"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." 

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." 

"I am satisfied that when the Almighty wants me to do or not do any particular thing, He finds a way of letting me know it" 

"I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the heavens and say there is no God."

"I desire to so conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me." 

"If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide." 

"If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, then ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference." 

"If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a horse have? Four, calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg" 

"In all that people can individually do as well for themselves, government ought not to interfere." 

"No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar."

"Nothing is politically right which is morally wrong."

"One is a majority if he is right."

"Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right"

"What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself."  

"Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally." 

"You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn." 

Don’t Let Your Misses Define You
by Jason Cruise

It happened incredibly fast. I was walking down a tree line by a cut corn field on the way to my stand when I saw a bruiser buck run a doe in heat over an incline in the field. I mean, he appeared out of nowhere. He stopped at 78 yards fully broadside just long enough for me to set off the sonic boom with my muzzleloader. He looked my way, then looked at her, and continued following her into the timber.

If misses were symphonies, in that moment, I’d have been a maestro. It was a beautiful tragedy.

As hunters we tend to remember the few times we missed instead of the many times we connected. Luke 22:54-62 details the story of Peter’s one big miss when he denied Jesus. I’ve always thought it ironic that, though he was arguably the strongest evangelistic preacher in the New Testament, most Christians remember Peter’s one bad day of denying Christ instead of remembering the amazing things he did in Christ’s name. I mean, I’ve never seen someone healed just from walking in my shadow (Acts 5:15); I’ve never walked on water (Matthew 14:22-36); and I’ve never watched thousands come to Christ in one single sermon (Acts 2:40-41). Peter not only saw those things, he did all those things.

Don’t let your misses define you. Jesus reinstated Peter to his ministry with just a few words (John 21:15-19), making Peter living proof that God’s grace can take a coward and turn him into a world changer.

Peter spoke from personal experience when he wrote, “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.” 1 Peter 4:8

From: Brother Seamus - Music for your Spirit
Sent: Wednesday, January 1, 2020 3:55 PM
To: William Gibbons Jr
Subject: Re: Happy New Year

Happy New Year, Bill!

Great email, thanks.  Apart from the fascinating content, I love your writing style.

A book of short stories, essays or a novel on the horizon?  Maybe essays, a book of essays on Christianity?

All the best!

Seamus

Seamus Byrne
SOL Productions
Quarantine Hill
Wicklow Town
Co. Wicklow
A67 X585
Ireland

Mob: 00 353 86 054 9816
Web: www.brotherseamus.ie

------------------------

From: William Gibbons Jr
Sent: Tuesday, January 14, 2020 11:31 AM
To: 'Brother Seamus - Music for your Spirit'
Subject: RE: on the horizon?

Hi Seamus,

Thank you for the compliment. Considering the newsletter I intended for last Thanksgiving looks like it will not be ready until Independence Day (July 4^th), I sincerely doubt any of those things you mentioned are likely to come to pass. Truth be known, as “a photographer who writes,” I do not like the “writer” process all that much. Most of the time, my writing takes place when I feel a compulsion to make some notes during my prayer and Scripture reading time in the morning before I even get out of bed. I keep pads of paper, and pencils, in my nightstand just for that purpose. I started doing that back in the 80s, when I was writing a lot of poetry. The problem is, to share any of that means I have to type it into the computer (one finger typist). I did have a dictation program for a time but, after a Windows 10 update over a year ago, it just stopped working. I tried to find help online. It was too old for tech support, of course. I also remembered Windows 10 was supposed to have a built in dictation program, so I tried to set that up to no avail. Hours later, I decided, even as a one finger typist, I could type things in faster than all the time wasted trying to get modern electronics to assist me. Plus, when I had a functional program, I still needed to become an astute editor to catch the errors between what I said, and what the computer heard. 

Short emails, like this, or the Happy New Year email, tend to be composed straight into the computer. But, as I am typing, I am also seeing a large pile of tablet pages full of notes sitting next to the monitor, waiting for me to find the motivation to start typing them into the system . . . . 

. . . . I actually had more already typed into this email, but my computer totally locked up requiring me to unplug it to reboot the system, and this was all Outlook had auto-saved as a draft. It has been doing that quite often after the last big Windows 10 overhaul. I am not sure if it is related, or just the timing of a computer starting to show its age. 

Well, I suppose I should stop here and do something about the 42,034 photos, dating back to March 2018, waiting to be processed into their appropriate inventory folders and renumbered. Oh wait, this email is supposed to be about the writing stuff waiting for my attention, not all those pesky photographs.

Be well my friend. It is always a joy to hear from you. 

God’s peace,

william
Acts 5:29

_____________

I removed my email "General Notes," but here is a photograph of the newsletter notes next to the monitor:

What are the inventors saying about their own kids?

Steve Jobs (founder of Apple) shockingly described their low-tech parenting approach in a New York Times article describing the launch of the iPad :

(https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/11/fashion/steve-jobs-apple-was-a-low-tech-parent.html)

“So, your kids must love the iPad?” I asked Mr. Jobs, trying to change the subject. The company’s first tablet was just hitting the shelves.

“They haven’t used it,” he told me. “We limit how much technology our kids use at home.”

I’m sure I responded with a gasp and dumbfounded silence. I had imagined the Jobs’s household was like a nerd’s paradise: that the walls were giant touch screens, the dining table was made from tiles of iPads and that iPods were handed out to guests like chocolates on a pillow.

Nope, Mr. Jobs told me, not even close.

Similarly, in an interview with The Mirror, Bill Gates (founder of Microsoft) explained how they approach technology with their children:

(https://www.mirror.co.uk/tech/billionaire-tech-mogul-bill-gates-10265298)

“We often set a time after which there is no screen time and in their case that helps them get to sleep at a reasonable hour.

“You’re always looking at how it can be used in a great way – homework and staying in touch with friends – and also where it has gotten to excess.

“We don’t have cellphones at the table when we are having a meal, we didn’t give our kids cellphones until they were 14 and they complained other kids got them earlier.”

Preparing believers to live their faith daily . . . . that is the part of the total mission statement of Immanuel Lutheran Church that the preparing team works on each month. 

1 Corinthians 6:19b-20a.  “You are not your own; you were bought at a price, so Glorify God with your body.” Who are you living for?  As Christians, we live for God, not ourselves. 

To live a Gospel-shaped life simply means we think of God more than we think of ourselves.  Simple, but not so easy.  We think about ourselves all the time; how we feel, our opinions and knowledge, what we want, what we look like, what WE think of others and what others think of US.  We don’t think about God more than ourselves.  If we did, what would that look like?  I listened to a sermon online this week.  Here is a story from it:  A woman at work made a mistake.  A big mistake. A costly mistake. Then, her boss went to his boss and basically took the blame for her mistake.  He said he didn’t train her right, he didn’t follow up as he should have, etc.  He put his job on the line.  He lost credibility, he lost social capital so to speak. The woman afterwards, pressed him to tell her why he would do that.  She said, “I’ve had people blame me before, even when it wasn’t my fault, but I’ve never had someone take the blame for me.”  After pressing him some more, he responded, “OK, I’m only going to say this once.  I’m a Christian.  My whole life is based on a man who took the blame for me.”  The woman immediately responded, “Where do you go to church?” 

Does our character, our attitude toward ourselves and others show that we live by Grace? Are we living for Jesus?  Grace by what Jesus did for us?  If we live a Gospel-shaped life, cultures will change. Living by grace is counter-cultural.  Paul said if you understand grace, costly grace, grace coming from a crucified Savior, then that grace teaches you to say no to ungodliness. Sin loses it attractive power. It’s not our willpower.  We would fail. Ungodliness just has no attraction, no passion, no power over us. It’s not just about seeing others through the eyes of God.  It is thinking about God more than ourselves. It is living for the Glory of God in everything we do, not just on Sunday mornings.  It’s not about I shoulda, I woulda, I coulda.  It’s about Jesus did. Our lives then are a response to the amazing Grace given to us through our Lord’s brutal crucifixion.  He bore our pain, he became our sin, he suffered death so that we can live for Him.  If we live for ourselves, we will never be satisfied.  Nothing on earth can satisfy us completely. Those of us older folks know this to be true.  So, living our faith daily means everyday in everything, living for Jesus. By doing so, we are Worshipping God. 

I don’t want to say make time for God everyday because that implies that we need to schedule God in and around us.  Instead, we want to schedule everything else in and around God.  The need is so deep because of what Jesus has done for us.  May our hearts burn with our desire to serve God every day in our work, in our homes, in our communities and in our church. 

Peace,

Luke 10:41-42 (Martha and Mary)

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

“Martha, Martha,”  the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

As the statistics on illness and death due to COVID-19 keep rising, the economic statistics keep falling. In March the stock market lost more than $11 trillion in value, and has been yo-yoing ever since. While the more fortunate are mourning their dwindling retirement plans, the truly desperate have joined the 36 million Americans applying for unemployment benefits.  How will they pay the rent or feed their families?

While watching the news one day, I flashed back to another time of financial crisis, the Great Recession of 2008.  I had just written a book on prayer, and got an unexpected call from a New York journalist.  “Any advice on how a person should pray during a time like this?” he asked.  “Does prayer do any good in a financial crash?”  In the course of the conversation we came up with a three-stage approach to prayer.

The first stage is simple, an instinctive cry for “Help!”  For someone who faces a job cut or health crisis, prayer offers a way to give voice to fear and anxiety.  I’ve learned to resist the tendency to edit my prayers so that they’ll sound sophisticated and mature.  I believe God wants us to come exactly as we are, no matter how childlike we may feel.  A God aware of every sparrow that falls surely knows the impact of scary financial times on frail human beings.

Indeed, prayer provides the best possible place to take our fears.  “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you,” wrote the apostle Peter.  As a template for prayers in crisis times, I look at Jesus’ night of prayer in Gethsemane.  He threw himself on the ground three times, sweat falling from his body like drops of blood, and felt “overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.”  During that time of anguish, however, his prayer changed from “Take this cup from me…” to “…may your will be done.”  In the trial scenes that followed, Jesus was the calmest character present.  His season of prayer had relieved him of anxiety, reaffirmed his trust in a loving Father, and emboldened him to face the horror that awaited him.

If I pray with the aim of listening as well as talking, I can enter into a second stage, that of meditation and reflection.  OK, my life savings has virtually disappeared.  What can I learn from this seeming catastrophe?  In the midst of the crisis, a Sunday School song ran through my mind:

The wise man built his house upon the rock…
And the wise man’s house stood firm.

The foolish man built his house upon the sand…
Oh, the rains came down
And the floods came up…

A time of crisis presents a good opportunity to identify the foundation on which I construct my life.  If I place my ultimate trust in financial security, or in the government’s ability to solve my problems, I will surely watch the basement flood and the walls crumble.  As the song says, “And the foolish man’s house went splat!”

A friend from Chicago, Bill Leslie, used to say that the Bible asks three main questions about money:
1) How did you get it?  (Legally and justly, or exploitatively?);
2) What are you doing with it?  (Indulging in needless luxuries, or helping the needy?);
3) What is it doing to you?  Some of Jesus’ most trenchant parables and sayings go straight to the heart of that last question.

A financial crisis forces us to examine how money affects us.  Am I stuck with debts I accumulated by buying goods that were more luxuries than necessities?  Do I want to cling to the money I have when I know of people around me in dire need?  Jesus taught us to pray, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” and we know that heaven will include no homeless, destitute, and starving people.

As the stock market dove to uncharted depths, I couldn’t help thinking of private colleges, mission agencies, and other non-profits, which depend heavily on the largesse of donors.  The IRS has dramatically loosened the rules that limit charitable deductions for 2020, hoping to encourage more giving—am I giving serious attention to the urgent appeals that fill my mailbox this year?

Which leads me to the third and most difficult stage of prayer in crisis times: I need God’s help in taking my eyes off my own problems in order to look with compassion on the truly desperate.  In the Beatitudes, Jesus described a kind of upside-down kingdom that elevates the poor, those who mourn, the justice-makers and peace-makers, and those who show mercy.

The novel coronavirus has temporarily accomplished that societal reversal.  In airports, janitors who clean the banisters and wipe the seats of airplanes are now as crucial to safety as the pilots who fly the jets.  Each night, people in major cities honk horns, howl, or shout their appreciation for the health care workers who keep us alive.  We’ve learned we can get along without the sports industry that pays top athletes $10 million per year to chase a ball; meanwhile, harried parents of young children have new appreciation for the teachers who earn less than 1 percent of that amount.  Last month Time magazine put some of the real heroes on their cover: cafeteria workers who serve up food to needy children.  They could just as easily have profiled hospital orderlies or paramedics.

The question is, will we use this crisis time to re-evaluate what kind of society we want, or will we return as soon as possible to a society that idolizes the wealthiest, the most coordinated, the smartest, the most beautiful, and the most entertaining?  A just, compassionate society builds on a more solid foundation.  The Sermon on the Mount, which begins with the Beatitudes, ends with Jesus’ analogy of the house on the rock: “And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.”

In the days of a collapsing Roman empire, Christians stood out because they cared for the poor, because they stayed behind to nurse plague victims rather than flee afflicted villages, and because platoons of wet nurses would gather up the babies abandoned along the roadside by Romans in their most cruel form of birth control.  What a testimony it would be if Christians resolved to increase their giving in 2020 in order to build houses for the poor, combat other deadly diseases, and proclaim kingdom values to a celebrity-driven culture.

Such a response defies all logic and common sense.  Unless, of course, we take seriously the moral of Jesus’ simple tale about building houses on a sure foundation.

_______

I was hoping this to be like the finale of a display of fireworks. A whole lot of everything all at once, but then it is done. I would like to shift my time to the backlog of my work. I am just now reviewing, numbering, and filing into my inventory photographs from over two years ago. As I write this, I have 42,743 of my images (files) in thirty-three folders waiting for processing. I still have poems, in file drawer folders, I wrote as far back as 1989 that never got typed up, or into a computer. Plus, other than newsletters and the previous year pictures of the week pages, I have created only one truly new item (Red Dawn Movie at Fitzgerald Park - Scrapbook Photos) in half a dozen years for my website. 

That is just the william's works piece of my puzzle. I also have 25,530 photos, and artwork images, in 414 temporary folders from the emails sent by you or others to me, and from the Internet, which I saved to process into permanent folders for use in my exercise slide shows. I have play lists in my computer (Windows Media Player) from our CDs that I select from each day I am exercising indoors on my treadmill, and Health Rider. I figured out it takes a slide show of 555 images to get me through my exercise routine without repeating any. I learned early on that if your exercise becomes too tedious and boring, it will not be long before you let things go, and are not exercising at all. 

Some years back I started revamping my exercise folders to hold less than 150 each (in varying amounts), so I could mix and match a fresh slide show every time by copying the alphabetical files into an empty folder until I reached 555. Adding new images also keeps things from becoming too mundane. A little side note about a good source of quality pictures if you have Windows 10 as an operating system. Microsoft regularly changes that first screen picture when you turn your computer on. For whatever reason, those are called lock images. They are hidden in your computer, and removed often as they add new ones. But they can be copied and saved if done as soon as they appear. I ran across how to find them, and rename to view them, in an article several years ago. I thought about including it here on the addendum page, but it is a mix of text and graphics. If interested, just email me and I will attach it to a reply. 

New images often need to be resized, cropped, touched up, and renamed so they are alphabetized in a way that provides a better mix when pulling from various folders. This takes quite a bit of spare time. Except for lock images I save whenever I first see them, usually it is later in the evening if I find time, since I see it as lower priority work, even though it is essential to my physical well being. A little more time devoted to this, however, would also help in the mental arena as well. When I originally started setting up folders in 2006 after my open heart surgery, I put 600 files in each folder figuring I would just need to pick one. Using those became boring because they always sequenced the same. I still have a lot of those early folders (214) which yet hold 27,142 images waiting to be broken down into smaller units, and re-alphabetized for a better mix. Until I get to them, they feel like a whole bunch of clutter on a "to do" list staring me in the face every time I go in to set up an exercise slide show. I find constant clutter to be highly stressful. 

When you add in the daily activities and work of living . . . . Scripture reading and morning prayer, making the bed, brushing your teeth, showering, fixing meals and cleaning up after, my cardiac exercise routines, finding time to get to the Center even just to water the plants, or change the sanctuary candle in the prayer room, etc, etc . . . . it becomes a daunting task to find the time to accomplish any backlog of non-routine work, let alone anything new. Then, when warm weather arrives it changes everything. Most of the time, I would enjoy being outside chopping wood to BBQ over rather than any of the other stuff except taking pictures. But, even photography gives me pause, because I am aware I will be adding to my backlog of images needing attention. So, writing has a lot of competition in my "to do list" world. 

None of this is meant to be complaining. I created my circumstances through my choices, just like everybody else does. The difficulty, of course, is the discernment of God's priorities in all of the constant flow of possible activities passing through our consciousness. That is why I would like to add newsletters to the list of things eliminated. They are hugely time consuming for me. I have to laugh, because as I write this, I have been thinking how much of that stuff I could be getting done if I were not spending so much time writing about it. I think I have become too much a Martha, and too little a Mary (see Luke 10:41-42 if you do not understand the reference). 

My best recollection is that I started writing in earnest when I was creating my poetry to help me through stressful, and challenging, times of mental and spiritual upheaval. It could feel obsessive and compulsive, but it did help. This had doctors originally looking at manic depression (referred to these days as bi-polar disease) as a possible diagnosis. They decided it was not. I saw it as an intense search for God, with the spiritual challenges often being expressed through the mental side roads, not vice versa. It has been an interesting journey, and writing definitely functioned as a coping tool. It still does in some fashion, as it allows me to release a lot of mental activity onto the paper. But writing has almost always felt like more of a burden than a joy. Especially so, when I transitioned to primarily prose from the shorter, more succinct, poetry.  

The End

(but you never know when you let God run the show)