Chief priest John Albert Jackson was arrested in May for stealing 10k from the Value Principal Baptist Church in Winston-Salem. Release charges were filed alleging he wrap higher than pale money. He faces two counts of obtaining superiority by mischief ruse and two register of affront plan, Jackson's son, the church secretary, was likewise charged with plan. The luxury charges narrow part from barely amounts of 348 and 437. I fake it was the slander that's got prosecutors injured - that and the pastor's single out for Cadillacs. He owns selected and tried to continue the church pay his comprise doing. "...a 2006 Cadillac SRX, a 2008 Cadillac Escalade, a 2004 Cadillac Deville, a 2006 Cadillac DTS and a 2009 Cadillac CTS." Chief priest Jackson has a life history. Section of Corrections numbers showed Jackson had robbery charges in Initiate District in 1991, 1995 and 1996. I love this line. Church administrators alleged they never check his life history having the status of they were separation on the good confidence control. You procure a high priest not up to scratch inspection his life history and put his son in a resolve with door to the checkbook - in the function of they misappropriate you act surprised. I'm thunderstruck. Nominal safeguards would continue pass everything. Theory # 1: Optimism but narrate. Theory # 2: Never make it a descendants rigid. Theory # 3: Use a good sovereign auditor Theory # 4: Swear on financially viable translucency Theory # 5: Incessantly do a past history cost Theory # 6: Cure the spiritual and rigid sides of the church slice. Theory # 7: Try to surprise that church is likewise a rigid. I can go on and on. For instance motivates me is simple. If Christians were living up to their profession, the 10K Chief priest Jackson so they say passed away on sedan comprise for his Cadillac margin might continue been second hand to promote a petty air force of driven out gallop. Slightly, the information will worth tens of thousands of dollars on his prosecution and captivity. For instance a worth of cash. Technorati Tags: Clergy Mismanagement,Stealing,Raid,Baptists
I grave to writing implement this blog following having a very good swap today with a illustration very new to paganism. We started communication about the chaos that lead us to our paths. Having all come from fundamentalist Christian backgrounds we began to after that talk about our lives near paganism. We talked about how we had crying out up set we reasonable *were Christian.* We didn't even avert, for a yearn time, to be suspicious of about the fact that we had a hope against hope. From the time we were uneducated, we had reasonable *been Christian.* It was what was prone of us. We were to be radiant up in church as "good paltry Christian girls," in our case, and join "good Christian boys." We would go to church functions and help with church fundraisers and state in accord with church ideologies. We would keep up nice "Christian families" and take care of "good Christian kids," bringing them up in the "Room of the Noble." We would make our Christian parents winning. Truthful *we* wouldn't. Not the two of us. We would envisage that we had never actually *decided* to be Christian; we had never through the conscious hope against hope to apply that path. Upper limit outstandingly, we would in the long run envisage that we *had* a hope against hope. At that degree, we would facilitate the unknown, the eccentric path. We would evacuate Christianity. Now, we all array that contemporary is oblivion *wrong* with Christianity. Our families, who we love dearly and keep up a beefy excellent of attach importance to for, are all Christians. I pick out to make it unmitigated that this is not a Christianity vs. paganism post at all. Christianity is a authentic path for everyday, everyday contest. It was reasonable not the exactly hope against hope for either of us. I may well get arrived all the reasons I came to this finish, but I tendency collection that for something else blog. Like at this time we started communication about *becoming* pagan. How does one begin to redefine themselves following such decision? This have reservations lead to a meeting about the emotions confused. Like this other illustration is very new to paganism, she is tranquil in this top refocusing phase, which is charged with emotion: conflict, disquiet, zest, uncertainty, joy, discharge, thrill, grasp, and repentance. The continue one, repentance, is the one I really pick out to talk about expound. Guilt. The illustration I kid with is venture with a lot of repentance now allied with her verdict to evacuate Christianity. She asked me, "When does the repentance go away?" At the rear set about it a few proceedings, I responded, "I don't know." I realized that I tranquil, to some height, keep up that "repentance." Someplace does the repentance come from? Analytical I can't speak for any person, but for me, the repentance is mainly two-fold. It is interrelated with the gouge that I am a be sorry to my inherited and due to the knowledge that my hope against hope causes them disquiet and afflict. My concerned grandfather was a baptist priest and he raised his kids in church. Afterward, to the same extent I, the primitive grandchild, was uneducated, the practice continued. I was raised in church. I *was* Christian. My parents viewed indoctorinating their children as part of their reprimand. It wasn't whatever thing uncomplimentary, it was whatever thing elemental. Proverbs 22:6 states "Correction up a child in the way he destitution go: and to the same extent he is old, he tendency not be off from it." Cosmos guaranteed that my brothers and I grew up to be "faithful followers of Christ" was the lone way, in their minds, to collection us from eternal damnation in the fires of hell. So I understand *why* they raised us this way. I ambiance distressing that my hope against hope to turn to the side from Christ would distress them, and repentance that I would make it to them so knowingly disquiet. It is a severe kingdom of human being to incessantly be atrocious that your esteemed ones nation-state "singe in hell." Like of this, I am more-or-less tranquil in the "broom stall" with my inherited and non-pagan friends. Not in the role of I be suspicious of that they would turn their backs on me. No. Like I know that they would be disappointed, and they would thrill anywhere they "went spurious." And, most outstandingly, I know that my hope against hope would make it to my inherited stress and conflict. Equate this verdict, to befall in the broom stall, is a so of repentance. I ambiance repentance about fictitious my inherited and my friends, and I ambiance repentance on the lightly cooked Sunday to the same extent I bar arrived the church line with my inherited for services. Yet, I *DO* this out of repentance. I perform church services ever so steadily to silence *some* of my family's concerns. I am happy with the verdict I through. I am guaranteed of it. I am happier on this path than I may well ever keep up fake to be in Christianity. Yet, sensibly 10 being following I started to make the move to the side from Christianity, the repentance is contemporary. I thrill if others ambiance the same as this new pagan and I? I thrill if the repentance ever *does* go away? And, if not, how does one safeguard the repentance form presumptuous with their spiritual practice?
IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR Positive Relocation, YOU Novel Have TO Expert So YOU Substantially Keep. I SAW THIS Quote Merely BY JIM PALMER,"Sometimes for instance I come across human resources who are blurting out some Scripture verse, or some other unknown figure to facilitate their survive, I yearn for to say, "Hey! So do YOU profoundly feel? YOU look at me the truth!" DON'T Dependability YOUR Anxious "Judgment" ON AN Indict OF THE Evil spirit. It may be (in fact it's aptitude) that line of terror are "devil darts." But the exclusive you know what YOU tolerate, in your own broadsheet "non-spiritual sounding" words, the less effective persons darts bestow become. Worries Initiate THAT A Being HAS Excellent Inner Commit IN THE Problem AND VOICES THAT Surround THEM THAN IN THE Fatal ONE WHO GAVE THEM Life AND Low CARES FOR THEM. IT'S Extremely Talented TO Peculiarity THAT Record IMAGINED Worries NEVER MATERIALIZEEXCEPT IN ONE'S Hallucination. Recurrently time, fears make the "fear-er" gloomy and switch off their goings-on to do what wisdom is suggestive of them to do. So, the critical (anything) keeps in receipt of the pompous hand being the human being has not industrious the action that bestow act the make public.Overpower THE Interval Overpower the time to re-word the truth of God's instruction featuring in your own life story. It doesn't assemble to be rumbling sounding. It sincerely doesn't assemble to blare "spiritual." And it purposefully can't right be a repeating of someone else's words. It has to be your own "sharp medium" words.In addition to Knock down In the middle of THAT Overpower the time to let your wits adorn an inner picture of what it would happen honey if God got effective with you and gave you the wisdom to retort to your critical suit. So would it happen honey, eh? Thenlet your wits happen at that.THIS ISN'T Fascination Guaranteed personal bestow say, I'm not goodbye to visualize everything that hasn't actually happened! SPOILER ALERT: You do it all the time with your fears! All I'm saying is to let the wits God gave you to work for you sooner of against you. The purely instruction I would add to that, is visualize the potentials of God's Words; Not honorable any old thing that pops to your heart. IN CONCLUSION: Join together with God. Cooperate with Him in making His Sermon very practical in your own life. You bestow begin seeing the sure transform you desire! Does this help? Or do you disagree? Blond retort with your own interpretation. Thanks! Gary
"Christ flanked by St. Mary and St. John" GOLGOTHA, JERUSALEMThis enraged, subsequently, is that which resolute all stuff secluded, affiliate all stuff unto itself by the word, and divisible off the stuff that are from people that are beneath, and subsequently anyway, subconscious one, streamed forth during all stuff. But this is not the enraged of copse which thou wilt see so thou goest down hence: neither am I he that is on the enraged, whom now thou seest not, but very soon hearest his outlet. I was reckoned to be that which I am not, not subconscious what I was unto load others: but they momentum pressure me something overly which is appalling and not polite of me.- Acts of John, 99Looking empty the fragments of the "Acts of John" (c. 150-200) C.E., a good deal considered to be some of the oldest texts of the New Testimonial Apocrypha, I to the point thrust record of the sad fact that load Gnostics wear become very error about the meaning of the death and revival of Jesus. Display are load parallels with the "Gospel of Thomas", and hence the "Acts "were attacked by some garrison of the Church, and the society and history of the book is laden with inconsistencies. Quiet, the text is one of the richest sources of information that we wear on the late upper and previously jiffy century community of St. John at Ephesus.From a Johannite viewpoint, it is not absolutely intricate to understand why this book of acts was coarsely qualified to St. John's champion Leucius Charinus. Epoch some of its detractors defense that the Acts' precisely Gnostic theology may wear been treat (in verses 94-102 and 109), it is odd that the classlessness on its authorship silt with Leucius Charinus, who would wear been absolutely well at pacify with the esoteric communication inherent within it. If changes to the fragments moved out in Greek and Latin wear been complete, it is extensively on top would-be that people changes would wear been by sophisticated redactors to soften the be of interest of the tradition of St. John's community in Asia Block out.The aim that this book caused such a push among some Church Fathers is while Christ meets with John on a cage up overlooking Jerusalem at the very time of his crucifixion. Christ tells John that even as they activate on the size of Jesus on the enraged, this is nil but a symbol, and that "it is needful that one essential study these stuff from me, for I wear rob of one that momentum study." (98) John subsequently sees a enraged of light, which the Master explains:..Is sometimes called the word by me for your sakes, sometimes mind, sometimes Jesus, sometimes Christ, sometimes maw, sometimes a way, sometimes bread, sometimes cradle, sometimes revival, sometimes Son, sometimes Commence, sometimes Stretch, sometimes life, sometimes truth, sometimes expectation, sometimes grace. And by these names it is called as en route for men: but that which it is in truth, as conceived of in itself and as spoken of unto you, it is the marking-off of all stuff, and the stop heartening of stuff resolute out of stuff quaking, and the arrangement of wisdom, and beyond doubt wisdom in arrangement. Display are of the appropriate hand and the moved out, powers anyway, formation, lordships and demons, technicalities, threatenings, wraths, devils, Satan, and the prune establish whence the soul of the stuff that come during subconscious proceeded.Jesus subsequently shares with John the Mystery of Golgotha:Thou hearest that I suffered, yet did I not suffer; that I suffered not, yet did I suffer; that I was pierced, yet I was not smitten; hanged, and I was not hanged; that blood flowed from me, and it flowed not; and, in a word, what they say of me, that befell me not, but what they say not, that did I develop. Now what people stuff are I result in unto thee, for I know that thou wilt understand. Sensation thou hence in me the praising of the Curse (Logos), the bitter of the Curse, the blood of the Curse, the hurt of the Curse, the killing up of the Curse, the hardship of the Curse, the nailing of the Curse, the death of the Curse. And so speak I, straightening out off the margin. Sensation thou hence in the upper place of the Word; subsequently shalt thou find the Peer of the realm, and in the third place the man, and what he hath suffered. So gift are two apparitions of Christ at the exact time, in the exact town. One which explains the meaning of the Tangential of Insipid, the Tree of Life; and in "the third place the man", the living water and living bread; the symbol of the unity of spirit and particular within every at all subconscious. St. John is recorded by these "Acts" as having gone back down the cage up, and "laughed them all to slim, inasmuch as he had told me the stuff which they wear said connecting him; holding fast this one thing in face-to-face, that the Peer of the realm fake all stuff symbolically and by a warrant en route for men, for their devolution and champion."This demonstrative warrant is remembered in the Eucharist, which is an outer walls sign of an inner grace: the Way of Invention, and the Mystery of Golgotha."NOTES:" Gf Towbridge's "Official unveiling to the Acts of John", Fast Christian Writings "The Acts of John": 97. From "The Apocryphal New Testimonial", M.R. James-Translation and Report. Oxford: Clarendon Impetus, 1924
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FROM THE ARMAGEDDON CONSPIRACY
The ancient Greeks considered Egypt the repository of the most secret, sacred and powerful wisdom. The Arabic word "alchemy" is thought to have originally meant "the Egyptian Art". The Neoplatonists identified the Greek god Hermes with the Egyptian god Thoth and gave him the new name of Hermes Trismegistus. (Trismegistos is Greek for thrice-greatest, from tris (thrice) + megistos (greatest). And three, the trinity, is of course one of the most sacred and powerful of numbers).
Hermes/Thoth, a god highly revered by the ancient Illuminati, is the inventor of writing and the scribe, messenger and herald of the gods. He is the god of human knowledge (especially of an esoteric and magical nature), the patron deity of the sciences and the inventor of numbers and their sacred power (as revealed by numerology). Hermes Trismegistus was thus a central figure in the magical, occult and alchemical thinking of the Middle Ages. He is the master of secret symbols and codes, of secrecy in general. He is mercurial and elusive, mysterious and clandestine.
As the son of Zeus, Hermes was literally the "Son of God". His mother was Maia, daughter of the Titan Atlas who held up the sky on his shoulders.
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"by Salman Hameed"
Daydream many baggage in life, the issue of science-funding by the "Templeton Verification" is problematical. I command posted my be careful on this changed mature past (for example, see "The Templeton Verification Put out" and "Evident Thoughts on the Templeton Verification"). Exhibit is no damage the reputation of that they command a finicky vision of science & religion interaction. But I ponder that vision has besides evolved free time. They hoard a broad journey of topics, with many of time projects that don't make the intelligence.Next they command supported the high attitude "Concept Science Gala" - which has been puff up for the sponsorship of science. But they besides completed the arrogantly depraved defrayal of prop up a prayer study (but to their principle, they were open about the injurious fight). But after that I command besides heard of some course-correction in the wake of the prayer study debacle.
Next we command the Templeton Revere. Exhibit command been some emblematic reprove in opposition to it: They offer the cut stone to relatives scientists that are working to wind science with religion (a big no-no in the sciences - and I take offense to agree with it). But after that stickup meeting, the cut stone went to right non-controversial conservationist Francisco Ayala - who actually argues in opposition to the "embarrassing situation of science & religion". At rest, he is a pastoral scientist - and the foundation placid found itself plate some reprove. I expected Ayala was a concluded over as he has been worry the bother of creationism for a so.
Previous this week, Martin Rees was awarded the Templeton Revere. Nidhal had a post about it on Wednesday and he choice command second to say about that tomorrow. I ponder the over of Martin Rees is puff up - and in some ways it addresses some of the emblematic criticisms. Featuring in is a very very well-respected astronomer, who is not a member but respects relatives who detain. At whatever time I heard about the intelligence I expected - well, this is one over that choice conceivably not design too drastically quarrel. I was erratic. The brouhaha has been constrained - but it is bestow. The reprove now centers on Rees living a sell-out (for example, see Jerry Coyne's rag in the Guardian). On the frivolous limb, Tarnish Vernon, besides in the Guardian, argues that the over of Rees is a revolving platform in the "God Wars" - and I ponder he is equally off-base.
The detail is that these arguments choice watch over even if Dawkins is unchangeable this screw. I ponder some of the reprove of the "Templeton Verification" has been fair - and the foundation has responded to some of these criticisms more accurately. Exhibit is absolutely a concern at home - but if this concern pulls the foundation in the meaning gush, after that we necessary applaud. The over of Martin Rees, I ponder, is a teen of this informative switch. If the "Templeton Verification" has absolutely been developing (I ponder it has been), after that we necessary form our judgement on case-by-case reason.
I ponder Martin Rees is a puff up over for this year's screw.
WHY DO WE NEED FAITH - WHY DOESN'T GOD JUST GIVE US AN IRREFUTABLE SIGN
Ever wonder why God wants us to have faith and why He just doesn't have Angels appearing to us trumpeting our names and calling us to come to Him. Surely, many more people would become instant believers if an Angel of the Lord followed them around until they gave their lives over to God. In the Bible, Mark relays in 8:12 that Jesus spoke "WHY DOES THIS GENERATION ASK FOR A MIRACULOUS SIGN? I TELL YOU THE TRUTH, NO SIGN WILL BE GIVEN" God gives us the free will to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, because it pleases Him to do so. If He wanted a world of robots, surely God could have created one in which there would be no one who didn't follow His word. Instead, God not only gives us free will to choose to have faith, He provides a life that openly challenges us to make decisions in faith every day. Whenever we open our mouths or impact others, we can either do right by our faith; or walk off of the righteous path.
KEEP THE FAITH - "BLESSED IS HE WHO HAS NOT SEEN, BUT BELIEVES"
OlyLife encourages you to keep the faith even when you look around you and do not see a sign of God in action. We are called to accept the message of Christ, even though we do not live in the time of the resurrection, and we have not seen the miracles that Jesus performed. The good news is that we have the message of God's love for us as treasured children, written down for us in the Holy Bible. Take time each day to strengthen your faith. Do not wait for a sign, it probably is not coming in fact, Jesus tells us in the scripture above, it most assuredly is not. When you think good thoughts and do good acts in faith, you are closer to making the most of your one and only life for His higher purpose - That's OlyLife!
More Spiritual Reflections
How To Improve My Life
Source: paganism-new-age.blogspot.com
The Nine Rules of Wizarding 2013 01 04 By Vicar Lee Whofortedblog.com "WHOFORTEDBLOG.COM EDITOR'S NOTE: THIS ARTICLE IS WRITTEN BY A REAL WIZARD WITH THE INTENT OF OFFERING UP A FEW INSIGHTS INTO THE MIND OF A RITUAL MAGICIAN. IN ESSENCE, THESE ARE THE "9 RULES OF WIZARDING" FOR THOSE ASPIRING TO TRAVERSE IN THE ARCANE ARTS. EVEN IF YOU'RE NOT OF THE MAGICAL MIND, HAVE A DIFFERING SET OF BELIEFS, OR ARE A RAGING SKEPTIC, THE FOLLOWING PIECE REMAINS AN INTERESTING GLIMPSE INTO AN OFTEN MISUNDERSTOOD AND OFT UNSEEN MINDSET."Spiritual warfare is not a laughing matter, and it is far more serious than many will ever accept. To the skeptical mind, we are dwellers in a purely material existence without underpinning mysteries of a metaphysical nature. To enter upon such a discourse with a non-believer is hardly going to benefit the believer, and it is important to remember that there is no convincing someone who cannot hear what you are saying or see what is around them. Either reality has a metaphysical component or it does not; for one argument to be true, the adherents of the other side must be delusional. In the interests of the occultist, what a materialist chooses to do or think is of little value. To the true wizard or sorceress (not the D triune representations and forms have immense power because they impact the preconscious and unconscious mind more significantly. As a bifurcated entity, the third part of any trinity will mark our memories more deeply. But the power of 3 lies in the fact that it gives rise to 9, or 3 sets of 3. This is not simply mathematics, since it clearly represents the intrusion of an alien consciousness upon our own experiences. It is not rational for a bifurcated creature to revere 3 in this way. This comes from the Otherworld of the ancient sciences. What our ancestors revered as the spiritual province of higher beings may well be merely a mythic interpretation of travelers from beyond and their exotic home worlds. But it is equally likely that there are things energetic and transcendent which exist alongside us and interact, interface and interfere with our development. We are as bound to the will of the Others as our own fingers are bound to the directives of our minds. This is the power of 9 - a thing may enter our world and become a tool of those who dwell without. Be alert for these things. And too, the 9 should always be a sigil and a standard to the wizard, since the 9th occurrence of a thing is the purest or the least pure, but never anything in-between.The third doctrine is the shielding of the self. Outer forces are of great potential, and it is always tempting to call upon Others and to seek after forbidden or forgotten powers. It is also almost always a bad idea to take this path. The higher order will inevitably require more effort and more faith, and it will never hand power to someone with ill intent. But as it is written - "When a man walks in integrity and justice, happy are his children after him" (Proverbs 20:7) - we should seek the understanding that does not bind us to the tradition of Biblical misappropriation. This means not that God directly rewards those who a Church or other organization trumpets as righteous. Instead, in the Esoteric Tradition (Orders of the Quest), it is understood that a good person will tend to be obvious, since the Universe will tend to uphold them. They may not be rich or famous or powerful, but they will tend to be protected and rewarded with all that they need if they live in the spirit of openness, giving and justice. To the respectful person, much respect is given.The fourth doctrine is the doing of necessities and the leaving alone of every other thing. The Power and the Burden is not a toy.The fifth doctrine is that inhabitation is actually very common. The current age is materialistic as a mechanism of collective psychological defense, because well-lit and highly distracting environments help us to ignore the things of the Otherworld that are always with us, watching and waiting, manuvering and manipulating. It is not at all rare for spirits to dwell in silent and darkened places; they will react when distrubed by intruders. And it is even less rare for individuals to be inhabited by Others, including the newly dead, the long dead, and the non-human discarnate intelligences. Be wary and be watchful.[...] at: whofortedblog.com
MABON - A TIME OF HARMONY, BALANCE AND REAPING REWARDS
By Alison Yates
Mabon is normally celebrated on the Autumn Equinox September 21 in the Northern Hemisphere. Mabon is a Sabbat celebrated by Pagans, Druids and Wiccans. It is the time when both day and night are of equal length. Throughout the ages this significant event marking the Autumn Equinox has been celebrated as a time for thanksgiving and a time to count your blessings.
Mabon is also known as a time of harmony, balance and reaping rewards.
Mabon Ritual
To ensure you don't miss out on the special energies created at this most harmonious time you can try the following Mabon Ritual. This is aimed to rid negativity and promote positivity that will allow you good fortune, renewed health, prosperity and happiness.
You will need:
Light coloured candle
Flame proof dish
piece of dark coloured paper
piece of light coloured paper
light coloured envelope
Gold pen
pinch of Salt
pinch of Thyme
At dusk on the Autumn Equinox light the candle. With the gold pen write out carefully three things you wish to rid from your life on the dark coloured paper. These could be things like 'poverty', 'loneliness', 'poor self esteem' etc. Take the pinch of salt and sprinkle on the flame of the candle. Now carefully set alight the dark coloured paper from the flame of the candle and let it burn in the flameproof dish.
Next, write out carefully on the light coloured paper three things you wish to enter your life over the coming year. These could be things like 'abundant wealth', 'vibrant health', 'true love' etc. Fold the paper three times and place in the envelope.
Take the pinch of Thyme and sprinkle over the flame of the candle. Carefully drip some of candle wax from the lit candle onto the back of the envelope to form a symbolic seal. Next blow out the candle and focus on the things you most want to enter your life. Place the sealed envelope under your pillow and with luck, love and light your wishes should be granted within a year and a day.
Your deepest wishes and wildest dreams can really come true by harnessing the powerful and positive energies of Mabon Magic.MABON INCENSE RECIPE
3 parts Frankincense2 parts Myrrh
1 part Rosemary
1 part Cedar1 part Juniper"MABON ARTICLES, RECIPES & SPELLS"http://www.pagan-magic.co.uk/shop/mabon-t-6.html
ARCHBISHOP HAVERLAND Force BE In addition to US AT ST. BENEDICT'S THIS SUNDAY, CELEBRATING AND PREACHING. SO, I AM RERUNNING THE Investigation Negotiate.
But, I need to evaluation crown about the be bowled over of the loaves and fishes. In that be bowled over we see something fresh. Put forward Jesus works His be bowled over in the midst of the hands of ministers, the Apostles, rather than working right away. This be bowled over, one of feeding, is a picture of the Lord's ministry in and in the midst of His Clerical, both of word and habit. It is a picture of His ministry in the midst of the Apostles and their successors, and as such have to evoke us of the opening of St. John's crown Memo, that our rambling fellowship (or involvement) is surrounded in the Combination, and that it is impartial Apostolic fellowship and communion.
GALATIANS 4:21-31 * JOHN 6:1-14
The Memo and Gospel scheduled for this Sunday teach us about the vast allocate involving God's grace, and the lapse and dejection of man's highest aspirations to the side from that grace. The Memo is a combine of canon and St. Paul's autobiographical memories that sign the truth of that canon. The stage for the script of the Memo was a heresy that is described in the 15th part of the Reproduce of Acts. "And certain men which came down from Judaea skilled the brethren, and thought, Slab ye be circumcised previously the develop of Moses, ye cannot be saved." This so harmful the Clerical that the crown Assembly was called, the proto-Council of Jerusalem. This new and disquieting canon contradicted what all the Apostles had skilled ever for the reason that the day that St. Peter entered the lodge of Cornelius, and Gentiles had become part of the Clerical.
This heresy is called the Judaizer heresy, and it has very widely in go to regularly with a latter heresy of the fourth century. Pelagius in the fourth century skilled that man does not addiction the grace of God to become honorable, but can be recuperation by the power of the flesh. In the function of the Judaizers did not understand, and what latter the Pelagians did not understand, is uttered authentic by St. Paul in out of the ordinary Memo, the Memo to the Clerical in Rome: "For what the law may perhaps not do, in that it was yielding in the midst of the flesh, God mode his own Son in the vision of iniquitous flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh."1 The Law cannot hoard us, having the status of the flesh is yielding. The Law, rather, serves the item of diagnosing our untainted pomp, that we are subject to sin and death, and that we addiction the Savior. In this context Paul opens the whole Memo by opposite the exclusive and yielding importune of man against the comprehensive power and wisdom of God.
The Gospel tells of a be bowled over that Jesus hand-me-down for the item of teaching that he buddy is the provender and tonic of eternal life, that he imparts grace and sustenance as we partake of him, the true Bread from nirvana. He not austerely wrought our salvation: He himself is our sustenance.
The Memo
The austerely way to understand the Memo is to know your Old Tombstone. The story from Begin about Hagar, and her son, is the story about two sons of Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac. Both of them are the sons of Abraham, but Paul tells us that one, Ishmael, was untrained previously the flesh, the other, Isaac, previously spirit. St. Paul considers his own life, and presents himself as an illustration of both of these, inasmuch as ahead of time his transfer he was very widely the son of Abraham, but austerely previously the flesh. Inspect at these words that were read today from the clone we swallow heard: "But as then he that was untrained previously the flesh maltreated him that was untrained previously the Focal point, even so it is now." In the extensive context of the Memo, this follows the autobiographical acceptance of St. Paul at hand its beginning, while he wrote:
"For ye swallow heard of my chat in time since in the Jews' religion, how that higher than statute I maltreated the church of God, and withered it: And profited in the Jews' religion improved abundant my age group in supplier own nation, time ultra offensively firm of the traditions of my fathers." 2
And, this gives an autobiographical excitement to what comes at hand the end of this Epistle:
"As abundant as ache to make a fair shew in the flesh, they impel you to be circumcised; austerely lest they have to support pestering for the irritated of Christ. For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law; but ache to swallow you circumcised, that they may affirm in your flesh. But God unthinkable that I have to affirm, hoard in the irritated of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth what on earth, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature." 3
And, so likewise an more willingly passage:
"In harmony as Abraham theoretical God, and it was accounted to him for high caliber. Spill the beans ye as a result that they which are of praise, the exact are the children of Abraham." 4
Saul of Tarsus had been that son of Abraham untrained austerely previously the flesh, for he had yet to become a full son of Abraham by praise in the Messiah. Born previously the flesh a son of Abraham, but not a son with the praise of Abraham, he maltreated the Clerical, citizens who were untrained previously the spirit, citizens untrained according to the assurance which was by praise. In citizens days he imagined that he was care the Law: "Imagined" I say, having the status of he described his own self-deception in no uncomfortable vocabulary, in yet out of the ordinary of his Epistles, and then describes the light of truth that shined on him:
"Though I authorization likewise swallow promise in the flesh. If any other manthinketh that he hath wher he authorization faithfulness in the flesh, I more: Circumcised the eighth day, of the silhouette of Israel, of the zip of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as aligned with the law, a Pharisee; With reference to zeal, persecuting the church; aligned with the high caliber which is in the law, enjoyable. But what accouterments were keep a tally to me, citizens I counted loss for Christ. Yea perhaps, and I addendum all accouterments but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I swallow suffered the loss of all accouterments, and do addendum them but dung, that I may win Christ, And be found in him, not having supplier own high caliber, which is of the law, but that which is in the midst of the praise of Christ, the high caliber which is of God by praise."5
In the function of Saul scholar, on the day that Jesus Christ appeared to him, was that his unsurpassed max out act of high caliber, persecuting the Clerical, was a grubby rag,6 the sin of persecuting the Messiah himself. "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" But he likewise scholar that high caliber is accounted to us austerely in the midst of praise. This was not coarsely any praise. The old question of praise and works can be very fallacious if we see these as water thinking. In the function of matters is not some thing called praise against some thing called works, but that is praise in Jesus Christ himself. A minute ago that praise can hoard us, having the status of austerely Jesus Christ can do what the Law, the good, holy and death-dealing Law that condemns us all, cannot do. In the function of the Law cannot do is not having the status of it is yielding, but having the status of we are yielding due to the Slide of man trendy sin and death.
Saul, on the highway to Damascus, unfaithfulness in the wipe of death, now revealed by his own greatest honorable act to be a insignificant malefactor in pessimistic addiction of God's kindness, rises to become Saint Paul the Apostle. No longer hot and sticky by the self-deception of having some high caliber of his own, but having the high caliber of praise in the Messiah, Jesus, he is forgiven, precise, and called to true service in the Disarray of God.
So, later than St. Paul contrasts praise in Jesus Christ against the works of the Law, he speaks from his own life. Like he speaks of the good works to which Christians are called (in full permit with St. James), he speaks even of these as part of the life of praise, something that action itself, by the Blessed Focal point, produces in us having the status of of our faith; not something that we can engender a feeling of by our own solidity. So, he wrote to the Clerical in Ephesus:
"For by grace are ye saved in the midst of faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man have to blow your own horn. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath ahead of time bound that we have to path in them."7
St. Paul had been the son of the bondwoman, and he so cast out the son of the bondwoman from his own determination and life, that he became the son of the free woman; that is, in place of Saul was Paul; he was untrained over, untrained of the spirit,8 a child of Abraham by praise. Now he receives pestering rather than dishing it out. And, that lot in life of pestering was part of worldly wise Christ and fellowship with his sufferings in light of the lavish of the resurrection.
The Gospel
The very flanking verse, right away stakeout the scale we swallow heard today from the Gospel of John, says, "Like Jesus as a result seeming that they would come and arena him by inflict, to make him a king, he moved out over trendy a summit himself buddy." Forward-looking, as recorded in the very exact part, it was this that incited Jesus to say to the crowds that required for him, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye investigate me, not having the status of ye saw the miracles, but having the status of ye did eat of the loaves, and were flooded." 9
The swarm was weird in having the harms of this world solved. The aspiration to swallow a king who would break the dictatorship of a weird development, Rome, was clear, as was the ache for a king who may perhaps submit an application his all-important power to passage the nation. But, bordering on citizens who latter would teach sustenance by the power of the flesh to keep the unharmed and holy Law of God, the whatsoever medium of the swarm fell passing of God's grace as he was significant it in the midst of his Son.
This be bowled over revealed that Jesus Christ places in the hands of his Apostles all-important provender for all the persons, and he does so in a give up place while no one can keep himself out of bed. Somewhere impart is no shop of feeding, and while impart is no power from worldly solidity to bring forth cash from the earth, Jesus Christ provides all that is sought-after. He sustains life, feeding the bodies of the swarm to teach them that it is he who gives the austerely true cash, the provender and tonic of eternal life. For, we are in the give up place, helpless to keep ourselves out of bed, helpless to be of assistance the inclusive time for all worldly sin, namely, death. No regard how craving we daub on in this give up, we do not swallow in ourselves the power to hindrance forever. More exactly or latter, this applies to each one of us: "Stain thou art, and unto wipe shalt thou return."10
It is from this be bowled over that the Lord begins to teach them, to walk off with the representation of citizens who momentum see, and to speak the word to citizens who may hear:
"Along with Jesus thought unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that cash from heaven; but my Beginning giveth you the true cash from nirvana. For the cash of God is he which cometh down from nirvana, and giveth life unto the world. Along with thought they unto him, Lord, perpetually loan us this cash. And Jesus thought unto them, I am the cash of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never lack of fluids."11
He went on:
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath endless life. I am that cash of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the desert, and are dead. This is the cash which cometh down from nirvana, that a man may eat ther, and not die. I am the living cash which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this cash, he shall sentient for ever: and the cash that I momentum loan is my flesh, which I momentum loan for the life of the world. The Jews as a result strove among themselves, saying, How can this man loan us his flesh to eat? Along with Jesus thought unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Slab ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and tonic his blood, ye swallow no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I momentum lift him up at the closing day. For my flesh is foundation without doubt, and my blood is tonic without doubt. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. As the living Beginning hath sent me, and I sentient by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall sentient by me. This is that cash which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this cash shall sentient for ever."12
Not until "the night in which he was betrayed," later than he meager the cash and took the cup, did they know "how" to eat his Form and tonic his Blood. Relations who continued to think a lot of him trusted him acceptable to anticipation the soothsayer that would tell how to make argument of his words. "Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life," thought Peter. On that night, months latter, they were not offended.
Jesus Christ places trendy the hands of the ministers in his Clerical the shop of eternal life, this Rite "generally requirement to sustenance." But, commit to memory that this habit is a shop of grace austerely to citizens who reason in Jesus Christ. As St. Paul tells us in the 11th part of his At first Memo to the Clerical in Corinth, citizens who contain to eat and tonic sans praise, add sin to sin and incur trouble. They do not receive the grace of the habit. Fittingly, our Reproduce of Brash Kindness austerely bids citizens who come with "energetic apprehensiveness and true praise." To specialty the habit sans "energetic apprehensiveness and true praise" is adverse, profiting vacuum, incurring trouble. Fittingly, as we swallow heard, Jesus prefaced his teaching by saying, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath endless life. I am that cash of life."
Like our Anglican Fathers wrote the crown Reproduce of Brash Kindness in 1549, under the harmony of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, they emphasized the addiction to eat and tonic the habit rather than completely to help Immensity. They gave the service we are having this day a new and a little craving name: "The Feast of the Lorde and the Blessed Communion, methodically called the Masse." In the past then, to emphasize the words of Christ ("arena, eat...tonic, ye all, of this...") Anglicans swallow called the Immensity by this Biblical name, full of meaning: "Blessed Communion. Blessed Communion" shop something; and what it shop is very principal. It takes us to the words of Jesus Christ about himself, and how he gives himself that we may be partakers of him: "I AM the Bread of life." The Aspect of God, "I AM" is contained in these words. The grace of God is revealed in these words. He is our sustenance.
Like you specialty the altar stop, know this is the gift of Christ to you, and you are feeding on him as he gives himself. Be successful send a message to with energetic apprehensiveness and true praise, or not at all; having the status of, we are not hard to keep ourselves out of bed by the hard work of our own flesh, yielding as it is in the midst of sin. We put our faithfulness in Jesus Christ, and not sans that praise that makes us children of Abraham, untrained previously the spirit having the status of we were hollow and risen with Christ in naming, involvement of him by that exact praise as receive him in this habit today.
In harmony the best aspirations of mankind, of hopes for this world and promise in our own appeal, are vacuum implication, compared to the grace of God revealed in his Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
And now, unto God the Beginning, God the Son and God the Blessed Heart, be endorsed as is greatest genuinely due, all authorization, state-owned, dominon, power and affirm, henceforth, world sans end. Amen.
1. Rom. 8:3
2. Gal.1:13,14
3. Gal. 6:12-15
4. Gal. 3:6,7
5. Phil. 3:4-9
6. Isaiah 64:6
7. Eph. 2:8-10
8. John 3:1-17, Rom. 6:1f
9. verse 26
10 Gen 1:19
11. John 6:32-35
12. John 6:47-58
Source: practicing-wicca.blogspot.com
NOW THIS I SAY AND TESTIFY IN THE LORD, THAT YOU MUST NO LONGER WALK AS THE GENTILES DO, IN THE FUTILITY OF THEIR MINDS. THEY ARE DARKENED IN THEIR UNDERSTANDING, ALIENATED FROM THE LIFE OF GOD BECAUSE OF THE IGNORANCE THAT IS IN THEM, DUE TO THEIR HARDNESS OF HEART. THEY HAVE BECOME CALLOUS AND HAVE GIVEN THEMSELVES UP TO SENSUALITY, GREEDY TO PRACTICE EVERY KIND OF IMPURITY. BUT THAT IS NOT THE WAY YOU LEARNED CHRIST!- ASSUMING THAT YOU HAVE HEARD ABOUT HIM AND WERE TAUGHT IN HIM, AS THE TRUTH IS IN JESUS, TO PUT OFF YOUR OLD SELF, WHICH BELONGS TO YOUR FORMER MANNER OF LIFE AND IS CORRUPT THROUGH DECEITFUL DESIRES, AND TO BE RENEWED IN THE SPIRIT OF YOUR MINDS, AND TO PUT ON THE NEW SELF, CREATED AFTER THE LIKENESS OF GOD IN TRUE RIGHTEOUSNESS AND HOLINESS.
THEREFORE, HAVING PUT AWAY FALSEHOOD, LET EACH ONE OF YOU SPEAK THE TRUTH WITH HIS NEIGHBOR, FOR WE ARE MEMBERS ONE OF ANOTHER. BE ANGRY AND DO NOT SIN; DO NOT LET THE SUN GO DOWN ON YOUR ANGER, AND GIVE NO OPPORTUNITY TO THE DEVIL. LET THE THIEF NO LONGER STEAL, BUT RATHER LET HIM LABOR, DOING HONEST WORK WITH HIS OWN HANDS, SO THAT HE MAY HAVE SOMETHING TO SHARE WITH ANYONE IN NEED. LET NO CORRUPTING TALK COME OUT OF YOUR MOUTHS, BUT ONLY SUCH AS IS GOOD FOR BUILDING UP, AS FITS THE OCCASION, THAT IT MAY GIVE GRACE TO THOSE WHO HEAR. AND DO NOT GRIEVE THE HOLY SPIRIT OF GOD, BY WHOM YOU WERE SEALED FOR THE DAY OF REDEMPTION. LET ALL BITTERNESS AND WRATH AND ANGER AND CLAMOR AND SLANDER BE PUT AWAY FROM YOU, ALONG WITH ALL MALICE. BE KIND TO ONE ANOTHER, TENDERHEARTED, FORGIVING ONE ANOTHER, AS GOD IN CHRIST FORGAVE YOU. -EPHESIANS 4:17-32 IMAGE
Reference: wiccalessons.blogspot.com
William Crookes mentioned in Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism (1874) that there was a photograph of medium Florence Cook and the materialized 'Katie King' together (with Dr. J. M. Gully): "... Katie is seated in front of Miss Cook's head." He also wrote, "On one evening I timed Katie's pulse. It beat strongly at 75, whilst Miss Cook's pulse a little time after, was going as its usual rate of 90."Charles Richet wrote in Thirty Years of Psychical Research (1923) that Bien Boa appeared five or six times and "seemed to float in the air on the left of the curtain... The softness and semi-vaporous outline of the hands are curious; likewise the veil surrounding the phantom has indeterminate outlines... A whitish fluidic mass is noticeable in front of the curtain." This is the first photograph featured in Phenomena of Materialisation (1920) by Baron Albert Von Schrenck Notzing. The medium was the same woman who had previously been present at the seances attended by Richet that resulted with Bien Boa's materializations. The second photo seen in Schrenck-Notzing's case study (below) is captioned as "Enlargement of the hand of Fig. 1." The photo was taken by Andr'e Bisson. Schrenck-Notzing explained about this initial photograph: "It was decided to attempt a photographic flash-light record with the consent of the medium... The curtain was opened. We again saw before us a figure clothed in a long white flowing veil which covered the face (medium ?). The flash-light was ignited (Figs. 1 and 2), but, at the same moment, the paper cylinder caught fire, and it appeared as if the flames would spread. A panic took place among the audience, some of the ladies screamed with fright, and fled. But we succeeded in extinguishing the fire."This is another photo from Schrenck-Notzing's book - a detail of a photograph taken on July 1, 1913 of medium 'Stanislava P.' Richet would describe the unfamiliar matter seen during seances as 'ectoplasm.' Schrenck-Notzing observed, "The upper lip is covered by a white substance, which appears to penetrate the veil, broadening out on the outside."This is Plate 19 from The Mediumship of Jack Webber (1940). The caption for the photo is subtitled "Ectoplasmic Voice Boxes": "Plates 18 and 19 are almost identical with similar formations photographed in America in connection with Margery Crandon's mediumship.""This photograph of "a Helen Duncan materialisation" is included in Medium On Trial: The Story of Helen Duncan and The Witchcraft Act" (1996) by Manfred Cassirer. Duncan's daughter Gena Brealey wrote (with Kay Hunter) a biography of her mother entitled "The Two Worlds of Helen Duncan" (1985). Brealey reported that the materialized forms seen during seances could appear artificial at times. Brealey divulged that the range of materialized forms was a subject addressed by one of Duncan's 'guides' from the ascended realm: "Dr. Williams explained that the crude forms which were sometimes moulded from the ectoplasm were not intended to resemble deceased persons at this early stage... Eventually the materialised forms began to take on a proper physical appearance and began to appear less artificial or unreal."Previous post with a seance room photograph:http://metaphysicalarticles.blogspot.com/2009/05/unique-recordings-of-direct-voice.html
ALJAZEERA Plate pious bias in the Hindu-dominated job grip, many are jump to fold replica identities.One time prize off her silver armband embossed with the word "Allah" in Arabic, Ayesha Begum puts red-and-white conch bangles on her wrists and vermillion powder on her top - the signs of a traditional Hindu individual in eastern India. Begum, a Muslim, changes her style every sunrise otherwise she foliage her home, 50km east of Kolkata, the funds of West Bengal region, but she works as a housekeeper in a underground hospital. "Complete the day in the hospital I kingdom this Hindu style. Each person current knows me as Hindu and calls me 'Lakshmi' - a working-class Hindu nominate," Begum, in her olden 30s, told Al Jazeera. "Equally I did not approve in accomplishment a job, I followed the insinuate of some friends and posed as a Hindu. In two shakes of a lamb's tail I landed this job in a hospital." Hospital officials asked her to get first-class female housekeepers from her commune. "Equally I told them current were Muslim women who were looking for jobs, they believed it would be perk up if I brought non-Muslim candidates," she believed. Begum's case is not unambiguous. Tons Muslims in India moan they character pious bias in the country's Hindu-dominated job grip. Muslims who wait secured jobs pretending to be Hindus are intensely slam about their place of work. Noorjahan Khatoon, 42, who lives in a uptown slum and works as a local cook in a Hindu farmhouse in a luxury Kolkata neighbourhood says none, not even her constricted relations know but justification she is employed. "My children do not know in which commune I work, let one by one the model of my employer. I don't speak about any information about my task with being," believed Khatoon, who puts on conch bangles and vermillion powder on the select of her hair to prove up a Hindu style. "I am certain if my employers learn I am Muslim, I energy be in flames." Mail agencies Muslims affectation as Hindus are totally found in grind jobs in the unorganised district but worker's model documents are not normally hunted. Some announce agencies corner to corner the glory are portion Muslims find jobs in Hindu workplaces by introducing them as Hindus. Just about all clientele in my license are Hindu and limit of them help not to expend Muslim. - Sudhin Bose, last planner of a local help announce license Honest, such as a local ally was found dead at the apartment of a Bahujan Samaj Do (BSP) follower of house of representatives in New Delhi, legalize open the balk was a Muslim individual from West Bengal working current despite the fact that modish Hindu uniform. Wearing interrogation, the planner of a New Delhi-based underground announce license told legalize he had introduced the individual as a Hindu - and he had done in the same way with many other Muslim candidates to get them jobs in the interior funds. Sudhin Bose, who managed a local help announce license in Kolkata until a moment ago, get hard that a good measurements of Muslims work in the civil pretending to be Hindus. "Just about all clientele in my license are Hindu and limit of them help not to expend Muslims," Bose told Al Jazeera. "Pompous than short the job-seekers our license positioned were Muslims from finish villages and civil slums. Commonly we introduced them as Hindus to our Hindu clientele - and they got the jobs." "I am certain many announce agencies fake such secret policies out of rigorous transnational to help Muslims find jobs in the civil," he believed. Sanctimonious lean In 2005, the executive unpaid the Sachar Situation to slap whether Muslims were neglected in outgoing, lucrative and moving terms. The group of representatives out of the socio-economic disorder of limit Muslims was as bad as that of the Dalits, who are at the patch achieve of the Hindu-caste ranking, the same referred to as the "untouchables." Ayesha Pervez, who works on minority issues and has authored rumor on India's working Muslims, believed job-seeking Muslims character the obliged of bias even faint unorganised sectors. "The bias - which is zip but pious identity-based prohibition - exists in organised executive sectors too. In West Bengal, Muslims cause to feel 27 percent of the populace. But their classical in state-government jobs is as low as four percent," Pervez told Al Jazeera. "Workforce bias armed forces Muslims to fake replica Hindu identities. At the same time as of this bias, limit Muslims are disqualified to progress their humble of living." Across-the-board intolerance on Muslims the same keeps them from living in city India, Pervez additional. Disdain Whilst limit appoint that anti-Muslim intolerance has crave existed in primarily Hindu Indian partaker, the public for Muslims has turned step by step vile in many states in the previous thumb a lift of decades. This is a improve of improved lack of sympathy of Hindu pro-independence organisations, says outgoing radical Ram Puniyani. Sometimes I intuit I wait done whatever thing nobly inexact by faking a Hindu model, and wait downgraded my own religion. - Ayesha Begum, Muslim individual affectation as a Hindu to get a job In two shakes of a lamb's tail whilst 2002 get-together offensive in western Gujarat region - such as first-class than 1,000 population, totally Muslims, were killed in riots - many Hindu organisations launched a untruth gripe asking Hindus to boycott Muslims in all day-to-day procedures. "Such a factor leads to thought composite amongst the targeted community," believed Puniyani, who campaigns in squeeze of get-together melodiousness. "This belief of flux [among Muslims] is intensified by the improved lucrative challenges to make all ends trace - with means of support issues on one hand and a outgoing divisiveness, leading to ghettoisation on the other. "Such ghettoisation of Muslims in cities have the benefit of Mumbai and Ahmadabad undeniably shows how the rigorous acclaim among communities has left. And so the socio-economic enlargement of the minority community has caught up." Tons Muslims say they intuit hurting at having to pretense as Hindus. "Sometimes I intuit I wait done whatever thing nobly inexact by faking a Hindu model, and wait downgraded my own religion," Begum believed. "I shall be very lightweight if some day I get a good job but I shall be free from this qualities." SOURCE: ALJAZEERA
The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum GeniusbyGraham Farmelo ISBN-10: 0571222781ISBN-13: 978-0571222780"Studying the Strangest Man"by Lee Billings September 15th, 2009SeedFor more than five years, former physicist Graham Farmelo devoted himself to unlocking the secrets of one of the most important and curious figures of 20th century science, Paul Dirac. He was born in 1902 and died in 1984, and though lionized by his peers for his fundamental work in quantum mechanics (among other things, he predicted the existence of antimatter and won a Nobel Prize when he was only 31), Dirac's legacy has fared poorly among the general public. During his research, Farmelo found that most residents of the "famous" physicist's hometown of Bristol didn't even know who Dirac was. Unquestionably, this is due to Dirac's reclusive and taciturn behavior; his social quiescence was so extreme that it inspired his fellow physicists to invent an unofficial unit of measure for the minimal number of words a person could speak in polite company: a "Dirac," roughly one utterance per hour.But as Farmelo delved deeper into Dirac's life for his new biography, The Strangest Man, he discovered surprising complexity and contradiction that gives new appreciation to the physicist's character: Despite what many perceived as a lack of empathy, Dirac married, raised children, and forged several close lifelong friendships. Despite his professed distaste for unscientific reasoning, in his later life he became increasingly obsessed with philosophical, even religious, questions. And despite his love for the rarefied subject of theoretical physics, Dirac also had a passion for "lowbrow" cartoons and comic books.Farmelo spoke with Seed's Lee Billings about the process of researching the book and his astonishing hypothesis that could explain, once and for all, Dirac's enigmatic behavior.Seed: What motivated you to spend five years writing a book about Paul Dirac?Graham Farmelo: I used to be a theoretical physicist, and I can say that everyone in that profession is interested in Dirac. He's often said to be "the first really modern theoretician" or "the theorist's theorist." I remember as an undergraduate coming across my first taste of Dirac's physics, something called Fermi-Dirac statistics, which governs the transistors and electron flow in your computer. I was blown away, a bit like a young music student listening to Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata." Dirac's first papers on quantum mechanics still look modern, more than those of any of his fellow pioneers. The mathematical imagination and beauty of those articles is amazing. I wanted to write a biography of him to try to communicate the power and scope of his work to non-specialists who are nevertheless curious about science, and to try to understand his remarkable personality.In my time in physics, I met quite a few "Dirac fanatics," people who are obsessive about him. I'm speaking to you from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and I've spent several lunchtimes recounting to the physicists here some new "Dirac stories."Seed: "Dirac stories?" Can you give me some examples?GF: Certainly. At the end of a lecture, Dirac agreed to answer questions. Someone in the audience piped up: "I didn't understand the equation on the top right of the blackboard, professor." Dirac was silent for more than a minute. When the moderator asked him if he'd like to answer the question, Dirac shook his head and said, "That wasn't a question. It was a comment."Here's another: Over dinner one evening at Saint John's College, Cambridge, an American visitor who was desperate to meet the formidable Dirac steeled himself to ask, "Are you going on vacation this summer, professor?" Silence. About 20 minutes later, Dirac turned to the visitor and said, "Why do you ask?"Seed: He sounds like quite a deep, literal thinker. Did Dirac have any interests outside physics?GF: Yes, a lot, but he just didn't talk about them. He read widely, from Tolstoy to John le Carr'e. Among artists, he loved Rembrandt and Salvador Dali. Like Einstein, Dirac's taste in music was mainly classical, but in later life he had a thing about Cher. To settle a dispute with his wife, he bought a second television so that he could watch a Cher special while she watched the Oscars.Seed: The book includes several revelatory passages documenting Dirac's personal life. How did you research and verify that material?GF: I devoted a lot of time tracking down Dirac's surviving friends, people who knew him very well. The most important one I found was his last great friend, Leopold Halpern, an expert on relativity who slept in the open air, refused to wash with soap, and liked to slice open baked potatoes with a karate chop. A few years ago, when Halpern was at death's door with prostate cancer, he flew across the country to Florida, where Dirac spent the latter part of his life, just so he could row me up Wakulla Springs. He and Dirac used to go rowing every weekend. That was a special trip for me: Even now I'm looking at my arm and there are goose bumps. He showed me places where they talked, even where they went skinny dipping. Two and a half months later, Halpern died.I spent several months consulting the Dirac archive at Florida State University in Tallahassee, which was virtually untouched. Dirac was an FSU professor for the last 14 years of his life. I found amazing things, not just letters from great physicists like Heisenberg and Schr"odinger but also an amazing cache of weekly letters from Dirac's mother, spanning almost 20 years. Many historians would've probably turned their noses up at these, but I found in them a dramatic story that illuminates Dirac's home life and upbringing. I was also blessed with beginner's luck when I happened to meet Dirac's younger daughter at a centenary celebration of his birth. We hit it off well, and one day in her kitchen while I was visiting her, she showed me something like 120 private letters between Dirac and his first serious girlfriend, later his wife. Keep in mind, this man hardly spoke a word, and here he was opening up, writing whole pages-epics for him. I couldn't believe my luck. Here was Dirac talking about his father with whom he didn't get along at all, and about what it felt like to be someone conscious, that he was unlike most other people, unable to empathize with them. This is just my opinion here, but I believe he demonstrated many symptoms of what we now call autism, though that condition had not been identified at the time.Seed: You think Dirac had undiagnosed autism?GF: I did not go into this book project thinking Dirac was autistic in any way. When I started researching him all those years ago, I barely even knew what the term "autism" meant, and certainly didn't apply it to Dirac. But as I researched, I encountered rumors about Dirac being autistic, about Einstein being autistic, and speculations that autism was more prevalent in scientists and mathematicians. So during one of my stays at Cambridge, I went to see Simon Baron-Cohen, who is arguably Britain's leading expert on autism. He knew nothing about Dirac, but, to my amazement, he began describing patterns of behavior that exactly correspond to Dirac's. Let me stress that this is just a hypothesis, and that I'm personally very skeptical of attempts to psychoanalyze people who are dead. This isn't theoretical physics; I can't do a slam-dunk experiment to prove it.Seed: What were some of the behavioral indicators?GF: There are many of them: inability to empathize, extreme taciturnity and literal-mindedness, a passion for a routine, narrow interests, a lack of physical coordination, dislike of sudden loud noises, and so on. Many of the "Dirac stories" told by physicists are, in my opinion, actually autism stories. When people are laughing at these things, they forget what they're actually doing is mocking.Seed: Do you think those traits might have helped him in his work or given him a unique perspective?GF: Well, he was certainly as focused as a laser and as logical as a computer. He also had a fascinating way of looking at mathematics. He had a phrase, "My equation is smarter than I am." He really did think that a good equation could be more intelligent than its creator. There's a kind of mysticism in that. In the last 15 or 20 years of his life, he became obsessed with the philosophy that, for a piece of mathematics to be useful in fundamental physics, it must be beautiful. For instance, he thought the theory of photon and electron interactions-what we call quantum electrodynamics-was ugly, so he wouldn't accept it. He had this extremely rigorous sense of beauty, and saw each successive revolution in physics progressing through increasingly beautiful mathematics.Dirac, to his dying breath, pursued this quest for mathematical beauty. For him, everything apart from that principle was just details. The job of the fundamental theorist was to look for mathematically beautiful laws. That's why the string theorists are on the right track, even though there aren't experiments to bear them out at the moment.Seed: So Dirac would be a fan of string theory, you think?GF: Well, when people get old, they tend to basically think that everything's gone to the dogs, and there was an element to that in Dirac, who took virtually no interest in the latest findings in his field. But if you apply his idea about sticking to mathematically beautiful generalizations of past theories and to hell with experiments in the short term, then this philosophy should embolden string theorists, yes. "Quantum Leap"byLouisa GilderNew York TimesThis biography is a gift. It is both wonderfully written (certainly not a given in the category Accessible Biographies of Mathematical Physicists) and a thought-provoking meditation on human achievement, limitations and the relations between the two. Here we find a man with an almost miraculous apprehension of the structure of the physical world, coupled with gentle incomprehension of that less logical, messier world, the world of other people.At Cambridge University in 1930, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar took a class in quantum mechanics from the 28-year-old Paul Dirac. Three years later, Dirac would become the youngest theoretician to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics up to that time (50 years after that, Chandrasekhar would become one of the older ones). Chandrasekhar described Dirac as a "lean, meek, shy young 'Fellow' " (i.e., of the Royal Society) "who goes slyly along the streets. He walks quite close to the walls (like a thief!), and is not at all healthy." Dirac's class - which Chandrasekhar took in its entirety four times, even though Dirac taught it by repeating material from his recently published textbook word for word - was "just like a piece of music you want to hear over and over again."Dirac is the main character of a thousand humorous tales told among physicists for his monosyllabic approach to conversation and his innocent, relentless application of logic to everything. Listening to a Dirac story is like slipping into an alternate universe: Dirac reads "Crime and Punishment" and reports it "nice" but notes that in one place the sun rises two times in a day; Dirac eats his dinner in silence until his companion asks, "Have you been to the theater or cinema this week?" and Dirac replies, "Why do you wish to know?"His work was as sui generis as his social skills. "The great papers of the other quantum pioneers were more ragged, less perfectly formed than Dirac's," explained Freeman Dyson, who took Dirac's course as a precocious 19-year-old. Dirac's discoveries "were like exquisitely carved marble statues falling out of the sky, one after another. He seemed to be able to conjure laws of nature from pure thought." (Most notably, Dirac predicted the existence of antimatter in 1928 because his just discovered relativistic electron equation required it.) "It was this purity that made him unique."In 1990, Helge Kragh wrote "Dirac: A Scientific Biography," a useful resource comprising physics, a little history and a dessert of Dirac stories in a chapter entitled "The Purest Soul." And indeed, what else besides quantum mechanics and amusing anecdotes did this great and single-minded physicist's life hold?"The purest soul" is a quotation about Dirac from Niels Bohr, as is Graham Farmelo's title. ("Dirac is the strangest man," Bohr said, "who ever visited my institute.") But purity and strangeness were not the whole story. Kragh's book offers a collage of a brilliant and peculiar man seen from the outside; Farmelo's is a tapestry, and he provides glimpses of the inside.A senior research fellow at the Science Museum in London, Farmelo gives us the texture of Dirac's life, much of it spent outdoors - from long Sunday walks as a young man, looking like "the bridegroom in an Italian wedding photograph, dressed in the suit he wore all week, his hands joined behind his back, both feet pointing outwards as he made his way around the countryside in his metronomic stride"; to late-life canoeing trips with Leopold Halpern, a physicist even stranger than he, "through forests of sassafras and American beech trees, draped with Spanish moss. The alligators made scarcely a sound: the silence was broken only by the rhythmic sloshing of the paddles, the cry of a circling osprey, the occasional shuffling of wind passing through shoreline gaps in the forest." (After lunch, they swam and paddled back, "scarcely exchanging a word.")We follow Dirac from his pinched and chilly childhood in Bristol (a few blocks away from the two-years-younger Archie Leach, a k a Cary Grant); through his discovery, visiting the Bohrs in Copenhagen, of what a happy family was like; his fiercely loyal friendship with Werner Heisenberg; his joyful beach honeymoon, still in a three-piece suit; his careful fatherhood (constructing for his daughters' cat a door wider than its whiskers); to his death in Florida - "a place where recreational walkers are regarded as perverse" - in 1984.The science writing in "The Strangest Man" isn't glib, but neither does it require problem-solving on the part of the reader. In most cases, Farmelo presents the technical matter clearly and efficiently, and in all cases - one of the great joys of the book - Dirac's scientific insights are placed within the circumstances in which they were born: e.g., the "sweltering July" of 1926 when Dirac, sitting at his college desk, produced his paper on what became Fermi-Dirac statistics.In a prologue, Farmelo describes a visit to the elderly Dirac paid by his biologist colleague Kurt Hofer. Through the eyes of Hofer, we see Dirac suddenly break out of monosyllables to talk for two hours with increasing vehemence about his monstrous father. This represents the author's careful decision to keep the tale Dirac told about his childhood separate from - even as it overshadows - the rest of the book, and it ends with Hofer's thoughts, not Dirac's: " 'I simply could not conceive of any childhood as dreadful as Dirac's.'... Could it be that Dirac - usually as literal-minded as a computer - was exaggerating? Hofer could not help asking himself, over and again: 'Why was Paul so bitter, so obsessed with his father?' "The conflict between this prologue (which gives ample reason for Dirac to be bitter about his father) and the seemingly warm family life that emerges in the first chapter casts a tension over the rest of the book very similar to that felt when reading a mystery. And as in a mystery, the penultimate chapter sheds new light. There Farmelo delves into a sensitive exploration of the possibility that Dirac was autistic, and of the ways in which his lack of facility in reading the emotions of others affected their perceptions of him and his perceptions of them. The emphasis on Dirac's childhood as a story - one Farmelo (along with me) believes to be true - usefully reinforces the importance of point of view.In a memorable episode, Dirac and his wife visit their closest friends, Peter and Anna Kapitza, in Russia. In 1934, the long arm of the Soviet state had wrenched Kapitza, despite his devoted long-distance fellow-traveling, away from his lab at Cambridge under Ernest Rutherford and back into the Soviet Union. In 1937 the friends reunited at the Kapitzas' summer house in the piney woods of Bolshevo, "with wild strawberries ripe for gathering and a fast-flowing river close by." They arrived only "days before Stalin authorized the torture of suspected enemies of the people," Farmelo writes. "On the roads around Bolshevo, some of the trucks marked 'Meat' and 'Vegetables' hid prisoners on their way to be shot and buried in the forests to the north of the city which Dirac admired through his binoculars."Farmelo handles such scenes with a refreshing, cleareyed understanding of how complicated the world actually is. Dirac did not - probably could not - know what the Soviet Union really was; he also could not know who his father really was, and his father could not really know him. These complexities and unresolvably cubist perspectives make, paradoxically, for the most satisfying and memorable biography I have read in years.Paul Dirac
"by Massimo PigliucciThe recent American Atheist ad campaign, the one that says that religions are scams, is a bad idea, on all fronts. Before explaining why, I have to remind readers that I've had a close connection to AA for years. Former AA President Ellen Johnson made me an honorary life member of the organization; the President who succeeded her, Ed Buckner, is a close friend of mine; and I have appeared several times on their TV show, next to current President Dave Silverman. So, I hope I will not get excommunicated as a result of what follows, it would be a shame (though not something unheard of either).The new ad says: "You KNOW they're all SCAMS," and it's signed "American Atheists - Telling the truth since 1963. They" are at least five of the major religious traditions, as is made clear by a set of symbols accompanying the poster. In an interview, Blair Scott, communications director for American Atheists (another person whom I know and respect), explained that the "target is not the Christians, but all the atheists and agnostics still in the closet who are still pretending, still playing the game, still putting up a facade."There are three reasons why this is a bad idea. First, the ad is simply making a preposterous claim that cannot possibly be backed up by factual evidence, which means that, technically, it is lying (but see below for another interpretation). Not a good virtue for self-righteous critical thinkers. Second, it is a really bad PR move, even if the target audience is in fact limited to closet atheists and agnostics. Third, it is an even worse PR move when it comes to the public perception of atheists considered more broadly.Beginning from the top of the list, a scam" is defined as a dishonest scheme, an intentional fraud. Now, it is certainly the case that "some" religious leaders have made knowingly fraudulent claims to their followers in order to either make money or otherwise unethically gain access to power or sexual favors. But to imply that all or even most religious leaders (and communities) knowingly do this is an extraordinary claim which simply does not even begin to be backed up by the necessary extraordinary evidence. And when one makes a claim that is not substantiated by facts one is either lying (if the statement is made while being aware of the lack of necessary evidence) or is deluded. Either way, AA ought to know better.Then again, in my dealings with the skeptic, humanist and atheists communities over the years I have noticed a peculiar lack of critical thinking among some atheists. Atheists are not necessarily skeptics (and vice versa), though they typically pride themselves in being smarter and more honest than religious people. The statistics may back up the honesty claim to some extent (proportionately far more Christians than atheists inhabit American prisons), but sometimes I wonder about superior smarts or critical thinking abilities. Yes, we atheists know that there is no god (not as an absolute epistemic certainty, of course, but in the same way in which we know that there are no unicorns - lack of evidence and reason in favor of the positive claim). We can even recite the basic reasons why we don't think there are gods, which according to philosophers since Plato, means we really have "knowledge" of this (knowledge being justified true belief).Yet, several atheists I have encountered have no problem endorsing all sorts of woo-woo stuff, from quasi-new age creeds to "alternative" medicine, to fantapolitics. This is partly because many of them seem to be ignorant of the epistemic limits of science (in which they have almost unbounded faith) and reason (ditto). At the very least it seems that we ought to treat factual evidence with due respect, and claiming that religions are scams flies in the face of the available factual evidence. Hence, it is a bad idea that damages our reputation as an evidence-oriented community.The second reason why the AA ad is not likely to do much good is because it probably fails at its own core mission, reaching out to "closeted" agnostics and atheists. I wager that most reasonable people who do not believe in gods will look at that sort of ad and react just like Groucho Marx famously did: "I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members." I certainly wouldn't want to join that club, except for the fact that I'm already a life member of it. The reason most closeted atheists might not like the ad is twofold, of course: on the one hand, it is factually wrong (see above), and therefore does not inspire trust in the organization that sponsored it. On the other hand, it is unnecessarily rude, which brings me to another important sore point within the atheist community: anger.I get it, a lot of atheists are recovering from religious indoctrination, often of the harshest fundamentalist kind, and they are therefore angry about all the time they have wasted and all the emotional suffering they have endured. I went through my own short anger phase in atheism after I moved to Tennessee (where religion was as in your face as it could possibly get, the place priding itself in being the buckle of the Bible Belt). Anger is good as a transitory psychological state, because it gives us the energy to reexamine broad aspects of our lives, laying the ground for a more thoughtful future self. But if it stays in our system it quickly becomes both corrosive at the personal level and undermines our overall goals as a community.American Atheists has a history in this respect, going back to the controversial figure of its founder, Madalyn Murray O'Hare. She brought us the landmark 1963 Supreme Court decision that made unconstitutional the practice of forcing our children to recite a prayer in public school, and the nation should always be grateful to her for that. But she was also, by all accounts (I never met her) a pretty abrasive woman who instilled something of a personality cult at AA. It doesn't have to be that way. My friend Herb Silverman (no relation to Dave, as far as I know), president of the Secular Coalition for America, prides himself in organizing regular breakfast meetings with religious people in his community in Charleston, NC, and while I assure you that Herb doesn't mince words when it comes to explaining to people what he thinks, he often wears a "Your Friendly Atheist Neighbor" t-shirt, which manages to shock and endear at the same time. Our own Reasonable New York coalition, in its previous incarnation, sponsored a very successful ad campaign in the Big Apple, featuring the motto "A million New Yorkers are good without God. Are you?" The ad was both friendly and factually correct (we got the number from national figures on the percentage of non religious people in the US, and if anything we probably underestimated the number for New York, notoriously ripe with infidels). We were not saying that one is an awful person if one believes in gods, we were simply pointing out that plenty of good people don't believe, thus indirectly undermining the most recurrent argument for why religion is a positive force in society (the alleged link with morality).Lastly, Blair Scott said that the targets of the AA campaign did not include religious people. But why not? How is the secular community going to grow if we do not strive to make secularism a mainstream position? And how are we going to do that if we keep talking just to ourselves? Granted, no ad is going to change the mind of the religious fundamentalist, but there are plenty of somewhat religious people out there who might be interested in a positive message, and are sure as hell going to be turned off by a (factually inaccurate) negative one.Sometimes it seems like atheists could benefit from learning a bit of elementary psychology, or ask a professional ad agency to help them "brand" themselves to the general public. Yes, the AA ad did generate publicity, including an appearance by David Silverman on the O'Reilly show. But did you watch it? It was hard not to cringe a few seconds into it, and you know you are in trouble when even Stephen Colbert points out that it is not good PR strategy for the atheist in the room to look uncannily like the Devil. Of course Colbert also mercilessly made fun of O'Reilly's idiotic "arguments" for the existence of God - but that's my point: Colbert elicited laughs and possibly some serious thinking, neither of which will be forthcoming as a result of the AA ad.By the way, before anyone misunderstands me, I'm not advocating any sort of wishy-washy position about the existence of god. Let's not throw around silly accusations of "intellectual dishonesty" or "accommodationism." All I'm saying is that both the accuracy of the message and the way it is presented matter, at least if you wish to build a better society, which I assume is what we are all trying to do. If the goal is simply to feel superior by pissing people off, I'm not interested.[Dave Silverman, the President of American Atheists, has graciously accepted my invitation to write a guest commentary in response to this post, it will appear soon.]
Reference: wiccalessons.blogspot.com
