Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Unemployment Checks – The “Union/Empire” Wanes

Confederate Constitution acknowledging God!

After a month away from this blog, I looked back at my last thoughts on this attempt by politics to hijack this virus scare:

Will our existing political class figure this out? Not a chance.

Will voting help? Not a chance.

The US still has the USPS and Amtrak, if they can be trusted with little things, you can safely say they can’t be trusted with MAJOR things.

This nation will have to split into many smaller republics before any of this can be addressed.

Whoever can be trusted with small things can also be trusted with big things. Whoever is dishonest in little things will be dishonest in big things too. – Luke 16:10 (Bible)

Is there any doubt by those that can critically think that our political apparatus from DC to the state’s governors and to the large (and small) city mayors are not full of want-to-be tyrants and sociopaths? When one follows the money, it gets even more immoral as the political class (BOTH sides of the so-called aisle) want to be re-elected so bad that they were all willing to place a big old pacifier in the mouths of millions of let go workers so that 65% or more would receive more weekly income than they had prior to this crisis. This is indeed immoral since to entice people to sit on their couches in their homes in time will lead to lives without any purpose. Life on the government plantation has ruined other cultures like the American Indian and the African American groups in the USA. This is how you emasculate the male population towards a purposeless life as government becomes both nanny and daddy.

But I digress. We should be in better position today to see the federal and state governments for what they really are. This “union” has been poisoned for some time. In fits and starts one can see how the federal government opted to be the “safety net”, like somehow a “neutral” entity could care for our communities and societies better than the locals could. That this safety net could extend to big business so that there was no risk in forgoing savings and instead buy back stock shares to prop up the stock prices. So whether this is individual or corporate welfare, both are immoral as one robs some people of their money and uses it to its own agenda’s purpose picking winners and losers in the marketplace as well as in towns and cities and farms across this land.

The southern states endured the reallocation of their taxed and tariff-ed economies from at least the War of 1812 up until the so-called Civil War (War Against Southern Independence). The South attempted to be “above-board” with their last ditch effort to save themselves from economic ruin by legally seceding (at first only 7 states) from this “union” (marriage). But Lincoln would not have his cash cow as a next-door free-trade zone, so he labeled it an “insurrection” and used George Washington’s illegal put down of the Whiskey Rebellion (25% tax thanks to Alexander Hamilton, so how bad was King George for wanting 3%?) as a template for saving the union.

This HAS to sound familiar right? The whole US government (in parallel to so many other governments) is trying to “save” us from Covid-19 while actually killing society and communities in the process. From 1861-1865 the “union” lost about 800,000 lives. What will the final death count be for the Covid-19 response by 2024 when the unintended consequences of good intentions has run its course with suicides, PTSD, mental health issues from the economic fallout AFTER the unemployment checks run out (now slated for 31JUL2020 but many want this extended to 31DEC2020)?

Smaller republics are the only answer that makes sense. Not existing state lines, although that would be a start, but republics that have like-minded people geographically grouped so that government reach can be minimized for liberty folks and maximized for totalitarian minded folks.

Reflecting on the course of what the southern states sailed can be very helpful. Sure they were not perfect and should have jettisoned chattel slavery at the very start (although this would have upset both white and black slaveholders) and compensating these owners with hard currency.

Consider what the Confederate government learned in the 80 years under the US Constitution.

  1. That unlike the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation which BOTH had God, our Creator, as whom we derived our natural rights from, the US Constitution written in 1787 failed to give such indication as its North Star
  2. That the US Constitution failed to protect the people from the 1798 Alien and Sedition Act that made it a crime to criticize the US Government.
  3. That the US Constitution failed to protect various regions of the land from the plundering ambitions of other region’s agenda and greed.
  4. That the US Constitution’s Supreme Court hijacked the ability of the states to determine which laws were unconstitutional.

It is the last point that is highlighted in this article from Abbeville Institite here. I do think it is the proper time to consider what real justice is these days and know how much a failure this a-political Supreme Court has been.

Although the Court would increasingly try to narrow the realm of States Rights, Madison [author of the US Constitution] denied that “the Federal judiciary” was the ultimate judge of such limits because it was the people of the states themselves who were the final authority.

It was in fact the US Government’s (called General government in those days, now labeled the Federal Government) over-reach that set-off a push back politically:

The conflict became obvious when President John Adams pushed through the 1798 Sedition Act, making it a crime to speak ill of the President or Congress. Since it was harshly enforced for some of the mildest criticisms, strict constructionists respond. Among them was future President James Madison who is known as the Father of the Constitution. He denied that the Supreme Court was the ultimate authority on States Rights. This can be seen from the 1798 Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions he helped write with Thomas Jefferson condemning the Sedition Act as unconstitutional.

Jefferson’s presidential victory in 1800 guaranteed that the 1798 Alien and Sedition Act would be eliminated, but by 1833 things were simmering again. By this stage of the republic’s life the South was losing its position as being a strong entity within this federation and saw New England culture and character make huge inroads into the federal government’s choosing of winners (railroads, canals and the steel industry) over losers in the marketplace:

Calhoun would build upon the Resolutions to formulate his nullification theory that South Carolina invoked in 1833 to nullify the 1828 Tariff of Abominations. Calhoun argued that the tariff was not uniform in terms of geographic economic impact and therefore unconstitutional. When the Federal Government crossed over constitutional lines, a state could take action as the final authority of constitutionality in its borders, not the Supreme Court. All states could only be forced to conform to such a law by passing a new amendment specifically making it constitutional.

This “one-size-fits-all” approach (sound familiar?) is a recipe for disaster, for just as all individuals are different, so too are the states.

The Supreme Court early on made a huge mistake that made it necessary to add an 11th amendment in 1795 when the US Constitution was less than ten years old:

When a 1793 Supreme Court ruling held the state of Georgia at fault in a suit brought by a South Carolina resident, Georgia denied the Court’s jurisdiction. After the adverse ruling ten other states joined Georgia to ratify a new (11th) Amendment specifying that individuals outside an applicable state could not sue that state without the state’s permission. The Amendment’s prompt ratification indicates a widespread belief that the Court was unexpectedly and quickly overstepping its authority.

Now you know why the Confederate government opted NOT to have a supreme court at least initially. Lesson learned.

Now it is our turn to learn from history and push for a government that is more commensurate to the people’s desire of liberty, freedom and self responsibility .. at least in certain geographical regions of this land we call America.

Peace out.

-SF1

The US Empire Has Blamed Other Nations in the Past, Wrongly, and Now Blames China?

A bully has to deflect any blame for anything and everything. One has to wonder it this is the proverbial blaming someone else before one gets blamed themselves, for something they actually did. First impressions are like that.

Lincoln knew if the South fired the first shot they would historically receive the blame for their peaceful secession that was spun to be an “insurrection”.

FDR knew if Japan struck first, he would get his ticket to join WWII which would hid his disastrous attempts at pulling the US out of the Great Depression with his New Deal programs ad nauseum.

Bush I knew Iraq would get the blame even though the US signaled to Saddam Hussein that it was his purview whether to invade Kuwait or not for infringing on Iraqi oil fields with horizontal drilling.

Bush II knew Iraq would get the blame after accusing them of WMDs.

Obama knew Libya would get the blame after accusing them of .. sorry, can’t even remember the excuse for turning Libya over to ISIS and other radical groups. Obama also tried this with Assad in Syria and that he used chemical weapons against his own people.

Now Trump, the GOP and the Democrats are all turning to blame China for ‘Rona. Seriously?

Yes, I call it ‘Rona since I ain’t following any government guidelines or laws that infringe on my NATURAL right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Just livin’ the life!

So Moon of Alabama has a pretty good article about the timeline that China had in sharing their own Covid-19 journey:

The U.S. claims that China did not inform it sufficiently. The timeline as published by China and confirmed by media reports does not support that claim.

On January 3 the head of the U.S. Center of Disease Control was personally informed by his Chinese counterpart that there was an outbreak of pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan. On January 8 the “unknown cause” was identified as a novel coronavirus. A full genome sequence of the virus was published on January 12 and preliminary testing kits were developed and made available in Wuhan. By January 13 another test and test protocol had been developed in Germany and on January 17 the WHO adopted its refined version.

In the U.S. the CDC insisted on developing its own test and failed by contaminating its test components. It then failed for more than a month to correct the issue.

When you point a finger at someone else, you have to realize that you have three other fingers pointing at yourself! However, American Exceptionalism keeps the blinders on as to the US’s stupid decisions at every turn of this pandemic turned plan-demic.

The whole blame game smells fishy as it becomes apparent that the wet market in Wuhan was not the source of the epidemic. For one, it did not and does not sell bats. Another point is that the epidemic started in December at a time when bats hibernate. The first know case was not related to the market at all.

As far as a lab source to this bat-sourced theory:

Edward Holmes, a biologist at the University of Sydney and a fellow of the respected Royal Society in London, said the Wuhan laboratory blamed by some for the pandemic does have specimens of the bat virus RaTG13, the closest relative of Covid-19 source SARS-CoV-2, but the two are not genetically linked.

RaTG13 strains, he says, are from the southern Chinese province of Yunnan, not the central city of Wuhan, the pandemic’s initial epicenter.

Genome tracing has revealed that the bat virus RaTG13 has at least 20 years of genetic divergence, or evolutionary change, from SARS-CoV-2, and possibly as much as 50 years, ruling it out as the source of the pandemic.

OK then. What is it that the US wants. You know whenever there is COOPERATION across the political aisle from Democrats and GOP, there is some stupid agenda going on as Democrats are evil, GOP are stupid and together they are STUPID to the 2nd power.

1. Financial: I am pretty sure since the US has chosen the path of financial self destruction to cover their own super sick financial fundamentals and a QE hell that they could never exit without saving face, this Covid-19 became a convenient camouflage. The US wants to keep China on its heals as the US fire-sale domestically heats up and Chinese investors come looking for good deals.

2. Military: I am pretty sure with all the Covid-19 infected aircraft carriers and nuclear bomber fleets are heading back to the US mainland which leaves China to do what they want in the South China Sea, and the Pentagon is not happy about that but its hands are tied between that and exiting bases in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

We can call this a lame pre-emptive strike in order for the US Empire to stay in the world stage without looking like it is no longer empire material.

The obvious solution is to do this financial reset is not to bailout corporate America, but to do the hard work of moving through bankruptcies WHILE drastically paring down federal government giving responsibilities back to the states and recall the military from their global outposts to the United States mainland. The core piece of this is the removal of the central bank, the FED, as this has allowed the United States to live well beyond its means ($25T debt and $250T unfunded liabilities) and enslave the generations to come.

Will our existing political class figure this out? Not a chance.

Will voting help? Not a chance.

The US still has the USPS and Amtrak, if they can be trusted with little things, you can safely say they can’t be trusted with MAJOR things.

This nation will have to split into many smaller republics before any of this can be addressed.

Whoever can be trusted with small things can also be trusted with big things. Whoever is dishonest in little things will be dishonest in big things too. – Luke 16:10 (Bible)

Peace out.

-SF1

 

Face Masks = Fear Masks = Psy-op Courtesy of the CDC

Disclaimer: If you feel the need to wear a face mask .. :

  1. Because you have flu symptoms and desire to keep OTHERS protected (alternatively, you could just isolate yourself)
  2. Because you on the journey towards truth and still trust the CDC over your own research .. (alternatively, you could just isolate yourself, otherwise, please order the most effective* mask on the market above)

* – your mileage may vary, I am not a doctor so this is NOT medical advice as “effective” does not related to physical health but mental health 🙂

.. then fine, go ahead. However, you should know the ramifications of going out in public with your fear, err I mean, face mask on. Allen Stevo from Lew Rockwell’s site explains:

There’s a thing about masked faces. They freak people out. People like seeing the full, healthy, relaxed faces of those around them. Reading faces is one way our primal selves avoid danger. Masked faces increase cortisol. They tell you something is wrong. There’s a reason doctors try to avoid masks during hospital rounds: a face is more comforting to a patient.

Truth. You who proceed to don the fear mask and go into society only helps to drive UP the fear component that the CDC and US Government seems to thrive on to either ..

  1. .. hide their hideous mismanagement of the financial state of the US since 2008, since the 1970s when we went off the gold standard, the 1930s when FDR confiscated gold OR in 1913 when the Federal Reserve was established apparently to squander the value of the USD!
  2. .. or use at this point in time to double down on ensuring the masses understand their slave status on the government plantation, driving 20 million out of work and swell the unemployment roles (weren’t unemployment rates bragged about until the last few months?) and move another subset of society toward dependence on the government, sucking any remaining dignity from their life and having them resolved to just live out their remaining days with no purpose in life. Totalitarianism in general taking either the socialism or Marxism route to Communism. It is just a matter of time once you go down this path.
  3. .. or BOTH!

You see, this kind of psy-op was accomplished almost 20 years ago as well. This is the next generation surrender pose to the one we all have had to do at the airports since 9/11, you know, arms over the head as we get scanned by the TSA?

.. the pose that is drilled into you every time you pass through airport security. You must enter the naked body scanner and do the pose of submission. If you don’t you will be barked at, eye-rolled at, and huffed at until you do.

Notably, this “I surrender” pose is mere security theater. It looks like it works. It doesn’t actually work. That, alongside the dehumanizing: take off your shoes, get groped, and throw away whatever items you recently bought that happen to be more than 3.3 ounces.

Even more than this, it is the more affluent that have been morphed into sheep in the past two decades:

… it does work at is taking some of the most affluent members of society – air travelers – and bossing them around until they submit. The more affluent you are (to a degree) the more you travel by commercial air. The more you travel by commercial air, the more you get put through the compliance tester and obedience enforcer. This is a predictable way to make the most affluent in a society more compliant…

Barf right? But you can see how this first generation ‘surrender pose’ set the stage for the one we are seeing now right? Can you see this Plandemic clearly now?

Psy ops (alternately PSYOPS, Psychological Operations, or Psychological warfare) is a behavior intended to psychologically weaken a target. The US government is renowned for this.

While I don’t know what is an intentional psy op in my life and what isn’t, I know fear is psychologically harmful to me and those around me. To live in a constant state of fear is hell. It shortens life and reduces the quality of the short life you have.

The government desires a sick population so they can be society’s “savior”, whether it is managing their health, managing their fear or managing their life. Totalitarian governments desire to embed themselves in every detail of their citizen’s lives.

“When stress is prolonged,” writes Aphrodite Matsakis, “The adrenal glands and some of these helping biochemicals can become depleted. This depletion can lead to depression, panic attacks, mood swings, rage reactions, and problems responding appropriately to others.”

The government and all those entities that depend on the government (individual and corporate) do not want a healthy population with a robust immune system. If society were made up of free and responsible adults that were responsible for their own actions which respected the lives and properties of others, government would not have a place.

This is and always has been the dividing line between the masses and the remnant, as Allen Stevo wraps up using the word “gadfly” which is defined as:

A gadfly is a person who interferes with the status quo of a society or community by posing novel, potentially upsetting questions, usually directed at authorities.

The work of the gadfly is some of the most noble work that can be done in a society, for it brings others into a more accurate relationship with reality and helps them to live a life that is more effective, more in touch, aware.

That is not readily appreciated by all.

Bloated, with inaction, expert committees, legal liability, risk mitigation, the corpulent hind quarters of the ass barely responds to the gadfly’s goading toward the truth. It seeks to pass the rest of life in slumber, to paraphrase Socrates.

The best gadfly is the one who is determined to live life honoring his own boundaries, and to be as truthful as possible with others about where those boundaries are. That person is a natural gadfly. He does not exist to sting another. His mere living of his life, however, is an affront to those who refuse to respect their own boundaries and honestly state those boundaries to others.

It can be no surprise that those who abhor truth, who contort their minds to avoid reality, who want to be coddled in the myth of riskless existence, are those most bothered by the very existence of the gadfly.

Some part of them wants to kill him.

They are “triggered” by him. They build “triggering” into an axiomatic evil, and build morality around the inability to trigger, around the inability to be a gadfly.

Here, coddled society comes into conflict with the free man.

Yes, so here we are, as we will always have the coddled society that see government as its lord and savior and the free man, the remnant who respects all but fears none.

Arrrrgh

-SF1

Mandatory or Voluntary Social Distancing: Flattening the Curve – Swedish Style

Sweden has been criticized quite a bit for forgoing the typical mandatory government enforced lock-downs / house arrests that a LOT of nations have chosen, even in the “land of the free” (United States), for the “common good”. These efforts we are told will flatten the curve and allow hospitals to deal with the sick in a way to avoid as many deaths as possible.

But have you noticed how “flattening the curve” is now about “ending the curve”? While at first this was all about the capacity of each nation’s healthcare system, is now about eradicating this virus BEFORE we can return to whatever normal awaits? Talk about mission creep.

Today’s Russia Today article revisits Sweden’s battle with Covid-19 that excludes government overreach. Notice even RT ‘seems’ critical of Sweden’s efforts as the author of this article attempts to see this from the view of the 22 researches in Sweden that are pushing for the government to do more:

They are not inclined to change their recommendations, even when Sweden’s curves start to differ radically from those of neighboring countries.

As always, context matters. It seems that in the past weeks it has been necessary to place ALL stats in context. While Johns Hopkins data is displayed in red highlighting raw data that fails to place a nation’s population in proportion to the number of deaths “reported”, one has to do this exercise themselves, at least if one is a critical thinker. Others just assume that the media does it all and they can just take what media gives them as truth. Not me, not even with RT or other non-US mainstream media (MSM).

If we take the raw numbers we see:

  • Sweden has 11,445 confirmed cases of infection and a death toll of 1,033 so far
  • Denmark has recorded 6,706 confirmed cases and 299 deaths
  • Norway reports 6,623 infected and 139 deaths
  • Finland reports just 3,161 confirmed cases and only 64 deaths

So on the surface you might agree with these researchers.  Now let’s look at the total population of these countries do we can compare more apples-apples:

  • Sweden 10.23M people
  • Denmark 5.8M people
  • Norway 5.5M people
  • Finland 5.5M people

So you see that Sweden STILL has more Covid-19 deaths PROPORTIONALLY than the other Scandinavian countries ASSUMING that they all do verify Covid-19 deaths WITH testing AND that the underlying diseases were NOT a major factor. I know, this is a LOT to assume for any government, that they are presenting the data accurately. But I digress.

There is one more attribute that I believe impacts a nation’s Covid-19 numbers, the numbers of migrants. Here is Bill Sardi on what this does:

Hot spots for infection (Wuhan, Italy, NYC) have a lot of young adult migrants who harbor TB bacteria in their lungs and may experience an eruption of latent TB, which is what is occurring now. Why we have to sort this out for ourselves as the Centers for Disease Control is not providing this kind of analysis and is narrowly presenting a COVID-19 pandemic with total disregard for the seasonal flu, TB, etc. speaks for the biases and politics involved.

Let;s look to see if Sweden might have more RECENT immigrants than other Nordic countries:

This latest influx of immigrants came from the Middle East where latent TB in the adult population can have an effect on both the number of positive Covid-19 cases as well as deaths attributed to Covid-19.

But back to the whole reason for flattening the curve, the salvation of the healthcare available for those susceptible to this corona-virus. In this regard, is Sweden is STILL on the right track?

… the man behind the government’s [Sweden’s] strategy, state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, [states]

“I don’t understand what they mean. The healthcare system has always been in control,” Tegnell said. “If you look at the curve, we have consistently had around 60 dead per day. We have had an unfortunate development in elderly care, and we have started to work hard on that.”

Tegnell pointed to New York, which has roughly the same population as Sweden but ten times the death toll, as an example of the apparent failure of lockdown.

In my own opinion, early in this evaluation of a reaction to a novel virus, that WE have experienced before, and like the flu, will experience again without most people’s “savior”, vaccines, Sweden has demonstrated a very healthy method in dealing with this overblown panic. In this I applaud them!

So there is one more attribute of the lock-down that could also be factored in here. In NYC, when one is locked down, one is under house arrest and remains INSIDE away from the sun which is the best and cheapest source of vitamin D around. This vitamin is essential in keeping the immune system healthy to fight viruses like this one!

I also wonder how the lock-down was implemented in Wuhan, China, if people were encouraged to stay inside and away from the sun?

Anyway, Covid-19 and the “proper” response in a world where ‘scarcity’ exists, is complicated! Choices have to be made as we do not have unlimited resources. This is a fact that most people fail to understand these days as they look to the government to keep them safe, even from the inevitable, DEATH! The fear used by government’s drives the herds toward obedience and irrational behavior:

2020 Oregon Trail

At this point it is too early to tell for sure if Sweden’s government did the right thing, but one thing is for certain, their economy and the people’s mental health are by in large intact, and that will mean that Sweden’s healthcare system will not be overrun by ‘Rona-PTSD in the months to come.

With Sweden’s economy healthy, the healthcare services can be allowed to remain healthy as well without resorting to the US approach, that of printing money and debasing it’s own currency. But I digress once more …

Peace out – stay safe.

-SF1

The Remnant: Those in the Minority that Get It – Faith Version Episode 1

In my previous post I opened up the whole concept of the remnant as it was offered by Albert Jay Nock in the 1930s to describe those who could see what the masses could not. His thought was that is was a huge waste of time and effort to educate the masses, and that it was much more effective to address the remnant, even if it meant a much smaller audience and rarely any reward factor.

I talked about my school experience transition where I was able to see it for what it was by age 10 as my parents separated and I moved with my mother and sister to California for my 5th grade school year. My whole personality changed with this new adventure in the midst of a time of crisis, where my parents were heading toward divorce.

My second of three major transitions came in the part of life that many people talk about the least. While most see this as religion, I see this more as faith and hope. Many, like myself were introduced to faith through religion, especially in my generation ( #60ish ), and that experience could have been good or bad, however, if you are one of the remnant, you might be “gratefully disillusioned”.

In hindsight I would change nothing, because my faith journey toward who I am today required that I navigate (with the assistance of the Great Navigator) my own way to the understanding I have today and where I might be going in whatever tomorrows I still have. I had mentioned last week:

I think it is by design that truth makes itself know in a process verses just being taught. While knowledge helps, there is nothing like a crisis to unpack that truth that had been simmering for months and years before.

This holds true for me in my own process of developing a faith worldview.

The process started in my earliest memories of attending a fairly large conservative church where a majority were of Dutch ancestry in the Midwest. The typical cycle of weekly religious life was church attendance TWICE on Sunday, at 9:30am and 6pm with almost NO “fun” allowed on that “day of rest”.

Many families would have cooked their Sunday meal the night before and prepared for a day, the “Sabbath”, to reflect on where they came up short with their creator. The church service was designed by John Calvin’s followers to be a rather dour experience where man’s degenerative nature was emphasized and I was quickly aware of the sour faces around me for that hour of organ music and hymns followed by a sermon from the “dominie” ( minister / professional pastor ) who spoke God’s Word at us in no uncertain terms.

Dominie is a Scots language and Scottish English term for a Scottish schoolmaster usually of the Church of Scotland and also a term used in the US for a minister or pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church

By Monday morning I was on my way to Christian school where the underlying emphasis was still communicated as almost all our lessons came from the Bible’s Old Testament and God was someone you always feared. Staying on the right path performance wise seemed to be the only way to avoid God’s wrath and judgement until one went to Heaven to be with Him forever. Midweek there was a Catechism class taught at the church and so we were bused from the Christian school to the church for another hour of instruction on what is called the Heidelberg Catechism, a question and answer format that was foundational to this Calvinistic theological matrix that emphasized total depravity of man, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints. ( known by the acronym TULIP, how Dutch is that? ) The only day without religious expectations was Saturday, which to me meant Little League, college football and playing with neighborhood friends except for weekends when our family went to my grandparent’s dairy farm for the day to visit, which itself was an interesting experience that I plan to talk about someday.

Inside this rhythm of religion, I started to explore the only option I had during the minister’s sermon on Sunday mornings, the Bible. Instead of paging through the Old Testament, I started reading the New Testament books where I discovered a whole new “lens” to see what faith was beyond the typical religious wrappings and trappings. I found it interesting that Jesus came humbly into the world and took His time to start His official ministry, that he was marginalized in His own hometown and that He chose gnarly fishermen to be on His team. This was not an exclusive religious performance culture, but an inclusive relationship-based friendship culture. The nautical culture that Jesus introduced His friends to the real loving Father he had, would impact the early Jesus-follower’s vocabulary for generations. The anchor symbol meant a hope to a future, whether on this earth or not.

“At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.” ~ CS Lewis

So in the middle of religion, I found a relational faith that would take years and decades to unpack. I will post an “Episode 2” in a few days that expands on my journey during the balance of my school years from 5th grade and beyond.

In hindsight, towards the end of this journey, I have learned to relax in this relational faith in the middle of the storms of life.

As opposed to religious obligation says that it is all up to you, where, if God isn’t doing the things you want, you have to work harder, stand firmer and pray longer. The religious focus I have found is on your performance, your obedience, your righteousness.

Outside that box, you will learn to rely on Him ( Abba Father or Papa ) alone and recognize that any time you give up responsibility for your spiritual and faith nourishment to another person – whether friend, pastor or author, you’ve already traded away a bit of your freedom, for life in a box.

So in these days I picture this:

.. and I leave you with this:

Peace out ..

The anchor holds
Though the ship is battered
The anchor holds
Though the sails are torn
I have fallen on my knees
As I faced the raging seas
The anchor holds
In spite of the storm

-SF1