all war and lies. Perhaps it was no coincidence that the Internet emerged around this time, a physical device to link consciousness. The hardware seemed a metaphor for the software we were reclaiming within, the knowledge that we were all connected, All One.
Sloan taught a simple alchemical ritual the angels had shown him, to be performed regularly, but not too regularly, lest one went mad. This spell transformed the lead of the human spirit to gold. But, as the metamorphosis happened, chaos would erupt and hell raised, even as heaven was lowered.
Sloan warned me, drunk in Spring hormones, to take his magic very seriously. He cautioned that, in a few years, I would be fully immersed in my darkness, exploring my shadow and might get extremely sick. On a more cheerful note, he predicted, via one of his angels, that I would survive…
—————————————————
When I met Willow, I was in the middle of the first dark night of the soul, as described in the commentaries of St. John of the Cross, as had been reproduced in St. John of the Cross: Alchemist of the Soul, by Antonio T. di Nicholas, a Spaniard ex-pat former New England university popular poetry professor living in St. Augustine when I first exchanged correspondence with him not long after I met Willow, whom I knew as Leaf.
The alchemy ritual Willow mentioned my sharing with her was the same alchemy ritual Juan de la Cruz had used to provoke the dark night process in himself. It was a ritual known in that time to have that effect. However, for reasons I cannot explain, I initially did not realize it was the same ritual Juan de la Cruz had used, even though I had already read di Nicholas’ book when the ritual came to me. I felt the ritual was given to me fresh by the angels, and perhaps the reason for that was it took me in the exact opposite direction from where it had taken the diminutive Carmelite monk, in Roman Catholicism today viewed as the straight arrow of all straight arrow saints, who by-passed the Church altogether and went directly to God.
For which heresy, Juan de la Cruz was persecuted, imprisoned and fed a starvation diet by his own Carmelite brethren, which eventually killed him. Di Nicholas reported that at the moment of his passing, the saint uttered, “Oh, what beautiful daisies!” Then, the beautiful aroma of flowers was noticed by those in attendance, his friends. Then, as was the custom in that time, his fingers, toes, nose and ears were removed and distributed as keepsakes to his friends. It was reported that those keepsakes did not rot but were preserved; proof that the saint was turned from lead into gold in the spirit sense. It was for those reasons that the Vatican later declared him a saint, even though in life he was persecuted as a heretic by the Inquisition.
Today, San Juan de la Cruz is viewed as the premier authority on the dark night of the soul, which I learned the hard way is unknown in psychiatry, which treats it as major depression, or worse, as psychosis. I learned that after leaving Boulder in 1995, right after the first dark night Juan had described had lifted, and moving to Birmingham, prelude to the second dark night Juan had described descending in early 1997.
As Juan had described in his commentaries, the first dark night, which he called “the cleansing of the soul”, was awful, but it was doable. However, the second dark night, which Juan called “the cleansing of the spirit”, which not everyone experiences who survived the first dark night, was far more terrible than the first dark night. In the second dark night, you feel like God has died, your soul has died, there is no hope, there is not darkness but is only blackness. You pray to die and fear you will live. Juan wrote, woe be to anyone who entered the second dark night, who was not in a protected environment, ministered to by people who knew what was underway. Even in that case, Juan wrote, only the toughest and luckiest survive it.
I was in a protected environment when the black night descended, but nobody around me knew what I was experiencing, and I didn’t even know what it was; that’s how truly black it was. They made it far harder than it already was, by pushing me to treat it medically and by going to church and mental health support groups, where people had never heard of the dark night of the soul. It lifted 16 months after it descended, and the recovery was made far more difficult by the detox I had to go through to rid my system of the wonderful killer addictive anti-depressant and anti-psychotic drugs psychiatry had nearly killed me with, which had made the black night even more horrible.
Willow called me not long after I had entered the black night, and she asked me if I was on pills? I said unfortunately, as that was the only way I was allowed to leave confinement in a locked hospital ward. By then, I was addicted to the pills which psychiatry says are not addictive. I knew the pills were addictive because I was unable to get off them, three times I tried over different intervals, and the withdrawal was like what I’d heard and read heroine or methadone withdrawal is like. Only after the black night lifted did the angels step in and help me wean from the pills.
If I had known all that lay ahead, I might not have been so eager to share the soul alchemy ritual with Willow and other young people, and older people, when I lived in Boulder. I might not have used the ritual myself, which opened the heavens to me: the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly – the whole big enchilada. Juan de la cruz had warned of phenomenon coming, and had warned to ignore all phenomenon, for there was no way know for sure what might be Lucifer lurking in disguise. Juan advised to keep turning away from phenomenon, back into the darkness, back into the blackness, until no more phenomenon came and a singularity was reached and the soul merged with Christ, or with God.
Then, it was over, and the survivor was totally different and no one who had not gone through both dark nights could comprehend someone who had. Survivors of both dark nights could not explain the journey to anyone who had not taken it, and there was no need to explain it to those who had taken it. Juan said he would not have written about it, but for being asked to so do by a Mother Superior. All as reported in St. John of the Cross: Alchemist of the Soul. As was reported there, compared to Juan de la Cruz, Teresa T. Avila was a spiritual lightweight being led by the forces of darkness she believed to be the voice of God.
As for my journey, it was shown to me that I should receive and embrace all phenomenon, because they were, or represented, parts of my own soul and spirit. It was part of my spiritual maturation to meet all parts of me, the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, and to learn to discerned them in myself, and in other people, and in spirit.
The first and the second dark night did not get me there. I had to experience a series of later dark nights, before I was doing pretty well discerning the phenomenon in myself and in other people, and in spirit, and even then I needed ongoing advice and corrections from the angels who were running me since early 1987, whom I eventually came to understand were Jesus and Archangel Michael, Later, I realized Melchizedek was there, and others those three let have at me from time to time.
Essentially, beyond the alchemy ritual, what was being set up was my experiencing the Holy Trinity in a way I was not taught or heard described in any church I ever attended. I came to call that the Melchizedek initiation, which I realized though various spirit signals in early 1999 was underway. All of which, believe it or not, was far rougher than living on the street, which began in late 2000.
So, what was the alchemy ritual, which got all of that started?
It’s a simple internal exercise, which I learned some people can do, and other people cannot do. Willow and some of her friends were able to move right into it, she was probably the most adept of those people.
How it’s done is, you get off alone. You get quiet. You close your eyes. And you ask God (use another word for the Almighty, if God bugs you) to show you what you need to see in that moment. Then wait with your eyes closed. Observe. Perhaps you see something in your inner vision. Perhaps you hear something in your inner hearing. Perhaps you feel something. Perhaps you smell something. Perhaps you taste something. I can be any or all of the above. Whatever is going to happen will happen in 5 minutes or less. Maybe in only a few seconds.
I remember a woman I taught the ritual on the small old wooden bridge on the upper bayside of Summerland Key in 1995, as a beautiful fool moon rose. She said all she saw was a black hole. I said a black hole is the most powerful female symbol of all. She burst into uncontrolled sobs for several minutes.
There is no way to anticipate what might respond to the ritual, which I was doing daily before I met Willow and taught it to her and her boyfriend at the same time. The father of her first child to come, as I recall.
I tell you the same thing I told Willow and her boyfriend and other people in Boulder. If you use this ritual and it works for you, it very well might take you places you would never yourself choose to go. I am a living example of that.
Perhaps I should say in closing, that the ritual came to me in the fall of 1993. In the late fall of 1990, I had been led to read about St. John of the Cross, and that had led me to the Pearl Street Bookstore on Pearl Street Mall, across from where I later would string the apples and do other weird things the likes of which street performances I never would see anything like on Key West’s Duval Street or Mallory Pier. In that bookstore I found a sole copy of St. John of the Cross: Alchemist of the Soul, which I read right away and said to myself it was interesting but I wanted nothing to do with what that saint had experienced.
Early the next January, in my sleep, I heard, “With respect to St. John of the Cross, you haven’t seen anything yet.” Then, I was lathered in raw horrible Evil. I tried to escape, and awoke trying to escape and gagging. I awoke with my ego inflated beyond belief, and I awoke terrified beyond belief.
A few months later, the first dark night descended. It was paradise compared to the second dark night to follow.
I believe that is sufficient warning, although I probably should say it looks to me today that most of the point of all of the dark nights and related mostly horrible training has been restoration of the feminine (the Holy Ghost/Spirit) in me. And, it looks to me that humanity needs the same restoration, although I imagine that what I experienced being applied to the species would reduce its numbers to maybe 500 people. Maybe the angels know a modified way. Maybe it doesn’t have to be so rough. Maybe that’s wishful thinking. As is my being a bespectacled gentleman. Just bespectacled might work okay.
Sloan Bashinsky

Boston Marathon massacre and other ruminations on what it will take to turn humanity around

Boston Marathon massacre

Boston Marathon casualties

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On CNN News programs last night, it was reported that there were no clues to who was responsible, nor any claims of responsibility, for the Boston Marathon massacre, which left me wondering if this was an inside job and not a foreign attack? It is not like Islamic terrorists to do something like this and keep quiet about it.

Willow Aurthur, an amiga from my past life in Boulder, Colorado, replied to yesterday’s

Boston Marathon massacre post:

I appreciate, as always, the courage and clear-sightedness of your writing. I have been wondering why there is “mental health” at the domestic level, i.e. we are discouraged from killing family members, neighbors etc, but NO MENTAL HEALTH at Government level. We are encouraged, even rewarded with medals and paychecks for killing our GLOBAL neighbors. This is schizophrenia. We must no longer tolerate madness in our leaders. The health of the microcosm is reflected in the macrocosm. Compassionate communication, anger management and mediation skills must be taught from kindergarten upwards, to see a global shift. I have hope for the next generation…I have to…I am raising them. Thanks Sloan.

Me, personally, I see no way to control America’s leaders, nor any American, nor any person, except myself, which itself is pretty much a full time job, and I get lots of help with it from the angels who run me. To listen to them, to observe and feel how they treat me, they ain’t too happy with me. Maybe what this world needs is for every person to get the much the same angel treatment I get. I bet that would cause things to be different on this world.

Bob Kelly of Key West reposted on Facebook yesterday this from yesterday’s

Boston Marathon massacre post:

Robert Emmet Kelly

“Excerpt From Sloan Bashinsky’s “Good Morning Birmingham” blog.
I agree with Sancho:

“are we ever going to learn (I mean all of Humanity) to appreciate life instead of glorifying/justifying mayhem!?”

However, I think absent something truly unusual happening, which gets every last human being’s undivided attention, the answer to Sancho’s question is, No.

Sloan Bashinsky

Repeat,

Me, personally, I see no way to control America’s leaders, nor any American, nor any person, except myself, which itself is pretty much a full time job, and I get lots of help with it from the angels who run me. To listen to them, to observe and feel how they treat me, they ain’t too happy with me. Maybe what this world needs is for every person to get the much the same angel treatment I get. I bet that would cause things to be different on this world.

From lower Keys amigo Michael Zarnowski yesterday:

This is among the best written and the most worth reading, I have found thus far…

https://www.facebook.com/pattonoswalt/posts/10151440800582655%22

Michael

Patton Oswalt · 247,598 like thisYesterday at 1:56pm ·

Boston. Fucking horrible.

I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, “Well, I’ve had it with humanity.”

But I was wrong. I don’t know what’s going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths.

But here’s what I DO know. If it’s one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. (Thanks FAKE Gallery founder and owner Paul Kozlowski for pointing this out to me). This is a giant planet and we’re lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they’re pointed towards darkness.

But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We’d have eaten ourselves alive long ago.

So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, “The good outnumber you, and we always will.”

A vast majority of Americans backed George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, then his invasion of Afghanistan. A vast majority of Americans backed Barack Obama’s continuation of George W. Bush’s wars, after Obama replaced Bush. A vast number of Americans backed George W. Bush’s father’s war on Iraq after it invaded Kuwait. A vast number of Americans backed the Vietnam war, and many Americans still wave their stars and stripes over it, and over the later wars mentioned above. In his handwritten diary, Harry Truman wrote that he dropped the A-bombs on Japan, not to force the Japanese to surrender, they were begging to surrender, but to intimidate the Russians. The Founding Fathers of the United States of America allowed human slavery to be legal. Their successors in power killed off most of the indigenous Americans and enslaved the rest of them. America’s karma is fucking horrible, it will claim its due, and there is nothing any American can do to prevent it.

Did I leave out America’s drone attacks on civilians in foreign countries? Are drone attacks any different from the Boston Marathon massacre? Or 9/11? Aren’t terrorists drones carrying out orders? Aren’t Americans who approve of and wave their stars and stripes over America’s foreign wars drones? When I learned of 9/11, my hope was America would not retaliate, for I knew it would be America’s undoing. Look at just the financial shape America now is in over fighting two land wars overseas it had not the money to pay for. That is precisely the result Osama bin Laden hoped to achieve. Osama won hands down, and his death at the hands of obviously very brave and very well trained Navy SEALS did not change the outcome of that war. America lost.

On another American war front:

Yesterday from Father Stephen Braddock, CEO of Florida Keys Outreach Coalition:

Stephen Braddock (frbraddock@cs.com)

4/16/13

Jesus homeless

“No place to lay his head”: Jesus the Homeless statue rejected

Posted on April 14, 2013 by Susan Thistlethwaite

This statue called Jesus the Homeless was rejected by two prominent churches before finding a home outside Regis College, a Jesuit school of theology with an emphasis on social justice, at the University of Toronto.

Statue of “Jesus the Homeless”

The rejection by churches of “Jesus the Homeless” is what I find we are up against as we try to spread a message on how economic justice is at the core of the Gospel message. People are really threatened by an image of “Jesus the Homeless” because it rips away the pretense that Christianity is about rewarding the wealthy.

Who is on that bench, under that blanket, shivering in the cold? God-with-us. It shakes you to your core if you let it.

Being homeless and sleeping on benches, and in doorways, and on beaches and piers, and in tents, and in homeless shelters, and in vehicles, and on couches and in spare rooms in other people’s homes shook me more than any thing I ever read, or saw in an art gallery.

The heart of the Kingdom of God program of Jesus is community organizing against Roman taxation, peasant indebtedness, loss of land, urban poverty, and the abuse of religion to justify that.

My reading of the Gospels, that is not what Jesus was about in Palestine. He told people to render unto Caesar what was Caesar’s, and to render unto God what was God’s. The Jews hated being under the Roman yoke. They wanted their messiah to free them from that yoke. Jesus said he was not about that. He was a soul activist, not a political activist. However, the politicians were terrified of him, because the poor and down and out liked him; even as he told his own disciples, the poor would always be with them, but he would only be with them a short while and to concentrate on him while he was with them. He also told his disciples re the poor and down and out, as his disciples did for the least of those, they did also for him.

Jesus, and his disciples, lived the alternative as revelation. That is why, as Jesus is journeying toward Jerusalem, he talks to them about the “Human One” (Oxford Inclusive Translation) having “nowhere to lay his head.” (Luke 9:58). It’s the revelation of how this is God’s program, not just a human program he is about.

That remark came about when someone who was not a follower of Jesus told Jesus that he wanted to be his follower, and Jesus said something like: “Well, here’s what that will be like: ‘The foxes have their dens, the birds have their nests, but I have no place to lay down my head.”

But the ownership crowd is not going down without a fight. In an amazing tweet-back, I was informed that “Jesus owned two homes. One in Nazareth and one in Capernaum. Plus a temple in Jerusalem.” Yes, I’m sure. That’s probably why Jesus cleaned the Temple, he “owned it.” You have to work hard to misread the life and teachings of Jesus that way.

A young minister at Glad Tidings Tabernacle Church in Key West told me in 2001, that the foxes have their dens passage did not mean Jesus was homeless; he could live with his mother anytime he wanted to. I asked the young minister where that was in the Gospels? What brought that conversation up was Glad Tidings was preaching  down to homeless people, before feeding them on Sundays at Higgs Beach, that if they were saved by Jesus, they would not be homeless. Hell, every person in that food line except one, who was Jewish, had been saved by Jesus; most of them had been saved several times by him, and they were still homeless.

But I’m finding there is a longing, in our local churches, to just tell the Gospel truth about this economy, and what it is doing to community, to education, to retirement, to actually being able to have enough to eat and a safe, warm place to lay your head. There are people sitting in our pews, right now, who are food insecure, who are drowning in debt, who aren’t sure how they will make the mortgage payment, who are facing a retirement in poverty.

Amen, Sister. In Acts, Peter and his community pooled their assets and shared what they had with each other; today, they would be called socialists, maybe even communists.

Reality. It’s the best interpreter of scripture. But incredible art helps a lot. That’s why it’s so often rejected, as was the very Jesus it depicts.

For me, reality is the best interpreter of Jesus, and of my relationship with God. As I wrote way up above, the angels remind me day and night of how much farther I still have to go.

Repeat,

Me, personally, I see no way to control America’s leaders, nor any American, nor any person, except myself, which itself is pretty much a full time job, and I get lots of help with it from the angels who run me. To listen to them, to observe and feel how they treat me, they ain’t too happy with me. Maybe what this world needs is for every person to get the much the same angel treatment I get. I bet that would cause things to be different on this world.

Jesus with leperJesus with leper

Other memories from my readings in the Gospels:

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth …

Not my will, but God’s will be done.

Love your neighbor as yourself, even if he is a Samarian, whom you and your people despise.

Do unto others as you would have done unto you.

It is more blessed to give than to receive.

Be a generous giver, good measure pressed down.

Resist not one who does evil.

Turn the other cheek, forgive, pray for and do good unto your enemies.

Meanwhile, what do you suppose if Jesus was in America today, he would say to one nation under God, in whom it says on all of that nation’s money it trusts, about America spending more money on its military than all other nations combined on this world spend on their military?

Jesus weptJesus wept

If Jesus did not turn humanity around, if Jesus did not even turn one nation under God around, do you really think humanity can be turned around short of what is being done to me being done to everyone?

Sloan Bashinsky, conscript

keysmyhome@hotmail.com