Where Have I Been?

 

I'm not here, but I'm close.... real close 

Where Have I Been?

About a year ago I gave up.  The only thing I could write about is the church, which is supposed to be the physical image of God on this earth, literally going straight to hell lead by their perfectly  coiffed grinning, greedy "pastors". These "pastors" have read the bible enough to sound like they know what they're talking about when they intentionally falsify God's word in order to line their pockets with cash, but it is more important (to them) to get you to worship THEM rather than God. Give it a try! Write about the lies and nonsense that Steven Furtick pours out upon the bio-mass that fills his goat barn every Sunday and see what attacks you get from people that have no clue about what God really said. And YES I SAID IT, I said bio-mass, they're not people, a PERSON would have picked up a bible and doublechecked what Furtick spewed out. A PERSON would have walked out when Furtick committed narcissgesis and injected himself into the bible. Instead they attack whomever points out Furtick's pastoral crimes like good little acolytes. Thanks to Steven Furtick they're now just bio-mass getting ready to fuel the furnaces of hell.

I should have been writing about God's word, I should have been explaining to those that were seeking Him and what He said, but instead I end up motivated trying to untangle the LIES and Deceitfulness of self appointed "pastors" who twist God's word to aggrandize themselves. To these psudo-preachers it's 1. all about worshiping the psudo-preacher, 2. writing checks to the psudo-preacher, and 3. hating the neighbor who isn't part of your cult. 

Take Golden Goat winner from 2015, Mark Sandlin. Uberleftist Mark Sandlin is probably still celebrating January 20th with masturbatory glee because it's all about the politics, not about GOD. Mark even re-wrote Matthew 25:31-33 putting the sheep to God's left because MARK SANDLIN is on the left, so GOD obviously made a mistake, and he took away Jesus' deity because EVERYONE made a mistake elevating Jesus to godhood without Mark Sandlin's permission. 

After I pointed out Mark's false teachings he wrote to me, telling me all about his superior intellect and understanding of the people rather than the bible, and then told me how he was going to be just like Jesus and go out drinking with his flock. No Mark, Jesus did not go out drinking with drunks, he did not shoot up drugs with addicts, he did not sleep with prostitutes. He warned them about their sins and told them to clean up their acts, something you don't have the courage to do. What you do for mankind Mr, Sandlin, is to prove that God is right:

1 But false prophets also appeared among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. 2 Many will follow their indecent behavior, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned; 3 and in their greed they will exploit you with false words; their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep. (2 Peter 2:1-3)

There is a special hell for false teachers, and if they believed a word of the bible, they would be aware of their coming fate and repent; but how many do you see repenting? These people are just like the false prophets of the Church Of Climate Catastrophe, they warn you the "little people" that you must stop driving cars, stop heating your homes, and stop eating beef to SAVE THE PLANET, then they hop in their private jets and blast their way to Barbados to spend your cash on their pleasure. They don't believe the "science" of what they told you, any more than Beth Moore believes the word of God is actually the word of God. I was filled with so much disgust at the antics of these false teachers I could no longer find the peace and tranquility I once found in delving in the word and expounding on what I learned, so I  slowed down and eventually stopped writing this blog in April 2020. 

I didn't quit writing all together, in the background I was (and still am) writing a silly story that no one will ever see but it would possibly make a saccharine sweet Hallmark Christmas movie. I think God wanted me to take some time and concentrate on my own issues, and kept me writing in the background just to keep my brain moving.

Dateline: Brighton Colorado, January 2020

I have been on oxygen for half a decade due to a rare condition called Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension. PAH is high blood pressure inside my lungs which causes high blood pressure inside my heart. Something clogs the pulmonary arteries which causes the blood pressure to rise and prevents oxygen rich blood from reaching the body. To us PAH sufferers it feels like our lungs are working just fine, we feel the air going in and out, it's just not... working. My medical miracle workers measure my blood pressure inside my heart with an echo cardiogram (ECG) on a regular basis, but they get a truly accurate reading through a right side heart catheter (RCH). A normal reading on an RCH is 8 to 15, I believe my last one was 38, and compared to some of my fellow PAH PHighters, mine is low. 

If I measure my BP with an arm cuff the average reading is 100/60 so I don't have high blood pressure.

I'm a carrier, I give high blood pressure to other people.

(I made that line up, you can use it if you want)  

At this point I honestly believe it was caused by COPD, but in reality I have WHO Group 4 Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension, my lungs are filled with blood clots causing the PAH. If you put a Pulse/OX on your finger while watching TV you'll measure 98% or 99%, I'll measure 95%. If you get up and walk your blood oxygen level might drop to 97%, mine will drop to 90% or lower, and that's dangerous. 

In January in Colorado we just had a heavy, wet snow and I'm out there, wearing an oxygen tank on my back, shoveling my driveway, gasping for air like a landed tuna. Not a young man with a shovel in sight to help a disabled veteran, that's too much like work for the youth of Colorado, so I'm shoveling the driveway by hand. I don't know why, I'm unemployed and living on social security disability, I have nowhere to go and nothing to spend.

My neighbor's son-in-law arrives home from work and asks how I'm doing. I say "I've spent all of my adult life in Buffalo New York, Minot North Dakota, and Denver Colorado, I'm done with winter. Sixty two years and I've spent all of those years with a snow shovel in my hand. Wanna buy a house?"

"How much?" he asks

I mention the fair market value of my house, to which he responds "Sold." Such is the real estate market in the Denver area. I could have put it on the market and started a bidding war, but he's a good kid and his wife watches my grandson.

Dateline: Terra del Trementina Florida, June 2020

Selling the house in Brighton was quick and easy, the realtor was a friend so it was just a few (dozen) signatures and closing was complete. Closing on the house here in Turpentine FL actually happened up in Denver, then we loaded up the RV and headed south. Once here, the first thing I did was turn off the oxygen machine, I don't need it, mostly. The air pressure here at an altitude of 49 feet is sufficient for me to function without supplemental oxygen, so I didn't have to move 1,750 miles to Florida; I just had to move one mile - straight down.

I have nicknamed this new residence Terra del Trementina, Land of Turpentine because this area was founded on turpentine. A captain in the confederate army, Guyler Walter Hilliard, leased huge tracts of land (Monty Python allusion intended) that were covered with huge pine trees. He cut those trees and became a leading producer of turpentine and lumber. Today the land is still covered with pine trees, tree farms cover the area and the trees are harvested for use at a box factory out on nearby Amelia Island. I live in a weird little corner of Florida that extends up into Georgia. I've got Georgia 10 miles to the north of me and 10 miles to the west of me. Directly to the west is the Okefenokee Swamp, home of Pogo. It's said that the gators in the Okefenokee are well fed with troublemakers. This is not said as a threat, especially not to those who would come down here with the idea of taking our constitutional freedoms away. It's more like... advice.

I miss the mountains, but they've been closed off to me for years, traveling upward past an altitude exceeding 8,500 feet is hazardous to me even on oxygen, and 8,500 feet is where the mountains I love to travel in begin. The Georgetown Loop Railroad starts at 8,500 feet and claws its way up the mountain gaining 1,000 feet in just 3 miles and the ride is spectacular. I tried to take the ride every year until 2016 when the docs all said "Stop".

It wasn't easy to leave my home in Brighton CO. It was so hard to say goodbye to my friends at the Colorado Model Railroad Museum, even harder to say goodbye to my brothers and sisters at Zion Congregational Church, but the hardest of all was saying goodbye to the doctors and nurses at National Jewish Health who worked so hard to keep me alive. I stay in touch with them, and luckily, one doctor has remained on my team.

Dateline: Terra del Trementina Florida, February 2021

A few days ago I spent the morning inspecting my gardens wondering what I lost; while  North America suffered a debilitating winter storm, NoFlo (North Florida) had a few hard freezes. All the plants I planted to attract hummingbirds were gone, even my Christmas Cactus lost their fight against the freeze. Covering the plants did nothing, a cover just keeps the frost off the plants. These were hard, 25 degree freezes. As I tallied the damage my neighbors daughter stopped by on her way to school and found a disk of ice floating on the top of my bird bath. Having never seen a freeze in her life (true Florida girl) she couldn't imagine ice in the wild. If you're born and raised in NoFlo and only 9 years old, you tend to believe that ice in its natural state is cube shaped and only exists in glasses of cola, lemonade, and ice tea. Rogue ice is found bagged and in coolers out front of the Marathon gas station. She played with that disk of ice until her fingertips numbed, amazed that a piece of ice could be as big as a wall mirror.

Later in the day I came home from the local Ace Hardware (a refuge for us old survivors on the St. Mary's frontier) I flicked on the truck radio to listen to Rush. He hadn't been on the past few days so I was expecting to hear Mark Steyn,. Come to think of it, I hadn't heard Rush since Christmas. I always make an effort to listen to Rush's Christmas monologue, he was always so grateful to God and his audience. Rush introduced me to Manheim Steamroller long before they became popular. Instead I heard his wife, Kathryn Limbaugh. 

I love Kathryn Limbaugh. After three failed marriages, Rush finally found the love of his life, and you could hear the joy in his voice whenever she was mentioned. And she's a direct descendent of President John Adams to boot. Anyone who knows Rush's love of America and American history knows that this was doubly endearing to Rush. She even published a series of children's books with her husband, The Great One, books that explain American history to children. Books that are now on my grandchildren's Christmas list now that they're old enough to understand.

I knew exactly what Kathryn was going to speak about even before she said a word. And when she did, confirming my sorrowful suspicions, my heart sank. I sat stunned in my beat up ol' redneck pickup truck in my gravel driveway, my injured wife convalescing hundreds of miles away, my injured mother-in-law convalescing in the house, my neighbor's nine-year-old daughter waiting for me to pick her up from school, all depending on me, and I can help them, but I couldn't help the man who meant the most to me, my mentor was gone. 

It was that point where God put his hand on my shoulder and said "Saddle up son, it's time to get back on the pony." So here I am, back in my blog, on the cutting edge of societal evolution, my personal prohibition on political discussion is gone. If I have to show Satan's course through every mumbling, stumbling, babbling utterance of Slow Joe Beijing Biden I will, and I will be sure to show him and his administration all the adoration and respect that Satan's horde showed President Donald J. Trump.