Monday, January 30, 2023

“AGAINST THE GRAIN” Turning the tide in my battle with heart disease

I just made one small step for myself, but straight out of a giant, foreboding pit for mankind. And I'm feeling like Astronaut Neil Armstrong must have felt when he said something similar, but far more positive on the Moon. As you might imagine, my excitement could not have happened without a stunning revelation to go with it.

This is a subject far beyond my calling or comfort zone. I wrote it because it is probably the most relevant and important thing I will ever write concerning worldly matters...

YOUR REAL HEALTH PROGNOSIS IS DECIDED BY YOUR DIET AND GENETICS

We are told my ancestors from Europe ate lots of mutton, wild game, cod and other seafood, and some crude barley bread, for thousands of years. They had no “medicine” or doctors as we know them and had to treat themselves through prayer, herbs and nutrition. Then came Science and all of its “improvements.” Today in America, ancient nutrition habits have taken the back seat to diet diversity and experimentation, where doctors propose to fight our dietary abuses with drugs, liposuction and gastric bypasses. Touted for decades as cholesterol reducers, statin drugs have led the way for maintaining our heart health in spite of our unhealthy diets. But over time, they have been proven to be poor performers. Heart disease is still rampant, but sadly, pitifully statin drugs are the main medicinal line of defense which doctors have to offer against it. Physicians argue that at least the statins stabilize the plaque, and that is worth something. But our physicians have only helpless sympathy concerning the statin side-effects, and no explanation as to why heart disease is still the number one killer in our country. (Yes, even worse than COVID).

Even more telling, doctors cannot explain why their most popular solution for heart disease has provided no improvement in our life expectancy, in randomized trials; Why Duke University researchers actually found through a study of terminally ill patients that those taken off of statins lived over a month longer than those who were kept on their statin meds; Why the Pharmacology community had no answer to an article in their own trade journal whose title declared “How statistical deception created the appearance that statins were safe and effective in primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease.” Bottom line, for all of their good intentions and effective marketing, statins failed miserably to impact the one thing we heart patients cared about the most: Our outcomes.

Doctors have known now for a generation that peoples all over the world enjoy good heart health, much better than ours, and the farther away from our diet paradigm the better. Researchers have suggested these healthier hearts were due to their high fish intake, or crushed grape skins in wine-making, or whatever, but there has never been much doubt that something in the American diet was the problem. In the end, early research suggested that fats were a contributing factor, and high cholesterol was the problem, and fats became enemy number one. Decades later, doctors quietly conceded that later research discriminated between “good” cholesterol and “bad,” and coffee, eggs, nuts, avacadoes and other shamed foods were released back into the American diet with fewer equivocations. Still, the average American doctor was only equipped to tell you what you should not eat... and he was no longer sure about that.

What nobody seemed to be wondering, was what about all of the native American plants which European Americans were consuming as major elements in their daily diets? For centuries, few scientists cared whether or not Euro-American physiological systems could process corn, wheat, tomatoes, potatoes or many other things found naturally in North America. Food was food, right? People are all the same, right? They had never heard of lectins, or knew much about what a high starch, or high carb diet might do to a person over time.

I was like most people, heart disease was not a problem for me. I looked and felt healthy. But I got concerned after my first heart attack in my 50's. I was suddenly introduced to a bizarre modern world of doctors who did not believe that nutrition was that relevant to my health. I remember begging my doctors for a heart-healthy diet, so I could know where to make adjustments. They were not too interested in the idea. I learned later that they were passively aware of genetics, and did not believe that people would follow healthy diets even if they knew what they ate was killing them. Right after my first heart attack, my young, well-educated cardiologist looked me in the eyes and said,

“I'll give you a diet... if it tastes good, spit it out!”

Funny. If one can find humor in the fact that for many of us, some food has become our number one health risk. And we don't even know for sure which food!

This same doctor prepared me for my future, of taking the statin drugs for the rest of my life and yet with my artery blockages, he fully expected to see me back on the operating table in less than a year... for open heart surgery. In his mind, there was little anyone could do to prevent it. That got my attention.

So I began to read and study on my own. I'll spare you the details. I desperately experimented with diets... avoided red meat and fats, as suggested by most heart experts. I juiced fruits and vegetables for meals, swore off cokes and ice cream... But I still had another heart attack and eventually a total of SEVEN stents were inserted into my arteries. It was very hard to find a healthy, sustainable, successful diet. I avoided that open heart surgery, but it was a battle. And the statin meds prescribed by my cardiologist caused depression, lethargy, muscle cramping and other side-effects, which adversely affected my job performance. Being self-employed, I would often get fed-up and get off of them and then the withdrawals had their own alarming side-effects. I would explain my symptoms and all of the doctors would shrug. It couldn't have been the statin, its manufacturer promised that, “on the average, there were very few side effects!” I spent a lot of money getting various expensive tests trying to understand what was happening inside of my body, (bloating, gassiness, blood in my stool, my creativity gone...) with no hard answers except hospital bills.

On both occasions, during my heart “events” my local hospital medical professionals assured me that my “numbers were not right for me to be suffering a heart attack.” I learned the hard way the mystery and subjectivity of Cardiology. It required technology unavailable at your local clinic to discern some heart attacks. After my second heart attack, I knew I had to prepare my family for... my impending demise, since there seemed to be no real solutions to heart disease. We moved to Bell County so my wife would be near our daughter... just in case the inevitable happened. My wife was precious as she prepared for me every thing possible you could make out of turkey; turkey spaghetti, turkey stroganoff, King Ranch turkey, turkey enchiladas, etc., etc. We even tried veggie meatballs, veggie burgers, and they actually weren't that bad. But the battle to reduce my cholesterol was still just that. No matter what I did, I was still clogging up my arteries with plaque.

I was more or less stuck with my already clogged arteries. All I could do was reduce the plaque which I was adding to them. Statin drugs supposedly kept those gradually growing artery obstructions stable, preventing further deadly events, and the daily aspirin helped to thin my blood so it could flow easily in the avenues left. With two heart attacks under my belt, it seemed that my prospects were dim. That being said, my assumption was that living near Scott & White Hospital in Temple was a smart move.

But in a town crawling with interns, and stocked with long established cardiologists who were always over-extended, I was unable to engage a permanent cardiologist. Think about that for a moment. In our system today, someone with a history of heart disease cannot qualify for a steady, seasoned professional to provide him or her care. After several years, one day I found myself in front of a semi-retired, veteran cardiologist “temp” who had tons of experience. After sending me to get my blocked stent cleared out, (Amazing!) he scolded me.

“You've been dealing with this disease for over ten years!” He exclaimed. “It's time to come up with a different strategy!” And he was right. He went on to chastise the cavalier attitude which I displayed, and even called me a few unkind names. He wanted me to consider some new meds which had not even been put on the market yet. I was not against a new medicine, if it was actually effective. But I believed that I had just learned of a more reliable action that would lower my cholesterol, and so I followed a different plan. And it was one he could never relate to. I was already sure it was time for all of us, and especially people in his profession to adopt a new strategy. One that worked.

I had just read a book (published 2018) by Dr. Richard Gerhauser. Everybody needs to own this book. It is titled the The Secrets of Underground Medicine. I love this book. Newer versions of this wonderful, paradigm-smashing book are now available. Dr. Gerhauser also has a newsletter which he puts out on the Internet, where he discusses effective, natural alternatives to treating most common diseases. [www.naturalhealthresponse.com] Bottom line, as my four-year LDL Cholesterol chart demonstrates, I found some real solutions while reading his book. So let me summarize for you, the major take-away for me:

GO AGAINST THE GRAIN

Suspend what you think you know about heart disease. As another published doctor puts it, “What if I told you that everything you've ever been told about cholesterol is a lie?” And Dr. Gerhauser goes farther to identify the real problem which contributes to American heart disease; Grains, or at least the most popular ones, as we process and use them, are THE DEVIL; very little nutritional value... except those artificially injected with vitamins like Iron. Corn is the real culprit... the beginning of the bad cholesterol (LDL) nightmare... fed to the cows in the feed lots... passed on to us through feed-lot raised beef, or ingested as Fritos, tortillas, grits, cornbread, roasted corn, popcorn, corn pops, Corn Chex, corn dogs, corn flakes, corn oil, corn syrup... God help us! And we were never meant to eat any of this stuff!

Modern hybrid corn is the agricultural equivalent of Frankenstein's monster. But it is easily raised, and keeps the American farmer in business. Wheat, especially bleached flour, is the same song, second verse. But it is considered a “staple” even though everybody knows that inside our bodies it all turns to sugar, sugar and more sugar. White bread and all of its forms are slowly sabotaging American health. And these grains are the main culprits in spiking our cholesterol.

This whole scam began back over 50 years ago when Congress released a scathing report demonizing red meat and the fat that comes with it. Senator George McGovern, the former Democratic candidate for President, led these sensational charges and the crusade against meat- and thus cattlemen and ranches and our way of life... as “enlightened” Americans embraced vegetarianism. They were convinced that people should not eat animal flesh- or any animal bi-products. These half-wits taught that American heart disease was attributable to the cow flesh we consumed, and cholesterol was our deadly enemy, ignoring that our brains need meat to develop properly, and are made up of mostly cholesterol and that we have to have animal fat regularly to maintain them.

What followed was a rush for Big Pharma to develop cholesterol-lowering drugs... which became BIG, BIG business... which (duh!) led to a spike in American dementia and Alzheimer's disease. Initially a 1,500% increase! McGovern and the Medical profession apparently believed the the lower the cholesterol level in our bodies, the safer we would all be... even if we all became as stupid as a fence post in the process. These spikes in American dementia were ignored... until they have risen to astronomical levels... something like 14,000 % increase over the past decades!

Today even the Mayo clinic has said that we need fat... and meat .. and eggs... much more than what heart patients have been told, and much fewer carbs, medical advice which will help Americans fight this onslaught of dementia... if they would only listen.

IDENTIFY THE REAL PROBLEM

SUGAR, SUGAR, SUGAR. Americans are so fat, and so unhealthy they have become a caricature of their worst fears. Our diets are packed with carbs and soft drinks and processed foods. Most of these things have little nutritional value and harbor addictive, truly insidious ingredients which we have learned to love. And nobody seems to be concerned about it.

So, not surprisingly, Americans are getting fatter and fatter, and enjoy the worst health of any modern country. Dr. Gerhauser educated me about this national health emergency, a national scam, which by now ought to be a national reform movement, but which has been obscured and prevented by Big Pharma, Big Government and Big Agri-businesses. Aw Hell, Kellogg's and Mazola too...

Folks we are outgunned here, and you had better read up on it... or risk you or your loved ones dying an early and miserable death. Until Americans stop trusting the “Bigs,” and learn to inform themselves, they will continue to belly up at the McDonald's and relish in corn-fed beef and sugar bread, and pay the consequences. But as of now, they ignorantly trust the Big American Agri-Pharmaceutical complex. I hate to point this out, but with the imminent failure of Social Security, the U. S. Government has no incentive to help educate us or extend our life-spans.

COMPREHEND THE MOTIVES BEHIND OUR “STANDARD” AMERICAN DIET.

Grains were elevated to a bogus status back during the Great Depression, when the government learned that it could feed us cheaply- and put the farmers back to work, while fortifying their grain products and thus insure that we did not starve or die of anemia. Grains were advertised by the government as one of the “five main food groups,” all required for a healthy life. But the people who were already mature then, like my grandparents, lived longer and healthier than we will, regardless that they defied modern medical recommendations, and ate “unhealthy” things like bacon and eggs. More importantly, they could easily obtain fresh, organically raised fruits and vegetables. During their developing years, there was no sliced white bread, and sandwiches were not that common. Cattle was grass fed. There were few hamburger stands, and no pizza parlors. People grew and cooked their own food. My grandparents and their generation were the last Americans to live under this ancient, unscientific paradigm.

Weirdly, we grain-raised “Baby Boomers” will not enjoy the long lives of our grandparents, (My wife and I had three grandparents who lived past or near 100) who smoked and drank and ate whatever they wanted. Our parent's generation signaled the backward health trend with a significant rise in heart disease, diabetes and cancer. None of our four parents, raised as children on Post Toasties and Cream of Wheat, even made it to ninety. In fact their average lifespan was just 76 years. My parent's lifespan average was only 71. That's two whole decades shorter than their parents! I'm not that great at math, but I think that is a very significant difference, given the so-called scientific advances of our age.

It was not beef or fat that killed the “WWII generation.” Two of them never smoked. The other two consumed only moderate or little alcohol. None were morbidly obese. It was cancer and its treatments, mountains of pills and what had been introduced into the American diet in a huge way in the 1930's... It was the grains! Then enter our generation- with cereal breakfasts, french fries, daily sandwiches and a tsunami of carbohydrate snacks which now fill our relentlessly hungry stomachs. We are dead men walking.

PREPARE TO UPSET YOUR DIET PARADIGM

It's NOT THE FATS! Our bodies not only crave, but depend on fats to survive. Your brain for instance is made up mostly of fat, and it cannot maintain itself without a steady source of it. Modern science has been barking up the wrong tree. It's the grains. Carbs leave you unsatisfied. Thus they encourage you to eat more of them, along with the sugar and salt that is often making them so tasty. And Dr. Gerhauser points towards them as a major threat to our health.

My chart here, the basics provided by my hospital, (and custom labeled by me) proves it to any skeptics. My battle with heart disease took a decided positive turn this past summer after I read Dr. Gerhauser's book. Just look at the results. We went to work, found substitutes for wheat-based bread... (YES there are some!) and cut out all corn and wheat products... (while dutifully still avoiding pork and red meat...) and in a short period, an astoundingly short period, we cut my LDL Cholesterol number in half. It was so dramatic, and so wonderful, my cardiologist was reluctant to believe the results of the labs.

Over time, he solidified that sentiment. Still, he had to admit that something was working, and he could not and did not try to credit the statin meds (Crestor) with my amazing results. “Whatever you are doing, KEEP ON DOING IT.” He proclaimed. We were encouraged and pressed on.

BUT, and this is very important, not being a nutritionist or any kind of scientist, I grossly underestimated the important IRON present in the bread and carbs I ate, and still avoiding meat, found myself in an unwitting jam when I became seriously anemic. Iron is an essential player in the blood-clotting process. Too much or too little Iron in our blood can lead to disaster. And I was having one. Normally our bodies regulate it and we live without thinking about keeping it in balance. Beef and wild game has always been an important source of Iron in our diets, for millions of years, but has fallen into disfavor in the past five decades. Doctors have wrongly warned against red meat and their fats for two generations. So for many Americans, especially heart patients who listen to their doctors, fortified flour is a main source of Iron. But since I had become suspicious of grains, I had severely restricted my intake of bread... without finding a new source of Iron, and my body began to break down... and unchecked by sufficient Iron, the prescribed blood thinners I was taking began to cause internal bleeding in my upper intestine. Sufficient Iron was not there to help clog the routine bleeding from the aspirin and Effient I was taking. And I was bleeding a lot... and losing the Iron in my system... and I did not even realize I needed to be concerned until it was too late.

Obviously, I lived, but it was a perfect storm which could have killed me. My Hemoglobin count got down to just above the danger line at 7 (Should be 15). Feeling like another heart attack was imminent, I went to the ER, and ended up in the hospital for several days. Incredibly, the heart doctors refused to take me off of the blood-thinning meds which were racing through my gut with my anemic blood and dumping into my upper intestine. I was seriously anemic and bleeding to death. Meanwhile the doctors ran blood tests... performed an upper G.I. search, and wanted to run one more, so for a couple of days solid food was withheld from me to keep my system clear for these G.I. procedures. Over three days, I only received one meal, all clear liquids, in my hospital room. This was consistent with modern medicine philosophy which considers nutrition an afterthought. I was scheduled for a “pill cam” in a day or two, which would supposedly explore possible hemorrhaging in my upper intestines... (which of course there was, and doctors already know this bleeding occurs. But with no food in days, especially low on IRON, I was weak, miserable, and yet I knew instinctively what I needed to do. And that was to get out of there. I refused any more tests for the time being and sought release from the hospital, and turned to someone who would restore my strength: My wife!

I went home and ate beef steaks and liver and spinach... and let my hands heal from the I.V. needle insertions, which had been taped to each. I got a little stronger and visited my semi-retired cardiologist, who finally agreed to take me off of the blood-thinning meds which were still causing copious internal bleeding. But he was confused by my situation. He intimated that the anemia might always have been a problem for me... and that it had been undetected. Of course, I was convinced my anemia was relatively new and caused by my steady loss of blood for weeks, exacerbated by my abandonment of bread (thus iron) and the foolhardy continuation of all the daily aspirin and the blood-thinners I was taking. So the recovery could finally begin, once I was taken off of the Effient- and I also temporarily reduced my intake of aspirin for good measure.

Then we were shocked. Before my consultation was over, my wise old cardiologist insisted that my earlier, wildly encouraging LDL blood test results, which came after my initial low-carb diet, were some kind of mistake! He confessed that he did not believe the numbers. They were unbelievable; not reliable enough to plan for my future treatment. He returned to his only answer, insisting it was past time for that new strategy! He suggested that new drug again, still not released to the medical world... He was more than ready for me to play Guinea Pig, and so was I. But think about that. After a lifetime of treating heart patients, my veteran cardiologist's last, best hope for me was something not even available to most heart patients. What did this say about his wizened confidence in the practices of his lengthy career? Then he told me to cancel the next scheduled blood tests, as they would not be necessary.

But I didn't cancel them. I disagreed with him. I wanted to know how much my anemia had improved, if at all... I wanted a number. Remember my serious ANEMIA? When I left the hospital it was barely up to 8. I wanted science to keep me informed as my Iron intake improved my Hemoglobin numbers. At this point, I trusted the labs more than my cardiologist. I'm sure he is a good doctor, but he is like most men of science, who constantly throw out facts which do not support their most basic assumptions. I've seen it for years in archaeology, geology and ethnology. At this point I came to the same conclusion as both of my brothers, both of whom have heart disease: You have to educate yourself. You have to follow your own wisdom. It is the only one you can always trust.

I was still weak, dizzy, and desperate for some good news. Strangely my doctors could not have been less interested in that or the progress in my blood count. Anyway, after the worst prescribed med (effient/prasugrel) was finally discontinued, (Thank you Lord!) suddenly I got a whole lot better. The bleeding stopped. This was no surprise to me. Then I went and gave blood for the labs and BINGO... now the evidence was in. My anemia was barely improved, but once again the results of the low-carb diet were amazing. I am grateful that Scott & White Hospital in Temple provides such handy charts to track my health over the years. The evidence is plain, and they have provided it. (All the colorful wordage was added by me.)

Once again, I had been able to bring my LDL (bad) Cholesterol way down... by omitting grains... very quickly, and yet now I was eating meat! Lots of it, just like my ancestors. Pork, beef and liver. I had to, to save my iron-poor blood. And these new, good lab results supported the great results of that first Gerhauser-inspired diet, which my unbelieving doctor dismissed and considered was a lab-error.

Finally I understand my condition and how to deal with it. And all I had to do to save myself was to go against the grain and give up breads. I consider it an easy trade. Not everybody has a body which reacts this way, but many of you need to do the same thing, and “Go Against the Grain.” Just remember to take an Iron supplement!

If I am wrong, and Dr. Gerhauser is a quack, all I gave up was some useless carbs. With my past track record, my heart was not going to go the long route and I had little to lose. But if we are right, I will live significantly longer, while most of America experiences a travesty and heads into a colossal health tragedy. And you will eventually know, one way or another... but it is not too late right now for you to make the same adjustments. Ones that could make a world of difference in the quality and quantity of your existence.

Just start by avoiding bread... or corn products, and see if your Cholesterol numbers improve. I believe you will be as shocked, and as thrilled as I was! So now it's up to you... what you do with this information. But it could change- and maybe save your life.

MORE: A silent killer is waiting for those who fall between the cracks of Medicine.

A third of the population suffers from gum disease, and among this large group are 40% of all heart attack victims. In fact persons with gum disease are 49% more likely to suffer a heart attack. Studies indicate that people with gum (periodontal) disease have a two or three times greater risk of having a heart attack, stroke, or some other serious cardiovascular event.

The bacteria which infect your gums can also move out and cause blood clots, which could cause a stroke or heart attack, and they often do. Every time you ignore an abscessed tooth, or your dentist does oral surgery on you, and you run the risk of infection, you not only increase the odds for having a stroke, but you also raise your chances dramatically for heart failure.

In 2012, Circulation, the American Heart Association journal published a report made by many qualified medical professionals which happily headlined “No proof that gum disease caused heart disease or stroke.” This no doubt put many dentists as ease, since those accusations could make their world much more complicated. The important point here is the seriousness which the industry responded with to warnings from other studies that said otherwise. But since then, many more studies have surfaced which erased the gleam from their smiles.

In less than ten years, the link between heart disease and gum disease has been well recognized and documented. Now we are learning that gum infections can also assist Alzheimer's Disease. But don't be surprised if you never heard about it. And don't be surprised if you are an elderly person with heart issues and your faithful dentist suddenly forgot that you existed. Almost overnight, you became a huge liability.

It was in the blink of an eye that the facts about this clandestine, insidious yet largely unknown relationship went from suspicious coincidence to “old news,” getting mild shrugs from dentists while this fact winsomely streams across the monitor at your dentist chair. “Did you know?”... they offer, as if everybody already knows. As usual I was the last to know. But many dentists were not prepared for this serious complication, much less the protocol necessary to protect their patients.

Suddenly the proven risks, especially for persons with previous heart issues, now arguably required extra care, verbal warnings, perhaps legal release forms. But mum was the word. There was no revolution in dental hygiene, no huge increase in dental insurance, not even stern announcements on television by health experts. But no doubt many dentists were forced to upgrade their facilities or change their methods to better avoid what had been treated for centuries as routine gum infections- which could be fatal. God only knows how many folks have died of a heart attack prompted by gum disease!

Medical professionals have had to learn another essential skill not developed in medical or dental schools: CYA- via patient winnowing; Thinning out patients who are at risk with stroke or heart issues. Insurance is dang expensive, and now brought into the light, this exposure was going to be a killer for everybody. For smaller practices, high risk heart patients probably had to be... dropped.

At the same time that it became obvious that gum and heart disease were deadly partners in crime, Doctors and dentists had to cope with even worse bad news in the pain-killer department. Ibuprofen, acetaminophen and other pain killers, the last line of defense since the sudden rationing of stronger prescription-only pain-killers, now almost unavailable to many patients, have been proven to be bad for us... even dangerous in high levels and after prolonged use. And Antibiotics, also being rationed, were proving to be losing their effect, as germs morphed and became immune to them. The threat of procedure failure and infection complications exploded overnight, not to mention the increase in excruciating pain for many patients. I am sure I am not the only dental patient who has called his dentist in the middle of the night, desperate from maddening dental pain, to find out that the effective pain-killers of yesterday were no longer available to me... and feeling somewhat betrayed by my health care provider. But the sudden drug stinginess is not their fault. The Feds have been monitoring them closely. Doctors are seriously questioned if they dispense more pain killers than the Feds think is normal... and ironically, they are questioned just as much if they are not prescribing them enough... as if they might be consuming them themselves...

One of my brothers has pioneered this significant discovery about gum disease via his own mouth. Only after he suffered from serious symptoms of heart disease, and was prescribed statins and a strict diet, did he learn of a bad infection in his gums which could have killed him. Hearing of the connection between the two maladies, he immediately engaged in a stringent practice of using his water pik- after every meal and often with Hydrogen Peroxide mixed with Listerine (rather than plain water) to kill the bacteria which might lead to a blood clot. He eventually found that his “heart disease” retreated significantly. So much so, he is convinced the gum disease was the source of his problem... not his heart.

Afterwards, when hearing about it, his cardiologist agreed that he was aware of the connection between heart disease and gum disease, and he always sent his patients to a dentist if he noticed they had bad teeth. He appeared oblivious to all of the folks like my brother who have what appear to be sound mouths, but in fact harbor a deep infection about which they are totally unaware.

This is the deadly, professional gap between the doctors and the dentists, which have been killing many heart attack victims. Some day, Dentists will require patients to have heart check ups before dental surgery, to be able to assess the risks, and they will treat gum disease very seriously. Cardiologists in the future will inquire of patients suffering heart pains whether they have had any dental surgery in recent days... which might change their prognosis or their diagnosis... but until then, you must boldly ask these questions yourselves, or fall between the cracks of Medicine.

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A FORK IN THE ROAD TO MY HEALTH

This weathered card is almost deteriorated beyond usefulness. But I keep it. It is a reminder of my health condition, and my battle with it... and my need for due diligence. It was my only souvenir after my first heart attack... documenting for anyone interested the four stents they ran up into my arteries. How diligent are you about taking care of yourself?

If you are like the average American, you are not. Take exercise for instance. Proper exercise has become a huge thing in our generation. We either do it, and it becomes a huge part of our daily lives, or we make huge excuses for why we don't, and thus become huge things ourselves.

It is hard not to be shamed a bit by all of the sweaty, muscular exercisers on television commercials, working those various fitness machines, or the neighbor who jogs five miles every morning before you are even out of bed. Exercise is something you have to make time for, something that requires sacrifice and inconvenience. And so most of us find it missing on our daily short list. So it is no wonder that Americans today are in worse physical shape than ever, and many are borderline obese. The real shame is that so many people are truly unhealthy in one of the smartest, wealthiest countries in the world. But how could that be?

Too many of us have grown somewhat complacent about our physical fitness, depending more on the doctors and their medical wonders to keep us alive. They always tell us to get plenty of exercise, advice we usually ignore, because we can count on them to bail us out when we eat too much sugar, smoke too many cigarettes, or indulge in too much fast food. Some of us might use a treadmill to get some exercise, or even go to the gym. But most of us don't think we need to. Bottom line, we usually never get on that treadmill unless we have to.

That is because as a culture, we implicitly believe in Science. Have we not seen the average lifespan lengthen? And wonderful remedies to save our lives from the cradle to the grave? From tiny, premature babies to heart attack victims, modern science has repeatedly stepped in and made the difference between life and probable death. I personally have been kept alive in both of those scenarios during my life, so I owe a huge debt to the doctors and the cutting-edge Science they knew which made my survival possible. We live in an age when heart stents and other procedures have become routine, and incredible, life-saving measures are taken in stride.

So this message may seem a bit... ungrateful. You see, I have also seen the limitations of Modern Science. There is a debt, but there is also a depth of familiarity and insight from being a recipient of the blessings of the greatest advances in Medicine; advances which have done me wonders, and yet have fallen short of another measure of health which I have grown to appreciate.

There is Science, and there is Nature. Nature is the infinite, perfect, totally complete expression of God's creative genius. It includes the Solar Systems and the squirrel in your bird bath and the electrons bouncing around in your cell phone. Science is man's attempt to wrap his mind around these things, and hopefully learn how to manipulate them to serve his purposes. Sad to say, Science will never conquer the squirrels.

Science is Okay, or at least it was, when doctors and many scientists acknowledged one basic truth, the concurrence of these two systems- Science and Nature. But Science eventually grew into its own kind of religion, complete with high, unapproachable authorities, making unchallenged edicts, and a responding unquestioning faith and obedience from the local pastors, (doctors) who front and practice the latest scientific theories. But so much of what is called science today is really mere hypothesis, or worse. If the modern treatments championed by Science were any more than that, there would not be so many lawsuits advertised, going after this or that drug manufacturer, their once touted scientific breakthrough now exposed as a bad idea. A false hypothesis. A hypothesis where the patients were part of the test of that hopeful theory. Since the canonization of Darwin's theories, so much of Science has become satisfied with reasonable theories being substituted for the old fashioned Scientific Method.

Pharmaceuticals and doctors want so badly to save their patients, they continuously embrace new practices and drugs which offer new hope of fighting diseases. Death and suffering being their arch enemies, they take calculated risks in the name of that hope, using the latest scientific information, and fueling the possibility of defeating them. They have good intentions. But they sometimes forget they are not dealing with a full deck. And worse, they sometimes trust in the wrong powers. They trust in Science and persistence, driven by the simple axiom, “where there is life, there is hope.” My experience is that most of them would rather lose the battle for a patient's life by doing anything, rather than just doing nothing. So they are constantly reading, trying new things. Of course they will lose some battles. They take those losses seriously, sometimes personally. But they have left behind the simple knowledge that God is in control.

The presence of life is obviously important, but it is not the main factor. Where there is life there is potential. Where there is God, there is hope. But God is not all that doctors have put aside. They have even left behind the first and most important rule of their sacred oath, “First, do no harm.” The side effects of drugs are ignored and downplayed, as the hopes of beating death are inflated, and in the process, many are harmed. Seriously harmed.

Many doctors have forgotten what many people depended on for thousands of years before their profession was pervasively respected: The involvement in every life of that creative God who runs the Universe. Most medical professionals have invested their entire credibility on the prowess of Science. Yet after fifty years, their high-tech wars on cholesterol, on heart disease, on diabetes, on Alzheimer's disease, cancer and others rage on with staggering losses. There have been no cures, no answers. They depend on chemical concoctions to extend broken lives, many rife with suffering. So preoccupied with maintaining life, there has been no recognition among health care providers of most people's real desire.... and that is a good quality of life.

Chemotherapy and other poisonous drugs have become commonplace, necessary evils, in the absence of medical cures. Six million people may have suffered permanent heart valve damage from the diet drug Fen-Phen. The scandal around the pain-killer Vioxx is a good example of this deadly cycle of supply and demand. It killed 38,000 people who were seeking relief from arthritis pain, before it was no longer considered good science. The list goes on and on. The latest Pharma scandal may very well be the vaccines we all took to save ourselves from COVID 19. Few Americans are aware that European countries have banned many of our most popular prescription drugs. Yet our doctors continue to prescribe medications such as Avandia or Actos when they have been warned that they increase the risk of heart attack and bladder cancer, (respectively). Finally, decades later, people are understandably looking elsewhere than the latest Pharma wonders to find reliable answers to their health issues.

It's a long story, how we got to this point. How we mounted the American medical treadmill, as we accepted the solutions of Modern Science, and we walked trustingly on it awhile. Just like a treadmill feels like exercise, so American medicine felt like treatment. Nobody wants to go to the doctor, it's not supposed to be fun. But like a treadmill, it never took us anywhere. It kept our heart beating, but we did not have the whole benefits of outdoor exercise, or the multiple benefits of Nature. The scenery never changed. There was no vitamin D from sunshine, no task completed, nothing built or repaired. Just numbers on a screen that said we had walked so many miles, burned so many calories. Numbers. Lots of numbers.

I remember during my first heart attack, the EMT's and doctors at my local hospital told me emphatically that I was not having a heart attack. My “numbers were not right.” They wanted to send me home. It was a false alarm they said. Less than 24 hours later, doctors at a different hospital put four stents in my LAD artery, the one called the “widow maker.” The confidence and solidarity of that first group of medical professionals was quite persuasive, but instead of going home, I asked for an ambulance to transport me twenty miles up the road... and probably saved my own life.

Still I mounted the treadmill and did what I was told, took the meds, and listened to the Science: I would have to take Plavix (or as it turned out, its substitute) for many months, possibly years, until my body accepted the stents. I would have to take a blood thinner like aspirin, and statin drugs for the rest of my life to fight the cholesterol, which was allegedly killing me. I suspected my diet should change, since there were so many foods which had cholesterol in them. But the doctors only shrugged when I mentioned it. Their advice was to reduce the salt in my diet and just take the medicines and everything would be okay.

That ambivalence should have been my clue, which I ignored for a long time, wanting to believe my doctors. Three more stents and over a decade later I came to realize that the cardiologists do very little after your stents are installed other than read the numbers and prescribe statins. Statins which cause a number of undesirable side effects, in my case dullness of mind, lack of creativity and leg cramps. After several months I suffered from terrible complications from an Iodine deficiency... As I had cut out salt, I cut out my main source for Iodine, which my body desperately needed. And then we found out that more scientific studies revealed that statins did not really reduce cholesterol! Still my doctors insisted that I take them... there were supposedly other unseen benefits. It was believed that statins stabilized the plaque in arteries, possibly preventing strokes and heart attacks. Sadly this lame strategy was all the cardiologists had to fight heart disease! Eventually the aspirin and the replacement I took for Plavix caused terrible internal bleeding which led to my hospitalization for anemia.

So finally I got off of the American medical “treadmill.” One day during a consultation after having one of my stents reamed out, my cardiologist exclaimed “It's time for a new strategy!” And I agreed with him about that.

I had been depending solely on Science, and I turned back to what I had always trusted... Nature. I knew that God had made me and everything else, and if there was an answer, it was somewhere in his grandiose scheme. I just had to find it. The human body is perfectly capable of healing itself if it is fed the right things. But instead I had been filling my body with meds which made be sick, and cured nothing. My new strategy was to dig deep and find out where Modern Medicine had gone wrong, and how to recover from both my disease, and its treatments.

Taking stock of my sixty-eight year old body, I suffered from heart disease, anemia, leaky gut, IBS, constipation, tinnitus, memory loss, cracking teeth, strange rashes, leg cramps, bleeding hemorrhoids, insomnia, corns, silent migraines, growing allergies and oh yes... natural aging. I had a lot of learning to do. But as soon as I stepped off of the American medical treadmill, I began to learn stuff which has changed my life- and for the better. And I want to share these things with you!

As for exercise? Don't worry about it. Really. Most of it that people do is unnecessary or even counter-productive. Without proper nutrition and self-restraint, running, cycling, weight lifting, trotting on the treadmill etc. is likely to stress or do damage to your joints, not to mention put your body on the brink of dehydration.

Thankfully, about the time that my doctors had run out of ideas, I discovered a group of Naturopathic or Integrative doctors who not only practice holistic medicine, they write about it. And thanks be to God I took the fork in the road and discovered their writings and have been reading them extensively. These are not medical misfits, but well-qualified veterans of the medical community who have been paying attention, and dared to question “conventional wisdom,” their challenges backed by scientific findings from many published medical articles from the past fifteen years. Since I know that most of you would not read these books if a copy was given to you, and so-called “modern Science” will take another twenty years to catch on to their methods, I am offering to bake it all down for you.

If you are a member of the medical community, it would probably be best that you not read on, in order to save our friendship. But if you care more about American health than our affinity, read on. Perhaps you can and will carry this encouraging word to your peers.

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Saturday, December 3, 2022

Ryan's Last Gift

For every follower of Christ, especially as they get along in years, there are a few stories which they carry all through their lives which testify to their belief in God, and even illustrate why they believe. This is one of those stories, and yet it is quite fresh. It did not happen to me, but to my younger brother Reynolds, who explained it in detail just a day or so after it happened. After he laid it all out, I realized that this could only have happened to him; that it probably would never have happened to me, and that it was a special, God-ordained moment designed just for him... but one which all believers can appreciate.

We were walking together on the street in front of our hotel in Rapid City, South Dakota, far from our Texas homeland, after a delicious breakfast at a popular restaurant. Suddenly he stopped me and said he wanted to tell me a story. I had no idea where he was going with our conversation, for my brother can be quite the joker when he wants to be. But given the reason for our being in Rapid City, I refrained from ducking or doubting him. We had just attended the memorial service for Ryan, our 33 year-old nephew the day before, who was tragically killed in a long-boarding accident, and we were both still in a solemn mood. He pointed across the street, right in front of a bar within the hotel, and blurted out “It was right there!” He was already almost in tears. I stood respectfully, hoping he could hurry up and get it out. We had been walking with my wife and daughter, and they were getting away from us. But what he told me rocked my world, and everything stopped for a moment, and days later I am still occupied with it.

My brother had stumbled into a significant Divine Appointment at that spot in front of the bar. A couple of days earlier, he had found a popular taco stand there. After arriving in Rapid City, and registering at the hotel, he had stopped in the adjacent bar and like many smart travelers, inquired from the locals about a good place to get a bite to eat. They reassured him, the traveling taco stand out front was safe and a great place to start. This was just one tiny link in a long line of “coincidences.” But I might have have missed them all. I would never have gone into that bar and talked with the bartender in the first place. I therefore would never have eaten at the taco stand, since I would not have considered it as an option, with or without the bartender's assurances. But Reynolds went right where he was supposed to.

Before I go any farther, I need to introduce you to the messenger in this story: David, a kind of mortal angel. I do not know his last name. But I believe that God hand-picked David before the beginning of time to be an unwitting player in this story, an angel if you will. David is an African-American from San Antonio, Texas and is the owner and proprietor of the taco stand. My brother learned this when he explained to the taco man and his wife that he had high expectations about tacos, since he was from the place of origin of many taco-makers.

David countered that he had been orphaned as a child and raised by Hispanics in Texas, and knew well his trade. But more importantly, back to all of those “coincidences,” David was a strong believer in, and an obedient servant of Jesus Christ, and lived there in Rapid City, and when my brother told him why he was in town, the taco man was startled to a standstill. He looked into my brothers eyes with compassion and said, “It happened in front of my house.”

Of all of the people my brother could have run into, in a city of 76,000 people, just minutes after arriving, was one of the last people to see our nephew alive. And of all of the people that our nephew could have had his terrible, fatal accident in front of their home, he slipped and fell in front of David's home in the middle of the night. And of all of the people who might have heard something outside and who might or might not have checked it out, David ran out and found Ryan in the street with a horrible head wound. And there he and his wife prayed for the young man, until an ambulance arrived. Suddenly the tacos were merely incidental to both men as they talked about the tragedy.

As my brother told his story, tears ran down his face, and he had to try hard just to get the words out. And both of the men in this story had that problem at the taco stand as they discovered they both had a “coincidental” connection to the tragedy. Reynolds brought the news that Ryan has passed away from his injuries. David brought the comfort that the young man was in the presence of one of God's messengers as he was dying, and perhaps God had made one last invitation to draw Ryan into His Kingdom. What an amazing development, that Reynolds would find David, a veritable human needle in a haystack, almost immediately, and tell him of his grief, and David would be able to tell him everything he saw, and give him the assurance, that even as the young man's life ebbed away, a servant of Christ was right there within minutes, praying for him.

If you do not believe, this was just a meaningless coincidence. If you do believe, it means everything.

As a believer, the thing that struck me, a fact we know but tend to forget, that God is always about the business of ushering all of us into and through this life. He is always there, from the beginning until the end.

The world would shrug and call all of this some kind of uncanny coincidence. But the “World” also says that we evolved after “spontaneous generation” (something never witnessed to date) from single-cell organisms and millions of subsequent fortuitous mutations. The world clings to the idea that all life forms hinge on accidental serendipity, while little in Nature suggests it. The world does not want to perceive the beauty and magnificence and designs of God. So Man's science offers a different explanation for life and its origins which also requires a ton of faith. Each person has to choose for himself, which paradigm of chance he prefers. But those two Christian men at the taco stand knew that they were not experiencing a coincidence, but a string of God's directions which had led them to a little miracle in front of Paddy O'Neill's Irish Pub and Grill.

We don't know what David said while praying that night. We don't know whether Ryan could even hear him or not. But we know that God could. And sadly, we don't have any clue about the young man's spiritual position when he passed. He was taken to the hospital where they learned his spinal chord had been snapped and was irreparable. Whether or not he had heard anything, when he was put on the stretcher, whatever connection Ryan had to this life had probably already been terminated. It's not one of those stories with a miraculous happy ending. Only a story of God's omnipresent faithfulness. But maybe, just maybe He was able to get through those human organic limitations and appeal to Ryan's soul, still very much intact, as David prayed.

But we Christians do know this much, and it means a lot: No matter who you are, or what you have done, no matter what you are doing or what time of day it is, God is reaching for you till your very last breath. There is always a messenger. God never gives up. He loves all of us and wants us with him for eternity, but ultimately, he allows all of us to make that choice for ourselves. Jesus just said flatly, “Seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened, ask and it will be granted...” (my paraphrase). If you want to find God you will. If you want to find excuses not to, you can find them too.

And for those of us who cherish these and many other words of Jesus, who claimed to be Heaven's gatekeeper, our Faith grows exponentially when we see God's hand in our daily lives, in this case piles of stunning “coincidences” which tell us He is there, behind the scenes, making all things fall together with the same genius He used in all of Creation.

Our trip to South Dakota turned out to be a very special time for our family. Many friends and relations gathered there from all corners of the country. We were able to reconnect, and spend time together. We saw Mount Rushmore, and other beautiful sites unique to the area. I was able to climb a mountain there with my family, one called Mount Teddy Roosevelt, and once more imagine myself having lived as a Rocky Mountain pioneer. Such experiences have fed my art career for over half a century. By coming thousands of miles from every direction, each of us; cousins, siblings, ex-wives, grandparents, great aunts, parents and children, saw how much the others revered each member of our family. It was an outstanding expression of love and compassion, as we traveled so far to celebrate Ryan's life and also to “pay our last respects.” And yet none of it would ever have happened unless... Ryan crashed to his death that night. And Reynolds would never have discovered that chain of coincidences or experienced that glimpse into the intense involvement of God in every aspect of our lives. Our trip to South Dakota was for all practical purposes, a once-in-a-lifetime family reunion. It was a sweet time, and a rare time when nearly everyone could attend, and one of the largest Cushman gatherings in memory. With God's help, it became Ryan's last gift to all of us.

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Monday, September 6, 2021

The Rocks Will Speak...

We purchased a 2 acre lot next to our home... more to prevent an intrusion on our tranquility than anything... and lately we have been clearing some of the considerable dead-fall, trimming back treacherous, dead juniper branches, and killing the bountiful, lush poison ivy. The Texas Hill Country is beautiful, but is an uncanny combination of everything mean in Nature from both east and central Texas; prickly pear, yucca, barrel cactus, sumac, sticker vines, poison ivy, scorpions, copperheads, coral snakes and rattlesnakes... Never the less, I am like a city kid at summer camp, exploring its limitless mysteries.
I found an ancient triangular hearth built into the ground on the added acreage... and a few arrowheads and other ancient tools, and concluded that the land was once an Indian campground. And it probably was. But then, again on the new acreage, I found this peculiar, squared stone... too big for me to move by myself... a veritable cornerstone, resting for God knows how many years on the edge of our mesa, a rough geometric marker that suggested that people who worked stone had once been here. And that suggested Europeans, although Native Americans did build large structures out of stone in New Mexico and Arizona. This thing just said, “I am the only evidence of long-forgotten pioneers.”
They could have been Spanish missionaries, or Conquistadors, or way over-confident American “filibusters” starting an outpost. Anyway, this heavy, squared stone was sleeping deep in the brush, protected by a stand of poison ivy about six feet tall.
Perhaps a stonemason intended to build here... and something changed their plans. The stone would have been too heavy to relocate... so it was abandoned. Or perhaps there was a tragedy which changed their plans... and rather than being the beginning of something, it became the marker for the end of something... and it became a makeshift grave marker. Or maybe it is an old property marker... Or even all three. The answer may lie within a half-dozen strange mounds along the edge of the mesa... one straddled by some anciently dead mountain junipers, which sprouted, lived for a hundred years and then died a long, long time ago, all after the mound was made. It is marked by a rhomboidal limestone foot marker...
When I discovered the crudely worked stones, I got kind of excited... if only they could talk. But they might have told me of deadly confrontations with Comanches, or Mexican soldiers, or smallpox. If I am right, the mounds represent a small graveyard... for an ill-fated party of frontiersmen. Maybe a family; but strategically, lovingly placed in a beautiful spot overlooking the Nolan Valley, long before there were towns or cemeteries. Maybe before there was a Texas. And somebody found a suitable stone for their beloved, fallen patriarch, and squared it up, and hauled it up to the top of the mesa, and put it on this person's final resting place. A hard place to live... but a lovely spot to spend eternity.
Or maybe, on a more positive note, a nameless father of Texas placed it as his “ebeneezer stone.” Ebeneezer stones, basically monuments, were recorded in the Bible, where great men placed memorial stones to commemorate a great historic event, one where the positive outcome was attributed to Divine intervention...
I can't even sing completely through one of my favorite songs which mentions the ebeneezer stone... (Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing) It literally chokes me up every time I hear it. In my mind, and it is probably just my imagination, the first time I ever heard it was while standing next to my grandfather at the funeral of his favorite aunt, at his home church in Bradley County, Arkansas, and watching him sing it as his shameless tears whetted the floor. The name of the church? Ebeneezer Baptist Church. Planted memorial stones were part of his ancient Scot-Irish heritage, going way beck to the Celts, and their dolmens and such. People have left or planted stones to leave a lasting mark on this changing planet since the beginning. Some were huge, like at Stonehenge- but most were like this...
So now I look forward to occasionally visiting the old cornerstone, and studying and wondering about it... and meditating. It sits on an angle... almost as if it had sunk a little, or once been a standing ebeneezer stone and gradually fell over. But it is perfect now, just the way it is. **************************************************************************************************** There is something about a tangible relic to help abstract things make more sense. That old rock was hewn and planted so long ago... and nobody ever repurposed it, nobody ever moved it, (nobody could lift it!) nobody even knew it existed. But at one time, to someone, for a day or so, it was the most important project in the valley. It may have been intended, God willing, to be the cornerstone of a fortress, or it may have marked the grave of an Hidalgo, a Spanish Nobleman. But God allowed whatever it was to become a mystery, an unwritten footnote in history. A discarded cornerstone.
Or maybe, Nature just made a square rock, and it has always been there. Whatever the case, there are thousands of rocks on the earth with a similar mystery, with similarly intriguing and yet unknown stories. But I don't believe that the stone just happened. It had one meaning when it was made, and now it has another, to the one who found it. Ever since I learned about that very first sign above, I have learned to watch for messages from my Creator...
Hewn stones kind of speak to me. Especially ones that are associated with some historic place... some long-forgotten happening. I love to make up stories to explain them... But the Bible actually provides great references and allusions to memorial stones. Joshua had twelve stones placed in the Jordan, one for each tribe, as memorials for when Israel crossed the river, but the prophet Samuel is credited with raising the first official “ebeneezer,” translated as stone of help, as a reminder of God's powerful assistance in Israel's survival and victory against the Philistines. But neither of them ever heard these words... a relatively contemporary folk song, the one that always gets to me: **************************************************************************************************** Come Thou Fount of every blessing Tune my heart to sing Thy grace; ************************************************************************************************* Streams of mercy, never ceasing, Call for songs of loudest praise ************************************************************************************************** Teach me some melodious sonnet, Sung by flaming tongues above. *************************************************************************************************** Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it, Mount of God's unchanging love. *************************************************************************************************** Here I raise my Ebeneezer; Hither by Thy help I'm come; *************************************************************************************************** And I hope, by Thy good pleasure, Safely to arrive at home. *************************************************************************************************** Jesus sought me when a stranger, Wandering from the fold of God; **************************************************************************************************** He, to rescue me from danger, Interposed His precious blood. **************************************************************************************************** O to grace how great a debtor Daily I'm constrained to be! **************************************************************************************************** Let that grace now like a fetter, Bind my wandering heart to Thee. **************************************************************************************************** Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love; **************************************************************************************************** Here's my heart, O take and seal it, Seal it for Thy courts above. **************************************************************************************************** **************************************************************************************************** Yes... prone to wander. Prone to leave the God I love. And that is partly why we all need to plant an ebeneezer stone. It is a marker in your life to represent your gratitude and commitment to God. It means that the same God who made this incredible world can be called upon and trusted in our lives. I was lazy, so I just adopted a boulder (below)... I call it my prayer rock.
But I know what you are asking right now... Russell, that is a nice song, but what in the heck is a fetter? I knew you were wondering... it is a restraint... you know like a shackle or a chain. Slave chains were fetters. And this song is asking God to chain Himself to us! Or at least to our hearts. Imaginary chains... And I believe that a person can raise an ebeneezer in his heart as well. **************************************************************************************************** But this stone represents even more to me than an ebeneezer, as great as that was, or could be. Even with all of that great Old Testament symbolism, which spoke of planted stones as reminders, there is something greater in the stone... an Eternal, personal challenge. **************************************************************************************************** Because Jesus spoke of himself... as a the “cornerstone which the builders had rejected.” And ultimately that is what this stone means to me, sitting in a timeless jungle, abandoned and unused. It is still an ebeneezer, reminding those who come upon it that things never go as planned, tragedy sometimes marks life like the seasons... and in the end no aspiration, no achievement really matters- only what we individually decide to do with that Cornerstone. The “Chief Cornerstone.” Did we elect to build on it... or did we reject it and trust in something else? Is it laying askew in the forest of our hearts?
So many ebeneezers dot the planet... evidence of power schemes and grand visions and good intentions, many of their stories lost forever. But somehow, the legend, the history, the truth of the Rejected Cornerstone still lives. And that shady spot in my yard now has become hallowed ground to me... almost Holy. It's as if the Lord... Jesus, the Creator of the Universe and the Savior of my soul, knew all of this, all along... and arranged it, and brought us here, to give us a special home... with a special message from Christ, to be discovered nestled in the woods... Waiting... Perhaps after centuries... Knowing that I would have to kill that horrible poison ivy, and as it cleared out the stone would emerge. And, well, speak to me. **************************************************************************************************** When I see that stone... the scriptures below line up to explain what I feel running through my mind: You see, the predictions of the prophets came true, and deadly persecutions by an apostate Israel- left the building- to us. ****************************************************************************************************** Psalm 118:22 The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. ****************************************************************************************************** Isaiah 28:16 So this is what the Lord GOD says: "See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation; the one who believes will never be shaken. ****************************************************************************************************** Mark 12:10 Have you never read this Scripture: 'The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. ****************************************************************************************************** Luke 20:17 But Jesus looked directly at them and said, "Then what is the meaning of that which is written: 'The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone'? ****************************************************************************************************** Acts 4:11 This Jesus is 'the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone.' ****************************************************************************************************** Romans 9:33 as it is written: "See, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense; and the one who believes in Him will never be put to shame." **************************************************************************************************** The abandoned stone in my yard means all of this... and more; that most people miss the point of the Rejected Cornerstone... the point of those scriptures, the point which God was making through hundreds of amazing subtleties in the scriptures, the point of LIFE.
And perhaps it is a message... to me, to us; that no matter how discouraged, or old we may get, to keep on... to finish the race... to be on the lookout for new foundations upon which to build; To do whatever we can to prevent our best efforts from being lost causes or false starts... abandoned corner stones. Ruins. **************************************************************************************************** Jesus, who was the Messiah, was unfortunately the “stone of stumbling” and “rock of offense” for the First-Century Jews, who were the puffed-up builders of the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem, the end-all of religious practice. But their temple was only to last for a few more decades. God was unveiling a new covenant, starting with Jesus as the eternal cornerstone of the family of God, as he had been since the beginning of time. The rejection of His Kingdom, even His profound spiritual foundations, was merely a temporary delay which serendipitously facilitated the incorporation of all peoples into His Church. And as Jesus claimed that His Kingdom was not of this world, we who believe and follow Him are conversely only passing through this world as well, and are naturalized citizens of Heaven. We are not to worry too much about earthly things. Like politics or building worldly kingdoms. As the Bible says, it is all “hay and stubble.” It will all be blown away or destroyed one day.
It is not important what stones we turn, or hew here, or where we place them, but how we prepare ourselves and others for that ultimate destination, where none of our earthly striving will matter.
Linda and I are wrapping up a minimal refinement of the top of our section of the mesa, and have another acre or so to go, which constitutes a sharp limestone bluff, covered with mountain junipers. I hope to leave a large portion just the way it is; ancient and mysterious. It is littered with ancient juniper branches, bleached white like the bones left from some prehistoric battle. And there are piles of worked rock rubble; thousands of years of fractured chert left from generations of arrowhead production. And I have found a long, peculiar pile of large, unmolested rocks and small boulders, perhaps fifty feet long, where people in the past seemed to have been trying to make some kind of crude rampart, a defensive wall, as if they were expecting an attack. If stones were not being used to memorialize, they were usually being stacked as protection from enemies. We build monuments and castles and bridges... homes and public buildings... out of stone. Anything we plan to depend on. But you never hear much discussion about their cornerstones. Its a function lost to modern architecture. The significance of the alegory of the Rejected Cornerstone was lost with it. But here, in my yard, are ancient symbols of man's warlike nature, the weapons of self-defense, the memorials to the dead, and God's oft rejected alternative of Grace and Peace.
I never had a yard before with so much to tell. Last year I unearthed a three-inch chert knife, perhaps a spear point, chipped-up and driven into the bluff with considerable force... Was it a weapon thrown at an enemy? Dulled and broken, perhaps it was impaled between the layers of limestone during a battle. When I found it, I imagined a Plains warrior lunging after a Spanish soldier, his stone blade deflected by a superior steel sword, and his weapon thrust into the ground right before he died defending his home... The typical violence of clashing cultures. If these rocks could only speak...
Jesus once claimed to the Pharisees, (the “builders,” who wanted his followers to be censored), that if somehow his disciples could be silenced, the rocks would cry out instead. I believe that, and I just wish they would quietly tell me what was going on here!
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Tuesday, November 3, 2020

A barrage of "signs": The Mystery of the Rocking Pig...

 

I've often been accused by my friends of “reading too much into the tea leaves.” So be it. It is because I believe that God shows us signs constantly, if we are paying attention, and He might use an infinite number of things to guide us. If we care to be guided. According to the Bible, God started out man's second chance to exist with a sign, a rainbow... and a promise.


I have had the pleasure of recognizing many signs during my life. God has used road signs, folder spills and even racoons to send me thoughts and directions. I have made many “life decisions” after deep prayer and then opening up for God's direction. I have never seen a thing in the tea leaves, but then I hardly ever drink tea. God speaks to us in a particular language by manipulating things we are familiar with... in noteworthy juxtapositions that we can hardly ignore. I should write a book about it. But suffice to say that I do not believe in accidents or coincidences...


Usually, when somebody else tells me about a sign they have experienced, I feel like they are nuts. Everybody's connection and relationship with God is unique and different. I only know what has happened to me. Friends have told me of literal angels appearing, or visions of spirits or a “giant eye.” Mine are not like that. They are usually allegories drawn from nature. Or bizarre groupings or sudden appearances of symbolic features on the landscape, which if they are applied, are amazingly germane to some prayer concern of mine.


I have probably misread some, or seen significance in some random things that were not God-sent, for sure. But several times during our marriage, God has shown my wife and I a path through some difficulty after we prayed together about it. I'm talking important things, like jobs and homes and relocating across the state. And he has often used actual “signs.”

So last August when I looked up into the night sky as I often do... I've had some great talks with God while doing so... I saw an amazing configuration. I had to go look it up on the Internet. Jupiter and Saturn were very close to the Moon. It turned out that this year has been a special year, featuring a rare and unusual dance between Jupiter and Saturn, closer to one another this year than they have been in 400 years. And as they “danced” by the Moon for a few days, it was stunning.


There are astrological interpretations of the significance of these celestial rendezvous, the Moon being the mother, Jupiter the father and ruler, and Saturn the planetary representative for duty and justice and wisdom. Who knows... lots of possibilities could be extrapolated from that. But as soon as I saw these three together, I thought about the “Wise Men,” who came from the far east to find and pay tribute to the Christ Child. Again, God speaks to us in terms we are familiar with. He told the Persian astrologers that a king was coming in Judea... a possible savior of the world, as Jupiter (royalty) was passing through Leo (Lion of Judah)... Somehow a virgin was involved, because Jupiter then was associated with Virgo. It was a huge, nightly billboard pointing to a messiah in or near Jerusalem. Familiar with ancient Jewish traditions and texts they knew, the “wise men” knew that if HE was really coming, he would be born in Bethlehem.


Ironically, perhaps by design, the Jews were forbidden to study astrology, and did not get the memo. But Gentiles were obsessed with the stars, and God knew it, and He spoke to them in symbols they understood. And they came from thousands of miles away to see the Messiah. These constellations were such topics of controversy, the Parthian Kings, some with Jewish ancestry, had been overthrowing one another, claiming the signs were validating them. But today we do not even know their names. Legends still persist to this day in Iran about John the Baptist and his cousin, Jeshua, and the impact they had on Persian Magi who came back with amazing stories. It all started with well-placed, fairly easily interpreted signs.


Anyway, I ignored the Moon/Jupiter/Saturn gathering, not knowing what to make of it. But Americans might read the astronomical events as affirmation of a world leader and his bride, persons who possess wisdom and discipline and who will achieve justice and prosperity... not a bad caption for the Trumps.

But strictly hokus pokus...

BUT THEN... In mid-September... just a couple of weeks later, this incredible, giant boletus mushroom- the biggest one I have ever seen, popped up in our front yard... and not just anywhere, right outside my office window. This thing was seven inches in diameter! Mushrooms have always been messengers of coming prosperity... if you are a witch and believe such things. There were smaller mushrooms all over the yard. Then an even bigger one popped up a few yards from the first one, right in our lantana bed. I took a walk around the mesa, to see if there was some kind of mushroom Burning Man thing going on... but ours were the thickest and the biggest. But Hey, we are talking fungus here. So what, if they say this kind of mushroom gathering only happens every five or six years...

AND THEN, the weirdest thing of all. I'm sitting in my armchair at the end of the day. My brain is dead, and I am just waiting to nod off or eat supper. Then I notice... a strange light undulating on my wooden rocking pig which decorates our fireplace hearth. There is no light on in the room. So I look back, across the house to see if there is some kind of bizarre reflection which could be shooting light across the living room on to the pig. The SUN, about to go down, was shooting through a bunch of trees, over the mushrooms, through the office window, through the office, the office door, across the living room, over the top of the couch, and hitting the pig with a perfect perpendicular ray, filtered by the windblown trees outside. The next day was a repeat, but not quite as accurate, so Sept 27 was officially named Solar Pigstace Day.


But I have no idea what that means.

Alignments. Stars. I have no idea... The next day we saw a number of Indian Paintbrushes, normally a profuse spring flower, popping up along the roadside... and on our property. In September. OK, so the rains confused them. The cool weather, the four or five inches of rain... but what got my attention was the places they sprouted... often right out of a thick layer of limestone gravel. Beauty and germination in the bleakest of places. Everything seemed to pointing to the pin-point precision, the perfection and sufficiency of God's Creation. Giant fungi just a few feet from my desk... A random sun-ray threading through my house, to envelop a beloved carving at my feet. It seemed nature was doing everything it could to say, “It's OK, everything is lined up, everything is working just as it should.”

We love the deer in our neighborhood. They have forty or fifty acres to romp in on the adjoining property. One morning we saw two deer during our two-mile walk. We had walked right past them, but did not see them, and they did not run away. When we got to the farthest point of our walk, and turned around... and there they were. They were like a painting, one with the strong light illuminating her like a light bulb. I wondered how many wonderful things we walk past and never see. How many things in Nature see us, but we never see them. Whenever the deer come through the yard, we always go watch them, as if it was the first time.


When the news broke about the President and his wife having the Covid virus, I said a special prayer at breakfast. We just trusted the Trumps, and our whole country in fact, into God's hands. The God who made this wonderful, beautiful world knows all about it. His Grace is sufficient.



Just a few minutes after breakfast, I was looking out one of the east windows, and about to remark that the deer would be changing their feeding habits, with the increase of predation in the fall. About that time a six-point buck climbed up the mesa into our back yard. He stayed and grazed a long time. To me, it was God saying. “Yes, everything is under control. Enjoy this young buck, without blemish, my perfect messenger.”


Just a few days later, I noticed the semi-annual alignment of the rising sun with the skyline of Temple, Texas. Solar Pigstace was just the precursor for this beautiful sight, often obscured in the autumn by fog or clouds. But not this year... a year of signs.

I have no conclusions about these signs. They are comforting, yet quickening in a way- they say to me “pay attention!”. When God found us this place on the mesa, high above the world, it immediately felt as if we were looking across mankind, the busy world “out there,” and I felt a kind of... removal from it all. I often say that God “plucked us out” of our old situation. Linda agrees. My heart needed a rest... literally and figuratively. Now I have woods to stroll in, a favorite boulder to meditate and pray on... many animals to watch and learn from. And wild, inspiring sunsets and sunrises. So I may just be seeing more “signs” because I am constantly opening myself to them... in a place where Nature can speak quite eloquently. But then... that rocking pig... caught perfectly in a celestial alignment... as if the Knights Templar had built our house! I'm telling you, seeing that was as exciting as the mysterious alignment in the famous ancient stone tower in Rhode Island.


This world... and the Universe, are like a humongous clock, built to perfection, and even the doings of man fit into it in a marvelous way... or at least sometimes they can... perhaps when built according to God's Will. And I have to believe, that God would not send so much assurance, so much comfort to my conscious mind, if it was some kind of empty promise. The signs have been positive and encouraging. The opposite of the lies and hysteria on Network Television. Perhaps the same kinds of signs that lured the Wise men to Judea are still being broadcast today. When spring flowers burst from the rocks in September, when all of Nature testifies of God's perfect plan, and even silly wive's tales verify hope in the future, why not just go with it?


When God allowed “Cyrus the Great” to take control of Persia, it was an essential part of His plan to restore the Jews to Israel. Cyrus should be pronounced with a hard K, so the great Persian ruler was actually Kurush. Cyrus supposedly meant “sun.” So the Persian ruler was associated with the center and power and light of the Universe. And in fact for a time he served that very purpose. He was not a Jew, not a leader of the Hebrews... yet he has been remembered for millennia by them as one anointed, a liberator, a re-builder of their worship and way of life. It was during his third year in power that God gave amazing visions to Daniel, who must have somehow let him know of their content. He ultimately set the Jews free to return to Jerusalem and financed their revival. He reversed a great injustice, and prepared Israel for the return of its Messiah.


This counter-intuitive method is an established trend in God's political strategy, to often use a great leader, even a pagan one to be his agent. This was much the case in the great achievements of Constantine. Signs played a large role in these men's thoughts and deeds. They were powerful, unstoppable, disrupters of the status quo. Constantine saw a giant cross in the sky, and read “In this sign conquer.” And he did, maybe more obediently than a life-long disciple of Christ. Certainly more ruthlessly. But he changed the course of history.


From Moses till today, God has chosen to use unlikely, uninitiated messengers. His anointed leaders are rarely from the establishment, but are more often from obscure or unglamorous origins. He would pick a Peter over a Paul any day... and if he picks a Paul, he will be a broken, repentant one. And when he picks his man, no man, no woman can stand against him. When God has some big thing in mind... like setting the captives free, or salvation of mankind... or Christianizing all of Europe... he picks a strong, almost inhumanly resolute person... someone who will follow through, and not run from trouble like Noah or David.


Moses had a burning bush, and water out of a ROCK, and a staff that turned into a snake... he enjoyed lots of amazing and bizarre signs. It is doubtful that he would ever have risen to power without God's help and insistence, guided by signs. Peter, an impetuous fisherman, was the “rock” upon whom Jesus said he would build his church. Boorish and unschooled, he is still considered by many Christians to be the founding Apostle of the Faith. He was also shown amazing signs... walking on water was only one. Jesus gathered a whole gang of these kinds of men... working men, only a few of his disciples were men of letters. Action was paramount, the parables and miraculous accounts could be written down later. Talk is cheap. God loves an action man. His chosen leaders are often not men of words or gifted in speech. But they go. They do. And they usually offend everybody when they do.


Moses died without many friends. Most of the Prophets did. Doing God's bidding is basically the “foolish” confounding the “wise,” and can be very unpopular at the time; Justice to be imposed on a dark, corrupt world. Power and authority stood on its head. It's not a job for a sissy. Not a task for the insecure.


So what if Donald Trump is this kind of leader? He certainly fits the mold. If so, he will be re-elected and totally exasperate his enemies. He still has work to do. He may have no idea that his success is not him, but a greater power... who is, well, using him. No doubt God has recruited him in this quest with signs he could read- as clearly as those which prompted great iconoclasts of the past. Maybe someday he will share those signs, which put a profane, ungodly hedonist, oafish and course in speech, in a great struggle, perhaps the greatest battle to restore America's moral compass.



P.S.: Days past as I pondered whether or not to post this blog. Signs for me may have been meant for no one else. Perhaps it was all too personal, and worse, subjective. Then election day finally came. The sun came up, glorious as if for the first time. 


The eastern star... the Star of Hope- glistened above as the sun highlighted a humble Hill Country shrub, laden with winged seeds ready to fly with the wind into infinity.


AND!... And... and angels had left their doodles in the western sky... which could not help but signify (to me) the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, Jesus, hanging on the cross... among thieves. He came for all of us. No matter how flawed or sinful. In seconds I was witnessing an epic light show, a heavenly illustration of the Alpha and the Omega. The great eternal truths of our universe... signs that God is near... in control, and there are no surprises in this world... for our Creator.


It easy to take heart, when you believe. It is easy then to dismiss most coincidences, and see meaning in so many otherwise mundane things. It easy to imagine that the God of this universe is speaking... through all of them- if we choose to listen... to read and receive these wonderful signs. AND HERE'S THE BEAUTIFUL PART... MANY OF THEM ARE OUT THERE EVERY DAY!

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