The first railroad chartered in the United States was the Baltimore and Ohio. Charles Carroll, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, turned the first spadeful of earth on July 4, 1828. On May 10, 1869, the last golden spike was driven into the newly completed transcontinental railroad built by the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific.

During this period, on May 24, 1844, Alfred Vail was stationed at the Mount Clare railroad depot in Baltimore, Maryland. He decoded the famous telegraph message “What hath God Wrought?” It was sent by Samuel Morse from the Supreme Court chamber of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.

During the Civil War, telegraphy played a strategic role giving Commanders the ability to communicate with their troops almost instantly. After the war, telegraph wires were strung across our vast continent along the same lines used by the railroads. When congress declared railroad companies to be common carriers in the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, telegraph lines were an integral part of railroad operations. As other telecommunications services evolved, their infrastructure was effectively grandfathered into the rights of way used by the railroads.

A common carrier had been previously defined as any business entity whose main commercial activity is transporting things on behalf of people. For example one requirement has been that common carriers, in the shipping industry, would charge the same price to transport one pound of gold, one pound of fertilizer, or one pound of printed material. Moving different products that weighed the same, and packaged in the same size container, would cost the same amount of money to ship.

In accordance with the General Railroad Right-of-Way Act of 1875, the federal government granted railroad companies rights of way across the United States. By connecting the coasts over thousands of miles, rights of way served to promote the country’s economic development and westward expansion. A right of way is a type of easement granted or reserved over the land for transportation purposes, such as a highway, public footpath, rail transport, canal, oil and gas pipelines, electrical transmission lines, and message communications lines.

Rights-of-Way, commonly referred to as ROWs, are granted to serve the public good and the overall competitiveness of our country’s enterprises. In the case of the ROWs granted to the railroads, when the line is further developed or abandoned, two questions that loom large involve ancillary uses of any Right-of-Way held by the railroads.

The railroads, as common carriers, have routinely sold access to their ROWs and retained those proceeds rather than pass them to either the land owner or to the public treasury. This gives rise to certain controversies the courts must resolve, especially in light of the fact that a select few Internet Services Providers (ISPs) have fought long and hard to the effect that they are no longer classified as common carriers.

On March 10, 2014, the Supreme Court, in Marvin M. Brandt Revocable Trust et al. v. United States, held in an 8-1 decision that the right of way for an abandoned rail line goes to the party that owns the land underneath. This decision, concerning just one type of change in circumstances, may have applications or implications with respect to others, such as when a Right-of-Way user is no longer classified as a common carrier. Here are two possibilities:

• First, a conversion whereby the railroad sells access to the ROW, without compensation to the land owner, may expose the railroad or the government to a takings claim under the Fifth Amendment. This would be more likely in the case of non-common carriers due to their implicitly diminished public benefit value. Should this thinking prove meritorious, any use of the ROW, not specifically related to the control of the railroad itself, should inure to the benefit of the original property owner or, in the alternative, the public treasury.

• Second, when the communications companies are no longer common carriers, they no longer merit special access to any of the ROWs and easements that are set aside for a public benefit. Placing this question before federal, state, and local governments could and should expose the ISPs to an endless array of challenges to both their natural monopoly and their public utility status. If they are not common carriers, how does this affect their eligibility for pole attachments or other access to utility Rights of Way. And, with so many ISPs in competition for that business, why should a few large incumbents enjoy superior rights over those of any startup.

In the second example, the ISPs would undoubtably argue that the public does receive a benefit from their commercial operations. Any competent advocate for the public might stipulate there is a public benefit now ancillary to the ISPs newly defined commercial operations. To be sure, there is a public benefit for most commercial operations, such as when the pocket-picking organ grinder’s monkey brings a smile to the faces of children.

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Continuing our discussion of gasification, we will touch upon moving vehicle engines as well as stationary engines like generators. We will further explore some of the factors to be considered in the conversion of petrol to wood gas with additional emphasis on the combustion energy produced and efficiencies in particular. We will discuss wood stoves and how those functions differ from the requirements of internal combustion engines and we will consider some of the environmental factors as they relate to gasification. Here again is Dr. Richard Bates.

At this point the conversation turned to how gasification can help in leveraging the waste stream and, in particular, how it can play a role in both waste management and its elimination. We will cover that in part 3 and, along with avoiding disposal costs, we will discuss generating electricity, and a useful byproduct called biochar. In part 4 we will turn our attention once again to the engine questions and specifically the problems associated with converting various engine types to make use of these different kinds of biomass.

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One of the things those called to ministry do is an exercise called The River of Life. In it we are asked: “If you were able to compare your life with a river, what would the river look like?” The exploration became even more meaningful to me, and intensely personal, as the following four additional questions were presented.

• When and where are the smooth, flowing waters – those times when events and relationships seem generally positive or there is a sense of ease about life? 

• When does the river take a sudden turn (and what caused the turn), or change from smooth waters to rough, tumbling rapids, or to an excited rush of water?

• Are there rocks or boulders falling into your river – unexpectedly landing there, changing its direction forever?

• Are there points at which it flows powerfully and purposefully or seems to slow to a trickle?

At one retreat we were asked to present drawings of our rivers. I was surprised as the youngest among us held up sketches that seemed very short whereas mine had two pages of tributaries. Then again, I’m sure our angels were amused by the fact that, on the scale of Eternity, I somehow thought my life was long.

The tributaries for my river featured the occasional puddle that I associated with being house broken. There were also refreshing springs that I remember as sweet tasting. But, by far, the thing I remember most is people, from all walks of life, talking to me. These were the babbling brooks. And I wasn’t listening. Well, every once in awhile a message might seep in.

I distinctly remember the phrase “You’re not listening!” as spoken by my parents, my teachers, and many others in authority over me. As I reflect upon these earliest impressions, I realize I wasn’t really goal oriented but, in light of how God has ordered my steps, I’m hesitant to characterize my life as one of aimless wandering.

When I decided I really wanted something, I was willing to work hard to get it. When I found a radio station that I really liked, I developed the strategy, mapped the tactics, and secured the licensing necessary to have them give me a job. In between high school and my all too brief college career, I literally rocked around the clock with afternoon shows. an all night show and another one on Saturday mornings. I was high on sleep deprivation and little white pills. Then it all came crashing down as my high school sweetheart dumped me. My immediate response was to go into the station’s record library and pull every love song I had ever heard. Friends and other listeners described the six-hour show as a rock opera. For me, one song in particular stood out. It was by Simon and Garfunkel and included the chorus “I’ve just been fakin’ it, not really makin’ it.” I was finally listening.

What ensued was a two year program of soil conditioning wherein God prepared my heart for the seed that would finally take hold in 1972. The surreal would soon give way to an enthusiastic embrace of total reality. God used it in my life, and I can clearly see just how the river of that young life took a sudden turn. One night, as the Who song Baba O’Riley was playing and the chorus “teenage wasteland” was ringing in my ears. I thought “how fitting” as the music stopped abruptly and the singer screamed “They’re all wasted!”

I remember thinking; “I don’t wanna be wasted.” This was the actual tipping point or, as I often think of it, my Deuteronomy moment wherein God said: “I set before you life and death, therefore choose life.” There was another song. It was not a chart topper, but even so, it would often seem to be playing in the places I would frequent. The chorus of this particular Moody Blues composition included the line: “When all the stars are falling down, into the sea and on the ground, and angry voices carry on the wind; a beam of light will fill your head, and you’ll remember what’s been said, by all the good men this world’s ever known.” 

Somehow, whenever I heard “the good men,” I would think of Jesus. I didn’t know anything about Him and I developed an insatiable appetite for reading about Him, listening to songs about Him, and having Him orchestrate my thoughts. My re-birth in 1972 was brought about through a long labor. I knew from the get-go that my life would forever be about sharing the Gospel of Jesus! I was grateful for my lowly origin as well as my capacity for experience. I became a counselor, of sorts, to those who were struggling with the modern pleasure mania. I shared my experience, describing how Jesus encouraged me to make healthier substitutions. Instead of reaching for a cigarette, I reached for the guitar. I gravitated towards music that was meaningful to those, “with ears to hear,” including the new me.

I traded a life with no discernible goal orientation to one with a career that was informed, and inspired by, the concept of service throughout Eternity. I envisioned a career that is lived under the continuing influence of the same person that rescued me from the depths of despair. Under the direct tutelage of the Spirit of Truth, we will each learn to master the essentials of the eternal career. For there is no higher reality than that which is lived in the presence of God.

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From an early age we were taught that one of the unique values for our country is “Freedom of the Press.” Of course, from the time of this country’s inception, until very recently, freedom of the press was only available for the privileged few that own a press. The traditional understanding of what constitutes “editorializing” was, in ages past, based upon what appeared on the opinion page.

Today we understand that every decision by a publisher is an editorial decision.. Whether a story runs above the fold, at the beginning of a newscast, or if it runs at all is based upon the opinion of someone. To those of us who thrive within a world of competing ideas, this is entirely ok as we can always engage in channel surfing.

In contrast, those intellectually dishonest folks, the ones that only want to hear opinions aligning with their own, have become a problem within the context of our participatory democracy. The “Consent of the Governed” as advanced through the Declaration of Independence, presupposes an informed consent. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights put forth by the United Nations in Article 21 states that “The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government”.

The December 2019 survey by Netcraft revealed there are about 1.3 billion active websites across over 243 million unique Internet Domain names. The number of WordPress installations on web servers is estimated, by several survey organizations, to be around 455 million. This clearly dwarfs the number of printing presses manufactured over the entire span of human history.

The advent of the Internet gave us tremendous hope for finally making freedom of the press truly real. Those hopes were dashed recently, by very real enemies of First Amendment integrity, in part, through their coordinated attacks on net-neutrality. Our nation has, as a result, reverted to a condition of severe vulnerability. Now, certain news can be advanced or retarded, at will, by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) operating primarily as common carriers, traditional conduits in the telecommunications space.

On October 1, 2019, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled the FCC had authority to reclassify internet service providers as “information services” under Title I of the Telecommunications Act, rather than as “common carriers” that can be more heavily regulated.

The hop-skippety-jump logic used by the Court to differentiate, between “information services” and “common carriers,” attempted to contrast the two categories by citing the function of Domain Name Services (DNS) as somehow unique to the information services. One would have to wonder if the judges ever dialed 411 or even used a phone book. While DNS may sound like mystic art to someone other than a technology worker, it is simply a list that correlates names with numerical addresses. Just how this is different, from the directory that shows your name along side your phone number, was apparently too technical a consideration for certain highly disciplined jurists sitting as a court of appeals.

Special interest groups also bring a dollar skew, into the nominations, confirmations and accommodations for judges as well as the public discourse. Issues affecting everyone are often crowded out or eclipsed as legislators are enabled and financially bolstered by overpaid, underwhelming CEOs. This occurs even as they characterize themselves as constitutional conservatives.

They masquerade as originalists and textualists as they disregard the declaration of intent, the mission statement, the value proposition, the cardinal precepts, and the constitutional imperatives as they were so carefully delineated in the Preamble to the United States Constitution. The Framers of our constitutionally grounded democratic republic did not intend for unrepresentative elected officials to treat the United States Constitution as little more than a buffet from which they can pick and choose.

Professional journalists and politicians have also facilitated the development of polarized news sources. They have, at times, belittled the contributions of individual bloggers that, while they may lack a certain journalistic discipline, bring much greater diversity to the public discourse. So-called advocacy journalism has also entered the fray. It is, of course, not true journalism any more than agenda science is true science.

To address the problems associated with a misinformed citizenry, unable to exercise “informed consent” as they consult suspect historical accounts, concerned historians are now working to leverage the consensus and immutability features of blockchain, the same technology undergirding crypto-currencies. In this way they hope to protect future generations from revisionist history.

While egomaniacal leaders actively engage in squelching diversity of opinion, we should closely examine the actual business practices of those tele-communications companies that were once, but are no longer classified as common carriers. While the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and the attempted murder of Alexi Navalny are high profile cases in point, there are also sinister forces at work within the United States, to thwart the collective will of We the People.

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This conversation with Dr. Richard Bates describes the process of gasification. His doctoral thesis was brought to my attention awhile back. Rather than me doing some injustice trying to summarize it, the good doctor has consented to break it down for us.

At this juncture the conversation turned to specific engines and applications and we’ll begin to explore that in Part 2.

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The concept of God as a Father did not originate with Jesus, Even so, any effort to study his life and teachings will reveal that he exalted and elevated the idea while advancing a more meaningful revelation of God and by proclaiming that every one of us is a child of this Father of love, truly a son of God.

While Jesus experienced all the natural difficulties and contradictions of human existence, he also enjoyed the peace that accompany’s unquestioned trust in God. He knew the thrill of living, by faith, in the presence of our heavenly Father. And this triumphant faith was a living experience of actual spirit attainment. The great contribution Jesus made was that he demonstrated a new and higher type of living faith in God.

His was not a struggling soul at war with the universe and at death grips with a hostile and sinful world. To him faith was not merely a consolation prize for human sorrows. The religion of Jesus was also not a mystic meditation. It was not merely an intellectual reflection. It was, rather, based on a personal spiritual relationship with our Father. It was validated by genuine personal experience. 

The faith of Jesus was living, original, spontaneous, and purely spiritual. This faith was not reverence for a sacred creed, but it was firmly rooted in a profound conviction. It was so real that any spiritual doubts and conflicting desires vanished. He was undaunted, steadfast, and completely free from fear. His consciousness of spiritual invincibility was evidenced by unflinching faith and unquestioning loyalty to the Father and his will.

Jesus highlighted the loyalty aspects of faith that wholly dominated his thoughts, his feelings, his beliefs, his prayers, his teaching, and his preaching. The life and teachings of Jesus are of greatest value to those who are sincere in their quest for truth. To find out what Jesus believed, to discover his ideals, and to strive for the achievement of his exalted life purpose, is to “follow Jesus.” To personally share his religious faith and to enter into the spirit of unselfish service for a great humanity is “to love one another” just as he commanded us to do.

The facts, ideas, and relationships that are the essential elements of universal reality are the corollaries of science, philosophy, and truth. Our progressive comprehension of reality greatly facilitates the approach to God. It is, after all, his creation we are seeking to comprehend. Appreciating the creation is a necessary part of appreciating Our Creator. Experiencing self-completion, self-entirety, and self-totality is understood as the consciousness of identity with reality. The full realization of God, the God-knowing experience, is dependent on some appreciation for total reality. It is, in essence as well as substance, the finding of God.

Our most effective witness is, for the most part, a wholly unconscious and spontaneous expression of the soul. Our personal experience with God is best revealed through the consecration and dedication, of our own wills, through the service of doing the divine will. This spiritual attitude, this personal faith, is the greatest of all offerings. Jesus consistently interpreted religion in the context of the Father’s will.

Of all the knowledge we may acquire, to know the religious life of Jesus will be of the greatest value in this short lifetime and throughout eternity. To Jesus, prayer was always intended as a truly spiritual expression of loyalty, sincerity, thanksgiving, and personal devotion. It was also, at times, a technique for the adjustment of difficulties and the mobilization of soul powers to withstand all human tendencies toward selfishness, evil, and sin.

Jesus was consistently motivated by such living faith. His was a sublime religious experience. The secret of his unparalleled religious life was his consciousness of the abiding presence of God. He attained and maintained it by unbroken communion through intelligent prayer and sincere worship. 

If the living religion of Jesus should suddenly supplant the theologic religion about Jesus, all of humanity would soon realize he truly belongs to us and we to him. Jesus brought to God, as a man of the realm, evidence of humanity’s value to an entire universe. The Master ascended on high as a man, as well as God. He led a life of prayerful consecration to the doing of our Father’s will and ended his mortal life triumphantly.

In light of his origins, and his desire to be close to us as a part of his creation, discussions concerning the humanity or the divinity of the Christ have long obscured the saving truth that Jesus of Nazareth lived a full mortal life as a religious man who, by faith, achieved the knowing and the doing of the will of God. He led by example and taught us that the full summation of human life is revealed as we are educated by fact, ennobled by wisdom, and saved — justified — by faith.

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Sir Francis Galton introduced the term “eugenics,” meaning well-born, in 1883. His emphasis was on encouraging healthy and capable people, of above-average intelligence, to bear more children, with the idea of building an “improved” human race. The eugenics ideologies that are typically associated with the first half of the twentieth century are much older though they persist, even today. Now they are simply manifest in a different way.

While an individual may reasonably consider what their children might look like upon choosing a mate, a couple would likely be ostracized for using abortion for purposes of selecting a child based upon, say, hair color. In May of 2019, a Supreme Court opinion described abortion as a potential “tool of eugenic manipulation.” The opining Justice was referring to an Indiana abortion law that bans abortion motivated solely by the race, sex or disability of the fetus. He used the history of the eugenics movement to explain why “the use of abortion to achieve eugenic goals is not merely hypothetical.”

Societies have long engaged in what is sometimes termed positive eugenics, the improvement of the human race by better breeding. Plato suggested applying the principles of selective breeding to humans around 400 BC. He went on to suggest selective mating to produce a guardian class. Negative eugenics also emerged long ago when, in Sparta, every child was inspected by the council of elders to determine if the child was fit to live. In Rome, Table IV within the Laws of the Twelve Tables required that: “A dreadfully deformed child shall be quickly killed.”

North American colonists practiced race warfare through the gifting of blankets and linens contaminated with smallpox to the Ottawa tribe’s Chief Pontiac. In his 1922 book Race Decadence, William Samuel Sadler, addressing problems within a given race, argued that alcoholism, feeblemindedness, insanity, and delinquency” were hereditary traits and that those who possessed them were breeding at a much faster rate than “superior human beings.” By 1933, California had subjected more people to forceful sterilization than all other U.S. states combined.

Early in the CoVid 19 pandemic, one Antioch planning commission member wrote on his Facebook page that “the World has been introduced to a new phrase “Herd Immunity.” He wrote “In my opinion we need to adopt a Herd Mentality. A herd gathers its ranks, it allows the sick, the old, the injured to meet their natural course in nature.” He went on to add, the “homeless and other people who just defile themselves by either choice or mental issues” should also be allowed to perish. This, he said, “would fix what is a significant burden on our society and resources.”

The forced sterilization program engineered by the Nazis was partly inspired by that of 1930s California. National Socialist racial hygiene, the German variation on eugenics, was at the center of Nazi ideology. It’s prominence rose sharply as wealthy Nazi supporters started heavily investing in it under Adolf Hitler’s leadership.

Now, in 2020, a wealthy and largely hidden network of ideologues, advances eugenics in a highly effective ways that also support plausible deniability. This same oligarchy uses a variety of sophistries to engineer poverty, to complicate access to healthcare for people that are in many other ways marginalized due to their age, their race, their ethnicity, or their economic status.

The oligarchy is cloaked in a thin veneer of religiosity as it surrounds itself with excessively prominent, integrity challenged, mammon serving evangelicals. No matter how injudicious the judicial act, how reckless the executive behavior, how negligent the legislative inaction, it all maps back to the depraved heart indifference and unmitigated selfishness of these, the most condescending.

It has been said that politicians campaign in poetry and govern in prose. We have seen them campaign in bigotry as moral depravity flows. Such groups cannot win without cheating, and therefore focus much attention on rewriting the rules of the game. Wielding disproportionate political influence to mislead, spam, purge, suppress, intimidate, gerrymander, and otherwise corrupt elections is not new to the game. The exploitation of crisis events, that was once associated with a small group of war-profiteering industrialists, now appears to be in vogue to benefit career politicians together with their donor owners personally, and on a global scale.

As the United States surpassed the grim milestone of a half million pandemic related deaths, we should all recall the former guy’s early efforts to minimize the severity of the outbreak. Vanity Fair quoted one public health expert who said a member of the Corona Virus Task Force offered the view: Because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. Beto O’ Rourke later said the Texas GOP is a ‘death cult’ that wants you to do the dying.

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What happens when you combine an embarrassment of riches with managerial incompetence? You get opportunity squandered and systemic failures together with prevarications and blame-shifting. If only the Electric Reliability Council of Texas could somehow convert the prevarications and blame-shifting of state officials into useful current, citizens could use it to heat their homes. Unfortunately, the electric companies and the state’s elected representatives are now passing the cost of their malfeasance on to customers while the high profile politicians have proven even less reliable than the wind.

Without wisdom, energy riches don’t transmute to power for the people. Texas ranks #1 for total energy production in the United States. It’s #1 in crude oil, #1 in natural gas, and #1 in electricity. It is also ranked #1 in carbon dioxide emissions. As the largest energy-producing and energy-consuming state in the nation, its industrial sector, including its refineries and petrochemical plants, account for half of the energy consumed in the state.

Texas also leads the nation in wind power and produced about 28% of all the electricity generated in the USA, during 2019, from wind alone. Its wind turbines have produced more electricity than both of the state’s nuclear power plants since 2014. In light of these facts, one might wonder why Texas Governor Greg Abbott told one media outlet that his state’s power problems were an indictment of the Green New Deal. The state’s Agriculture Commissioner, Sid Miller, wrote on Facebook that appointees to the state’s Public Utility Commission should be fired and that more coal and oil infrastructure should be built.

It was the Public Utility Commission that, after the ice storm of 2011, recommended several actions to prepare power plants for extreme weather. These recommendations were largely informed by a joint report in August of 2011 by the non-profit North American Reliability Corporation and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The report identified 210 power generating units under the jurisdiction of ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, that failed during the 2011 ice storm.

When, during a media call, the President and CEO of ERCOT Bill Magness was asked why recommendations from the 2011 report weren’t followed, he claimed he didn’t know which report they were referring to. Feigned ignorance concerning causes for the failures of 1989, 2011, and now 2021 is not masking the intellectual and moral defects of politicians for whom unmitigated selfishness is a point of pride. When authorities advised citizens to boil water they didn’t have, with power they didn’t have it simply underscored the managerial ineptitude.

Upon closer examination it was revealed that these politicians, who are now tilting at windmills, failed to acknowledge their penny wise – pound foolish approach to managing the critical infrastructure of Texas. The reason windmills work more reliably in places like Antarctica, Canada, Norway, and Denmark is because planners in those regions exercise a scarce commodity known as forethought. Properly designed wind turbines include appropriate lubricants, air conditioning, and heating. It would appear the state of denial didn’t plan for climate change.

The wind is always blowing somewhere. That is why a continental energy grid is more resilient than one limited to a single state. The decision by Texas politicians, to go it alone, has resulted in some citizens paying with their lives while others were endangered unnecessarily. The state that refused to either benefit from or support the national energy grid is now receiving emergency assistance from the same nation.

Years ago, Walter Gretzky taught his son Wayne, “Skate to where the puck is going to be!” As major manufacturers are planning to convert their entire range of product offerings and roll out electric cars exclusively, as efficiencies of lighting systems, appliances, storage systems, and generators continue to increase, Commissioner Miller and Governor Abbott are working hard to sustain the last gasp of an outmoded economy. Texas needs leaders that are instead working smart towards the next economy.

The future will, hopefully, leave integrity challenged politicians and other retardant forces in the dust. The promise of grid dynamics will extend the day by utilizing rooftop photovoltaics from coast to coast. It will take advantage of a widely dispersed array of wind turbines together with devices that can resonate with smaller convection currents. It will incorporate vehicle to grid innovations whereby the most efficient parts of the fleet can help to power the grid once their batteries are topped off.

The Texas experience should serve to accelerate the kind of interconnectivity that will insure no single point of failure can cause wide-spread outages. Cord cutters should take note. The potential to sell excess energy to the grid while, at the same time reducing one’s own dependence on the grid can help to pay for any and all energy efficiencies that can be adopted on a homestead scale. While cutting the public umbilical may seem like the thing to do, generating as much energy as possible at home while maintaining all the advantages of wide area grid system may be a better solution in the long run.

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While binge watching a TV series called Numbers, I was enjoying the sibling rivalry of the two brothers that are the main characters. One is a mathematics professor and the other is a kind of swashbuckling FBI agent. As the swashbuckler enters the professor’s office, a paper airplane falls at his feet. He picks it up and says “Wings are a little thin here buddy.”

The Mathematics Professor fires back with: “Forgive me if all my years of applied mathematics take issue with that assessment.” To that, the swashbuckler replies: “Well, you’ll forgive me if all my years of high school detention say I’m right.”

Some, especially law enforcement officers, would likely say a big part of their education was quite literally through the School of Hard Knocks. Those actually, or just perceived as being, on the wrong side of the law would likely attribute their education to the same school.Billy Holliday paid a big price for singing about Strange Fruit and of course we all know Jesus was also in the “perceived as” category by those who wanted to squelch his message about Spiritual Fruit.

Our Sovereign Lord came to earth to personally experience the joys as well as the injustices that are a part of the human experience. In his Gospel narrative, John quotes Jesus as saying: “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world, but that you protect them from the evil one.” Jesus held that the personal experience of faith is one in which challenges are a central feature.

For us, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are practical strivings. Potential evil serves to highlight the good by contrast. Grappling with hardships, reacting to disappointments, facing situations of social inequality, coping with our insecurities, knowing less than we can believe, sorting and sifting through error and falsehood, are all recurring and stimulating challenges to the person of faith.

The irrepressible reach for better things is a powerful witness. You’ve probably seen the popular bumpersticker that reads “It’s All Good.” While, in light of the foregoing list of stimulative challenges, this may be to some extent true. It certainly doesn’t apply to unwise choices, Paul said it best in his epistle to the Romans when he wrote: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.”

We are seemingly immersed in a dysfunctional world, where prevaricating politicians want us to take a hard stance on either the left wing or the right wing. And yet, as any native American can tell you, the left wing and the right wing belong to the same bird. Overcoming the gravity of our current geopolitical situation will not happen with the paltry amount of lift that is produced at the wingtips. In other words, no bird can soar except by outstretched wings.

We are pummeled with messaging that prevents us from righting the ship, getting on an even keel, regaining our balance, and maintaining equilibrium. We were told through Proverbs that “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” The political operatives of our day have offered no inspiring vision for the planet as a whole. They have instead sought, often in the name of God, to advance their own clubs of self-righteous exclusivity. They have exhibited few of the statesman-like qualities that will move us forward in the knowledge that God divinely loves his people, all of them.

Jesus sent us a Spirit Helper, the Spirit of Truth. He said this Spirit would lead us into all truth. And yet, for this to occur, we must be responsive to Divine Leading. If we are, the Spirit can lead us far beyond the elemental and fundamental religions of our mortal existence into an experiential relationship with the God of all Creation, the First Source and Center, the Cause of Causes, the one and only Uncaused Cause, and the most intimate friendship we will ever know.

Every true teacher acknowledges that experience is the best teacher. When we experience the realization of the Divine Indwelling, our human experience becomes one of perpetual life enrichment, ever progressing reality, a closer walk with Thee, and a relationship with Him that transcends all human controversy. Paul also observed that “For in Him we live and move and have our being.” Indeed it is the experience with Him and in Him that qualifies us for eternal live. The experience acquired in this short lifetime will also serve us throughout all of Eternity.

We have choices before us that will insure our extinction or survival. Our planet will become either an orgy of darkness and death or a world of light and life. This is not a time to land somewhere between wishy and washy or to be proactively straddling the fence.

Jesus said: “This is my command, that you love one another as I have loved you.” The experience of loving is in direct response to the experience of being loved. It is not enough that the Spirit be poured out upon us; the Divine Spirit must dominate and control every phase of human experience.

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On February 13th 2021, a pathetic minority of United States Senators landed decisively somewhere between wishy and washy on the question of autocracy versus democracy. As they were feigning reverence for the Constitution of the United States, they inadvertently highlighted the most fundamental problem facing the USA. It is a problem that has plagued civilization from the time of its inception and, from the looks of things, it’s not going away anytime soon.

When a democratic republic tolerates a reckless indifference to the truth by people occupying positions of honor and trust, it is hardly authentic. When we value government of, by, and for the people does it make sense to retain elected representatives who routinely engage in barratry, deceptive practices? Would an honest person take an oath as a juror and, while the trial proceeds, act as co-counsel for one side in the controversy? Would a judiciary willfully convert a whirlpool of information into a cesspool of disinformation through its lack of forethought and intellectual rigor? Would a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court shrink from his constitutional obligation to preside over an impeachment trial?

In the United States elected and appointed officials often get a pass for integrity deficits. Then, when these same officials are called upon to pass judgement upon the behavior of others, and when in so doing they would be effectively implicating themselves by rendering an honest verdict, such a judgement is rendered meaningless. Why should we be surprised when such a long history of Supreme Court case law has effectively immunized the most dishonest political operatives from any consequence for deceiving and vexing the electorate.

To admit personal complicity, to admit hostility towards authentic democracy, and to admit just how unprincipled one is while simultaneously working to deceive one’s own constituency is more than can be expected from a prevaricating politician. Not serving the highest and best interests of an elected representative’s constituency should be enough to disqualify one from high office and yet, such unrepresentative politicians enjoy squatter’s rights to their form fitting seats.

While campaign finance, through dark money, has long been seen as having a distorting influence upon representative democracy, it persists. While corporations wield outsized influence that renders the “one man, one vote” principle meaningless, recent decisions by some corporations have highlighted the ability of such companies to disrupt the system of political patronage.

If a corporation can, by withholding campaign contributions from those politicians who actively deceive the public concerning election results, that corporation’s clients can also stop doing business with any company that contributes to the campaigns of politicians that lie about other things.

One popular meme on social media reads: “Universal healthcare is such a complex beast that only 32 of the world’s 33 developed nations have been able to make it work.” Why is our developed nation unable to make universal healthcare available to its citizens? Could it be the BS artistry and all the dark money? Could it be due to the House or Senate decorum that prohibits the questioning of a colleague’s motives and why one may be entirely subservient not to their constituency, but to the money brokers?

The U.S. electorate is not bound by such “decorum,” and one thing that became abundantly clear during the 2020 election cycle was the extent to which this country’s various forms of voter suppression had just one purpose. It was to make sure the Constitutional Convention formula, that would insure a black man or woman could never count as more that three-fifths of a person, would remain in force.

The racist riot of January 6th, 2021 happened because the gamesmanship that involved gerrymandering, the purging of voter rolls, the closing of polling places in marginalized neighborhoods, the voter intimidation, the vandalizing of the Post Office, the unmeritorious legal challenges to a great number of ballots, and the highly selective pandemic response didn’t work for the gaggle of bigots that assembled on the national mall that day.

The forty three Senators that voted against disqualifying an anti-democracy demagogue, from ever holding office again, have no plausible deniability with respect to their racism. They are unfit to hold any position of honor and trust. Any business that contributes to their campaigns for re-election, should be subjected to the most robust technologically advanced boycott in the history of boycotts.

It is not enough for elected representatives to pay lip service to constitutional imperatives. It is not enough for Supreme Court Justices to masquerade as originalists and textualists while ignoring the Declaration of Intent, the Mission Statement, the Value Proposition; the Cardinal Precepts as they were so carefully articulated in the Preamble to the United States Constitution. It is not enough to display the words “Equal Justice Under Law” above the doors to the Supreme Court building. Either make it real or take it down, because right now its only effect is to perpetrate a fraud upon the citizens of the United States and the rest of the world.