Thursday, January 31, 2008

46th anniversary of my father's death

My dad became a father at the age of 50 years old! My arrival was quite a surprise to him. I was his first and only biological child, as my half brother was adopted by him.

My dad was a great father and I adored him. He had a genius IQ yet he dropped out of school in the 8th grade to help at the hotel that his family owned. He was a paratrooper in World War II, lying about his age so that he could enlist even though he was too old (40 years old). When he returned after the war he worked at the hotel, was an unpaid deputy sheriff, and ended his days being a night watchman. He was a good and devout Catholic and he donated to the building of the new Catholic school even though I attended the public school. But he was no saint and enjoyed his beer and cigarettes as much as the next man ha. He taught me to read before I was even in school because he took the time to have me sit on his lap and read the comic strips in the newspaper with him. He brought home blank night watchman books so I could practice writing my letters in them. Every night before bed, if he was not working, we would walk around the back yard of our house so I could say good night to each of the trees, which I had given names to. I miss him all the time and the passing of 46 years have not lessened my memories of him, nor my missing of him.

What has hurt is that stupid and disgusting "new age" astrologers and stalkers have obsessed about and profaned my father and his memory in their ignorance and wickedness. Because he died at what they consider a profound astrological day these idiots have stalked me and my family, shoved their filth about reincarnation (which in the name of Jesus Christ I can tell you does not exist and never has existed) on me and my family, and robbed my dad of just being remembered in loved in peace as a good man, an extraordinary man, but a plain human man nontheless.

He was the only father that my brother knew, since my brother's father was killed in the war only a week after my brother's birth. My father loved him greatly from the start and was the role model for a man loving a son, even one that is adopted from a foreign land at the age of seven. My brother has taken over responsibility for paying for the tending of our father's grave and that of our ancestors there and I'm very proud of him for that. (Hopefully the astrologers have not dug up body parts from our dad over the years, and I'm only partly joking about this possibility). Drop the heresy at the peril of your souls for all eternity and just learn to be decent people living one life with inevitable judgment by God at the end of it.

God bless our dad.

Iranian condolences have a wonderful phrase

http://www2.irna.ir/en/news/view/line-20/0801310795011609.htm

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki in a message to his Greek counterpart Ms. Dora Bakoyannis expressed his condolences over demise of Greek Archbishop Christodoulos.

According to Foreign Ministry Media Department report on Wednesday, Mottaki in his message expressed sorrow for demise of Greek archbishop and said:

"The loss of holy men, who create love in people's heart, is deep grief."

He expressed hope that interaction between Iranian and Greek religious and cultural bodies prepare an appropriate ground for better mutual understanding and creation of religious proximity between the two countries.
Archbishop Christodoulos died Monday at his house at the age of 69.
1391**1771
---> Iran-Condolence-Greece

***
I found this reminder of the role of holy men to be very touching and appreciated very much the tender wording directed from Muslim to Christian.

Pictures of good spirited snow in Jordan

http://www.petra.gov.jo/Default.aspx?Lng=1

The Jordan news agency has a wonderful slideshow of pictures of the unique snow that has fallen on the country. They have had a very positive and safe attitude toward it, which is warming to the heart to see.

Suggestion for Saudi unadopted children situation

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=1&section=0&article=106338&d=1&m=2&y=2008&pix=kingdom.jpg&category=Kingdom

snip

The problem is that most orphans are not fair skinned. Rida says about 85 percent of them have African features and are unwanted by Saudi adoptive families who perceive these children to be outsiders.

“Their looks indicate that they are not of Saudi origin,” she said. “They are the children of illegal residents of Makkah.”

Rida says adoptive families make it clear that they aren’t interested in these children and specifically ask for light-skinned tots. She warn that this phenomenon of leaving these children — widely perceived to have been dumped by illegal aliens on the Saudi street or the product of extramarital affairs — will eventually exacerbate social problems

“These children grow up to hate Saudi society,” she said. “It will take us a long time to rehabilitate them. These children are the result of immoral relationships, poverty and lack of religious values.”

Abandoning babies is clearly a global issue, but the problem is exacerbated in the Kingdom due to the large numbers of uncounted people living outside the system, either as pilgrims that overstayed their visas to eke out a living in the Kingdom or by undocumented migrants crossing from poorer countries in the region.

snip

Nisrin Al-Ghamdi, a psychologist, said that while she wouldn’t call the problem endemic to Saudi Arabia, she does think it could be addressed more compassionately. “In the West orphans are raised and given an education regardless of their origins,” she said. “In Arab countries these children are often considered sinful. They’re raised under psychological suffering and they grow up hateful.”

snip

If police failed to find the parents of these children they end up in charity organizations such as Um Al-Qura. The officer couldn’t provide statistical data on the number of abandoned babies found in Makkah, which is home to a high number of illegal residents.

Rida said that her organization typically received these babies from the government after it is informed by the hospitals that received the babies from the police.

Islamic scholar Sami Khayat said that Islam encourages marriage in order to prevent the problem of abandoned children. From a religious perspective, abandoning a child implies two sins: one of having an illicit sexual affair and the other of not taking care of one’s offspring.
“Whoever is not (caring for his children) deserves punishment now and on the Day of Judgment,” he said.

***
I totally agree with the psychologist and the scholar Mr. Sami Khayat. I want to point out that the US in reality is not quite comparable because while it is true that an orphan is not discriminated against and receives an education, many women in the US obtain abortions, which is even more abhorrent than the having an affair and not taking care of one's offspring. So I'd like to make a suggestion so that you don't get pressure in the Kingdom to have more abortions like there is in the US.

I suggest that a foundation be established to create foster living centers for children who are not adopted. If the child cannot be adopted into a family, then let the families come to the child. You would pay good married couples or honorable single men and women (to be like aunts and uncles) to be permanent residents of the foster living centers. They would be group mothers and dads and extended family to all the children who reside in these foster living centers. This will give the abandoned children a positive family and learning experience. When they become of age they will be feeling loved citizens of the Kingdom and will have received religious instruction and not have the abandonment, hate and resentment problem. When they grow up and become of age I believe many of them will adopt their own kind from the same positive foster living centers where they were raised. This will solve the problem of preference for light skin children as the darker skin children grow up, become of age, marry and adopt younger children as their own. This would also provide honorable and charitable jobs for many Saudis. Elderly couples who have already raised their children may want this job. Poor couples who are good parents would want this job so that they have a good and safe place to live and an "instant family." And since the children would be raised in the foster center by light skin people who would love them and care for them and be their mothers and fathers they would not have negative experience with Saudi adults whom they will eventually join in society when they grown up. Also I think that attitudes would soften as the years go by of such a foundation and people observe how family ties are developed regardless of the abandoned child's origin and skin color. A child should not, ideally, feel like they are "waiting to be adopted" and "no one picks them out." If they are immediately put in a family organized foster center that is their life and they are immediately part of a family and not waiting for something that may not occur and feeling rejected. So all children could go into this system and some may be adopted but the rest are not the rejected ones without a mom and dad because they will have had a family from the very beginning.

I hope you find this idea helpful, with blessings for caring for the children of the children of Allah everywhere.

My suggestion to Egypt about Gaza border

http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-01-30-voa33.cfm

snip

The leaders of the two main rival Palestinian factions are in Cairo for talks on the crisis at the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Egyptian authorities view the open border as a security risk and want to reach a solution as quickly as possible. But Hamas and Fatah are showing little willingness to compromise. VOA Correspondent Challiss McDonough has more from Cairo.

In an effort to solve the border crisis, Egyptian officials held urgent talks in Cairo with officials from the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority and with leaders of the Hamas movement that controls Gaza. But the hostility between the two groups was evident. Each side issued angry statements criticizing the other and expressing their determination not to compromise on their demands.

snip

Egyptian state media are reporting that Egyptian security forces will move to completely seal the border in the next few days. The state-run AI-Ahram newspaper said the beginning of next week will be the last chance for Gazans to return home.

***
It may sound crazy but hear me out on this suggestion. Even if Egypt needs to seal the border in the next few days I suggest that Egypt establish an "economic zone" in their territory around the border. Egyptian merchants would be able to establish businesses there. Then I suggest that the border be opened for the issuing of "day passes." Gazans would be able to obtain a one day shopping pass to enter the Egyptian economic zone and do business. They could obtain goods and also contract services. It would be jobs for many Egyptians and a humanitarian provision for the Gazans so they can obtain goods and services. If someone abuses the one day pass system simply refuse to give them another one day pass for a penalty period of time. But I think this would be an extremely successful and safe endeavor that would benefit the poor people in both Egypt and Gaza. It would be simple to issue a photo ID right on the border with a digital camera and printer so you would issue each pass on the spot, and take it back on the resident's return. Think about it. I'd sure do it and I'd do it quickly, there's no time better than now when a win-win idea comes up (especially in the Middle East!)

***

Frost, hail and God's rounds

By the breath of God frost is given: and the breadth of the waters is straitened.

Also by watering he wearieth the thick cloud he scattereth his bright cloud.
[With hail, also, the clouds are laden, as they scatter their flashes of light.]

He it is who changes their rounds, according to his plans...

Job 37: 10-12

Idea for parents, educators, social workers etc.

When I was a kid in school we had what was called "home economics" class. Only girls could attend even though lots of boys were interested because they wanted to learn the basics of cooking! But the girls learned cooking and sewing and others of the classic home making skills, while boys attended "mechanical education" aka "mech ed" where they learned how to handle tools, carpentry and repair skills.

Some time ago home economics underwent a fundamental revision "modernization" in American education. Some of it was obviously needed as part of updating what both boys and girls need to know, but some of it I believe you need to rethink very seriously and quickly.

The focus of modern "home ec" (I'm not going to use any of the trendy names in this blog post for simplicity's sake) has been careerist, enjoyment, and birth control oriented. I'm being a little simplistic and blunt but you know what I mean. It was kind of redesigned to appeal to white middle to upper class kids who planned to work in jobs (especially "enriching" types of career tracks) and would be very much limiting or not having children at all.

But meanwhile what seemed like a logical synchronization between "modern" needs and the home ec curriculum is now in my opinion very questionable. I read a few articles to refresh my memory and update where schools are today in home ec. I detect a HUGE consumer orientation. A grooming of consumers would not be an overstatement. It sounds all logical, to teach them to be "good consumers" and "to read labels" but that is really so bourgeoisie and middle class if you think about it. What kids need to learn is how to make good choices of lifestyle, how to relearn some basic skills, and how to manage their nutrition in ways other than reading a label. These curriculums fail and leave behind lower income children and those from broken and incomplete families. We wonder why so many young men (and women) batter babies. Well, babies are alien consumer goods to many young parents. Teaching them more and more birth control and calling that "home ec" is not logical. Home ec should be the place where kids get exposure to home and family skills that they once would have received in, well, the home and family! Health ed classes are not the answer for even more of what I said above; they all want to be sexual and self empowering and birth control oriented.

Here is an example, and this is why I thought about this topic to discuss. I enjoy sandwiches; I'm not a burger or taco kind of person. So I needed to stock up on sandwich meats today and I broused the section deciding what I was in the mood for this week. I really hate pre-prepared food because by necessity they are full of additives and preservatives. I am convinced that someday like a concrete thud researchers will find that in addition to the unhealthy, calorie, and other problems with fast food and much of grocery food there is a huge problem with the accumulation of food additives that seem innocent because they are used to "preserve freshness." Think about it. Whatever chemical keeps meat from going bad or vegetables from growing mold is in your body with every bite. I don't want to get into a rant about that right now, but whenever I shop I weigh whether I want to buy a dose of what I view as chemically pickled and chemically preserved food. Everything has this stuff in it. You are talking to someone who baked her own bread into her early 20's so I know what I'm talking about.

So I looked at the small packages of sandwich meat, that run from like $3 to $5 and passed them up. Instead I bought a huge package of fresh chicken quarters for $5. That's 5 pounds of chicken for the same price as a small 12 ounce package of meat and the chicken comes without preservatives. I'm going to bake or saute the chicken and then slice it up for sandwich meat. It will last me for a week of sandwiches AND it will have no preservatives or additives (except what is in that darned bread ha ha).

Now, in a day when we are in an uproar about the cost of food, the toll of diabetes, sensitivity to additives, hidden dangers of chemical and processing of food, high fat, low nutrition values, etc etc why is it that I possess what one might almost call lost knowledge? Good grief, it used to be that everyone knew how to do this and that you got a better sandwich as a result. Now I don't want to hear that no one has time to cook because literally all you have to do is put the chicken on a tray with a rack in the oven and bake it for 45 minutes or so (until the juice runs clear).

What is PC home ec teaching today? Not this! Why teach kids they are eating crap and have to read labels carefully if you don't teach them how to create for themselves a whole new self empowering choice? Kids would go back to viewing fast food as treat food and not as the daily family larder. What is more empowering than not teaching kids to be "good consumers" and "interior decorators" but teaching them how to make their own sandwich meat that is better, healthier and cheaper? You could have a whole lesson on what I just wrote here. (Parents, don't wait, you can remember how to do this and show your kids yourself.)

But educators, I urge you to think outside the box. I know that's what you thought you were doing when you "modernized" some years ago but the technology and consumer madness of the society combined with unbelievable health and nutritious crisis has run over your modern curriculums like an out of control bandwagon. Kids can read food labels until the cows come home and they are all going to have "color" "freshness" and "quality" additives, plus they come in plastic or metal containers that add questionable chemicals to the system. Home ec needs to go back to the basics with a survivor twist. Another idea is to teach growing your own vegetables in the new old home ec.

I hope someone finds this suggestion helpful and looks into it. There is a DIRE need for this in the poorer school districts!!!

(spell checker is not working, surprise, surprise so if there are any typos it is not a secret message and you don't need to play any of your songs backwards either)

Abortion causes not stops parental baby abuse

Every day there is a new horror story about a mother or father, or a boyfriend or girlfriend of a parent, who horribly batter, torture and murder babies as young as the newborn.

And every time there is a "comments" page there is some idiot who calls for more birth control and more abortion because these are "unfit parents."

Obviously they are unfit parents, but they are unfit parents because they have become unfit human beings. And they have become unfit human beings because they have been raised in a society that takes abortion and baby killing for granted. Even people who go ahead and have a child after an unexpected pregnancy are contaminated by this belief.

Abortion has trained a generation of previously "human beings" that a baby is an accessory, one you either decide to allow to match your lifestyle and outfit or not. As men have become deballed by the breakdown of the family, this lack of empathy for small children and an accumulation of self involved and unresolvable rage results in young males beating and tearing apart even a newborn baby. They do it after arguments. They do it because they are high. They do it because the baby cried. They do it because the child knocks over the video game the "adult" is playing. Women think they are going to "kill their babies and take them along to heaven with them." (Wrong, by the way. The babies go to heaven all right. You don't.

When are people going to understand that a country that aborts millions of babies like they are dirty snot rags of inconvenience instead of even trying to have the baby and giving it up for adoption (the way things used to be) is also inevitably training the "parents" who do have children to be blind rage killing machines?

I'm old enough to remember parents who would die in hand to hand combat to defend their babies. Now these soul less morons decide to kill their babies to punish someone, to release their dinosaur rage, or to "take the baby along to heaven, a better place." (You will roast in hell for killing a baby. The baby will be in heaven and not remember you at all. File this truth away for future reference when you think you hear "God" or "the devil" "telling you to do something" to your baby or child.)

In a way I don't blame the under 30 year old batterers and murderers because they grew up in a time that YOU, their parents, dreamed up along with your dope and paid for with your dollars from your media job and taught by making "abortion a choice." The fault is on the heads of the generation that raised this generation to be immoral monsters. So don't sit there and comment that infant abusers "should have used birth control" or "should have had an abortion." You soul less morons it is growing up in this generation of kill a baby after a quick fuck that has caused this generation of unbelievably depraved skin bags who used to be called human beings.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Christian theological meeting in Syria

http://www.sana.sy/eng/21/2008/01/30/158778.htm

A Three-Day Theological Meeting Kicks off in Ma'arrat Sidnaya, Near Damascus
Wednesday, January 30, 2008 - 08:00 PM
Damascus, (SANA)- The 5th meeting of the theological dialogue atarted on Wednesday at Mar Aphram the Syria Monastery in Ma'arrat Sidnaya, near Damascus with the participation of the Vatican representatives (the Catholic Family) and Oriental Orthodox Churches (Family).
The meeting would discuss theological issues between the two churches, the Christian unity and defending the beliefs through amity and mutual understanding.
His Beatitude Patriarch Mar Ignatius Zakka I Iwas of Antioch and All Orient and Supreme Head of the Syriac Orthodox Church in the World delivered a speech stressing that the Eastern Churches were keen on continuing discussions with the Catholic Church to make rapprochement between them and reach mutual understanding.
His Beatitude voiced happiness that this meeting was being held in Damascus, capital of the Arab culture and cradle of civilizations and heavenly religions and from which the message of Jesus Christ had spread to the whole world.
He pointed out that Syria was the symbol of national unity and coexistence and an example to be followed in the world.
The opening ceremony was attended by 30 Christian figures from the Vatican, the US, Armenia, Egypt, Lebanon, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Indian, some European countries and Syria.
Representative of the Vatican and Head of the Catholic delegation Cardinal Walter Casper highlighted the meeting which grouped together the two churches in an atmosphere of amity and cooperation.
He expressed happiness that the meeting was held in Syria, the country of safety and stability in this tense region.
Ahmad Fathi ZAHRA


-and-

http://www.sana.sy/eng/21/2008/01/29/158606.htm

Syria offers condolences over the death of Archbishop Christodoulos
Tuesday, January 29, 2008 - 06:40 PM
DAMASCUS, (SANA)-President Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday sent a cable of condolences to his Greek counterpart Karolos Papoulias over the death of Greece's Orthodox Church leader, Archbishop Christodoulos who died yesterday.
In the cable, President al-Assad, on behalf of Syrian people and himself, expressed grief and sorrow to President Papoulias and the Greek people over the passing away of Archbishop Christodoulos.
The President recalled the honorable stances of Archbishop Christodoulos and his meetings with the late President Hafez al-Assad, and his commitment to boost and enhance ties between the Syrian and Greek peoples.
Mazen


***
Syria continues to have a dignified and generous spirit in Muslim-Christian relationships and are to be applauded for setting such a notable example of people secure in their faith in God. May God bless all people of good will and spirit.

Snow around the world

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow;

though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

Isaiah 1:18.

Something to ponder

It is better that a man or woman fully understand with their whole mind and heart a single sentence from the Bible that contains the Word of God than they know the number of times each word occurs in the scriptures.

Better that he or she knows to turn to the Bible when in doubt than he or she show off to another Christian that they know without opening the Bible the names of each chapter.

Better to look up a passage in a shared open Bible with the one you are debating than to try to shame the other by rattling off the passage in a prideful way.

Why are you debating the person if you are not holding a Bible to refer to in your hands? Know you everything already by having memorized favorite passages?

Bible Reading by topic: the tool hammer

I like to teach sometimes, and read for relaxation, all of the references in the Bible to a particular word. I don’t do it to “count the number of times” or do some other "Bible analysis" that borders on somewhat heathen or pagan numerology beliefs. When people are too busy counting words in the Bible they are not busy enough understanding each occurrence of the actual word. Therefore I do publish the actual words and meaning as a meditation to show people how a concept is fully developed in the Bible. For example, let’s look at the word “hammer,” which is a tool, and how the word appears in the Bible.

1. Used by Israelites in defense against enemies, as a helpless woman slays a fleeing general.

Judges 4:17. Howbeit, Sisera fled away on his feet to the tent of Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite: for there was peace between Jabin the King of Hazor and the house of Heber the Kenite. (21) Then Jael Heber’s wife took a nail of the tent, and took a hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground: for he was fast asleep, and weary. So he died. (23) So God subdued on that day Jabin the king of Canaan before the children of Israel. Judges 5:20. They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera. (26) She put her hand to the nail, and her hand to the workmen’s hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sisera, she smote off his head, when she had pierced and stricken through his temples. (28) The mother of Sisera looked out at a window, and cried through the lattice, Why is his chariot so long in coming? Why tarry the wheels of his chariots?

2. Idol makers use tools like hammers to exhaust themselves glorifying false gods and graven images.

Isaiah 44:9-10. They that make a graven image are all of them vanity; and their delectable things shall not profit; and they are their own witnesses; they see not, nor know, that they may be ashamed. Who hath formed a god, or molten a graven image that is profitable for nothing? (12) The smith with the tongs both worketh in the coals, and fashioneth it with hammers, and worketh it with the strength of his arms: yea, he is hungry, and his strength faileth: he drinketh no water and is faint.

3. The hammer as a symbol of the Lord God’s word, power and will, especially against false prophets, false dream interpreters and false priests and all who believe them.

Jeremiah 23:28-35. The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream; and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? Saith the Lord. Is not my word like a fire? Saith the Lord; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces? Therefore behold, I am against the prophets, saith the Lord, that steal my words everyone one from his neighbor. Behold I am against the prophets, said the Lord, that use their tongues, and say, he saith. Behold, I am against them that prophesy false dreams, saith the Lord, and do tell them, and cause my people to err by their lies, and by their lightness; yet I sent them not, nor commanded them; therefore they shall not profit this people at all, saith the Lord. And when this people, or the prophet, or a priest, shall ask thee, saying, What is the burden of the Lord? Thou shalt then say unto them, What burden? I will even forsake you, saith the Lord. And as for the prophet , and the priest, and the people that say, The burden of the Lord, I will even punish that man and his house.

4. The hammer as the power of Babylon that once broke the earth and now is broken in turn.

Jeremiah 50:22-25. A sound of battle is in the land, and of great destruction. How is the hammer of the whole earth cut asunder and broken? How is Babylon become a desolation among the nations! I have laid a snare for thee, and thou art also taken, O Babylon, and thou wast not aware: thou art found, and also caught, because thou hast striven against the Lord. The Lord hath opened his armoury, and hath brought forth the weapons of his indignation: for this is the work of the Lord God of hosts in the land of the Chaldeans.

Observe that it does not matter how many times the word “hammer” appears in the Bible. What matters is the meaning of what the Lord instructs in each separate use of the word hammer, both in actual events and in symbolic description.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Homosexuality case study (part one)

Here is a second case study. This one discusses homosexuality. Again, as I pointed out in the first case study regarding marijuana consumption and dealing, what I am writing about homosexuality is not anything new or surprising to anyone who is truly focused on discerning and obeying God’s will. It is all in the Bible and Qur’an. However I understand that people need to be helped to think through God’s “reasoning” and “methods” in order to be more faithful to their beliefs and not issue themselves “exception cards,” as so many sinners do today.

Immediately upon posting the marijuana example I thought of a trendy analogy for the methodology I am using. When I divide the topic into “small,” “medium,” and “large” cases it is like the way people talk about carbon footprints. I start out by explaining God’s attitude toward the sinner with the smallest “sin footprint.” This would be like a conscientious human being coping with a very personal and individual situation and therefore like a “small carbon footprint.” I don’t want to say it’s a “small sin footprint” because it is not, as in the last example the most important Commandment is being violated by the “small” category of dope user. But it is a relatively small footprint because the effects are highly individual and therefore do not enmesh others in the sins, plus the violating of other Commandments, as “medium” and “large” “footprint” users do. I hope the borrowing of the carbon footprint analogy, without going too far with it, is useful.

1) A man or woman recognizes that he or she is homosexual. He or she decides to be chaste in their homosexuality and do not engage in any homosexual acts at all.

I am going to spend a lot of time on this first example because it is the baseline to understanding God’s attitude toward homosexuality. The act of homosexuality is a sin, but being a person who is a homosexual is not a sin. The Bible and Qur’an prohibit homosexual behavior and lifestyle. This does not mean that simply “being” homosexual is a sin. Of course being a homosexual is not a sin. Sins are thoughts that lead to intentions and actions. In other words sins are verbs. A person who is homosexual is not a walking, talking and breathing “sin.” He or she is an equally loved child of God. Again, remember I am discussing the baseline condition of being homosexual but not acting upon the homosexuality.

One modern pro-homosexual propaganda that I must refute is when someone says, “God made me gay.” No, God did not make you gay. God does not “make people gay (or not gay)” any more than God decides you will have blue eyes, be born lame, have sickle cell anemia, be good tempered, like broccoli, or get childhood cancer. God does not “make” individual people; God makes their souls. When you are conceived you receive three things from God. The first thing is the gift of life in the first place, which is a share in God’s decision to have created and loved human beings, into which you are born to know, love and serve him. The second thing is a soul, which is unique to you, but not connected to human traits such as appearance, health, attitude or destiny. Each soul is unique but a clean slate, like a generic baby angel ha. You earn your wings in life, to use that old saying, but you are not born with preprogramming as to what those wings look like and how you choose to use them (or how life circumstances forces you to use them). The third thing you are given directly by God is the ability to know and communicate with God, including your own guardian angel but more directly, no one is blocked from communicating and accessing God. There is actually an inborn hunger in everyone to know God, whether they realize it or not, and whether they welcome this or resent it. This is because like I already wrote, the second gift that God gives you is your soul. All humans want, at some level, to know and be reunited with the parent of their soul, who is God. So God gives you, or “makes you,” to use the term under discussion a shareholder in humanity created by God, a soul, and direct connectivity to God.


The traits that you have, including physical, mental, emotional and social, are not directly given to you by God or mandated by God. They are the natural biology and social implications of being born within the human species with certain genes depending on the parents and certain environmental circumstances depending on where and how you live and with who. So the creation of your body in conception is not something that God “manages.” But once an embryo is conceived, attaches itself to the woman’s womb, and “quickens” (shows its first impulse and growth of life) God sends the soul and guardian angel to the attached and growing embryo. So you actually have your genetic traits already in place at the time of the fertilized egg just before it attaches and God “sends the soul.” So your soul is obviously not the driver of your lifelong traits. Your traits come from being a human, having a genetic code, receiving a certain upbringing, being in a certain society, having illnesses or disorders happen for biological or environmental reasons, and develop sociability unique to yourself. Within your body is that soul that is “along for the ride.” The body is the temple of the God given soul, not the other way around. The soul does not create, predetermine, or manage the mind or the body. So God does not send “a gay soul” or “a straight soul.” God does not send the soul at all until the embryo is already made by two people with their own traits and it is attached in the womb and has its first quickening. If you are “gay” for a biological reason, the gayness is already there before the soul arrives. If you are “gay” for social reasons, that possibility is already there before the soul arrives because you are already in existence with a set of specific parents in a specific society and with specific opportunities, or not, around you.

You should be happy with that news rather than sad. God loves everyone fully and equally from the moment of conception and sends a perfect first class clean and pure full soul to each person from their very moment of quickening. There is no “even though you are or have such and such” in God’s eyes. God sends the best and most beautiful soul to each person with no exceptions.


As an aside while as a humanitarian I understand it but as a theologian I am disappointed when parents of a very ill child tell the child that God made him or her “special.” It’s like they are saying to “comfort” the child that God made a child have leukemia just to make the child really “special.” ARGH! This is so wrong, though like I said, understandable in the pain of the moment of explaining a cruel disease or disability to a child. What parents should tell their child is that even though some people are born with an illness or disability, God has given them the same perfect shiny and healthy soul that he has given everyone else. Children need to know that even if their body is sick that their soul, which is the part that God creates, is beautiful and perfect and healthy and whole, and that it lives on after them (if they are at an age where the parents must discuss death with them). I’m amazed when parents explain that the child “won’t need crutches in heaven” but never think to tell them that their soul through all their travail is as healthy and strong and beautiful as anyone else’s soul, “before” their dying and throwing away the crutches! Parents should explain to children that all people get sick, some more than others, but that just because some people get sick it does not mean that God wants to stop “having people as babies” at all! That is “God’s will” if you want to explain it to a child. (Or an ignorant adult ha ha). God’s will is that even though many humans will have illness, troubles in their life, hardships or limitations, he loves them all so much and gives them such perfect souls that his “will” is that people continue on and have babies and try to be good and happy. God’s will is not to distribute a portion of misery among humans. God wishes everyone could be happy and healthy and this is one reason he has blessed good doctors (even though many of those doctors spit in God’s face in return, but don’t tell the kids that, that’s an “adult” story). God has blessed the development of nutrition, hygiene, medical doctors, surgeons, research doctors and their findings, though in return many of them become greedy and Godless. But if God “wanted” a certain proportion of people to “suffer” he’d never have blessed physicians and medical researchers the way that he has.

So back to our homosexual but chaste man or woman. You can now see that despite being homosexual the man or the woman is in possession of as pure a soul as anyone else, and is accessible to knowing God and his love as anyone else. A homosexual chaste person has no problem with God.

2) A homosexual person, man or woman, has a homosexual relationship that includes homosexual sex.

Now this person has put themselves into a condition of sin. Here is the reason. I explained above that God’s will is for the human species, and the flora and fauna of the earth too, to be fruitful and multiply in the context of the union of a man and a woman. This is God’s will and agenda. When you have a homosexual act you are acting outside of God’s clearly stated agenda. Notice I’m not discussing if it’s “gross” or not or anything judgmental. I am helping you to understand God’s will simply and clearly. God’s agenda is to love his creations, which are the inanimate objects and forces of the universe and the living beings, both humans and animals and plants. God created certain rules of physics and biology and then permits the living beings to exist and prosper within those rules and systems. For humans God specifically created the mechanism (man and woman in union) and the system (marriage, family, and tribe/clan/community). God specified over and over in the Bible and the Qur’an that this is the way that he wills live beings to live and exist within their set of natural rules and systems. When a person engages in one act of homosexual sex he or she is breaking the First Commandment by placing their own physical and emotional desire ahead of God. Just like I explained with the secret self grower individual reefer puffer each act of sex that is outside of what God has specified for the species is like that person carving one of their own idols. The person is saying that their self gratification is more important than God’s plan instance by instance, case by case.

This is an example of what I called in the doper posting a “taking your chances with God” type of sin with one huge obvious exception. When you have a homosexual interchange there is obviously another person involved AND there are sins against people who are omitted. An example is a man who leaves his marriage and children because he decides to live as a gay. Not only is he now sinning with another person (the gay partner) but he has deprived his children of a fully present dad. So the singular pot growing smoker who does it in total secret and with no financial implication does not have a parallel with the single discrete homosexual act because there is by definition another person involved and by default the “missed opportunity” sins of not fulfilling one’s full potential in God’s plan. God wants people to marry and have babies. He does not require it; single and childless people are just as blessed. But heterosexual single and childless people should not be running around undoing God’s agenda either (think abortion, family destroyers and moral libertines, but that is another topic).

The extent of a homosexual’s “problem” with God will be very much dependent upon how active and destructive the person’s pursuit of this lifestyle is toward God’s will, plan and intentions for humans. Being a homosexual person is not a sin. Each homosexual act is a sin of contrariness to God’s will. I will only go so far as to say that a homosexual person who is in a partnership (NOT trying to call it “marriage”) with another mature and willing homosexual person (who you did not turn or groom to be gay) and who is not a proselytizer of homosexual lifestyle and is otherwise pious has reasonable odds at “taking their chances with God.” God understands love and loneliness. But God will not forgive siphoning love from other people and from the health of humanity as a whole by people who seek their own sexual gratification. God will not tolerate homosexual agendas that attack and siphon from real marriages and the predominant heterosexual agenda of being fruitful in male-female unions within a family. God will damn for sure (guaranteed) homosexuals who pursue heterosexual “converts” to homosexuality, child or adult.

If I were to advise someone who is homosexual who feels they must have an active homosexual relationship this is what I would suggest. Recognize that you are acting contrary to God’s overall plan and that you are being weak in choosing a homosexual relationship. The reason that it is important is that if you accept God’s will as being valid and the most important you are minimizing your defiance of God in the First Commandment. In other words, you are not saying that your “lifestyle” is more important than God’s will (which would be violating the First Commandment by making your homosexual relationship an idol) but you are proclaiming that God is correct and you are incorrect and that your homosexual relationship is not pleasing to God, but request mercy for your weakness. This helps you to keep God where he should be in your mind which is over and above all of human beings' “wants and needs.”

Another reason this is important to be honest about it that it will help you to make “your sin footprint as small as possible” if you agree to work within God’s plan. For example I am pleased when I see homosexual people stand up for pro-life issues and pro family activities. That is true charity and consistency with God’s plan. Just because a person struggles with or is content with being homosexual does not mean they should be uncharitable and ungenerous toward straight families. The parallel is the Christian missionary who is concerned with feeding and clothing the poor who do not share their religious beliefs, knowing that charity is God’s will. Well, homosexuals need to wake up and realize that God’s will is heterosexual intact families and communities and homosexuals ought to be contributors rather than degraders of straight life. A person who has a private and discrete homosexual relationship but who works in the STRAIGHT community for betterment will go a long way to improving “taking their chances with God.”

Let’s have a little history lesson here: God’s not naïve. Human history is filled with the elderly spinsters who lived together in Victorian times, or “confirmed bachelors” who “never married for some reason even though he is such a fine catch.” But until recently and excepting very libertine lifestyles and communities, many thousands of homosexual people lived discrete lives with a partner but they gave toward the building of the straight, married, family oriented community and faith base. They lived God’s will in the community and the public square even though they could not do so to the ultimate degree by being chaste, and God has understood this throughout the time humans have been on earth. In more pious and low key times homosexuals who had a very discrete relationship and yet proclaimed God and family in the public square had little to fear from God. They, unlike the perverse social engineers of today, understood and supported God’s plan for humankind even if they could not contribute directly to being a full card carrying member of that plan! They taught in schools, but did not look at kids as rape bait. They worked at church socials for the betterment of community and faith in God, not to troll or weaken other people’s faith. They fought in wars and researched diseases without shouting that they would only work on projects that benefited “their agenda.” And most of all, they did not wish their circumstances on someone else. Maiden spinsters may have lived together but they didn’t want lesbian knitting clubs to spring up or butch “preachers.” They would have flipped their wigs to know today how people seek to propagate and push what they coped with, with dignity, in their day. They did not demand a greater share from the mainstream all the time screaming that they are deprived. Like our forefathers and mothers in general, homosexual or straight, they worked for everyone’s betterment and for everyone’s children of the future, not to skew the world into their playground and call that “equality.” They had confidence and belief in God and his love for them. The homosexuals of the past did not challenge and doubt God and his goodness the way they do today. They would denounce the activists of today most severely.

(More in the next section).

Dope use as case study about sin/purgatory/hell

A step by step case study using the example of a marijuana user to illustrate why the action is a sin, how the severity and number of sin occurences grows, and the implications for salvation (how the purgatory process might or might not be available to the sinner).

I’m going to spell it out for you why specific actions, in this first example drug abuse, are sins, what the consequences are, and all within the context of how God perceives these actions. There is nothing in here that is new; anyone with rudimentary religious education of the Bible or Qur’an can figure this out. I am speechless at how self deluding and ignorant people have become, however; it simply has amazed me over the past several decades of rampant sin and ignorance of the severe penalties to come. I am going to use the example of marijuana here in order to have the simplest and most prevalent possible example. Obviously this example can be extended to consumption of any mind or mood altering drug.

1) God’s view of the “smallest” example of drug abuse sin, which is to grow pot plant at home and harvest it for occasional personal use in secret.

Even if you are not purchasing weed, only growing a tiny amount for your own use, and keeping that use secret so that no one knows, this is nonetheless a very serious sin against God. The reason is that a mind or mood altering drug is an artificial barrier placed between the person and God. This therefore violates the first Commandment which is “I am the Lord Thy God; thou shalt not have strange gods before Me.” By using a drug with mind and mood altering and addictive properties you are “having a strange god” that is more important to you than God. The mere act of deciding to utilize a joint on each occasion is a decision to use something that is to you more important, even in only that instance, than God. That is the definition of a “strange god,” which is an inanimate object that you give power to over and above the power you attribute to God. Having a joint is exactly the same as picking up a piece of wood and carving an idol. Each and every time that you have a joint is the same as picking up a new piece of wood and carving a new idol. So consuming a thousand personal joints equals one thousand separate and individual violations of the First Commandment just as if you had sat down and carved one thousand wooden idols instead of one.

2) God’s view of “medium” example of drug abuse sin, which is to purchase pot from a dealer. Another example of this “medium” use sin is to endorse drug abuse by smoking the joints in the company of other people.


Everything that I explained under point one obviously by default also applies here. So each and every smoking of the joint is an example of violating the First Commandment. Now however you are adding additional sins by virtue of doing so publically in the view of one or more people in order to endorse this behavior, and/or giving money to people whose job it is to supply drugs. You are therefore in this “medium” example of drug abuse violating more of God’s commandments and prohibitions in addition to already violating the First Commandment because you are subsidizing the industry through even a “small” purchase AND you are setting an example for others, even in front of only one other person, that drug abuse sin is “OK.” By providing money to drug dealers (either professional or personal suppliers) you are violating the First Commandment in yet another dimension, which is to pay for people to carve those wooden idols and give them to others. And by consuming the marijuana in the presence of even only one other person you are “endorsing the carving and use of wooden idols.” I hope this example helps you to see that even the “small” example is a very grave violation of God’s most important Commandment, the First, and how “medium” examples are not only additional occurrences of violating the First Commandment but also “worse” because you are now tempting and enabling others to also violate the First Commandment.

You also need to understand that you become liable for other Commandments that are violated by yourself and others as the result of the consumption of marijuana. “Thou shalt not kill” is liable to be violated when “using” while driving, doing your job, and otherwise being responsible for the public. “Thou shalt not steal” is violated by financially and publically endorsing an illegal activity that is the direct cause of a robbery and crime culture. “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor” is also potentially violated because you are promoting the use of a substance that alters, however subtly, the accurate witness of reality.

3) God’s view of the “largest” example of drug abuse sin, which is to be a drug dealer, whether “small scale” (sold to one person) or “large scale” (block, neighborhood, gang, state or country, anything that involves multiple people).

It should not be difficult for you to figure out right now that hell is full of drug dealers, including the asshole on the block who “just” provides to a few people. A dealer is in the business of not only “carving the wooden idols” but making other people believe in the wooden idols. A dealer’s purpose is to “make a living” off of enabling and influencing people, often using force, of disobeying God and altering not only people’s spiritual reality but also their economic reality. Because the dealer “makes a living” off of pot use, in this case, the dealer is therefore also violating, in addition to all the Commandments listed above, the Commandment “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods.” The dealer craves money and possessions and so establishes an illegal and immoral enterprise to take money away from other people through their addiction and/or casual use of pot. The dealer not only takes money from the user, since he covets their money, but the dealer often takes the very means of livelihood for an entire family away from the users as they spend money on drugs instead of their own well being, education and livelihood. By transforming neighborhoods into drug zone the dealers suck away livelihood from the innocent around them as companies flee the neighborhood and jobs can no longer be had (except, ultimately, by dealing themselves). Dealers are responsible for the sins of those who emulate them, and they are responsible for the hardships that both the users and the innocent bystanders endure.

It should be clear that only example one, where the person grows their own pot for their own individual secret use, is a situation where the unrepentant person can still hope to “take their chances when judged by God.” A person who is literally a “singular island” of grapping with a sin such as growing and consuming their own pot in secret with their mouth shut about it has the best chance of being allowed into purgatory to be cleansed and eventually achieving heaven. This is because it really is a matter of their own conscience and background, all of which God is, of course, aware of. A parallel is the term “a victimless crime.” This is because literally not a single person or a single dollar is involved in this “pure and simple” example of single use secret consumption of home grown pot. The very minute that someone becomes aware of this usage, however, and that any money is spent in the purchase of the weed, it becomes the MUCH more problematic number two type of example. There are not too many people who smoke weed that they grow on their own and no one at all knows about it and no one benefits financially from it.

But I want to highlight example 1 because it helps people to understand that God is more “understanding” and “flexible” than the anti-God propaganda would have you believe. God recognizes that otherwise worthy people, as a result of their own choices or compulsions, sometimes “take a chance” with his mercy. That’s why purgatory exists. It’s not a matter of God’s “opinion” when he judges, but it is a matter of God revealing to the person the extent of their personal stain, which physically prevents people from entering heaven. I’ve explained this before that a sin stained soul cannot enter heaven because, to use the analogy, it cannot survive in the pure “atmosphere” of goodness and truth. It’s not like a sin stained soul can sneak into heaven through the back door. It’s still attempting to enter an “atmosphere” that a soul stained by sin cannot “breathe.” Purgatory is the process by which souls can cleanse themselves so that they can enter heaven and survive, living for eternity.

Here’s another example. When one dies in a state of sin it is like a person plugging cotton up their nose so they cannot breathe and wanting to enter a room of pure oxygen. Um, it’s not like God is being mean by insisting that people take the cotton out of their nostrils so they can breathe at all! If they do not remove the cotton up the nostrils they will die of asphyxiation. This is the example of a soul that dies in a state of sin. And by state of sin I do not mean they die without regrets. What I mean is they have an unresolved sin “track record.” One’s soul is stained by one’s track record of sin. Sometimes a person comes to their senses and regrets their sin, but what they did cannot be undone. Suppose the person the sinner wronged has died. The sinner can regret their sin, contribute a big check to some charitable organization, and if they are Catholic, obtain forgiveness through Penance and the Holy Eucharist. So the sinner can be forgiven, as if they never sinned, but the reality is that the actions of their sin cannot be fully remediated due to circumstances of time passing. A person can be forgiven of sin but it is not like time travelers erase the consequences on other people of that sin. This is part of the sin staining.

How do we know this? Look at the example of one of the greatest of the Prophets, the most holy Isaiah, who prophesied the very coming of Jesus Christ. What was the reaction of this extremely holy man, the like of whom has never since lived, when he was first called by God? Isaiah saw God appear, surrounded by angels who hailed God’s glory. (These very words of the angels are preserved in the “Sanctus, sanctus” sung portion of the Catholic Mass). Before God or the angels could even say one word to Isaiah, he told them to hold the phone before even speaking to him because:


Then I said, “Woe is me, I am doomed! For I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5).

Notice that Isaiah does not say he is a sinner, because he knows he is not and is instead a very pious and very holy man. Yet this great man recognized instantly that simply by being a human being, especially living among man who were sinning, that he had “unclean lips.” This is the example that Isaiah gives for the reality of one’s total unsuitability to merit seeing the manifested God with one’s eyes, and obviously this is the condition all who would want to enter heaven will be in. Upon his words the following happens:


Then one of the seraphim flew to me, holding an ember which he had taken with tongs from the altar. He touched my mouth with it. “See,” he said, “now that this has touched your lips, your wickedness is removed, your sin purged.” (Isaiah 6:6-7).

Notice the angel does not say, oh tut, tut don’t exaggerate Isaiah, you know you are a good man. No, rather the angel immediately acknowledges Isaiah’s insight that by definition he is a man who has “sin” and has “wickedness.” Notice the angel couches the expression that Isaiah possesses sin and wickedness, not that he is a sinner or wicked. This is the stain that I am referring to, where sin that results even from the inevitability of the human condition and living among sinners leaves a stain that must be removed. The angel uses an ember from the altar of heaven. The angel does not light a human charcoal grill, duh. Only an ember from God can purge a person so that they can communicate with God or enter into God’s realm of heaven. So the angel brings an ember from the very heavenly altar where God sits and uses that so Isaiah’s “wickedness is removed” and his “sin purged.” And yes, notice indeed the word “purge.” Whenever someone tells me “purgatory is not mentioned in the Bible” I want to smash his or her mush right into this page of the Bible. I don’t know how this could be clearer, and who thinks that what Isaiah required they don’t require in spades, in orders of magnitude greater than the holy ancient Isaiah? PURGATORY IS MENTIONED IN THE VERY CHAPTER WHERE THE PROPHET WHO PROPHESIED CHRIST IS FIRST PREPARED TO GET THE GOOD NEWS. CAN YOU HEAR GOD NOW? PUT ON YOUR FREAKING EYEGLASSES AND READ YOU MORONS.

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for me?” “Here I am,” I said; send me!” (Isaiah 6:8).

Upon being purged by the angel Isaiah is immediately ready to receive the Lord’s voice in his ears and hear his message of what he should do. After being “purged” by the angel Isaiah is now like an angel in that he is cleaned of the influence of sin and wickedness and now able to be entirely in performance of God’s will.

Going back to our original not so glorious example of man or woman, the pot user, you can see how the three instances of small, medium or large uses will all map to purgatory and, obviously, hell. Even the mildest pot user of the first “small” example cannot hold a candle to Isaiah, so this person had better expect some serious purgatory, assuming all else in their life is just. But people in the second “medium” and third “large” categories of pot use and dealing better think really hard about how they measure up to Isaiah. God will not bother with purgatory at all for those whose souls are so blackened that there would be nothing of decency left anyway due to the great weight and persistence of their sin. They will be dispatched promptly to hell.

What happens in purgatory? Let me talk about the most borderline case, where someone “gets into purgatory but just under the wire.” In other words, they escape hell by the skin of their teeth. I have to be honest with you, for those people there is not much “left” to enter into heaven. Some of these people have to be stripped back to how their souls were when they were infants. So while they achieve heaven they do so as infants or simple souls and do not bring the memory or associations of the world with them. They will not be part of “family reunions” in heaven, nor will they recall or miss their families, since there is no sadness in heaven. But it is not God’s plan that people should be given life in the cradle that is earth only so that they sin so much that the personality and grace that they developed on earth be besmirched and blackened so much by their sin that they lose their individuality and, for lack of a better word, “adultness” in order to gain heaven. Don’t count on seeing a lot of loved ones in heaven if they are in the sin business. Or if you are in the sin business.


I hope this example helps. I don’t know how many times it can be spelled out in dog simple terms.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

More about relieving and curing OCD

Here is my promised follow up on this subject. Remember that these discussions are also very helpful to people with other disorders such as depression and anxiety because there is a commonality of causes, which I will be discussing. In my previous blog post I wrote about what I call “justifiable” OCD, which is OCD that springs from overly checking scenarios where there could be a legitimate danger consequence, such as leaving the stove on after finishing cooking. So my advice focused on creating a system of assurance that you have done the proper “danger” checking and can move on with your day. With the bureaucratic system I proposed you can relieve the systems of the OCD and go back to being a normal albeit an extremely cautious person, ha. And that is not a bad thing. When I had a house and pets who depended on me I was very checking and checklist oriented myself, so I understand.

But now I want to talk about the more pernicious and damaging form of OCD which is non-justifiable OCD, to use my terminology. I call it non-justifiable because no matter how intense the OCD feelings are they are nonetheless an undue concern over a thing or phenomenon that is out of proportion to its actual importance in life. Non-justifiable OCD can be put into street talk, “You are obsessed with the bid-ness of something else, giving it an importance and street cred that it just does not have.” Let’s dive into an example that is not really classic OCD (like hand washing, walking a certain way, having obsessive gestures and motions, etc) but is enormously enlightening about the causes, mind set and cure for OCD. This topic is the obsession with numbers, counting and dates of the year.

Now I enjoy as much as anyone else glancing at the newspaper’s “What happened on this day in history” or that page on Wikipedia if I happen across that section of a newspaper or am on Wikipedia checking out who died or what’s the background and scoop about people and places in the news. But I have no urge to check what happened on this date if I don’t happen across that information. That includes my deep Catholic faith. If I am not attending daily Mass or I’m not reading scriptures for that date I have no urge to find out what saints are honored on a particular day. Trust me, the real St. Paul does not want people to obsess about his fall on the road to Damascus and meeting of Jesus on the same day every year. He related his story in his letters (epistles) so people would understand the meaning, not so people commemorate that day every year or worse make an occult linkage between that date and his fall. He would flip his gourd and bite his arm if he knew that some people are reading into his fall an occult linkage to the date the Church has designated (but has no way of knowing the truth of) as the holy day or feast day of his fall. Now the Church is correct to have these saint days because it is part of the teaching and celebrating the full comprehension of the body of the Catholic Church and Jesus Christ. So the Church is correct to have the feast days but it is incorrect for people to start making occult linkages between the date and the type of event. So “what happened on this day in history,” either for secular or religious reasons are educational and informative but should not have any influence on your day to day thoughts, activities and priorities whatsoever.

Here are more examples. My mother is German, emigrated here in 1949 four years after World War II so she is still very European in her outlook. Europeans make note of family events such as births, marriages, and deaths by noting them in the family Bible. So if they are Catholic they also track baptisms, first holy communion, confirmation, and the receiving of Holy Orders (becoming a priest). However my mother is depressive and borderline so she has put what has become an all too common distorting twist on what was a family record keeping and celebration event. She keeps the events not in the Bible but on a calendar, emphasizing the bad events, and uses them to alter her mood. She ignores the joys of birthdays, first jobs, and certainly of Catholic events (she does not remember dates of my baptism, holy communion and confirmation for example) but boy oh boy she loves remembering deaths, illnesses, surgeries and accidents that made her unhappy. (She does not remember surgeries of her children and their families, for example. If reminded she snarls, “I have enough problems of my own to remember.”) She has forged a chain of misery out of elevating the dates on which bad things happened and uses it to whip herself and others. My brother and I, for example, recognize that she spends January working herself into a depressive snit over the forthcoming February, which is a month full of dates she wants to feel bad about. She ignores the many good things that happen in February, focusing only on dreary dirges and rages about how she has “suffered” due to the sad events in the past of February. She will obsess about my father’s death anniversary in February, for example, but never once talk about the happy Valentine’s Days they had together. That’s an obvious example of someone who charges sad dates and events with a power way beyond what they deserve in a very dark OCD way. When I was stuck with her two years ago she was enraged that I was not a depressive mess on the anniversary of the date of my father’s death and we had quite a fight because I was watching TV instead of acting the mourning Queen (which is her job anyway). When I explained to her that yes, I think of dad on that day, but that I think of him and miss him every day she did not have a clue what I was talking about. She could not comprehend normal missing of my dad and thinking of him every day because she does not really think about him every day, but saves up all her drama for making his death anniversary torture for everyone around her.


Now I know people who follow occult matters and who obsess because my dad died on a “highly significant astrology alignment.” For goodness sake people are stupid and wicked. Just because my father died on one day of “astrology significance” how is the loss of a dad any more fraught with significance than a girl or a boy who lost their dad on an “insignificant” astrology day? My dad was a dad and a husband who worked in humble jobs. He was not a prophet or a reincarnated person (lest you’ve missed my messages there is no such thing as reincarnation.) OCD people give great significance to events way out of proportion to their importance and believe in causalities and relationships that do not exist.

Here is another example, the September 11, 2001 attacks. People in the occult obsess with the date and time the planes hit, and the birthdates of people involved. How stupid and pointless is that? How about worrying about when the bunch of terrorists first got together and had the idea? Events that are monumental are given birth to in gradual stages years in advance. So dates, numbers and time have no meaning at all and you are an idiot if you think so. To refute this mindset I did some research and found the first report by a New York City official warning that terrorists will target parking areas in skyscraper buildings. He had returned from a trip to the UK where he observed IRA terrorist techniques and extrapolated that to worry about what NYC could do to avoid the same types of risk. He wrote that report in August, 1984. The World Trade Center was bombed the first time in 1993 via a truck of explosives in the open parking garage. Why don’t we have a day of mourning and obsess every year about the date this guy’s report was issued and ignored? It’s August 6, 1984 by the way. I plugged that information into my astrology software to demonstrate to the retards who believe in astrology that they don’t even understand their own crap. You don’t obsess about the date and time and the “numerology” of the day the bomb goes off in the parking lot, or the day the planes fly into the building. You obsess about someone not doing their freaking job in heeding warnings by security people that are issued nine years in advance to the danger actually happening. And the fact that the date the report was ignored is “Leo” doesn’t mean crap. Or that the digits add up to 8+6+1+9+8+4=an “8” day does not mean crap either. It means that a bunch of idiots (of assorted birthdates) ignored the due diligence warning report of a security professional who went to England to learn about terrorist threats and not to play with a pendulum or count how many people in the room have a Leo Moon up their Leo Uranus.

So it’s time to talk about the causes of non-justifiable OCD. One cause is occult teaching, as I’ve described above. Many OCD sufferers have a family who deviated from mainstream and valid religion and faith formation in childhood to superstition, occult or other “New Age” beliefs. The second cause of OCD is genuine chemistry or medical imbalances or conditions. It can be as minor as sensitivity to food chemicals and too much carbohydrates to the still mysterious flaws in internal brain chemical balances that do genuinely disrupt some people (though not as much as the pharmaceuticals would have you believe in their advertisements). The third cause of non-justifiable OCD is a trauma. Many people who have this form of OCD had a trauma in their early life and the feeling of not being able to control the circumstances and the subsequent pain of the trauma causes them to try to over-control their surroundings by seeing sinister causes and effects. This is especially true if the person was traumatized as a child because children have “magical thinking.” This is a term to describe how youngsters do not have enough life experience and knowledge at their age to fully understand cause and effect in life. An example is the child who thinks his parents divorce because of something he did like not cleaning his room or that they don’t love him enough to stay together. A child who experiences a trauma is very vulnerable to potential future OCD, especially if the trauma is untreated in our very fake society that challenges a child’s sense of reality anyway. For example, years ago most people lived on farms. Rather than being a rare occupation it was THE most common way people supported their families, by growing their own food and raising their own livestock. So a child knew about eggs and chickens and chicken dinners at a very early age and it was natural. If there was a death in the family even the youngest child understood, having been a part of the cycle of birth, life and death from the very beginning on the farm. But today children are totally divorced from reality, and by reality I mean life affirming and stable reality. Reality is a good thing, but today it is often used as a label to deliver an unkind message. But the farm child of 100 years ago would never think that her dad died because of “something she did” and have the magical thinking that children are vulnerable in the past forty years. Today’s children are raised on vibrating electrons of unreality from day one. I would only be exaggerating slightly to say that a child could see a false connection between turning off a TV and having the image of people “disappear” with the disappearance of a member of the family who suddenly passes away or leaves the family. So trauma, such as abuse, a sudden loss, or a chaotic home with violence and substance abuse and no predictable virtuous structure can definitely be causes of OCD later in life. What is the first thing a child learns? Children learn how to count. What do many OCD sufferers suffer from? An undue obsession with numbers, counting, the significance of dates and numbers and the feeling that they must “participate” in the “control or counting” of these numbers or something will be “off or bad” in consequence. Adults with number and counting obsessions are reverting to the first thing that they as children experienced success with and some control over!

So one of the first principles of alleviating and curing OCD is to recognize that the props and activities that you utilize in your OCD relates back to where you had your first childhood “success” and felt that things were understandable and in control. For example, some people obsessively wash their hands. What does this go back to? One of the first things that a child learns, usually lovingly in even the daftest and most dysfunctional house is how to wash his or her hands. Hardly a child has not had the experience of a mom or dad helping them to stand on a stool or chair to reach the sink and learn to wash their hands like a big boy or girl. Often they had to wash their hands before eating so washing hands is a ritual before reward. If someone is traumatized or grows up in an out of control household it is not at all surprising that the person reverts to the behavior that was their last pleasant and in control learning experience. The adult mind will tell you that they are washing their hands obsessively because of all the germs “out there.” But the reality is that the adult is reverting to understandable positive ritual behavior that was learned before chaos and trauma intruded into their lives. This is why the OCD hand washer will do it until they are raw and pained sometimes trapped in the house or apartment being never satisfied with the washing. It is not a chemical imbalance (though one develops over time as one behaves dysfunctional without being relieved) that causes the hand washing and it is not the over concern about germs that is causing the hand washing, even if that is what everyone says. What is causing the OCD hand washing is that the person feels he or she has to revert to early positive childhood behavior because somehow they have felt derailed and a loss of control over positive reward and experience due to a trauma or familial/societal chaos. OCD counters revert to obsession with numbers because learning to identify numbers and to count was their most positive childhood experience that they can revert to. I’m sitting here trying to think of other examples (in person dialogue is always so much better because people can actually ask real questions and present examples!) People who OCD about what is being put into their food or drink (outside of the very real concerns about unclean food or drugs being put into bar drinks) are reverting under stress to the time when as a baby or child they did not have to worry about what was in their food because whatever mommy or dad gave them was fine. So under stress OCD food, drink, poison obsessions can be traced to the person reverting to a time when they felt the safety net of the baby bottle, the pureed food, and the meals prepared by family members that they can trust. When trust has been lost and when a trauma or dysfunction takes hold the adult reverts to obsessing about the last thing, in this case eating, where they felt they were in control and could implicitly trust without even thinking about it. I think these are sufficient examples that you can examine your own OCD experiences and immediately see the potential cause(s) and why your mind and your body “chose” through reversion to childhood the mechanism of the actual OCD behavior.

Knowledge is power and even having this conversation with you through this blog posting is going to have a hugely positive effect on you. (Again, don’t stop using any medication a health care professional is giving you without consulting with them first). OCD is in a large part a feeling of being unable to control life around you, due to that trauma, occult “education” and/or chaotic household environment. So knowledge is medicine to someone who feels they lack control because it is that golden answer to “Why me?” You should feel great relief at knowing that whatever your mechanism of OCD is (or hopefully you can soon say “was!”) it is your body and mind trying to do a good thing. You are not a freak or damaged. The body and mind are trying to self heal by reverting to positive childhood experience. So some go back to that universal childhood joy of learning to count. Others go back to the rituals of childhood, so important in otherwise chaotic lives, such as washing hands. Still others yearn for the time when they could trust other people and society in general, so they obsess about food and beverage as they unconsciously try to recall the time when mom or dad prepared the safe meal in the sippy cup, or the sandwich and cookies after school. So I have just given you a huge part of your self control back to you by helping you to understand that there is a positive self healing reason that your body and mind selected a particular OCD as a coping mechanism. And this is the hint as to how to cure OCD. You need to expand your repertoire of where you can draw on normal life for positive reinforcement, control, and healing of traumatic or chaotic conditions.

Here is another thought for you. Those of you who are Christian and/or involved in programs such as AA know the expression, “Let go and let God.” Well let me tell you this is more than a wise saying or a positive mindset, it is an actual prescription. Think about history of humanity. Pagans felt out of control of their environment so they did many superstitious things including sacrificing to idols to “appease angry gods.” While people didn’t suffer from things like OCD in those days, religious ritual is a cure for OCD because it is giving back to God things that you obsess about controlling but rightfully should not even be trying. (The reason people did not suffer from OCD in Biblical times is that everyone had to work to glean food and survive and anyone who had a disorder contrary to healthful living just would not have thrived or survived). But where I can help you see the parallel is that suppose each and every person in a tribe worried on their own about doing sacrifices to the “theoretical angry gods.” You could easily see OCD develop as some people spend all day sacrificing and doing weird rituals rather than tilling the field and feeding their families. So people realized that they needed a designated holy person to perform sacrifice and ritual on their behalf. I’m deliberating using non Christian examples so that everyone can relate to what I am saying because I’m talking about an individualized disorder, OCD, and a tribe that lacks a central performer of ritual would have many individuals having to guess the best they can. I’m not saying that there are “angry gods” nor am I saying that sacrifice as taught by God to the Israelites and understood in Christianity and Islam is a meaningless superstition. I am using an example of how people all went through their own search for control in the days before they understood the natural forces at work around them, before they adopted the great moral codes for behavior, and before they received inspired instruction from God directly. People could not afford to have large segments of their population running around performing sacrifices, having counting rituals, developing their own “what if” superstitious practices and other non productive activities because literally people would die unless every man, woman and child were involved in the gathering and preparation of food, water and shelter. Today, however, people can still eat and survive with a roof over their heads and be as OCD as you can imagine. Back then people would die very quickly, within days, if any segment of the population ran around doing their own superstitious and ritual thing. Primitive people would have crumbled under the burden of each of them thinking that they have to carry the burden of “controlling and appeasing angry or capricious temperamental demanding gods.” So people around the world learned to “let go and let the high priest or the shaman.” I think I’ve used this example enough to give you background to human nature and its linkage to the potential development of OCD. Oh, but one more point. People who lived near unpredictable things with big consequences, like volcanoes, would feel a greater stress to understand and engage in mitigating ritual. People who lived in fertile and gentle environmental surroundings where food is plenty and the weather is steady would have less of a sense of angry or temperamental gods and forces of nature to understand and appease. Likewise children and later adults who were raised in and subjected to “volcanic” and chaotic abusive conditions are going to be more vulnerable to OCD than children and later adults who grew up in steady Eddie surroundings where people were well fed and felt safe and consistently secure. Children who grow up in steady and secure well understood family and community environments are less likely to develop OCD later in life. And this is where again I remind people with depression and anxiety disorders that they share in the same potential scenarios as those I am directly addressing with OCD, so these insights should help you too.


God communicated with early humans, from Adam through Abraham for a reason. Not only does God love all living things, including of course humans, but God wants people to understand life and be as healthy and joyous as possible. God did not want to see people churning through idols and superstitions, especially since MANY pagan beliefs resulted in the sacrifice of infants, children, men and women. I always wonder when daft New Agers have their eyes shining in admiration about some “calendar” or “mythology” of ancient pagan people when those same people were trying to get better crops or more lavish treasure by throwing babies into fires and cutting the hearts out of the poor stupid people in the next village. People wonder why God sounds so “pissed off” in the Old Testament and in the Qur’an. Well, any decent human being would have been pissed off too as babies were spitted on spears to sacrifice to some stupid idol that didn’t exist to get some advantage that came down to weather, hard work, not being at war and a bit of luck. If you read the Bible carefully you can get a sense of the rage of Moses for this very reason. He goes to God to get the good news and finds that he can’t even be away for a few days to get God’s word for the people without them worshipping idols, and this is what is important, who demand human sacrifice!

This is why God gave what sounds today like bloody and weird instructions for sacrifice to him in the Temple. God recognizes that 1) the mental wiring of humans simply needed a sense of feeling in control of the forces they could not control in reality and 2) people forget reality and who they are unless they have ritual that reminds them that they are not God themselves and that all that they have, including their harvest, is due to the generosity of God in the first place. So God teaches humans to sacrifice a portion of what they have to him so that they can feel the right amount of control (by doing proper ritual) and that they remember who they are (they need to give back to God so that they don’t start to think that all goodness comes from humans themselves). Jesus replaced the animals, grain and gold of Temple sacrifice with the liturgy of the sacrifice of the Mass. The Prophet (PBUH) linked sacrifice to the annual Haj. So the proper mindset is still maintained that people are doing right by the one God and what he requires.

This is why OCD sufferers are sometimes deprived of the structure of “letting go and letting God.” They, because of their trauma or chaotic conditions, feel that they are personally doing business on behalf of the universe. This is especially true if New Age and occult “beliefs” have contaminated their thinking. You’d be amazed how many people consciously or unconsciously think they are players in the workings of the universe. You’d think a hurricane or two would remind people otherwise but people are persistent in their self inflation and disbelief. OCD sufferers are often unconscious victims of what is the common temptation of society today which is to over inflate the individual’s role in the workings of the universe and ignore the specific instructions and teachings of God that are the actual antidote to many mental disorders. Don’t get me wrong on this; I’m not saying that there aren’t psychotic Christians or religious folks with mental disorders. That’s the reverse of what I’m saying. Mental illness and trauma, disordered and chaotic family and social conditions strikes every one of all classes and faiths. What I am observing is that certain conditions are becoming more common and severe as a result of the safety net having been removed. A child who is brought up to understand a loving God in a structured family and faith is less likely to have to fall back on obsessive counting if and when a trauma occurs, for example. The purpose of this blog posting is less to predict if a disorder can be avoided and more about how to understand the disorder and relieve or cure it where you can. I am pointing out that OCD sufferers often do not have the benefit of the safety net of feeling that “God is handling whatever they are obsessing about so they do not have to have obsession rituals in God’s behalf.”


I can give you a very whacky example. After September 11, 2001 I was doing some of my undercover work examining the whole New Age phenomenon. I was shocked to read on a very popular astrology board that people were actually stating that the souls of the dead were “trapped” in a “golden cloud” above the World Trade Center and that they needed some spooky New Age prayers and thoughts to help “free them.” Good God what have people come to that they would believe and propagate this crap? Who in their right mind thinks that God doesn’t have the whole dying/soul goes to heaven, purgatory or hell thing really worked out kind of smoothly and might I also add perfectly? God would leave people hanging and chilling after a horrible disaster because what, God is getting a pedicure somewhere? God can’t handle a few thousand souls? (Though no one remembers the 100’s of thousands who died in Chinese earthquakes decades ago and somehow God handled all those souls without the Internet ghouls to help him out.) This is an extreme but informative example of how some very inflated people think they are players in the universe. On a microcosm and individual level, non-justified forms of OCD sufferers unconsciously think that they have to do certain things to “help the universe out.” This is the unjust burden that they carry. They feel like something terrible and wrong will happen if they don’t do their counting and their rituals. This is especially true of people who have kind of elaborate rituals of behavior as their form of OCD, since they are not just reverting to a childhood mode of comfort and control that singular form of OCD sufferers experience. These behavioral OCD sufferers who develop elaborate models of behavior are trapped into thinking, consciously or unconsciously, that the basics of life and death are somehow incomplete unless they stick their hands and noses into it.

Again a quick look back in history helps illustrate this. Pagan folks often wanted to help their loved ones by giving them provisions to take with them to use after they died, since they did not understand that material goods do not accompany the dead. But they wanted to help their loved ones so they buried food, tools, sometimes even slaying their animals to go with them to serve. The Egyptians developed a whole elaborate belief system on what they thought would happen once a person died and tried to work it to the best advantage by providing surroundings for the dead person and ritual that would be supportive of what they thought the gods on the other side were doing to the soul of the departed. But even they did not actually think that the gods on the other side actually needed the help of a human to handle a death! They did not say, “Step aside Anubis, I know what to do better than you!” Ha ha. It is only today in this incredibly fake culture where everyone has their 15 minutes of fame and delusional feelings of grandeur that people think they actually have to get personally involved in God’s bid-ness. Look at movies like “Men in Black.” The universe is a series of toy marbles of universes that freak alien children are playing with? You think this is just “entertainment” and not a reflection of what self inflated images some people have of themselves as players in the matters of God and men? Virtually all entertainment and media promote an occult self importance that is simply invalid, untrue and unhealthy. A segment of the OCD suffering population is very sensitive to this propaganda, either consciously or often unconsciously. They start to feel that yes indeed, unless they do certain rituals there are universal consequences. “Reality shows” and so forth reinforce this belief by linking their subplots to political, religious and commercial events, so it is possible to see some minor event magnified in what seems to be a universally significant way! This was what first clued me off to checking out what was really going on in the New Age circles of crazies. I started wondering why trivial events were deliberately being attached and linked to universal events.

So it is very important that OCD sufferers recognize that their actions do not have any influence on the universe or global events, and that their feelings and impulses are individual cycles of trauma and self healing attempts and coping mechanisms. Here are my suggestions to reprogram your self and alleviate some of your OCD symptoms and driving causes. If you have the sense that unless you perform some of your OCD ritual that something “bad” will happen: 1) imagine that you are writing a memo or post it note to God. In your mind write on the memo “To God, please handle this. Thanks.” Attach the vague feeling of worry or compulsion that you have to the mental memo and send it to God. Trust that God will “handle” whatever crisis you think is possible if you do not do your OCD ritual. Trust me, you are not responsible for whatever you think you are. But the best way to short circuit that dire feeling of compulsion is to “forward with attachment” your even inarticulate package of worry and foreboding to God and trust him to “handle it.”

2) Be aware that whatever you are compulsive or worried about is already also “being handled” by the truly spiritual people of the great mainstream religions. So after doing my first suggestion of sending to God your “handle this” memo, spend a moment being aware that people are already “on the situation” and that you do not need to “do” anything about it. Trust me the Pope is on top of a lot of the situations that people (Catholic or not) feel uneasy and compulsive about. All of the Christian patriarchs, priests and performers of holy ritual as specified by God are “on top of the case” of whatever is giving you conscious or unconscious unease. They are doing it without your having to worry about it or even without your having to send them a reminder ha. Another example of someone who is “on top of the situation” is the King of Saudi Arabia, The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. He has responsibility for welcoming God’s guests to God’s places of worship for up to a billion believers in the world. As the host on behalf of God for millions of faithful at a time, trust me, the King is on top of things. I mention the men of Christianity and Islam specifically because unlike cult and pagan beliefs they do not require people to give them money or buy into their version of manipulated spirituality because the true men of God are working for God, not themselves. The Pope and the King would do exactly what they are doing whether they were wealthy or poor, whether there was one believer left on earth or a billion. Because they “work for God” and do not have a personal agenda you can trust that men like this are “on top of the situation for you.” Know that whatever “needs to be done” that you feel a vague universal compulsion about is already being handled by them.

3) Go see and see for your self that “it is all” being handled. People often whine about why they should go to Church if “they have God in their heart” and if it’s not entertaining enough. See other blog postings by me about why people need to celebrate in community their faith and why they need to attend Mass. But here in the context of this topic is yet another reason. When you do go to Church (or mosque) you are observing and witnessing, and hence being reassured first hand, that people “are on top of the situation” and that they are “handling it.” There are few things more stabilizing than witnessing that Orthodox Christianity, Catholicism, mainstream Protestant and non-denominational houses of worship and mainstream Islamic mosques are “handling things” for you. They are following the instructions of God and they are on top of things. They will do this whether you are there at Church or mosque or not but by being there YOU gain the advantage of witness and assurance that quell the vague and mostly unjustified fears and compulsions that you may be feeling. This is different than attending AA or another support group. When you attend AA or a support group you are learning coping mechanisms and having the community of fellow sufferers to learn from and gain strength and support. When you attend Church or mosque you are watching people who don’t have the burden of your problems handling them and others for you! That is not to say people do not have problems. What I am saying is that they are performing God’s overall work rather than being gathered together to deal with a situational problem such as addiction or a disorder like OCD. You need to detach the unconscious inflation that your disorder is associated to the spiritual and physical working of the universe. The best way to do this is to observe, witness, and participate in the group that is serving God and “handling things” on that level. Then you can isolate and shrink your profile of symptoms to understanding that they are your individual coping and healing mechanism and not part of some unfathomable problem. God has given clear instructions and advice for dealing with the realities of life and there are millions of people who are busy “handling” what God has told them to do. For example while visiting with a family friend Native American medicine man years ago I discussed with him his tribe’s belief that all the prayers they say are part of universal benefit for the salvation of humankind. Unknown by many people they are “handling it.” You don’t need to find out “who is handling it best” or run off and join a cult, heaven forbid, since that starts most of the problems in the first place. You need to plug back into the mainstream religions who serve the one God and witness that you do not need to have weird qualms that unless you walk a certain way and do a bunch of ritual actions that something bad will happen.

Another way to look at this is to think of food cravings. You know how when you are low on vitamin C often you will get a craving for a citrus fruit or juice, or if you are low on salt you get a craving for a salty food? OCD people who dodge church or mosque have the craving nonetheless to “handle the universe’s bid-ness” and so you develop this weird connection between your original individual trauma or chemistry imbalance and the grand movements of the universe. You have the correct instinct that “things need to be done.” But you are dodging the very place where God’s business is being performed! So when you have the craving that is the compulsion recognize that you don’t need (and indeed should not) allow your body and mind to invent skewed individual pagan and superstitious thinking. If you craved salt would you go into your basement and try to invent a salt substitute? I sure hope not. If you crave salt and you worry that you (and the universe) are not getting enough salt, how about going to where the salt is being distributed and consumed and getting some for yourself? And observe the universe is getting enough salt? (Please no crank email about too much salt causing high blood pressure, lighten up, it’s an analogy ha). You know what I intend with this analogy, I hope.

4) If you have OCD do NOT use any mind or mood altering drugs including marijuana! Weed is not harmless. Weed accentuates the false linkage between your condition (your OCD based on trauma or other original cause) and the false believe that your condition has some dire universal significance. The same applies to alcohol, do not abuse alcohol though if you are not an alcoholic it is OK to have a normal and healthy consumption. But I must totally warn you that there is no "OK" amount of pot at all and there is no medical "alleviation" of symptoms of OCD through use of pot. First let's look at the salt analogy. Using pot is like eating more of salt depriving foods when you are having a salt shortage already. In other words the pot strengthens the wrong linkage between your OCD and the sense of doom/universal significance of your individual condition. Everyone should stop using pot period no weed none whatsoever ever any how or any way. But in the context of this topic I need to explain to you that pot does not alleviate OCD but worsens it and pot actively blocks you from being cured.

Whew! This is a lot of information and I hope you and your family and friends find this helpful.