Near-sighted?

"An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field." Niels Bohr (1885 - 1962)

I wonder if he saw it coming, huh?

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musings for this week.

Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing. Redd Foxx (1922 - 1991)

I am reading (amongst others) Matthew's Henry's "Experiencing the presence of God" and can thorougly recommend this book both for its applicability to every day life, and for its ease of reading. (Not Brain of Britain you know!) But the theme that has been heavy on my heart and relevant, of late, as to how or where we put our dependance. I was talking to my closest Christian friend this week by telephone, a man of God, and he had had some what turned out to be minor family trouble, but at the time he felt under attack and bought low. And he has been aware of all the attacks and struggles over the last three years since I became sick, probably better than anyone else here. And I said to Him, how often, when we are low, and have nothing else that is holding us, that will often be when God becomes most visible. He has said himself, that over the last three years, with the dipping and diving my health is continually taking and the crises that happen almost on a weekly basis, that seeing as up until now, (tho this may soon change) symptom management is all there is, that God knows what i need better than the doctors do. And I was skeptical at first. i mean who likes to be sick, and just basically tossed aside to get on with it? Which of us if we had cancer, would be happy about treatment being witheld for no good reason? And I know from first hand knowledge of other people i've met online with the condtion that death is all too often a reality for people with this condition. So, the question. The doctors have done naff all to actually help apart from pain mangement and other symptom management. I struggle on alone here (or as good as) day after day, and if a medial emergency happens, no one is around who would get help. I lay in bed for a week not too long ago, without food being bought to me but I was too sick to get it myself. And cos I do have someone else in the house, people assume he sees to my needs, rather more than they should. But it seems at least twice a month but more often once a week, things get so rough that it seems like at any time I could be staring death in the face. So, given the above circumstances over almost three years of continuity now, who else but God, has kept me.

When people hear of my past, they wonder i aint' a fruit cake. (tho i insist on being 'Crazy') and none of this surviving even intact as weak and hopless as i am, is down to me. Who kept me thru the wilderness years when I've seen others end there life thru less traumatic circumstances? When illness for years should have taken every bit of brain power that survived. One can't have a major grand mal seizure every 10-12 mins, 24/7 for weeks on end, and not lose humongous amounts of brain capacity through it. Can they? Well, as I said, its nothing i have done. i was living life day by day, angry at the creator for the hand life had dealt me, and not realizing that if not but FOR the creator, I would not have a life at all.

And days at a time sometimes, I can be shut in one room, throwing up, in ubearable pain in my body, and all that time alone. isn't that a recipe for madness? No! God will reveal Himself at these times, and He manifests Himself into reality. Its obvious where our help comes from. I sometimes feel so alone in coping with this sickness. And yet, in other ways i never feel alone. I can have hours and hours of silence, but as long as my God is there, something good is happening. We can put our hope in people who at some point will lose the plot, let us down, and then that can make us distrustful and maybe some of that distrust will extend towards God. We can put our trust in the god of this world. Money, riches and/or pleasure. But will they get us through even the most hardest times, and keep us from danger and harm? will they sustain us in any real way thru the storms of life. No, we can say along with the sweet singer of Israel. "my help comes from the LORD."

My Help Comes from the LORD

A Song of Ascents.

1I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?
2My help comes from the LORD,
who made heaven and earth.
3He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
4Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
5The LORD is your keeper;
the LORD is your shade on your right hand.
6The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.
7The LORD will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
8The LORD will keep your going out
and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore. [Psalm 121]

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Shopping spree

Money can't buy friends, but it can get you a better class of enemy. Spike Milligan

This seems like it could be my ideal shopping trip!!

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We are what we eat?

The chief obstacle to the progress of the human race is the human race. Don Marquis (1878 - 1937)

Well, most folks are surprised when they know I like fish. n (but it goes so well with chips, so not sure why they should be!) but, this is further proof, that one doesn't need any desease where the system poisons itself, as the globe and the dangers all around us, will poison us to a certain extent anyway. I think its one reason why I agree with the few people I've heard the last several months, that says food should be consumed the way God intended, and that way it eliminates many of the dangers we have put into eating say a simple egg or almost anything else.

"SETE, France - Each day at 4 p.m., the trawlers come back, alive with giant bass, mackerel and squirming eels, at the end of a food chain that links family dinner tables to poisons in the sea. Besides mercury which can damage the brains of fetuses and young children and can affect healthy adults, there are PCBs, dioxins and flame retardants with unknown long-term effects. " Full Story

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Those Crazy Catholics

An idea is salvation by imagination. Frank Lloyd Wright (1869 - 1959)

Click Here:

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Blag before Bed.

Love is not blind - it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less. Rabbi Julius Gordon

You may prefer, cocoa, ovaltine, hot milk, I prefer a blag before bed!!

While my friend from church was visiting, we discussed lots of things, but I told her how Poprhyria was often related and the source of the vampire and werewolf legends. And I told her there is one form of it, called Gunthers deisease, where you end up looking worse than a Yorkshire Terrier whose threee years over due to be clipped...lol..(was joshing of course!)but had never thought before, when she asked, if that was likely the source of the beareded ladies that used to be at fair grounds years ago. But seems likely, methinks.

And I only remember a beareded lady from the film the elephant man, and really, most all of the people of those times who put themselves on display as a unsual specimen, had illnesses, deformities of one kind or another. And the world laughed at them and mocked.

Made me think of the one line from the Elephant man that reached right into my heart, spoken by John Merrick, the elephant man himself. "I am a man, I am a human being."

How quick we forget the humanity of people in whatever there circumstances. Not just the weaker or sickly ones phyiscally. But weakness is common to all mankind in varying forms. And each one of us could say about anyones weakness, "there but for the grace of God, go I."

We are all fearfully and wonderfully made, whether we be the cream of the crop as the world regards beauty, or the runt of the litter. All unique in the our own right. All with something to offer. Which is one reason, tho a Brit, Winston Churchill is Anathema !! in my book. With his role in planned parenthood, and ideas at one time not that much different to Adolf Hitler as regards the unborm and the disabled, and women who may have in those days been termed "mentally retarded" mandatorily sterilized. Epilepsy was one of the things that would get you sterilized at one time. So, yes, there indeed but for the grace of God, go I.

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The Turkey Gobblers

I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much. Mother Teresa (1910 - 1997)

Boy, things must be bad! As knowing it was Thanksgiving in yankee Doodle Dandy land normally flings me into the "Save the Turkey" mode, and I forgot this year.

A Turkey is for life, not just for Thanks giving!!! (Better late than never!)

Well, I woke decidedly well no actually, not kinda grouchy, but, feeling like I had been on the rack all nite, and still looking for the place I put down my brain so i can repick it up.

If anyone finds it, then please return to the lost property office, or call British Intelligence, as a unique and valuable find. Can't promise a reward, but will be eternally grateful. Later on, the Queen being an imposter has stuck in my throat long enough, and (D.V) will get on the case about this. The Throne actually belongs to some guy in Australia called Michael, at least by the way of blood line. I can't stand pretenders to the throne, when it equates to them being the idle rich. But maybe that's my former socialist tendencies still coming to the fore. Always fancied being a bit of a revolutionary, and deposing the Queen seems a good place to start!

For now, morning, coffee, and meditative musings, are calling.

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What's Normal?

Life is a sexually transmitted disease. R. D. Laing

New Scientist magazine reported in October that psychologists seem to be reclassifying people who are permanently uninterested in sex, from the old notion that such behavior was a disorder to the emerging position that it is merely a sexual preference of "none of the above." (Asexuals profess no sexual attraction at all, encompassing loners reluctant to associate with people and gregarious, caring people whose natural inclination is to relate to others nonsexually.) Recent research estimated that 1 percent of the population is asexual, and in previous research, 40 percent of asexuals described themselves as "extremely" or "very" happy. An asexuality support group (AVEN) touts its best-selling T-shirt, "Asexuality: It's not just for amoebas anymore." [New Scientist, 10-14-04]

I hate questions of most any kind, that are personal or seem invasive... which is probably why the smart alec answers come to mind, as with the gender question. But, this one, I would just take the fifth, like Yankee doodle dandies do on TV, for fear of incriminating myself!

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Transatlantic Coffee Mornings

In prosperity our friends know us; "in adversity we know our friends." John Churton Collins "When someone allows you to bear his burdens, you have found deep friendship." Real Live Preacher,

Today has been a strange day. (is there any other kind?) I went to bed, and managed to sleep at about six am. Then, at between ten and eleven am, I was woken by a strange rattling, jangling noise. And cos i sleep in the back room, I normally always leave my curtains open when I sleep. And this strange, rattling, jangling noise, was my window cleaner climbing up his ladder hastily towards my bedroom window. Yikes. So, after recovering from that little glitch, i remembered one of my best buds was going away today. My lifestyle in some ways is pretty limited as compared to most folks, yet, I have daily transatlanic coffee mornings, with two gels, who couldn't mean more to me if they were my blood sisters. Tho cos of the state of my blood tis probably a good job for them that they ain't. And the first words i will hear in a morning, is either Beth or Susan saying, Click here and we all go into guzzling, sippy sipping mode or even glugging.

And then I managed to somehow need to set to a plan of organizing my social life. Which may seem a bit strange given my circumstances, but my home will likely rock at times over the coming weeks.

Tomorrow, my house gets cleaned, by my friend and neighbour who has been doing this for me for almost the last two years. A clean home always lifts the spirits and morale. And she is much less expsensive than the local social services. Birmingham social services, which is the dept that deals with my needs in the U.K was voted teh worse social services system in the country last week and given a big fat zero in the scoring. Which is likely why my home adaptions will not be set to start till appro next Sept, two years after the application was first approved.

I used to watch a TV proggie in the 70's? maybe 80's... with Ronnie Barker and David jason, called Open all hours, which was a bout a corner shop keeper who was more tightfisted than Grinch, and he always used to end the proggie, by saying... "Its been a funny old Day" indeed it has. Funny, but not bad by any means. Sometimes, you just know that things are working, and the garden is growing, even if you still feel midgetized in a fully grown world in many ways.

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I'll suffer for you

"Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody." Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)

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The Little gerbil

Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it. W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965)

Do you ever as a believer ask yourself the question, what's life all about? What's the meaning of life? Well, in our heads at least we know the answer , To Glorify God and enjoy Him forever. And at times, as the circumstances creep up on us, and make life seem intolerably hard, how can you ever believe during duress it is from the hand of a loving God? And if it isn't, doesn't that negate the first clause, to Glorify Him and enjoy Him forever.

Sometimes you feel like a little rat, no, I distincly have no fondness for rats, a little gerbil, running round the wheel. pushing as hard as you can, harder, harder. And the little gerbils legs get tired of running the race, and it falters. And only mildly holds utter and total despair at bay. And all around the little gerbil, life rolls on. So, what happened to make the little gerbil different? What did it do, to make there life so hard, when everywhere else, life rolls on, admittedly with all the difficulties and tummults all of life entails, but being a little gerbil doesn't protect you from the normal ills of life either.

Eventually, the little gerbil, is near the edge from all that running. Why does it have to run faster and harder than everyone else, and still get nowhere near where most of civilization is in life? The little gerbils relative even, the big strong daddy gerbil, is just a few feet away, oblivous of his floundering off-spring, and the little gerbil fills with tears as he hears daddy gerbil laugh at his TV. The TV, a source of conflict, in the family, a source of being disregarded all thru life in favour of the TV. yet daddy gerbil didn't try and please God. He didnt' do anything terribly evil either, but his life rolled along, and he had a life. One he chose and he made of it what he wanted. life goes on, except in the cage running around on the little wheel.

And the little gerbil waits. Waits for there time to come. Waits for freedom, and life, AND love. And it remembers a saying that always used to be near to its lips. I always believed this was a world without love, and tis true. And as the cage closes in, and gets smaller, and the little gerbils anger gets greater, it thinks the anger will surely make it burst the cage all on its own. And it grows, and grows and grows. Then music. Feeling under the afflicting hand of God, and that this surely cannot be borne out of love, and trapped in this cage, how can anything be good? how can life be lived from behind these bars? Muzak. And the irony of the song, about kindness and repentance brings the little gerbil lower. And it knows that all it can do is hold on, and feeling afflicted by God, and not part of the normal world, as it goes on its merry way, the little gerbil knows to wait is all there is to do. And the little gerbil knows, even thru its tears and longing for life in a normal way, after so many years already robbed, that the real bars the real prison, are in its mind. once the bars are lifted, it will once again be able to fly, and the wheel will not seem so fast and so hard. But till then, the little gerbil runs round and round, frantic to find a way out of the cage, and waits for the anchor to take hold again, to steady it on its way.

Maybe The little gerbil should become a prozac gerbil, just like Prozac Pilgrim

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