Category Archives: OUR BEST POSTS

* Andy Kessler: Guilty as charged

Clippings, Get on your feet, Homelessness, National media, National news, OUR BEST POSTS, Poverty, Yahoo! Voices,

I participate on a certain online discussion board. My premiere antagonist is a man who got trounced by a playground bully in fifth grade. He never fails to seek to re-enact that battle with me (or any of certain others), hoping for a different outcome this time. He casts his opponent by turns as the bully he wants to be or the chump he fears he was; and interacts with those projections. It has nothing to do with me. He might as well be playing with his G.I. Joe dolls.

Andy Kessler’s 07/08/13 Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Summer Jobs for the Guilty Generation,” is little different. In his quotations of others’ expressions, I hear compassion; he hears guilt. I hear gratitude; he hears guilt. I hear hope; he hears guilt. What’s up with this?

Kessler projects his own guilt feelings onto his son’s generation. That’s easier than owning them, but solves nothing.
Continue reading * Andy Kessler: Guilty as charged →

x Prayer primer

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nanocrystals2 edited
All my life, I’ve been fascinated with things that glow in the dark.  Where does the light come from?  This is now fundamental to my understanding of prayer, and of my vocation.

The picture shows what I take for the latest advance in the world of fluorescent materials.  Here are germanium nanoparticles in a colorless colloidal (gelatinous) suspension, being irradiated by ultraviolet light.  By virtue merely of where they are and what they are, the invisible light that shines on these particles is changed into visible light.

The nanoparticles catalyze that process:  they do no work of their own, expend no energies of their own, and take no active part in the process; but it won’t occur without them.
Continue reading x Prayer primer →

* Was there a Jesus? If so, what was he like?

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In many cases, you can strip away the fictions surrounding a legendary figure, and discover the historical original.

For example, there probably was a King Arthur.

Troy was a real place, and the Trojan War a real event. Achilles, Odysseus and Agamemnon were probably real people.

What about the Jesus of the Bible?

Circumstantial evidence exists to suggest there probably was such a person. Textual evidences are available to suggest what he may have been like. He may or may not have been as Christianity presents.
Continue reading * Was there a Jesus? If so, what was he like? →

* Nemesis of the morning glories

Bible, Get on your feet, Job search/Job prospects, Motivations, OUR BEST POSTS, , , , , , ,

The job search feels like an endless exercise in futility.

I recently launched a new hobby that may help me persevere.

It involves the unusual tactic of seeking emotional discomfort.
Continue reading * Nemesis of the morning glories →

* Unlocking the vision

Bible, Career goals, Get on your feet, Motivations, OUR BEST POSTS, The Way of Peace,

Proverbs 29:18:  “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”

I saw it any number of times while teaching:  give a child a musical instrument, or the discovery of any other talent, whether art, or sports, or some special interest; and it just transforms that life.  The vision of the excellence he or she can achieve, the beauty she or he can create, unlocks vast positive energies.  The mediocre-at-best student comes to excel in every subject.  The child who was awkward and socially withdrawn begins to shine.
Continue reading * Unlocking the vision →

* Conspiracy theorists: America’s lost sheep?

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Man who helped Sandy Hook kids is harassed by conspiracy theorists

Sooner or later, something like this will happen.

If someone were to call “The William Tell Show” proposing that the Sandy Hook shootings were a hoax perpetrated by the Obama administration as a pretext for seizing all Americans’ guns, and that Gene Rosen and the others were all “crisis actors;” I would be strongly tempted to dismiss the caller quickly and perhaps even hold up his or her beliefs to ridicule.

That would be exactly the wrong response.
Continue reading * Conspiracy theorists: America’s lost sheep? →

* Paying my dues, singing the blues?

Career goals, Get on your feet, Homelessness, Motivations, OUR BEST POSTS, Poverty, Yahoo! Voices, ,

Courage and despair hang in the balance for a homeless radio talk jock wannabe.

“You’ve got to pay your dues
If you want to sing the blues,
And you know, it don’t come easy.”
— Ringo Starr, “It Don’t Come Easy”

Many years ago, when I first conceived the ambition to become a radio talk show host, I quickly selected that song as virtually a theme for my show. Life is difficult. My heart’s desire was to equip people to face life’s difficulties head-on.

My life circumstances were far more comfortable at that time than they have become since. Now I’m asking myself if I’m paying my dues; if I can sing the blues; and whether I myself will face life’s difficulties head-on.
Continue reading * Paying my dues, singing the blues? →

* Treatment resistant

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A ‘village’ of mentors keeps Trayvon Martin’s friend, Rachel Jeantel, on track

Tom Joyner: “Did it work? The short answer to that is no.”

At first glance, the story of Jeantel and her “village” seemed to me to epitomize the principle I set forth in “Don’t come uninvited.”

Continue reading * Treatment resistant →

* The New Life Clinic

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I recently came across the web page for The New Life Clinic.  This appears to be new.  It’s modest, but says enough.

The New Life Clinic

The New Life Clinic happens at Mt. Washington United Methodist Church, 5800 Cottonworth Av., Baltimore, MD at noon every Thursday.  The service lasts about an hour, and includes individual prayer with the laying on of hands.

I’d encourage anyone in Baltimore to go.

They’ve always kept a very low profile.  In 2013, not sure whether the New Life Clinic was still in operation, I phoned the church office.  The pre-recorded message didn’t mention it.  Yet the services I’ve attended were all standing-room-only with people who’d come from all over the world; many of them also patients at one of Baltimore’s world-class hospitals.

I seek to model my practice on theirs.

(Reblogged 04/11/19.)

* Keep the focus on you

Get on your feet, Homelessness, Job search/Job prospects, Motivations, OUR BEST POSTS, , , ,

(Originally published 09/15/12 at Trojan Horse Productions.  Reblogged 03/28/19.)

Teddy is an old man. He wears a rosary around his neck, and never fails to “testify” in chapel. “I talk to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost every day,” he says. Every time there’s an altar call, he runs right up there to get born-again — again. Five times a week, he’ll do that.

He got barred out a year ago for selling someone oxycontin.

Friday night 09/07/12, he came back. He insists to everyone that he’s never been here before, and said he wants to get into the program.

Aside from those things, he hasn’t changed at all. Still all the same empty religious talk.

Sunday night he said he changed his mind about the program. They require you to sign over all your benefits, and he’s not willing to do that. That tells me you don’t want to get well.

I get bad feelings every time I see him.

———— ♦ ————

Sitting outside waiting to be let in, Wednesday 08/29/12 Fallon and a couple other guys I don’t like too much got into reminiscing about how this shelter used to be, years ago, before the renovation. This upset me.

Continue reading * Keep the focus on you →