Book Excerpt: “The Constitution of the United States – and Selected Writings of the Founding Fathers.”

Even my Canadian readers will want to pay attention here. In fact, this excerpt may resonate with any resident of the Commonwealth as much as it would to an American.

It will be quite some time before I do a “Book Review” post. This book has over 800 pages, and at the moment I’m just over 100 pages in. It’s not light reading, it’s mostly speeches and letters at this point. I think the book is organized in chronological order.

I can tell you what stands out to me so far, and then I’ll give the excerpts.

There’s a question I’ve had about America, and I’ve heard it a couple of times when I was in Canada and didn’t have a good answer for it. “How can God bless the United States, when the founders rebelled against the authority?” How can God bless a rebellion? They were supposed to be all Christians and pastors and godly people from a culture that was saturated in the Bible. Why did they not submit as Paul instructs us in Romans 13?

What was surprising to me in reading through these various speeches and letters so far, was how the founding fathers, John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Otis, Thomas Paine and so forth were addressing that very question. And not doing it only to themselves, and to the residents of the American colonies, but also to the king, the British parliament, the British people, Ireland, Jamaica and even the Native Americans, all in separate letters, documents and speeches.

I’m positive that they used to require at least reading some of this in school. But, that would have been before my time.

At a minimum, we should publicly (or privately) read the “Declaration of Independence” in our celebration of the Fourth of July.

What else is fascinating, is that these speeches and arguments are appropriate, relevant and would be immensely helpful today.

So, here’s the excerpts I want to share with you. These are the lines and phrases and paragraphs that I have already read to a couple of friends that asked me about them. It’s from a speech that John Hancock gave in the Constitutional Congress after the Boston Massacre. You remember, John Hancock is the man that signed his name in super large letters at the bottom of the Declaration of Independence so that the king wouldn’t need his spectacles to see who signed it.

Yeah, that guy.

And, his speech was straight fire. And, boy, does it have something to say about our situation in 2022. Here’s some excerpts. This first one is in the second paragraph, after he apologizes for not being a good speaker and how he shouldn’t have been chosen on this occasion, but somebody needs to say something, so he will give it a go. He says:

“I have always, from my earliest youth, rejoiced in the felicity of my fellow-men; and have ever considered it as the indispensable duty of every member of society to promote, as far as in him lies, the prosperity of every individual, but more especially of the community to which he belongs and also as a faithful subject of the State, to use his utmost endeavours to detect, and having detected, strenuously to oppose every traitorous plot which its enemies may devise for its destruction. Security to the persons and properties of the governed is so obviously the design and end of civil government, that to attempt a logical proof of it, would be like burning tapers (candles) at noonday to assist the sun in enlightening the world; and it cannot be either virtuous or honorable to attempt to support a government of which this is not the great and principal basis; and it is to the last degree vicious and infamous to attempt to support a government which manifestly tends to render the persons and properties of the governed insecure. Some boast of being friends to government; I am a friend to righteous government, to a government founded upon the principles of reason and justice; but I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny. Is the present system, which the British administration have adopted for the government of the colonies, a righteous government, or is it a tyranny?”

What stands out to me from that passage is two sentences:

“Security of the persons and properties of the governed is so obviously the design and end of civil government”

And…

… “I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny.”

And, then he asks the question… is our current government doing that?

Then, he starts to make his case. And, after detailing some of the events that have occurred that are economic and then military in nature, he says:

“But this was not all: as though they thought it enough to violate our civil rights, they endeavoured to deprive us of the enjoyment of our religious privileges; to vitiate our morals, and thereby render us worthy of destruction. Hence the rude din of arms which broke in upon your solemn devotions in your temples, on that day hallowed by Heaven, and set apart by God himself for His peculiar worship. Hence, impious oaths and blasphemies so often tortured your unaccustomed ears. Hence, all the arts which idleness and luxury could invent were used to betray our youth of one sex into extravagance and effeminacy, and of the other, to infamy and ruin, and did they not succeed but too well? Did not a reverence for religious sensibly decay? Did not our infants almost learn to lisp out curses before they knew their horrid import? Did not our youth forget they were Americans, and regardless of the admonitions of the wise and aged servilely copy from their tyrants those vices which finally must overthrow the empire of Great Britain? And must I be compelled to acknowledge that even the noblest, fairest part of al the lower creation did not entirely escape the cursed snare? When virtue has once erected her throne in the female breast, it is upon so solid a basis that nothing is able to expel the heavenly inhabitant. But there have not been some, few indeed, I hope, whose youth and inexperience have rendered them a prey to wretches whose, upon the least reflection, they would have despised and hated as foes to God and their country? I fear there have been some such unhappy instances, or why have I seen an honest father clothed with shame; or why a virtuous mother drowned in tears?”

I didn’t know that the British government was imposing restrictions on their church services. That was surprising to me.

But, the line that jumped off the page to me was: “all the arts which idleness and luxury could invent were used to betray our youth of one sex into extravagance and effeminacy…”

That line will get you in a lot of trouble these days.

I know parts of that paragraph we have to read a couple of times, and it’s tempting to scan it and not take the time to try and understand what he’s saying. But, we are that youth he’s talking about. If we want to reject out of hand what he’s saying, we should at least try to understand it first.

He goes on to talk about the Boston Massacre, and calls for the day of March 5, 1770 to be remembered forever because of how unjust the whole affair was. And, then declares:

“But let not the miscreant host vainly imagine that we feared their arms. No; them we despised; we dread nothing but slavery. Death is the creature of a poltroon’s brains; ‘tis immortality to sacrifice ourselves for the salvation of our country. We fear not death.”

As the speech continues, these are some of the lines that I underlined.

“Let our misfortunes teach posterity to guard against such evils for the future.”

“The dark deeds of a treacherous cabal have been brought to public view.”

“This people will never be enslaved with their eyes wide open… a wise and brave people, when they know their danger, are fruitful in expedients to escape it.”

“At such a congress, a firm foundation may be laid for the security of our rights and liberties…”

Last excerpt:

“Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed, by the soft arts of luxury and effeminacy, into the pit digged for your destruction. Despise the glare of wealth. That people who pay greater respect to a wealthy villain than to an honest, upright man in poverty almost deserve to be enslaved; they plainly show that wealth, however it may be acquired, is, in their esteem, to be preferred to virtue.”

That to me, is straight, white-hot, fire…

He closes his speech with an appeal to God Almighty as the righteous judge of the whole earth who sees all, knows all, and raises up and pulls down kingdoms and empires as he pleases, and appeals for everyone to submit to His will and sovereignty.

I’d love it if you read the whole speech for yourself and then gave me your thoughts on it. You can read it here.

 

Book Excerpt: “The Real Anthony Fauci” – Chapter 12 – Germ Games

In my review of the book, I shared how the book starts out with easily observable characteristics of how Dr. Fauci had handled the Covid-19 pandemic poorly. That’s an easy argument to make, in spite of the fact that not many people in mainstream society have made it.

As the book progresses and the author begins to dig and answer the questions that arise in our minds, things become far more sinister and conspiratorial.

Much of the middle of the book goes back in history of Dr. Fauci himself through his long career at the NIAID and how he became the highest paid person in all of government. There’s a long section on the AIDS epidemic and HIV and how he handled that. We have such short memories.

Then, he shifts to Bill Gates, his history, and then details all of his connections stretching all the way back to the Rockefeller Foundation at the turn of the last century. Their ideologies are telling. They are worth an excerpt. And, then umpteen accounts of the hundreds of people that have positions of institutional power all over the globe, yet are working in lockstep concert with both Gates and Fauci.

The details of their first meeting and partnership are worth another excerpt, but I won’t do it, because I’m sure others have or will.

What I want to share is how the book comes to a close. And, that’s with the merger of the biomedical firms with the military and government.

In Chapter 12, the author gives the history of bioweapons and names the events and people involved that brought about the funding and institutions that are now dominating our day to day lives.

And, then pulling from news reports shows all the simulations that they have orchestrated over the last few years. Here’s the deal. All over the globe they have taken people from local law enforcement all the way up to government department heads through multi-day exercises to see how they would respond to a biomedical attack. It’s all under the guise of being prepared. But, actually, when you read what they do, it sure looks like what they were doing was training.

This is why it seemed like all the globe was running off the same playbook when it came to Covid-19 response. Within hours of each other, different nations came out with the same measures to contain Covid. Well, except for Sweden.

It was because of these simulations. And, here’s the names:
Topoff 2000-2007
Atlantic Storm 2003
Global Mercury 2003
Atlantic Storm 2005
SCL Simulation 2005
Lockstep Simulation 2010
Mars 2017
Spars 2017
Clade X 2018
Crimson Contagion 2019
Event 201 2019

It should go without saying to not research those on Google. Instead, use DuckDuckGo or something that’s not monitored by Big Tech. Qualified research on Google doesn’t exist anymore.

Here’s the excerpt. It’s from the results of the simulation they ran called “Crimson Contagion” in 2019.

“…organizers staged the Crimson Contagion exercise nationwide at over 100 centres. ‘Participation included 19 federal departments and agencies, 12 key states, 15 tribal nations and pueblos, 74 local health department and coalition regions, 87 hospitals, and over 100 healthcare and public health private sector partners.’ (footnote) The simulation scenario envisioned a ‘novel influenza’ pandemic originating in China labeled H7N9. As with COVID-19, air travellers rapidly spread the deadly respiratory illness across the globe.”

Crazy right? Did you click the footnote link? It’s to the NY Times.

Did you notice that it says: “Do Not Distribute” all over it? Robert F. Kennedy writes:

“…(The report) didn’t become public until the New York Times obtained a copy under the Freedom of Information Act and “published a front-page article on March 19, 2020, eight days after the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic. (footnote)”

He continues:

“The Times story contained this paragraph: ‘The October 2019 report documents that officials at the Department of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services, and even at the White House’s National Security Council, were aware of the potential for a respiratory virus outbreak originating in China to spread quickly to the United States and overwhelm the nation.’ (footnote) The New York Times takeaway missed altogether the larger and more significant stories: that the Crimson Contagion’s planners precisely prédictives every element of the COVID-19 pandemic — from the shortage of masks to specific death numbers — months before COVID-19 was ever identified as a threat and that their overarching countermeasure was the preplanned demolition of the American Constitution by a scrupulously choreographed palace coup.”

Earlier on the page he writes:

“The Crimson Contagion exercise achieved eerily accurate forecasting with numbers that precisely predicted the official casualty data for COVID-19: 110 million forecasted illnesses, 7.7 million predicted hospitalizations, and 568,000 deaths in the United States alone.”

Specific death numbers. That’s crazy.

Of course, this little snippet is provided to whet your appetite. You really should read this book.

I won’t provide a link, but I’ve read reports that there was a simulation that just wrapped up that was about global economic collapse.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s book doesn’t end with much hope. But, we need hope. And, I’ve found great hope and comfort in another book, an ancient one, specifically, the book of Psalms. In it, people like you and me who have faced the prospect of danger, or the results of evil people’s machinations to reject God, disregard his imminent justice and wreak wickedness all over the world. They write about that, openly, poetically, emotionally, in these plaintive phrases to God, the just judge of the whole world.

Evil won’t win. It can’t. “There’s no wisdom or counsel that can prevail against the Lord.” He is the just judge, and he watches over the righteous and the innocent. His ways are past finding out. What we can do, is choose to trust Him to work and to move on the behalf of the oppressed and speak the truth to our neighbour.

This is my attempt at that.

Maranatha.

 

Book Excerpts: “The Real Anthony Fauci” – Chapter 10 – More Harm Than Good

My dad used to say, “if they let you shoot the gun, shoot it until they take it away from you.” It was in reference to preaching in churches. It should be obvious that he wasn’t talking about a literal gun, but using it as a metaphor for doing something good that needed to be done, for the joy of doing it, recognizing that there may not be much time.

That’s how I feel with these book excerpts. As long as I can post them, I’ll keep doing it!

Here’s the one that I usually start with. It’s the one that stunned me the most. And, it’s personal. It really doesn’t have anything to do with Covid-19 or the Covid vaccines, or the lockdowns or anything. It has to do with childhood vaccines. Look at what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. writes in a section titled “Allergy to Placebo Testing”:

“Most medicinal products cannot get licensed without first undergoing randomized placebo-controlled trials that compare health outcomes — including all-cause mortalities — in medicated versus unmedicated cohorts. Tellingly, in March 2017, I met with Dr. Fauci, Francis Collins and a White House referee (and separately with Peter Marks from CBER at FDA) to complain that HHS was, by then, mandating 69 doses of sixteen vaccines (footnote) for America’s children, none of which had ever been tested for safety against placebos prior to licensing. Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins denied that this was true and insisted that those vaccines were safety tested. They were unable, however, after several weeks, to provide us a single citation for a single clinical trial using an inert placebo against a vaccine. In October 2017, Del Bigtree and Aaron Siri — who both attended these meetings — joined me in suing HHS under the Freedom of Information Act to produce the long-promised safety studies. (footnote) Ten months after the meeting with Fauci and Collins, on the courthouse steps, HHS admitted that we were, in fact, correct: none of the mandated childhood vaccines had been tested for safety in pre-licensing inert placebo tests. (footnote). The best of Bill Gates’s African vaccines are all on this list. But Bill Gates also uses a large retinue of much more dangerous and demonstrably ineffective vaccines in Africa — ones that Western countries have actually rejected because of dire safety signals.”

The footnotes are illuminating.

However… what jumped off the page to me was…

NONE OF THE MANDATED CHILDHOOD VACCINES HAD BEEN TESTED FOR SAFETY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And, when you read their response, in the last footnote… argh! Especially when you compare that to the second footnote which is the letter they were responding to.

This is a scam. And, it needs to end.

That last line, about how Bill Gates uses the vaccines, that Western countries have rejected, in Africa is a straight up crime.

I won’t go into the detail here, you’ll need to read the book to get the details of that. Crazy stuff. Like doing vaccinations that include sterilization ingredients, in only women of childbearing age. All the vaccines were kept in a hotel, along with the medical staff, so that no vaccines are left lying around for anyone to pick up and run some tests on. Every morning, the staff would leave the hotel with the vaccines, go administer them in some remote area, and then pack up and go back to the hotel every night. And, then they tied funding for public health from the WHO or the UN to the percentage of vaccine uptake among the population.

That’s a crime against humanity.

And, if it doesn’t move you, then maybe what they did in NY for years among foster kids with vaccine trials for HIV might.

Again, it’s detailed in this book. Too much to write here.

I’ve got one more excerpt I want to share with you in another post.

 

Book Excerpt: “The Real Anthony Fauci” (NIAID: A Pharma Subsidiary)

How about another excerpt?

This is from the end of chapter 2, where the author has taken the time to begin to explain the connections between staff at the NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) and pharmaceutical companies and universities. It’s an entangled web that is funded by both the US government, but also pharmaceutical profits.

He closes the chapter with a rhetorical flourish that shows again in an easily observable way how far off the mission the agency that Dr. Fauci leads is.

It really caught my eye because so much of my daily life has been affected by the failure of this agency to stay on mission. This, as they say: “gets me right in the feels.”

“Most of us would like “America’s Doctor” to properly diagnose our illnesses using the best science, and then instruct us on how to get healthy. What if, instead of spending their entire budgets developing profitable pharmaceutical products, Dr. Fauci and the heads of other NIH (National Institute of Health) institutes deployed researchers to explore the links between glyphosate in food and the explosion of gluten allergies, the link between pesticide residues and the epidemic of neurological diseases and cancers, the casual connections between aluminum and Alzheimer’s disease, between mercury from coal plants and escalating autism rates, and the association of airborne particulates with the asthma epidemic? What if NIH financed research to explore the association between childhood vaccines and the explosion of juvenile diabetes, asthma, and rheumatoid arthritis, an the links between aluminium vaccine adjuvants and the epidemics of food allergies and allergic rhinitis? What if they studied the impacts of sugar and soft drinks on obesity and diabetes, and the association between endocrine disrupters, processed foods, factory farms, and GMO’s on the dramatic decline in public health? What would Americans look like if, for fifty years, we had a public health advocate running one of our top health agencies – instead of a Pharma shill? What would have happened if we’d spend that hundreds of billions of dollars on real science, instead of drug development? Dr. Fauci seems willing only to give us diagnoses and cures that benefit Big Pharma – instead of public health – and to cover his trail with artifice.”

Here’s the lines that jump out to me:

“Spending THEIR ENTIRE BUDGET developing drugs. “

“Glyphosate and gluten allergies”

“Mercury and autism“

“HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS on real science instead of drug development.”

There’s definitely some questions that need to be asked and resourced. This is just a paragraph, and it has no data in it. It’s a rhetorical flourish. You’d have to read the surrounding chapters to see all the data, the myriad of connections all these supposed “experts” have that serve on committees, boards, watchdog groups and so forth and how tied into the pharmaceutical companies they are. That’s bad enough, and then to see how ultimately all the funding comes from Fauci.

This book is a few months old. There were some emails released within the last couple of days that show how Fauci has a network of “experts” all throughout the world that under his direction give “expert” witness and testimony to the media, in boards and committees and even “watchdog” groups to quash information that is damaging to pharmaceutical companies.

Meanwhile, families like ours are left with the daily consequences of these failed opportunities.

It’s so gross. Judgment will come.

 

Book Excerpt: “The Real Anthony Fauci” (HCQ – Before Dr. Fauci’s Smear Campaign

Here’s the first section I dog-eared and marked in the book: It’s in the section of the book where the author is examining the current response to Covid from Fauci, and it’s all just observable data, easily found and resourced. He writes:

George Washington? Seriously? Wow! And, they got it from the bark of a tree? Incredible. I love this kind of information. Kennedy continues:

“Dr. Fauci’s challenge – to prove that HCQ is dangerous – was daunting because hydroxycholoquine is a 65-year-old formula that regulators around the globe long ago approved as both safe and effective against a variety of illnesses. HCQ is an analog of the quinine found in the bark of the cinchona tree that George Washington used to protect his troops from malaria. For decades, WHO has listed HCQ as an “essential medicine,” proven effective agains a long list of ailments (footnote). It is generally benign prescription medicine, far safer – according to the manufacturer’s package inserts – than many popular over-the-counter drugs.”

GEnerations have used HCQ billions of times throughout the world, practically without restriction. During my many childhood trips to Africa, I took HCQ daily as a preventative against malaria, a ritual that millions of other African visitors and residents embrace. Long use has thoroughly established HCQ’s safety and efficacy such that most African countries authorize HCQ as an over-the-counter medication. Africans call the drug “Sunday-Sunday” because millions of them take it religiously, once a week, as a malaria prophylaxis. It’s probably not a coincidence that these nations enjoyed some of the world’s lowest mortality rates from COVID. HCQ is the #1 most used medication in India, the second-most populous nation on the planet, with 1.3 billion people. Prior to the COVID pandemic, HCQ and its progenitor, chloroquine (CQ), were freely available over the counter in most of the world, including France, Canada, Iran, Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, and many other countries.”

Sunday-Sunday… that’s hilarious. He makes a great point about how ubiquitous this drug is and was. I have a friend from Africa, and he commented that in his country “Praise the Lord, the Lord has been gracious to my country, because there hasn’t been many hospitalizations or deaths from Covid. There aren’t many hospitals or resources anyway. The Lord has protected us.” I have another friend from Africa, and she said that her family there says that “it’s a rich person disease.” He continues:

“In the United States, the FDA has approved HCQ without limitation for 65 years, meaning that physicians can prescribe it for any off-label use. CDC’s information sheet deems hydroxychloroquine safe for pregnant women, breastfeeding women, children, infants, elderly and immune-compromised patients and healthy persons of all ages (footnote). The CDC sets no limits on the lengthy and indefinite use of hydroxychloroquine for the prevention of malaria. Many people in Africa and India take it for a lifetime. Since its recommended protocol as a remedy for COVID requires only one week’s use, Dr. Fauci’s sudden revelation that the drug is dangerous was specious as best.”

Well… there you go. Some people take it FOR A LIFETIME for crying out loud… amazing. And, they have prescribed it for all kinds of people and it’s always been safe.

Don’t miss the footnote that takes you directly to a document on the CDC website that looks like something you would get at a tourist office instructing you on why and how to take HCQ when you go to certain places where you’re likely to get malaria.

So, you can see. I was 20 pages in, and already gob-smacked.

There’s more of course. Much more. But, that’s enough for today.

Let’s see how many excerpts I can publish! LOL.

 

Book Review: “The Real Anthony Fauci” by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Okay, this book is explosive. Let’s just say that from the start. There’s a whole side of the world I was introduced to in starting to read it. Here’s the story.

As you know, I have many friends in Canada. A good friend, even though he never attended Calvary, came across an interview that the author did with Tucker Carlson a few weeks ago, and sent me the link. That video isn’t available anymore, except if you create an account on FoxNews.com and watch it there.

The interview was difficult to listen to. I don’t know what the deal is with his voice. But, it was well worth the time and effort to listen. He rattled off some facts and information and statements and events in history that told a completely different story about public health than I’ve ever heard.

I was surprised to find out that he was a Kennedy, the son of Robert Kennedy and the nephew of both Senator Ed Kennedy and JFK. That was intriguing. I also didn’t realize that he was the anti-vaxxer that everyone has been talking about and trying to counter in the public square. I couldn’t figure out who they were talking about or where this information against vaccines was coming from. It was this guy! Alright, this is now the other side of the story, not only because he was a member of the Democrats, and Camelot, but also an anti-vaxxer.

My friend and I discussed the interview and then he sent me a copy of the book that was the subject of the interview.

I think it’s important to say at this point that I don’t believe everything in books. I’m actually quite sceptical. I’ve been known to not only dog-ear pages and underline while reading, but also to write in the margins how and why I disagree with the author. And, I was sceptical in picking this up and flipping through it because it was just so outside of my experience, and in that category of hard to believe.

All that to say, I tore through it. And, I’ve dog-eared lots of pages, and I’ve been sharing excerpts with others. I’ll share those same excepts with you in coming posts. I don’t know if I’m allowed to because of copyrights and so forth, but, we’ll give it a go.

One guy said that you can read this book in five minutes. Everyday, just pick it up, open to a random page, read a paragraph or two, and you’ll have plenty to stew on the rest of the day, and then do the same thing again the next day.

The way the book is structured, is he starts out by reiterating what we already know about Covid and Fauci from the beginning of 2020, and his argument is that Fauci has obviously mismanaged the response to the pandemic. It’s like he knows we have short memories, or busy lives, and don’t keep track of what we’ve been told, and what other countries and cultures have done.

And, then he starts to go back and tell Fauci’s story, how he ended up in the position he’s in, and what’s happened under his leadership over the last 40 years. Then, the story shifts over to Fauci’s relationship with Bill Gates, and then he gives Bill’s backstory, along with the context of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and their connection to the Rockefeller Foundation, and their connection to vaccines stretching back to the early 1900’s.

The book closes by pulling all these backstories, and contexts together showing the scope of the web of connections all across the globe and then through news articles details what they have been doing over the last 20 years. The footnotes are overwhelming.

Eye-opening isn’t a strong enough word. Blistering wouldn’t cut it. Stunned is still too tame. Astounded is too high-brow to describe how I felt. I’m still searching for the right word. It did change me.

I will say this. The Bible is right. There is evil in this world. There are godless people. People who have no fear of God, or of divine judgment. But, judgment is coming nevertheless. And, if justice doesn’t catch up to some of these people in this life, it will greet them in the life to come. Reality is undefeated.

I’ll share some excerpts in coming posts. But, only to tease you. As a citizen of an English-speaking nation, encountering the other side of the mainstream narrative is imperative. I can’t believe this thing got printed. And, I can’t believe the author is still alive.

 

Book Review: “The Language of Deep Forgiveness” by Dr. Allen Gee

Last fall, Pastor Brett Robinson graciously allowed me to use his office to host the online gathering on AltarLive for Calvary back in Ottawa through December 2nd. While I was doing that, I would peer through the stacks of books on his desk. This book was in the pile. He receives a package of books occasionally from a service called “Pastors Box.”

I’m fascinated by the topic of forgiveness. It was the lynchpin in my life. Forgiving my dad in my late teens is how I had a life-changing encounter with God, and has served as a cornerstone for my life so far.

As, I experienced more life, I saw the same principles repeated in John Eldredge’s book “Wild at Heart,” Bill Gothard’s “Institute in Basic Life Principles,” “The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous,” almost everything I’ve encountered in counselling and inner healing and marriage resources, and then most recently in processing grief from “The Grief Recovery Handbook.” Forgiveness is a key component of spiritual and emotional and even physical health. It’s also been described as an art, and something that as we get older, we can expect to get better at as the years go by. You either get “bitter or get better.” What’s guaranteed is that we will all have ample opportunities to forgive.

When it comes to forgiveness, what has really helped me is the Apostle Paul’s words in his letter to the church in Collossae. He writes: “Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you are also to forgive.” For me, that tells me that Jesus knows exactly how I feel about this situation. And, that encourages me. It also tells me that Jesus is my example on how to deal with the situation. This isn’t one of those situations like creation, where I can’t follow his example. He creates something out of nothing. Humans can’t do that. But, with forgiveness, this is something that humans, especially Christians, people who have put their faith in Christ, received the forgiveness of their sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit, this is something that we can do.

And, that’s really good news. Because the alternative, not forgiving, becoming bitter, or burying the offense down deep inside of us is poisonous. That there’s a way out is really, really good news, and we can simply follow the leader.

So, the topic always piques my interest. And, this title is “The Language of Deep Forgiveness.” It had two new words in it that I hadn’t seen before connected to forgiveness. That was “language” and “deep.”

What threw me off was that the book almost looked self-published and the author had a connection to Fuller Seminary. But, it was small and the words were big and the topic is interesting to me, and so I dove in.

I think he’s got some great insights and I think what he’s bringing to the topic can be very helpful for some people. Dr. Gee shows how that forgiveness is an act whereby we accept what’s impossible to accept. And, he does dig down deep into how we process what’s happened to us.

He says that forgiveness rests on two pillars. The law of retribution and the law of restitution. What’s been done to us has to be both repaid and punished. These are laws. It must be. And, so we have to address them in order to be released from the burden of the offense.

He then goes on to give some examples of how you would phrase things to express both what happened, what should happen as a response and what you are deciding to do about it. It’s language to help your heart and mind (and even your body) process the trauma.

And, it’s important to do it in both areas, both punishment that’s due and repayment.

I could see how this could really, really benefit some people. And, so, I recommend this little book.

You can probably find it on the internet at a huge website that starts with an “A” that doesn’t need one more cent from anyone.

But, I would encourage you to start by visiting Dr. Gee’s site – http://forgivewell.com it looks like you’ll end up on the big “A” anyway, but still a good place to start.

 

Family Update

Instead of answering all the emails and phone calls… this might be a good way to share how we are doing.

I underestimated a couple of things with this transition. I knew it would be tough, but there were some parts that I didn’t anticipate.

First, I knew emotionally it would be a challenge. What I didn’t completely calculate was how it would affect everyone else in the family. That’s not to say that I would not have made the decision to relocate, no, just didn’t realize really how big of a change it is for everyone else.

Thankfully, early on, someone encouraged me to seek out “family debriefing” which is what missions agencies do for missionaries and their families when they return to the US from another culture. You would think that the Canadian culture is so similar to the one in the US and so it shouldn’t be a big deal. That’s true. But, the difference is the transition. When we went to Canada, we were excited, and it was an adventure, and we had lots of hope and expectation and wonder. This transition is different. We didn’t want this one, it’s not all that exciting, there doesn’t seem to be much adventure, and we all in different ways mourn the loss of what we had.

We are scheduled for “family debriefing” in a couple of weeks. My prayer (and I hope yours too!) is that each member of our family would have an opportunity to process all that’s happened to us, so that we can be ready and open (and have an attitude of adventure) for what’s next.

The other thing that I didn’t calculate was how much paperwork is involved. Our society is intense on the maintenance of life just in paperwork. And, because of the pandemic, it’s slow. There’s government documents, identification documents, licenses, tags, insurance, banking, tax returns, phone numbers, addresses, two factor authorizations. On top of all of that, we trip over things like app stores and blocked IP addresses to get things done.

What complicates that further is that it’s still not clear what’s next for us. We don’t know where to settle down yet, and I don’t know yet what’s next for work.

I finished officially at Calvary Ottawa on December 15th. I’m grateful for what a blessing that whole process was for me and my family. I hope it was a blessing for the church as well. Pastor John Cowan and his wife Laura are a gift from heaven distributed all around.

After that, we threw ourselves into anniversary, birthdays (2 on the same day!), and very different ways of celebrating Christmas and New Years. There’s no snow. It wasn’t even cold. We all missed “Christmas in the Park.”

In that period of time, we did get around and started visiting potential schools for Olivia. She’s done well at home with the A.C.E curriculum, but we could see how she would really thrive to be in a school that offers that curriculum in a dedicated “learning center.” Just before the holiday break, we visited a small school in St. Petersburg that looks like it will be a good fit.

We enrolled her and one of the big reasons I’m able to write this post is because she’s on her third day there, and it appears to be going swimmingly. She LOVES wearing a uniform and has already made a couple of acquaintances by bringing her bubble mixture and wand for the times of recesses.

My heart is full of gratitude for people that pursue that calling of investing in children, and do it well, because they love the Lord.

While we wait a few weeks to ensure that it’s a good fit, I’ve been connecting with a couple of local pastors and volunteering. I’m happy to report that I was able to teach the Bible on Wednesday morning to a group of young people including my eldest daughter at Zeal School of Ministry. That was a real delight. I haven’t taught since October 17th in Ottawa. Well, I did share for a couple of minutes at the U-Turn Ranch in California… but not a full Bible Study.

Oh yes, and I’ve been reading some interesting books. I’ll share some reviews in upcoming posts.

We’ve also been visiting churches in the area. We wanted to see what was going on down here in the Calvary Chapels and we’ve even visited some churches that aren’t Calvary Chapels… just to see what’s going on, what the Lord is doing. I doubt I will write publicly about that, maybe I’ll make some general observations about the culture at some point.

Oh… and I stopped drinking coffee a few months ago. I don’t want to change my blog name though! LOL. I still love it. The problem was I loved it too much, and the caffeine was wreaking havoc in my body.

So, that’s the update. And, if we went for coffee today and had some time we would likely hit all of those topics at some point.