Billy: So ...
Joe: So ...
Jim: Yup
Bob: Survived Armageddon yesterday.
Billy: Yup.
Joe: Yet again.
Jim: Like always.
Bob: Yup. Like always.
Billy: Good thing too, I s'pose.
Joe: Always a good thing when Armageddon doesn't happen.
Jim: Would be better if it was never threatened at all.
Bob: Now where would be the fun in that?
Billy: S'pose you're right.
Joe: Yup.
Jim: Yup.
Bob: Wonder what tomorrow might bring.
Notes from the LifeGroup gathering:
Genesis 1:28 - be fruitful and multiply
The church doesn't want to split groups, but it wants them to split organically and naturally. The call this the BIRTH PLAN
John 14:12 - Believes and will do.
Ephesians 4:11-12
Equip the Saints for service
Matthew 28 - the Great Commission
Matthew 4:19
2 Timothy 2:2
Matthew 6:33
John 3:30
Acts 1:8
Pastor suggests the book
Hero Maker by Dave Ferguson
Sparrow had fond memories of Grandpa.
"I remember one time, I was maybe 14,15, and I was staying at their house, and I asked Grandpa if he had any pain reliever, and he went into the bathroom and looked in the cupboard and he would always do funny things, like he wouldn't say Acetaminophen or Ibuprofen, he said, 'We've got I See the Medicine and we've got I Be Profane. Which one you want?'"
And I said, "I actually need some My Doll."
And he said, "Aw, your Grandma hasn't needed any of that for about ten years."
And Grandma yells from the kitchen, "She doesn't care to know that, Owen!"
.
.
.
#vss365
#prompt
#Sparrow
John Chapter 9
We were walking out of the Target near Fry Road and I-10. Judas didn't like shopping there because he said it's too expensive, but that's mainly because he like to keep skimming from the group fund. Thomas always said that he thought he could find better deals and better quality at TJ Maxx, but James had to have his Bustelo, and that was the only place that sold it.
Anyway, as we were walking toward the frontage road, we saw the homeless people camping there among the trees. They were panhandling at the corner, and so we were asking Jesus, "Hey, why should we give these guys money? Are they homeless because sometimes Life just happens, or because they were on drugs and made some bad choices along the way?
Bartholomew said we should see which ones were the Vets and help them and maybe not the others. "Ultimate sacrifice," he said, remembering something Jesus had been teaching us about friendship.
Jesus went to one blind guy. He said, "This man's homeless through no fault of his own. It also wasn't the fault of having bad parents. This happened so that the works of God can be demonstrated through him."
We asked Jesus what He meant by that. He said, "I'm only going to be here a short while longer. You guys need to do this work with me. As long as the sun shines, we have to do the work of God. There will be a time when the opportunity is gone. As Andrew likes to say from his favorite show, 'Winter is coming'"
The scant trees in this section by Fry and frontage road has a depression to catch overflow of rainwater. Jesus walked down to the damp area, scooped up some mud, spit on it, rubbed it in his hands, and then walked back to the blind man with the goop in His hands and while James and John propped the guy up, Jesus rubbed the mixture into each eye.
We all kinda stood around, wondering what was going on. Surely that couldn't be sanitary. At least, that's what I was thinking. Don't know what the others were thinking.
He waited for about an hour or so. The cars were driving by the entire time, most everyone slowing down to look at what we were doing with this homeless guy. If they thought we were doing him any harm, no one ever stopped to check. They just stared as they passed by.
Eventually, the mud dried and began to crack, and scales of it began to fall off, like dried limestone shale that gets brittle and breaks. The homeless guy raised his hands to his face to peel the rest off and his eyes were red and puffy but he started blinking furiously, and then covered his face from the light of the sun.
"I CAN SEE!" he shouted. He shouted so loud that I thought they could hear him all the way at the PetSmart.
Jesus told the man, "Go and wash in the baptismal pool at the Second Baptist Church building. There, the healing will be complete."
The man got up and ran off. Interestingly enough, he knew the direction to the church. I had the sneaking suspicion that he was wandered there a couple of times looking for assistance. I wonder what they would say now.
We looked at the rest of the homeless with new eyes that day. I realized that even all those times I'd gone on church outings to give them clothes and sandwiches, that I always wondered what they had done to get themselves into their situation. I realized today that it was not my place to wonder. Not my place to ask such questions. Not my place to judge.
The scales had fallen off my eyes that day.
Thank God. Before it was too late for me.
2025
Day 1: Army Veteran runs into crowd in New Orleans, killing 14 or 15. Gets out, shoots two police officers before being gunned down. Was flying ISIS flag from his truck. Early reports said he was from Eagle Pass TX, to which Fox and other RW MSM outlets stated meant that he was an illegal alien and blamed Biden for the attack. Trump posted that this proved his point about illegal immigration.
That the man was born in the USA and spent ten years in the Army apparently doesn't matter to the official Fascist government narrative.
Same day: In Las Vegas, a white man drove a Tesla Cybertruck to the front of the Trump hotel, shot himself in the head, and then the truck exploded. Nobody really knows the motive, but the photo has been named as a perfect symbolic image for the incoming Administration.
The man was also a currently active Army soldier, and was also stationed at Fort Bragg and could have been in contact with the NOLO killer.
https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/new-orleans-truck-attack-suspect-01-02-25-hnk/index.html
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2025/jan/03/new-orleans-truck-attack-latest-updates
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/blaming-biden-new-orleans-attack-trump-setting-failure-rcna186008
https://www.foxnews.com/us/new-orleans-terrorist-man-las-vegas-cybertruck-explosion-shared-more-links-attacks-just-hours-apart
https://apnews.com/article/trump-hotel-explosion-tesla-cybertruck-5c5a8fd13a50e2bcde46370ae926d427
https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/02/us/tesla-cybertruck-trump-hotel-wwk-hnk/index.html
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/17/mark-zuckerberg-hawaii-estate-kauai-land-rights-dispute
I have something to say as well, Slate writer: "Stuff it"
The world is already far too busy, too much noise, light, chaos, battering our senses all time, incessantly, without stop.
Putting down the window shade over a space the size of a sheet of paper when you're at 30,000 feet and there is nothing to see but grey clouds anyway is a RARE, BRIEF moment of serenity, of calm, of a tiny cocoon in which we can shut out all the screaming NOISE.
Sure, open the shade for takeoff and landing, because topography can be cool. You can say goodbye and then hello, but in the air? C'mon, Slate writer, stuff your bad take here
https://slate.com/life/2024/07/flying-is-better-with-an-open-window-shade.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us
My neighbor was partying and playing loud music until 2am last night. I couldn't sleep. But I remembered what we'd learned in church about doing good to the people who annoy you ... so I stayed awake and at 7am, I started mowing his yard. Even used the leaf blower.
Nothing is more dangerous to the Pursuit of Life and Liberty than the denial of full and inalienable rights to all our fellow citizens.
- Joseph Armitage
Sunday Morning Sermon Notes
I Thessalonians Chapter 2
Jeremiah 23 - wood blech hammer [sp??]
2nd Ministry Journey
Trade route - in three weeks Paul established a church and then was run out of town in the middle of the night.
Psalm 119:97-98
1 Thessalonians 1:6-7
wrote one year after he had left Thessalonica
...
2 Corinthians 9:7
Acts 20:35
She knew words were powerful, from the first time she wrote a story as a child and made her mother cry.
In high school, she wrote a story about suicide. Three of her classmates took their lives before the end of the semester.
In college, she wrote a story about wild, unprotected sex. The University noted a sharp uptick in pregnancies and venereal diseases that year.
In her twenties, she wrote a story about gun violence. Murders in her neighborhood increased exponentially.
One day, she decided to write a story in which everybody in the world was caring and decent and kind to each other, and everyone lived in peace and then ...
nothing happened.
Nothing changed.
She realized that there was, indeed, a limit to her power. To the power of her words.
Feeling a deep, profound disappointment, she sat down to write her final story, one in which every country decided to drop all their bombs, everywhere, all over the world.
"I came here to write poems and whoop ass!"
"So, how's that working out for ya?" "Well, I'm a wussie, so I'm just writin' poems." "Hate to tell ya, but your poems suck, too." "Well, shit.""So ... are you vicious bishes, or just suspicious bishes?"
"We're delicious bishes!"
"My favorite kind!"
Prolegómonos
Two church elders,
t-shirts, shorts,
beer guts, both
sit beside the
Tree, the Babe,
Joseph and Mary.
They await the third
Magi.
He's bringing the kolaches.
MR
2023-1203
The Dead Kandinskys say,
"They tell us to buy the Dip but they never tell us how much the Dip costs?
Last time when we bought the Dip, we got the Dip home, and it turned out to be a Doofus.
So, we returned it, but they would only exchange it for a Dork."
73.
As I sat there, reading, the owner of the bookstore came over with a stack of books crocked under his arm, which he started shelving. The man looked like he was almost seven feet tall, and had a grey hair that looked like it was once auburn, there were still flecks of red among the grey, which made me think of Autumn turning into Winter, and his long arms and big hands made him look like the perfect Book-Shelving-Machine, the way he pushed books aside to make space for others.
"You're the owner, right?"
"Yes," he said, smiling.
"Nice place you got here."
"Thanks. I think so, certainly." From the stack that he was carrying, he pulled one and handed it out to me. It was a thin trade paperback, looked well-worn and read. I took it and looked at the cover, a grey cover with an illustration on the front of a boy with a dragon and a cat.
The title was "Catcher of the Writers."
74.
I looked up at the owner of the bookshop. I don't even think I said anything. I think my mouth was just open. He smiled at me and moved past me, toward the back sections, where I think Acsa was wandering around. His grey cardigan flapped open and I saw that he was wearing a t-shirt that had the words Ardmore Gongmongers wrapped in a circle around what looked like a shovel. The shirt was old and faded, and I got the impression that he got it when he saw the band in concert, several decades ago.
75.
I opened up the book and the first line was "I hated the way she smoked, the last time I saw her alive."
Those words really hit me. I didn't know why then, and still don't, now - how I knew, I mean. But they were written about my mom. I just knew. The description went on to talk about the bandages around her wrists, and the way they trembled as he held her cigarette in the mental ward at the top floor of St John's Hospital.
Yes - exactly where I am now. In the same room. Telling you all this onto this stupid tape machine.
76.
Look, I'm getting a little tired here and I kinda want to stop here. Let's pick this up tomorrow, OK?
77.
OK, let's start again. Guess I'll get back to where I was - in the Catcher of the Writers.
After the intro, it went on to say, if I can remember it all, something like this:
If you really want to hear about it, you’d probably want to know what really gave me the love of reading and literature and all that, but honestly, I’m not going to tell you – not because I’m some sort of Holden Caulfield jerk*, but because I truly do not know.
There was an asterisk after "jerk" and at the bottom of the page was printed
*I am a different kind of jerk, entirely)
Then, the book goes on with this story of a story that he - me, I guess - had read somewhere...
I remember a short story that I read once. A Christmas story. It was written sometime between the 20s, to the 50s... probably 40s are the most likely. I think it was in a collection of short stories that had been printed in the New Yorker.
It was about 4 pages long, and it was about a guy, can't remember his name, but I think it was George. He walked up the steps to a Christmas party, and when he walked inside, all the presents were sitting on the table, and while everybody else was congregated in the other room, he went through the tags and added his name to each one. "... and George"
Such as "Love from Charles and Sue ... and George!"
Or maybe the story was at a wedding reception ... that would make more sense.
I don't know. That's all I can remember. Kills me that I can't remember the story, or be able to find it. I've looked through my books, the collections of short stories, the collections of Christmas stories, collections of New Yorker stories, but I can't find it.
Strange.
Really freaked me out how this writing sounded just like me. I kid you not, it was like it was written by me and at the same time, FOR me. Part of me was smiling because I was thinking, "Cool! A book written by me that I didn't have to do any work on!"
Yeah, I know by now this meant that at some point I'd have to put in the work on this book - writing, reading, notes, plotting, researching, editing, re-reading, MORE editing, all that crap. But I bet there would be a TON of people who would love to just have an idea and then just it into some machine that would spit out a book for them.
But then I thought, that would probably be a loser way to go. I mean, can you really call it YOUR book if you didn't really put the work into it?
But anyway, I skipped through the Catcher of the Writers and the main aspect of it seemed to be that this guy (me) comes to realize that his main point in life is to encourage other writers, other artists, other musicians, to create, create, create.
It keeps coming back to the idea that the creative impulse inside humans is the only thing that ultimately saves us from destroying ourselves entirely, both as individuals and as a collective body.
(That's a quote I lifted from the book)
Another passage that I read that really struck me was this - goes something like:
Marcel Proust once wrote, “… the only true paradise is always the paradise we have lost.”
But what if that’s not true?
At least not entirely?
What if the one true paradise is the one that we have never seen?
The one that we wish for, the one we yearn for? the one that we see in our dreams?
What if the one true paradise is the spouse that we have created in our minds?
The house that we have pieced together out of photos of houses in magazines, or the insides of houses that we have seen?
The rolling ocean when we live in a land-locked state?
The open fields when we are living in the urban jungle?
The paradise that we have lost is the one that we can never reclaim, but the one that we have not yet obtained, that paradise is always perfect, always true.
And that, right there, got me as well ... it speaks to the idea that we should always keep dreaming, keep creating: music, books, art, whatever, because at the end of the day, what we leave behind of our art is the only thing that we have given to the future, and it is the only thing that makes other people, as well as ourselves, feel as though life is worth living.
Art saves lives. Music, photography, poetry, all that stuff: it saves lives.
And sure, yeah, some - a lot, actually - of artists kill themselves, but have you ever wondered if maybe their art actually kept them alive longer than they would have otherwise?
Take Hemingway for example - he gave us all those books, all those short stories, but if he hadn't have been a writer, he probably would have taken himself out a long time before.
78.
Look, I know you guys aren't letting me out of here anytime soon, but I'm telling you know, that ... I don't know how to say it ... but I - know better, now. I know.
Just wanted you guys to know that, too.
the guard was a really great guy, he just seemed kind of lonely. I guess that;s what all night security guards are like, having to wander around the places all night long with nobody to talk to. Plus they are probably asleep through most of the day when everybody is out and about and interacting, so they don't really have the same human interaction.
Kyle was like that - he had kind eyes, even if a little sad, Bad teeth, but that looked more genetic than from hygiene, and he kept running his hand through a big mop of dishwater blond hair that kept falling over his eyes as he talked. He told us about his days as a studio musician in Austin before he moved back here to take care of his brother, and he told us about the Ardmore Gongmongers, starting off as though we should know who they were.
Apparently they were a local band back in the late 80s and early 90s - and yeah, I know what you're thinking. Yes, I know that this is 1985 when I'm talking to you and making these tapes, and I know that this - all of this - is probably going to make you guys keep me locked behind those doors - but you guys asked me to tell you this story and so I'm telling it, and I'm just giving you what Kyle Staedelmeier said to Acsa and me. ... And McCartney. Like you should probably know by now, he couldn't see Kit.
Kit was, by the way, curled up around Kyle while Kyle spoke. Kit seemed to like listening to him talk about his band.
They were originally going to be named the Electric Slits, but then they either found out there was another band named that or close to that, or they thought they wouldn't be able to get shows with the name "slit" and they came up with the Gongmongers because that was an old 18th century title of a job for a guy who went down the streets of London, shoveling the shit off the streets. Because those were the days when people threw their chamber pots out the window onto the street, so somebody had to clean it up, right?
At this point, it reminded me that I'd read where James Joyce had written a collection of poetry called Chamber Music, which he always referred to as "Chamber Pot" music. Kind of the same way he called "Ulysses" "Useless-ees" - which truly, I always liked about the guy. I mean, when you can make stupid puns putting down the titles of your own books, that shows that you really know how language can work, how it can be twisted.
But yeah, back to Ardmore Gongmongers - Kyle said that no one in the band was actually FROM Ardmore, but it was a town close by, and they liked how it worked with Gongmongers, and then when they found out that town was named after a town in Pennsylvania and that the word was Gaelic for "High Place" they knew it fit - because all in all, they said that Ardmore Gongmongers gave the image of those who shovel shit from the top of a hill - meaning that they are throwing it DOWN on all the people at the BOTTOM of the hill. Plus, musically, they could do Irish trad, American folk, mix it all with punk and see what shook out.
I loved his explanation and I told him that I'd love to be in a band like that, and that's when Kyle said something weird to me, "Actually, you remind me of the screamer of our band. We called him the screamer, not the singer. His name was Matthew Laycox."
That's when I froze. Acsa and I hadn't said our names to him, and for a second I had not idea what he was on about. Was he a Collector who was just getting ready to nab us? What was going on here?
But then he started talking about how I looked like I could be the guy's son, or how I looked like HIS Matthew Laycox, only a few years younger, and it really did seem then that he was just going on through his memory. He hadn't seen Matthew in over 15 years, after the band broke up. He wouldn't say why. I got the feeling he didn't really want to tell us.
Acsa asked him, "Even if you haven't seen him in awhile, do you know anything about what he's doing now?"
"He had a woman he knocked up, and from what I hear, he's still married to her and she's making him work three jobs still, and their kid should be about your age" (pointing to me) "or about. That's why it's so weird that you look so much like him. Weird."
I didn't know what Acsa was getting at, but she seemed to want me to know about this OTHER Matthew, but then it was getting about time for the morning shift to get here, so Kyle told us we better be moving on. But before we left, he gave me a little shiny slim box, fit right in the palm of my hand. I asked him what it is, and he said, "You haven't seen an iPod? Where are you kids from, anyway?"
"Let's just say we're not from around here," Acsa said.
"Well, I want you guys to have my iPod, because it's got all the Ardmore Gongmongers songs on there, plus a few of my own over the years. I always just made music that I wanted to listen to, myself, but I'd be happy knowing that some people out there are carrying it to places ... not from around here."
He was smiling through those bad teeth and some part of me suddenly wanted to shake the guy's hand and tell him that I was sorry. Sorry for breaking up the band.
Sorry for something I hadn't even done. I knew that feeling very well. Always that.
But this time, I was sorry for something bad that I hadn't even done YET. That was a new feeling.
I'm Gen X, and it just hit me today, as I was getting ready for work, I looked at myself in the mirror and thought "man I am starting to look kinda old" and then it hit me that, when we were young, we were taught to respect our elders BECUASE they were old.
I remember thinking how cool it would be that people would respect me for being old when I got old. But now that I am old, we're suddenly in a culture in which people only respect you if you do what they like.
So I guess the culture is telling me that I'm gonna have to keep WORKING for respect until the day that i DIE.
... I call bullshit!
Anomaly 11
Once upon a time there was a little village and it was a happy little village and the harvest came in every year and the generations grew and replaced the other generations and for a long time everyone was happy.
Then one year the candymen came to town and they had beautifully colored candy and it tasted so good and the children all loved the candy and they wanted more candy. Their parents warned them against eating too much of the candy, because too much candy is not good for you, they said, and the children cried out "You're MEAN! We won't listen to you!" and the children all left the village with the candymen and went off and the parents did not know where they had gone.
Then one day the children came back home when they were grown and the parents did not recognize their children because the children had themselves become candymen and they told the parents, "All the candy has made our stomachs hurt, and we are not happy, because the candy has never filled our bellies. You should have warned us about the candy."
"We did warn you about the candy," the parents said. "You didn't listen."
"Shut up!" the children who had grown to be candymen said. "You are old now and we are still young, and so we are taking all the harvest and we are going to eat all the harvest and you can go live in the barns and we will take the houses and live there and invite other candymen to join us"
And so the aging parents were shoved into the barns, who died there when the winter came, along with the animals, who were untended by the children who had become candymen.
Then Spring came and there was no planting, then Summer, and then Autumn, and there was no harvest, and the children who had become candymen died in the houses, with the windows open and the curtains billowing sadly in the light breeze.
My wife keeps sending me videos on IG of Tristan Tate talking about looking good in suits, along with some other guy talking about how getting into shape make people think you are wearing an expensive suit when you might just be in a white button-down short. These guys are all so roided-out and beefed up and strutting around beaches with women looking on in dripping admiration ... it's actually kinda weird.
- I think she might be telling you to hit the gym.
Yeah, that and she's suddenly on this "Alpha Male" kick. She wants me to be an "Alpha Male"
- That's what the Tate brothers are selling.
Exactly, so I told her, "These guys have been arrested in Romania for sex trafficking. What they are selling is Toxic Masculinity Bullshit. You want me to be an Alpha Male? OK, fine. Don't ever send me shit from those fucking shitbags ever again! How's THAT for 'Alpha Male'?
