Forgiveness

I am preparing for what I will discuss tomorrow. I prepare, partially, by thinking about the subject I want to discuss and the point that I wish to make. I read as much news as I can to find examples. One subject matter I have been considering is forgiveness. A real tricky thing to describe.

I had a song on my mind by Don Henley of the Eagles called "Forgiveness". I searched on YouTube and came across this video. "Venia (Forgiveness)". The word venia can be used to mean forgiveness, grace and other such things. The video tells the story of a young lady who was killed in the Virginia Tech shootings, her name was Mary Karen Read. Her last writings in her journal were, “When deep injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive… Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.”

We tend to get angry with people when they either prevent us from getting what we want or intentionally do something to harm us. Once we perceive harm to us we then foster anger at the other person. The emotion is completely within us, it does not impact the other person unless we return the harm. The harm the anger does is really towards ourselves.

Here is the odd thing about it, if someone harms me and I forgive them, the one who benefits is me. In fact, if I forgive someone they may not even know it and believe that I am still angry with them. Someone harmed me very badly and I told them that I forgave them, they told me that they did not want any of my so called forgiveness. Heck, I will take all the forgiveness I can get.

Forgiveness does not come all at once, we have to accept that what has happened has happened and that we cannot undo it. The next step is to just let it go, that gets easier over time. The trick is to look forward rather than look back, the trick is to be headed somewhere.

I don't know how you have been hurt and I don't need to. I can tell you this, when you are lying on your deathbed, how do you want to go out? Last week I was talking to someone who has made a very big mistake in his life and there will be penalties for it. Like most people, his first thought was that he would never make the same mistake again, I asked him to think about where he was going because if you are not headed to a better place then you will go back to the old place.

We should learn from our past and consider it; but, you have to be more concerned about where you are going, what you want your life to mean. I have learned so much in the last four years as a result of betrayals that were done to me. I don't have the time to think about much of what is past as I am building my life and am focused on where I want to go, what the rest of my life will mean. I would much rather it be about love than about loss and those are the choices we all have. Be well.

Today in San Bernardino

Is this a sign of the times? This article from the Los Angeles Times discusses how the FBI and IRS searched the offices and homes of many politicians in San Bernardino.

We have county politicians agreeing to a $103 million dollar settlement in a case with a developer when their own legal counsel told them not to. You can legally move a lot of money that way. You see, cities and counties can vote behind closed doors to settle a case, any case, even one that they will probably win.

Look at how your city or county has settled cases, who the opponents were and how valid the cases were. Bell and Vernon got nothing on how the bigger game is played. Why do we let these things go on? How much longer can we afford this?

Dear Readers

My least popular posts are always about religion. I intend to create a new blog soon, it will be for the people I talk to about religion and this one will just sit as it is. My biggest reason for leaving it is because of Pastor Carol Daniels. The pension stuff will all come out, I wasn't needed for that, just prodding.

I do not have the time nor energy to keep up two blogs at once and I will not give a pointer to the new one nor even mention it's name. The name shall be new and e-mail address shall be new. There will be no connection between the two and the new one will only be for people who have attended my services.

I have really appreciated the opportunity to discuss such a wide range of topics. I do hope that people have learned to look just a little bit deeper into everything that they are told. I have been moved in my heart regarding some comments and e-mails about this blog. I love writing; but, I have a second job now and it is important that I put my efforts there. I want to thank everyone who has followed this from the beginning, I wish to thank a special lady who was one of the first and has sent me many e-mails. Always happy to correspond with a lady and I love the name Barbara (a junior high crush on a teacher, lol).

My life has not made a lot of sense to me. The world is a bizarre and often annoying place; but, people matter. I have one or two more posts left in me; but, when I say it is done, it will be.

Last week, I began my sermon by asking people why they were there. This week, if anyone comes back, I will ask why they returned. It is a good question, what keeps us away from God and from talking about him?

I shall post again, we shall end this blog on a high note. In the meantime a song, something by Elton John.

Elton John, Love Lies Bleeding - Funeral for a Friend.

This song always makes me think about my best friend who blew his brains out in the last year of High School, just before I moved. So many good times and so much humor and so much pain. Life.

I will never get over his death, not during this life. I know his favorite car, I know his favorite movies, we used to watch them together, he is always in my heart. I knew since sixth grade and it hurts to this day, that is one of the reasons that I absolutely do not believe in suicide or taking LSD, he did both and I refuse to do either. If you are ever told that I committed suicide, know it is a lie.

They say the new normal is constant change, I am good with that, lets see who can hold on the longest. The sheep and predators all tire long before the sheepdog. Aarph, aarph. LOL.

Our Pensions and Israel

Before you read this post, please read yesterday's post. I never got to finish it because I was on the phone for four hours and had endless interruptions. Sorry.

So, if 2003 CalPers lost hundreds of millions on investments in Israel. One would think that they would have become more cautious. Nope, this article from Israel21c in 2006 says, "American pension funds look to Israel for investment". At the meeting mentioned in the article we find some interesting characters showing up. Alan Hevesi the Comptroller for New York was there, he was convicted of corruption involving the New York Pension Fund. Here is an article from The New York Times.

At the meeting in question the heads of CalPers and CalStrs also attended. The person who invited everyone was Ehud Olmert the man accused of corruption in Israel that I wrote about yesterday. Hmmmm. Markstone was also there, that is the company that Elliot Broidy was in charge of, he is the guy that plead guilty to bribery charges in regards to the New York Pension Fund.

So the investments by the pensions funds had done poorly by 2003, maybe things got better. Nope, they got worse. "CalPERS: 6 Israeli VC funds wrote off $385m in 5 years", read that article from 2005.

Maybe since then we have learned to stop investing in Israeli Venture Capital Funds and having to write off losses with nothing to show for it? Nope, how bout this article from Haaretz.com In the last quarter of 2006 and the first quarter of 2007, that is about half a year, CalPers wrote off around $700 million dollars in these investments.

So, here we go. Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Finance Minister and future Prime Minister arranges to have the heads of various Public Pension funds in the United States come to his country to look into investing in it. Elliot Broidy of future prison fame convinces many of them to go to Israel.

At this meeting apparently many were swayed because afterwards these pension funds invested untold amounts in start up companies. These start up companies then lose hundreds of millions for years and years and we just keep investing in more. The "Placement Agents" for these deals make tens of millions and many had sat on pension boards, having been placed there by politicians. Hmmm. These placement firms also are heavily involved in redevelopment agency jobs and are also funded by the public pension funds. I see lots and lots of money being lost and no assets to write off, hey, this is beginning to sound like the loan to the Solyndra, you lend or invest in a company that has practically no assets, the money goes somewhere and the losses are written off because there are no assets to go after.

For those who care to, try speculating why CalPers never pulled their investments and kept investing when year after year they showed a loss. Somethings to consider, with the housing boom and the over inflation of the value of the investments, throughout most of the last eleven years, the pension funds were overfunded. In fact many increased how much retires would get because they are not allowed to be too overfunded. Nobody even cared about the losses.

This is not about Jewish people and it is not about Israel, it is about corruption and the theft of hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars from public pension funds. Who got the money, where did the money go? Why did certain people keep investing it in these companies and why didn't the unions or politicians care?

Israel and U.S. Public Pension Funds

Lets start with this, I am a Christian and support the state of Israel's existence. I believe that Israel is currently at it's greatest risk. Firstly, the United Nations is looking at recognizing Palestine's government officially. Reuters reports that "Abbas vows "no retreat" from Palestine U.N. bid".

Next we are seeing that Israel is losing support (even the little it had) with Egypt, Jordan and Turkey. Newsweek had this article, "Is Israel Over". If you read this report you will discover that Ehud Olmert, a previous Prime Minister, he is in court over corruption charges.

Mr. Olmert has been charged with being dishonest and taking bribes. Maybe we should look into who he was dealing with. I don't know, I have been interrupted so many times tonight that all I can do is post these other articles.

IVC Newsletter, Calpers isn't quitting Israel.

What happens when the United States stops funneling money to Israel? That is when things get bad for all of us.

Garbage People Want You To Believe

I was looking at a website I like called "The Daily Grail". It has interesting writing and stories and good link to articles. Today they linked to this article from Nature News, "Neuroscience vs philosophy: Taking aim at free will"

Now why would scientists try to prove that you don't have free will? By the way, their test and explanation proved nothing. Bad science leads to bad results. They are basically trying to prove that you don't make your own decisions, that you don't really make your own choices.

There is something else called the Near Death Experience that scientists don't like. Worldwide the Near Death Experience is almost always the same and nobody can explain it well. One of the people associated with The Daily Grail posted this on the site, "Science Can Explain the Near Death Experience".

Psychology Today has this article promoting visualization."Visualize to Actualize", you do know what visualization is I hope. It is taught by people like the Rosicrucians and others with an occult bend.

People are always trying to prove that humans aren't that important and that we should commune with spirits. I don't believe either of those things. We experience, we feel pain, we feel love, we define ourselves by the choices we make and should take responsibility for our choices.

While these types of articles may seem silly and most people never ever read them, they are not written for the average person. This is what will be taught in school to your future leaders in these fields. The world will be designed around these types of beliefs, that is how it works.

College is where the people who will run the world are taught. You would be amazed how many important people will talk about the people who taught them and how it changed their lives. Many people become professors for just that reason. I don't like that style of teaching. I don't believe in trying to prove something to students, I think we should question them, I prefer the Socratic method of endless questioning, it frees the student's mind to find it's own answers rather than provide them.

When you send your child off to college you probably think they are going there to become "smarter", they are not. They are going there to be taught rather than learn. The methods used to teach them vary from one discipline to another. As they told us in law school, this is not about learning the law, it is about learning a way of thinking.

College, especially graduate school, is a lot like brainwashing. The first thing you do in graduate school is show them how little they know and then you begin explaining things that most people are never taught if they are not in a graduate program. Break them down and then provide them with the answers. That is why the experience is so intense for some. Law school involves reading hundreds of pages everyday and being expected to repeat it, work them hard enough and they will accept anything and no it didn't work with me.

Humans have a tendency to try and get others to agree with them, to think like them, we like conformity, comfort. We also tend to like followers. I had someone come to work for me as my personal assistant, he instead became one of my dearest friends; but, when he first came to work for me I told him that I would blow his mind and I think I did.

When he came to work for me I had to try to really make sure that the things he would see and learn would not effect his being him. I remember telling him that he would never see the world the same way again and he has told me that he never could now. He told me that he could never be me and I told him that I would never want him to. I wanted to show him behind the veil, to show him how things are really decided and how things work from the top. The guy had some real guts.

I am so very proud of who he is, he learned about things and uses his personality and strengths rather than trying to imitate me or the person who helped me teach him. I taught him how to see, understand and predict certain things, not how to be or what to think. I love it when he calls me to tell me something that he figured out and I know he is correct in his assessment. That should be the joy of a teacher.

I was asked what I am going to teach on this coming Sunday. I sure wish I knew. Last Sunday we all got to know each other and talk about why we were there, I think I set the tone and hope that it is a very open and fun tone. It is my hope that after listening to me for a bit that the people in the church learn to teach themselves. You have to teach the basics of anything; but, after that I want people to listen with discernment because they are capable of knowing the garbage from the honey.

I guess I don't so much want to teach them the bible as teach them how to read the bible. Last Sunday one young lady who had grown up in the church told me that I had shown her to think outside the box, I told her that there are no boxes. By the way, my Pastor friend reads my blog so he can always correct me if I misstate something.

That is sort of how I am when I am teaching. I don't want people to tell me that I am right, I want them to tell me that they understand that they should think about things for themselves and not just repeat what they have been told. I want the members to question me, not accept everything I say, I want them to challenge me more than I challenge them, that will be a challenge. We are not taught to constantly challenge our teachers and we should be.

This pastoring thing is hard and I never intended to do it. As I have taken it on, I take it on with intent. I didn't study it and I didn't think about it. This is very much a work in progress, a man who never felt the calling teaching people who don't like church. Somehow that makes sense.

There was someone who had come to my first "sermon" (I think of it as a conversation) and said that if they needed to have a reason to not go to church I sure gave it to them, and I did. I told them that the "church" is dying because it is and then I told them why. Religion as it is taught today is keeping people from God more than bringing them to it. It is all about putting rear ends in seats rather than focusing on what it taught in the beginning.

I am not concerned with this gathering growing, I am more afraid that it will and that is how it should be. The focus should be on telling the truth and teaching the word and showing people how to teach themselves. I think it talks about teaching a man to fish and how he is then set for life rather than giving him a fish, how is spirituality any different?

I don't want anyone to follow me, not in business and not in the church, I have never liked such things. I want people to turn their brains on, wake up to the reality around them, stop chasing the cookies and being willing trained seals and come to their conclusions in a logically consistent manner.

Life is about coming to terms with being ourselves. It is about taking responsibility for our choices and actions and modifying them to reflect our true heart and beliefs. It is about spiritual growth not spiritual death. It is about how important you are, not how unimportant you are and that is why people want to teach you the opposite. Life is not about love, love is the result of a true spiritual understanding of just how important everyone of us is and man, God created you so you matter. Love should be the life decision because we matter.

There are people who will not read my blog when I talk about spirituality, it doesn't stop me and it won't. I don't care if the viewership is one, truthfully, I will write if nobody reads it, they might tomorrow and I want what I write to reflect what I believe.

This coming Sunday I know what I want to see. I wish to see the young lady that said I had busted her boxes sitting in front of me, I need to know her more and I want to see the family of five, whose mother asked me for my blog address to be there, I will be very sad if they are not; but, I would understand. I will feel glad if those people are there because it will mean that I have been of service to them. There are others that I would like to see; but, I do understand that many did it as a favor to my Pastor friend and I am okay with that. I also deeply appreciate it to the ones who did it to be supportive of me, with all my heart.

The first Christians were not given a lesson plan, they were not given a building, they were not given too much. Well, they were given the word and he spoke to them, I didn't get that; but, I got his word and it is enough. Oh, the word was Jesus and he was God and he was with God.

A friend of the Pastor's told the pastor that the fact that I smoked showed that I didn't respect the fact that our body was a temple. Yeah, that is dangerous ground for anyone. He didn't know that I had taught on that and what I taught was discussed with him. Bad theology and legalism does not like me, never has and never will. He failed to understand the term he used or the context in which it was raised. I am a very gentle person and a pacifist, that doesn't require me to be stupid or not know my bible and I will correct people. His focus is on sin rather than redemption and that is wrong.

God is not a cookie and he is not a "reward", he is a sentient being who practices good. We should do the same while understanding what is really important and what is really important is us and God, all sentient beings. You matter and the truth is inside you, my answers don't change too often, my priorities are always us and I don't know how to or want to change that.

I have no idea what I will say on Sunday, I never know and will probably never know in advance. I say what is on my heart and think about issues that challenge me. My intent is more important in preparing than is my message, the message should just flow if my intent is right and it should work, be understood, because it is the truth.

By the way, the "evidence" that the scientists found for us making our decisions prematurely was wrong, it was evidence of intent, of our searching for a pattern, not the actual choice. Humans look for patterns every time we make a decision, it is how we make decisions, we check the odds.

In My Head

This preaching thing is really confusing me. It is a job. I feel as if I have been tricked into this, because I have. I asked my Pastor friend what made him think I could pull this off, he had never heard me speak in public. He said he just knew.

This is funny, how do I tell my children that I have become a Pastor? This is too funny. At least my parents aren't alive to see this. I cuss so much that I come up with new cuss words, I smoke and I drink wine. I am very bad example for young people, don't even think about trying to do this at home. If Robbie reads this she better make a comment, lol.

By the way, my Pastor friend is lucky that I don't cuss on the blog. lol. I know he reads the blog so I thought he should understand a little better who I am. Anyways, I cannot break up a church and if one person comes, I will come.

We debriefed, the Pastor and I. He is grooming me to find this okay, this preaching thing, he has done this before, I have not. This is good, he knows that God still loves him, that is a very important thing to know. I am so very happy that he knows it. God knows that he respects him and loves him. It is tough when we don't think that he does love us; but, he loves us all.

I think that is what I want to talk about this coming Sunday, God created us to love, for him to love, he is always rooting for us, that is why Satan accuses us day and night, he has to. We shall see. Be well.