Poetry, Short Prose and Walking

Center – Six Sentence Story

Although Martha was shocked when she heard that Brian died after being hit by a bus, his death saved her from having to explain to him her involvement with George should he ever find out which he wouldn’t now. To her credit, she thought, she had indeed warned Brian many times that he had better get his act together if he wanted to keep her. Besides, she reasoned, George was a serious artist with highly acclaimed paintings of mystically wise dragons and seductive faeries grossing over five figures while Brian by comparison was what exactly?

Martha forgot about Brian until she and George passed the center of the art district and she saw him – Brian! – supposedly dead, but now, bringing a tray of food to guests at a patio table, alive and well, working where he always did. Brian saw her, too, and went back inside.

Later, moving with George through the gallery that displayed his art, a chill came over Martha as she stared deeply into the hate-enflamed eyes on painting after painting and wondered how she could have been so wrong about those dragons.

Denise offers the prompt word “center” for this week’s Six Sentence Stories. This story continues from Bowl – Six Sentence Stories. Next: Shift – Six Sentence Stories

GirlieOnTheEdge Denise Farley's six-sentence-stories icon — GirlieOnTheEdge Denise Farley’s six-sentence-stories icon

Reflections

Dale offers the theme “reflections” for this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge. The top photo shows reflections on a pond. The bottom photo shows the reflection of the rising sun.

Reflection of the Rising Sung on the Beach

Sunday Walk 49 – Weaponized Sexuality

Addiction weakens a person and undermines that person’s community. When addiction is socially promoted one needs to ask just who is benefiting? Anybody socially promoting addictive behavior is trying to undermine some community by weakening its members.

After reading Henry Makov’s excerpts from John Coleman’s 1993 book, The Conspirators’ Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300, I began to suspect that any promotion of sexual addiction may well be part of a plan to weaponize sexuality and use it against families.

Here are some points from the plan that Makov highlighted.

Marriage shall be outlawed and there shall be no family life as we know it.
Children will be removed from their parents at an early-age and brought up by wards as state property.
Women will he degraded through the continued process of “women’s liberation” movements.
Free sex shall be mandatory.
Pornography shall be promoted and be compulsory showing in every theater of cinema, including homosexual and lesbian pornography.

There may be an even deeper level of conspirators manipulating this “Committee of 300”. Those deeper conspirators would be demonic and they have been at it since that snake entered Eden (Genesis 3). You could read the Bible as God’s efforts to bring disobedient, but redeemed mankind, the Bride of Christ, back to the wedding feast (Revelation 19). Weaponizing sexuality would be a way for those not invited to try to spoil the wedding.

Now I know that’s a lot to swallow, but assuming you see this as something to be concerned about, what should we do? This is what I’ve come up with.

Affirm that sexuality remain within a traditional marriage between a husband who was born male and a wife who was born female.
Don’t engage in political or cultural activities that degrade or satirize the family including husbands, wives or their children.
Persevere by putting on the full armor of God in anticipation of His Son, Jesus, the Bridegroom.

The first two respond directly to this weaponized sexuality. The last one is there to confront those underlying demonic conspirators. You may have other suggestions.

Weekly Bible Reading: Deuteronomy (Audio), Joshua (Audio)
Commentary: David Pawson, Deuteronomy, Part 2 of 2, Joshua, Part 1 of 2, Unlocking the Bible

Go – Décima

My soul’s a knotty network mess.
I know some demons have to go,
perhaps them all. I’d love to show
them to the door. I do confess
I chose this curse, but who could bless
me chained with guilt and justly bound?
They block my way. They’re all around.
“You’ve still one path to liberty:
Yes, faith in Jesus sets you free.”
And now no demons can be found.

Ronovan Hester offers the rhyme word “go” to be used in a B line of a décima having rhyme pattern ABBAACCDDC in this week’s Decima Poetry Challenge. Eugenia offers the word “network” for this week’s Thursday Prompt.

I’ve been listening to and reading Derek Prince on expelling demons.

Ronovan's Decima Poetry Challenge Image — Ronovan’s Decima Poetry Challenge Image

Bowl – Six Sentence Story

Brian rented in an upscale artist community, but he was not commercially viable as an artist, so he served tables. In one of the new age stores that littered the area he listened while the shop attendant tapped a Tibetan prayer bowl available for purchase in his price range. It sounded nice and he almost bought it, but then he couldn’t see himself meditating to that stuff and fifty bucks was fifty bucks.

Although Brian didn’t know what happened from the time the bus hit him to the time his heart began beating again, he felt changed. Tourist-trap spirituality with its bowls, crystals and satanic supernaturalism no longer interested him. He hungered for the real thing.

Denise offers the word “bowl” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories. This is a continuation of Alternative – Six Sentence Story. Next: Center – Six Sentence Story

Clap – Decima

We stand to cheer and gladly clap.
The King is riding to his throne.
Our enemies, defeated, groan.
They fall forever in their trap.

Now with the twilight’s final lap
deep darkness comes to insulate
those blinded by a mindless hate.
No shadows haunt our living Light.
No tears remain. That ancient night –
how short it was our need to wait.

Ronovan Hester offers the rhyme word “clap” to be used in an A rhyme of a decima having rhyme pattern ABBAACCDDC for this week’s Decima Poetry Challenge. Eugenia also offers the word “twilight” for this week’s prompt.

From an Unusual Angle

Dale offers us the prompt “from an unusual angle” for this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge. The top photo views roses from below. The bottom photo is a view from about the eye-level of a pigeon.

Sunday Walk 48 – Independence Day

Happy Fourth of July! I am in the process of moving away from big tech. Here’s what I’ve done so far.

For browser and search engine, I switched from Google Chrome to Brave with DuckDuckGo.

For email, I purchased a subscription to ProtonMail. My Gmail account is nearly inactive.

For cloud services, I canceled my subscription to Google One’s storage plan using instead my own solid state drives.

For office tools, I switched from Google Docs and Sheets to Apache Open Office.

For those interested in doing something similar, Sven Taylor provides a list of alternatives for Google products at the Restore Privacy site. There are more alternatives than I initially realized.

For social media, although I am currently inactive on Facebook and Twitter, my accounts remain open. I think it is worthwhile to interact with others in such environments. The same goes for places like Stack Exchange and Quora where I also have open, but inactive accounts. At the moment my social media focus is on MeWe and this WordPress blog.

Part of alt tech is to learn how to wear the whole armor of God (Ephesians 6). It is not just using open source software to protect one’s privacy or new platforms to avoid censorship. The user needs to get his act together. Without that armor I could still become corrupted and unwittingly corrupt others in turn.

By the next Fourth of July, God willing, I hope to be on Linux and know better how to wear that armor.

Weekly Bible Reading: Numbers (Audio) Deuteronomy (Audio)
Commentary: David Pawson, Numbers, Part 2 of 2, Deuteronomy, Part 1 of 2, Unlocking the Bible

Alternative – Six Sentence Story

Brian was self-reliant enough to do whatever was good in his own eyes. Eventually he’d have to repent of much of this goodness, but right now the mountain he expected would hold the weight of his imaginings began sliding due to an avalanche of truth.

Down he went clutching onto one esoteric branch of conjectures after the other discovering that every alternative he grabbed onto failed to stop his fall. He could see the smiling mouth of nihilism lick its lips and open its jaws below him.

It was as he absent-mindedly looked into this dread that he was hit by a bus and rushed to an emergency room where he was pronounced dead on arrival. Whether the expert opinion was wrong or whether hell didn’t want him, Brian’s heart began beating with no desire to climb fantasy mountain again.

Denise offers the word “alternative” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories. This story continues with Bowl – Six Sentence Story.