King Nebuchadnezzar First Tried To Kill Me

 King Nebuchadnezzar First Tried To Kill Me

1/13/2016

 

“Look!” he answered, “I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire; and they are not hurt, and the form of the fourth is like the son of the gods” Danial 3;25

 

            Babylon; the city where you can forge your wildest dreams, sleep in the most beautiful of palaces and worship as many gods as you can imagine. As far as worldly beauty goes, it is the queen of sinful lust and desire. If you love the world, you will love Babylon. If you are a Hebrew like me, Babylon goes against all your senses and represents hell on earth for the LORD’s faithful.

            My name is Shadrach. My close friends and coworkers are Meshach, Abed-Nego, and Daniel, the man with many visions of the future of God’s people and the demise of the great Babylon.

            My countrymen were carried off into exile to Babylon during my father’s generation. Those who weren’t slaughtered in Israel were carried off to this eastern land where the Euphrates and the Tigris Rivers meet. This is the cradle of civilization, but for us Hebrews, this is the land of our captivity.

            It was so awful when our great city of Jerusalem was laid siege. The people were surrounded by the city walls. The Babylonians outnumbered us in numbers and their technology was superior. They taunted us by catapulting our dead brothers over the wall. Decapitated heads were slung over. We could hear the cries of the women and children as they told us to give up. The battering rams battered at the doors. The fiery arrows were shot over the walls.

            Some of my people were forced into cannibalization of the weak and young to stay alive. The hearts melted like beez-wax within our chests.  What was worse was that for years prior to this, some men who claimed to be prophets of the most high, declared that our punishment was upon us because we had forsaken the LORD and worshipped other gods like the foreigners around us.

            The people disbelieved and even killed some of those prophets. God’s messengers were cast out of the land, humiliated, starved, sawed in two, and hunted down like wild dogs. As death approached, and defeat was imminent, the words of those messengers hit my people’s hearts just as if David himself had shot a rock at us with his slingshot, the way he killed Goliath.

            I was one of the lucky ones. My parents were one of the ones who were captured in the city, to be dragged off into exile in Babylonia. My people were made to serve the king, King Nebuchadnezzar.        

            Government officials were sent out to see the mental capacity of the children of these exiles. If any of them showed any promise, they were taken from their parents so as to enter the service of the king in his palace.

            All types of skills were taught to these elite groups of exiles. Some were turned into the arts, including music, the visual arts, and all sorts of writing arts. Others were made to be servants of the high king himself. They were to advise him on the sciences, the state of political sciences, astronomy, the purchasing power of gold, and all sorts of other matters.

            The rest of the population was put into manual labor. This meant building up of the city, the maintenance of disease-infested sewers, and the purifications of religious activities. Other parts of the exiled society were for sport. They were made to fight against trained warriors to the death. Some were given training while others were not.

            During the time of the exiles, the great king Nebuchadnezzar had made a large golden image. It was the image of a large man/beast. The upper body was of a man with a long beard, and long hair while the lower part was that of an ox, which represented strength and prestige. The king made a decree that when he sounded off for all the musicians to play certain music, all peoples no matter what language, country of origin, or economic status, were to bow down and worship this golden image. 

            My Jewish friends and I said we would not worship this hideous image, and so we didn’t. We knew who our God was. Our God was the creator of everything visible to the eye; animals, beasts, mountains, fields, everything. Man was said to be made in God’s very image. This meant that all the spiritual attributes that God contained in himself, he created in man and woman. God was both masculine and feminine. He was both strong and nurturing. He was rugged, strong, and direct, and also beautiful, prestigious, and poetic in all his ways. God’s mind was above everything yet he chose mankind to share in his intellectual property, and not to be depraved just as the animals are, who being of lower being, cannot think or praise the almighty God, the way we are commanded to.

            Knowing all this, there was no way I would fall to my knees over a manmade image in the shape of an unnatural beast representing a god that did not even exist. If I must lose my life for this, then I must lose my life. Even as a servant of the king, I knew that it was always possible to disobey man while at the same time obeying God. I trusted that God would rescue us. If he didn’t, then it was his will to let us return to his presence eternally, forevermore able to worship at his throne. 

            So it was no surprise when the king ordered us into his blazing hot furnace of fire in the ground. The king was so angry that he ordered that the furnace be turned up seven times the normal heat and that we be bound in chains and thrown in.

            We were thrown in. The furnace was so hot, that the valiant men who tied us and led us to our death, were themselves killed by the heat. God rescued us. We were in the fire, yet we were not affected by the fire. Our hair was not even burned. Our clothes were never singed and we never smelled of smoke. We were prepared to meet our maker, yet it was our maker who decided to join us and he kept us alive and safe.

            The great Angel of the LORD was there speaking with us. He spoke to us of eternal things; the greater picture in all this. He did not speak to us as one speaks to another man. He spoke to us with his mind. He could read our thoughts and he communicated to us through his thoughts. The thoughts were so deep that it was a communication so intense and so pure and so loving, that I had never had a day like that before, or after during my whole life.

            King Nebuchadnezzar came to the opening of this great fire and called out our names. He asked how we were and said that if our God was with us and had indeed saved us, then we should come out so that he can see and believe. We walked out

            The king immediately dropped down to his knees and begged that we ask our God for forgiveness. He then began to praise the God of the exiles. He came up and touched our faces and our clothes. He smelled our clothing and told us it was as if we had never been near the fire, while his own men had perished while only coming close to it.

            The king then told us from that day forward, we were to forever eat at his table and drink of his wine. We were to always be within reach on the matters of administering his government. The next law that he declared was that if anyone said any sort of malice to the God of the Hebrews, they were to be cut into pieces and his house was to be demolished.

            I have remained in the king’s service to this day. The LORD rewarded me with my faithfulness in that I am free to worship him at any time without malice, hatred, or any other sort of molestation to my rights.

The End.

            

Jesus Turned My Lemons Into Lemonade

 Jesus Turned My Lemons Into Lemonade

1/6/2016

 

There shall come forth a Rod from the root of Jesse. And a Branch shall grow out of his roots. The Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, The Spirit of counsel and might, The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD. ---Isaiah 11; 1-2

 

            When the Romans came into the land of Israel, they brought with them great terror and misery. All the inhabitants of the land were utterly uprooted and scattered. Our temple was defiled and burned down. Before this, a horrible Caesar actually went into the holy of holies, inside the temple, and sacrificed pigs upon the altar. This was after the city was laid siege. The siege lasted so long that before the great city wall was destroyed, the people inside resorted to the eating of each other’s flesh, even the flesh of their own children.

            So once these horrible armies took over, we prayed constantly to our holy God that he would take vengeance for his people. Yet all the while, we could not hold our heads up or find a word from the LORD. Many of the older prophets had spoken of a time of “Jacob’s troubles” because we had forsaken the LAW of the LORD.

            Our land that was given to our forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was in utter ruins because of the Romans. They laid a heavy burden on all of us Israelites. We were all sold as slaves to the Roman government. Our streets were lined with criminals who were part of this new kind of execution, called crucifixion. On those crosses laid men, women, and even children for crimes against the Romans, both large and small. They were signs to us of the terror that they used against us.

            God extended minimal mercies to us in that we were allowed to retain our ideology. We were also allowed to practice the strict sects of our Jewish religion, so long as it did not offend the Roman Empire. Caesar took from our own people, all of whom we considered traitors, officials to be magistrates over us, tax collectors, and even spies to report all behavior to Caesar himself.

            I came from the small town of Nazareth. I lived with my small family of a wife and two children. I worked hard in the fields while my wife did her best to sell her crafts in the market. Our most sincere prayer was that we could live to the end of our lives without seeing our young children die of hunger or cold.

            The Roman society was one based on slavery. Over 30 percent of the people were slaves. The rest were full-fledged citizens with rights to own property, vote, and run their own businesses. The Romans used all their captives as slaves. Although such a large portion of the society was slaves, the average age of death for those slaves was 22. Their mortality rate was more than double the rate of their birthrate. Even though the Romans were conquering this part of the world at an astonishing rate, they were killing off their own workers with cruel punishments.

            They even took the Greeks as prisoners. From the Greeks, they had their doctors, scribes, great warriors, and philosophers. Even the educated ones were slaves unless they could prove their worth to be freed from their bondage.

            We looked elsewhere towards redemption. We prayed up to the sky, in the hopes that Yahweh would hear us, even though his holy house was demolished. The priests would talk about the almighty having promised that through the seed of David, we Israelites would see our deliverer through the might of his messiah.

            That’s when life began to get interesting, even though this terrible land of death and darkness that we now occupied. There was a man named Jesus. Some of my relatives remember him from when he was a carpenter. He grew up in our small town of Nazareth. There were rumors about him that spread all through the country. It was said of him that he was the deliverer.

            We had heard that he was on his way from the northern territory of Tyre. He was preaching a message about God’s kingdom at hand. That it was time to rethink our lives and consider the kingdom at once. He was doing miracles. He was healing the sick, raising up the lame, opening the mouth of the mute, giving sight to the blind and even casting out demons who begged him not to torture them.

            I decided it was time to go find this man. I was hoping for sure that he would end this injustice of the Roman rule. I left with my wife and kids towards the Sea of Galilee. Jesus was a friend of fishermen and was known to have walked on its waters. He also cast out the demons that possessed a very dangerous man who lived among the tombs. If he was coming through Nazareth, he would for sure stop by the lake.

            After many hours of looking, we did see the multitude of a crowd that was following him. So we followed him for two days straight as he taught in the synagogues, people’s houses, and finally when he taught that wonderful sermon on the mount just on the edge of the Sea of Galilee.

            On the third day, we sat down on that glorious hill and heard him speak about the kingdom. He spoke as one with authority, and not as one of the teachers of the law, of whom Jesus called hypocrites many times.

            Jesus spoke in parables. He talked about how the kingdom of God is like a man who had 99 sheep but lost one. He left those 98 in search of that one, and when he found it, he rejoiced greatly. This was how he spoke about God’s love for man as he came to search for and to save what was lost.

            He also talked about the law. He said that he was not there to abolish it, but to actually fulfill it. He spoke of the commandments, but when he spoke of them, it was like he opened our minds and made our hearts understand them. He said things like hate was the same as murder, and that if you looked at a woman with lust, you have already committed adultery with her in your heart.

            Our books from Moses told us to sacrifice an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, yet this Jesus was telling us to forgive and pray for our enemies. He said that God blesses both the just and the wicked. If we hate our enemies, are we not doing as the Gentiles and heathens do?

            After those three days, we were hungry. Jesus had intended to send us on our way but I overheard him tell his disciples to feed all 5000 of us. Was this a joke? I heard the disciples tell Jesus that they only had 5 fish and two loaves of bread. That did not make sense to me because not long afterward, Jesus passed out food for every single man, woman, and child who sat on that hill as we could see the warm sun glaring on the lake that Jesus had once walked on.

            We all had our fill. No one was hungry, although I asked Jesus if he could bring me something to drink. I thought I was being cheeky when I tossed him an old lemon that I carried in my pouch in the event that I came across some fish and wanted to add flavor to it. When I tossed that lemon to Jesus, he tossed something back to me. It was a long skin of lemonade. Enough for me and my family and anyone else around us who needed to wash their fish and bread down as well.

            We traveled back home that night, to our small living in Nazareth. Was this indeed the Son of God? Was he the seed of David? Was he going to overthrow the Roman government? Many of us who knew and followed him were let down and terrified as we would later hear that he was unjustly punished, held on false charges, and then eventually crucified. He was tortured and murdered just outside of the city. He was not treated like a general, but like a slave full of shame and scorn.

            What was more puzzling is that Jesus himself said that he must die in this way, but on the third day he would rise. I miss Jesus. I’m going to travel down to Jerusalem to see if he is alive like he said he would be.

 

The End.

 

Eye Know (I Love You Betta)

 

Eye Know (I Love You Betta)

1/3/2014

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHEvjLJgWM8

            Today was a day of snow. It was also a day of sitting inside, taking a few naps with my son. What really captured the mood was receiving a picture, via text message, of the house that I grew up in. it was from a female writing colleague, who is also one of my own writing fans. More specifically it is of the gazebo that is in the front yard to the beautiful house turned bed and breakfast, in the city of Empire, Colorado. What better thing to write about then, then to write about an epic love story from my earliest memories while living in this house.

            I moved into this house with my cousin Ace and his dad, my uncle Curt, back when I was 13. I’ve written about this subject before, so just to catch anyone up to speed, me and mother were going through some tumultuous times, and we mutually agreed that I needed to be around a good strong man, such as my uncle Curt. Ace and I were always growing up together, so this was a chance for us two best friends to be around each other all the time now. I considered it a win/win situation for me.

            Uncle Curt was a hard man indeed. He grew up in the rough upbringing of West Virginia. I don’t exactly know the history, but I know that in some tragedy both of his parents died while he was at a very young age. He was raised by his older sisters for a while until he moved out into the world on his own. To be honest, I don’t even know how far he got in grade school. Because of the death of his folks, he and his siblings were more concerned about surviving. He never learned how to read.

            What uncle Curt did learn was how to be a man in a tough world. When I moved in with him, he was a coal miner in the Henderson Mine at the base of Berthoud pass. Most Coloradoans may know this pass, because it is the steep mountain pass that you must drive through to get to Winter Park. It’s cold, windy and I’m almost sure it had to be one of the miserable working environments. This is not even mentioning the dangers that my uncle faced as he used dynamite to blow holes in a mountain. He never talked about the work much. In fact, he was a very quiet kind of guy, usually about anything really. But man, he was a fearful guy to be around because you talked with respect around him. You didn’t give excuses. You didn’t feel sorry for yourself when life got hard. You just kept going “Jack”. Jack was how he referred to us boys when he had something serious to say.

            Ace and I had our chores every week. That consisted of gathering the fire wood from the wood pile and cutting it into big, medium, small and really small sized pieces for the fireplace. I don’t think the house even had a heater, but the house always stayed warm. Uncle Curt loved antique rustic furniture. It’s beautiful to look at, but a terribly tedious chore to dust weekly. So that was another one of our chores. Of course there was the vacuuming, dishes, cleaning of windows, and cleaning of our own personal bedrooms. Uncle Curt would inspect these rooms weekly. He was like a drill sergeant, with the white glove inspections. He would occasionally tell us that we had more cleaning to do, but that our try was a good one, “Jack”.

            Now I loved growing up for that time in the mountains. It was the total, Little House on the Prairie style of living. We went to school with minimal amounts of kids. Everyone knew everyone. The local police officer knew all of us boys because we also went to school with his boy. If one of us kids got into any kind of trouble or drama at school, we knew someone’s parents would eventually tell another and so on. The snow up in the mountains made for some great adventures. I still can remember going sledding and inter-tubing down steep hills for so many hours, that we even got warned about the dangers of frostbite. We simply would have so much fun that sometimes we didn’t know any better than to come in earlier than we were.

            This was also the time that I began my own experience of becoming a man. It’s the time that I was not only going through puberty, but the time that I discovered that I immensely loved the ladies. There were 3 girls from this time in my life that I will always remember. The first girl was Jenny. She was in my grade, but not in my class. We went to school in Georgetown, Colorado. I took the bus to Georgetown from Empire. I still remember to this day the love letters I would write to her. Sometimes I would be blessed to read one of her many letters to me in which she was making fun of me for writing her a love letter. Of course, like most ladies, I think she was absolutely elated by the attention, so this was a constant thing.

            The dilemma was that Jenny was not the only girl that I wrote love letters to. I also wrote letters to her friend, Josie. Her name was Josie. Her brother was Brook. I will never forget her name or even her family name, because to be honest, she was my first or maybe I should say my most intense love interest as a young boy. She was blond. She was growing quite well for her own journey down puberty. She was also way out of my league and made fun of me too, which made me love her all the more. The difference between her and Jenny was Jenny showed her heart and caring side much more, while Josie was cold and adrift. She was a challenge.

            The two girls knew I was writing them both. In our childhood innocence, there was nothing improper about it, and so I believe it became a competition for them to see who got the longest letter that day. It does not stop there. I had mini girlfriends from other classes, with whom I would write to. I just don’t remember them. I will always remember Jenny and Josie. Looking back now, I can say that I truly loved the both of them.

            What I also remember about growing up during that time was that I was really getting to understand that as a young boy, I had very strong sexual urges. But up until I lived with two other guys, I had never had the opportunity to talk to anyone about that, and besides, this was just now beginning to happen for me. I literally thought that ejaculation (semen) meant that there was something wrong. I told my cousin Ace about it. He said, “Nah cuzzz! That shit is perfectly normal. Just don’t be making a mess with that shit.” I think Ace showed me his 70’s era playboy stash at around that time. I’m talking about ladies with big hairy, triangular shaped bush in all its 1970’s glory. I loved woman, and I wanted to kiss all of them.

            Now I never got a kiss from Josie or Jenny. They were both my best friends.  They made me aware of that thing that happens when you are next to a person of the opposite sex with whom you are attracted to. I was very much into their lives and talked to them all the time. I loved them and they both loved me. But the first girl who gave me a kiss was my next door neighbor. To the right of the picture with the gazebo is a house where lived a girl my age by the name of Emily. Yes I still remember her name. Our love, although not meant to withstand the test of time, was love all the same. She kissed me and I knew then that passion was transferred from her lips unto my heart and soul just as the snow is relentless in passing from the sky to the mountains. She had an “all girls” slumber party at her house. Her mom knew us boys though, and for whatever reason, Ace and I were allowed to hang out with them. In the innocence of our age, I thought the craziest thing was being in the presence of all these girls with their pajamas on. I was introduced to the music of De La Soul. The album was 3 Feet High and Rising. The song was Eye Know. Even to this day, I remember that song. I remember it because Emily took me out of her mom’s sight after she told me that she has always had a crush on me. She then kissed me on the lips. It was a peck. There was no tongue. So the emotion I felt was pure ecstasy and excitement.

            I moved back down to Denver not long after that. I missed Jenny and Josie for a year straight. I think I even cried a few times thinking about the letters we would always exchange. I even tried looking them up later in life. I would hope that they both married good men who loved them and took care of them. They and all my ladies of the mountains meant so much to me as a growing boy. So the gazebo in this picture represents more than one thing to me. It represents the innocence of growing up. It also is a symbol of my unsatisfying passion within me, not for just the ladies, but for all the exciting things in life. Thank you for reading my little love story. Thank you for taking the picture. You know who you are.

“Cause it takes two, not three to seduce. My destiny of love is brought to an apex, sex is a mere molecule in this world of love that I have for you. It’s true. (Eye know Eye love you better)” ---De La Soul. Eye Know.

 

Jissoseph Out!

(Could You Be Loved) What if I Don’t Need To Be Loved?

 (Could You Be Loved) What if I Don’t Need To Be Loved?

6/4/2015

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3t6YDnGXAc

 

            I asked a smart ass question today. I asked a person of the female sexual nature, “Could you love me?” What that immediately sounded like to me was me asking, “Can you love me enough to cover the love that I don’t have for myself?” Of course, I immediately felt vulnerable and pathetic all at the same time. So really, what does it mean to be loved by a person of the opposite sex? Surely I did not feel like I needed this individual person’s love, for I have known her very long. I think I was asking the rhetorical question of, “Why must I be loved”

            I do a lot of reading of philosophy and poetry. I have been reading giants like Ralph Waldo Emerson, and John Milton. I find that I can relate to their writing in that I want to be the person that I can love, not the person that somebody else can love. What happens if I lose that person? What happens when (and there will be a when) that person’s love for me begins to wane like the midnight sun setting down? My soul will be devastated because the need for me to feel love or be loved will not be diminished by the outside circumstances. If I depend solely on the love from an outside source, then I will tire every day of the vacuum that is created when that love is void for even five minutes.

            What is the response then if I were to say, “Well I don’t need love?” To me that sounds mighty brave in a world where we are expected to be social beings and loneliness is a terror that artists, musicians, writers, and actors talk about in their art, much more than any other subject. To deny the need for love seems possible. But you also become victim to your own bravery, because you also become hardened. You become emotionally unattached which is ok if you don’t want to feel anything at all, to include hate, anger, sadness, joy, peace, guilt and even frustration.

            The idea of love then is not the battle; it’s the amount of love and the way you love which is the true struggle that we all face. Now I love my children. I also know that I can love them too much, or to an unhealthy degree. If I refuse to take care of my own needs and overexpress love to my offspring, which quickly becomes unhealthy. If I put my children on a throne, it becomes wrong. I have to love in the sense of caring for and providing for, but I also have to be able to say to them, “sit the hell down, stop talking, and get ready for bed.” If I put anybody in front of my own needs forever, I will slowly dwindle myself to a place where it is not even possible for me to love anything.

            Emerson wrote in his essay, The Over soul, that before a person can be ok with anyone else, he must first be ok with himself. This may take years of self-guided or forced isolation. A person must sometimes go through this isolation before he can be fit for society. In fact, he may be a sickness instead of a blessing to others if he hasn’t got this precept correct, before he begins to love another.

            One of the reasons I enjoy writing so much, is that it is a huge vehicle for me getting into the mind of myself, and to conquer my inadequacies while at the same time celebrating my strengths. I know my thoughts. They are ever before me, but on a daily bases my thought betray who I really am even to myself. I sometimes want to burry by head under a pillow and think no more because all that floods my head are feelings and thoughts which I have no idea from whence they flow.

            Now when I write, it is as if I’m a Roman soldier, nailing a criminal to the cross. Only I am the roman soldier and my thoughts are laid upon Calvary. I’m able to examine where those thoughts come from, why they have their being, and from which way they travel. I get to have fun and develop ideas from other ideas from still more ideas. It is as if I’m an onion and I’m only now learning why my thoughts can create tears my solace cheeks.

            So could I be loved? Of course I can, by me. The danger in realizing this is that I can then live a real selfish life because I’m capable of pleasing myself to the highest of joys. I know what I do or don’t want in my life of passions, desires, joys, and romance in activities. To be honest, it would take another person only 5 minutes to fall quickly out of rhythm with my wants where as I am always in rhythm. I have years to train myself, and I have a track record of what I like and do not like.

            Do I want other people to love me? Well I don’t enjoy being despised, unless I am for some reason despised because I have found this secret to self-love while you are continuing on your deplorable journey to find someone in whom you can give permission to love you, when you should be doing it in the first place (and much more know how).

            Let me use my children as another example. If my son were to one day steal my car, go rob a bank, and ruin other properties of mine, of course I would be angry. Yet my very next emotion would be the desire to fix and save him from the consequences of his own destruction. That’s why as a parent, it’s best I curtail his/her behavior now, so as not to save only them from heart break, but myself as well. I will forgive my children much more quickly. Now if a lover were to somehow hurt my property, reputation, and or time, I would be much more apt to say that they were without loyalty, and any love that I would generate would be a love towards my own heart because now I feel a wound from a person who at one point was a complete stranger, until I gave them permission to be known to me. Now I will regret the displeasure of knowing that person, and will immediately protect myself from further injury.

            It is in the divine nature to reproduce, because the way I see it, we are not all flesh, but contain a spirit that has no end, and a mind that can think amazing things. When I see my children, I actually see the mirror image of myself. I see who I was before life made a mess of me, and I’ll do my best to prolong the inevitable when life will eventually take hold of my kids. That’s why I feel there is unconditional love that only exists between me and my children, and me and my creator. So if I ask a female, “Can you love me”, the answer will always be a resounding “not in the completest of terms, yet consider that a god-send”.

These are just my thoughts on love. I still love to kiss, cuddle, and have relations with someone of the opposite sex.

Sometimes I Write Essays in My Sweaty Kimono

 

Sometimes I Write Essays in My Sweaty Kimono

5/13/2015

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmHDhAohJlQ

 

Words are signs of natural facts.

Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts.

Nature is the symbol of the spirit. ---Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature Essay

 

            Today I did what was customary as of recent months---I sat in my car for nearly two hours before Jiu Jitsu class starts and I read. I have the availability of time, even considering after I have worked out my muscles or my cardio. I consider my reading time my time away from the savages of the world to redefine my thinking. It’s my personal oasis. It’s my time to look at the landscape and horizon of my life. My memories are behind me while my hopes are in front of me.

            Emerson is I think one of the greatest Essayists that I have experienced so far. If you look at his life, it’s hard not to see why. Yet in his day you have to consider that there was not the technology or distractions that there are today. He was not checking his Facebook, or playing video games once he got done with his Harvard classes. Back then, an intellectual mind was in a wonderful world to contemplate the nature of a man. What is that nature?

            I think about it like this: a man cannot mock the nature that he lives in. He cannot live an evil life and so not expect that nature will call out to him its revulsion. Nature is a witness for or against a man’s character. This is considered a Godly instilment into the created order of things. There is this universal soul that Emmerson talks about. That soul is called reason. All men belong to it and reason testifies against us by the weakness or strength of our character. It’s fabulous stuff to think about.

            Tonight I realized that Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is also a part of this truthful reason that exists in art from. Art is nothing short of a man’s soul trying to express the beauty he sees in the world, himself, or something in the invisible world trying to call out to those of us who are awake. Taste is the appreciation of that beauty. You cannot fake your way in fighting. Either you have the strength of mind, character, and technique to be able to showcase your abilities in this art form. If I wore a black belt on the Jiu Jitsu mats, I would be discovered as a fraud with immediate circumstance. Once you stop trying to fool yourself, only then can you stop trying to fool others, but many times you are the only one who is fooled until you wake up and realize that you were put to sleep by a veteran grappler.

            Tonight we learned some side control attacks. Before we went over technique, we got smoked with multiple pendulum arm bar drills from the guard. I believe we had to do twenty each. My core was on fire after this. The next drill was multiple triangle set ups. After this we went onto the technique. The first technique was the anaconda from top side control. We drilled this attack multiple times. The next attack was this slick triangle set up from top side control. You trap the arm, move the other arm from your hip, and bring your knee to elbow. And when you are nice and tight, you roll them over on top so that as you are rolling over, they are falling into a nice triangle set up.

            The techniques and drilling lasted for an hour. After that, it was time to roll. There were a bunch of us. Because of the smaller mat space, only five groups were allowed to roll at a time to avoid people’s head getting injured. The first guy I went with was a white belt named Josh. He saw my purple belt from across the room and came calling for me. I gladly accepted. The kid was young. I would say 24-26. He was a brute of a young guy; very strong. Before the match begun, he told me he didn’t know much, and to go easy. That strategy went immediately out the door as soon as I could feel him using every bit of strength and killer instinct to do whatever he could to take my head off. I also noticed that when I tried to calm him down and I would slap a submission on him, he wouldn’t tap. There were a few instances that I knew that if I kept going, he would let his arm, or elbows break. That’s when I knew he was just a guy to play defense with. I don’t care about hurting people and I have nothing to prove to this kid.

            The next roll was against a wrestler named Jason. He was a visitor to the school. He was such a wrestler that he was even wearing the wrestler tights or whatever you call them. I wouldn’t think anything undignified about that, except that he looked well past the age of wrestling, so he was the type of guy to take his wrestling very serious. I would realize that he did. He was very big, athletic, and strong minded as most wrestler guys are. He used some asshole techniques, for instance digging his elbows into my thighs to break my guard open. He was doing a few other reckless things like trying to throw me around. I kept trying to catch him in a nice anaconda choke when he would leave his neck wide open, but he was too strong and sweaty for me to control it. His antics even caught the attention of another purple belt, who was soon taking an audience to this mayhem. He was watching my performance so that he could have a go at this wrestler who it seemed was trying to make sport of this other grappling art called Jiu Jitsu. I was able to keep him in my guard, and recover whenever he would escape. I made his life miserable by breaking down his posture consistently, but I wasn’t getting any submissions on him. He had years of wrestling behind him, and was bringing it. Eventually the match ended. The other purple belt got his licks in on him. I sat and watch. He was unable to do anything ending to this wrestler guy. I talked to the black belt about him, as if I should feel some shame in my lack of performance. The black belt reassured me that we were going up against a monster and that we were doing fine.

            My next match was against a red-headed MMA fighter. He has a purple belt like me in Jiu Jitsu as well. He is a scrappy little white guy. He knows better than to stand up against me because every time he stands up, I get up with him and over power him with my strength and usually start setting up a choke on him. So he will play open guard against each other. He’s tough and as an MMA Fighter, he is in much better shape than me. Yet I kept it even between us both. We each got a single submission on each other. A distinct moment that I remember in the match was when I looked up and caught him giving me the prison-stare-tough-man-look. I immediately felt the anger rush through me as if to say, “Don’t you dare fucking look at me like that”. Anger and strength don’t usually work for you in Jiu jitsu because getting emotional like that usually throws off your concentration and you get outwitted by the guy who just got under your skin. I figured this out after 5 seconds and I decided to stop treating him like my red-headed step child. We kept it cool.

            My final match was against a person I call “Lieutenant Shannon”. She is an Air Force officer at the base that I work at. She’s a skinny red-headed girl with freckles and an aerospace engineering mind. She looks as sweet as a button, but she is strong and she loves Jiu Jitsu. She is recovering from a broken hand in which she had to have metal bolts inserted and then later removed. She is that committed to the art. In Jiu Jitsu, it is not a compliment that you can tap everyone who steps on the mat. I consider it a compliment when the black belt tells you that he feels safe putting you up against all the lower belt girls, because he knows you will not hurt them. But let me tell you, Shannon has enough skill, that if you are not careful, she will catch you in something, broken hand or not.

            That was my night tonight with Jiu Jitsu. I read essays by a man who helped shaped the mood of the American society with his writing. I trained Jiu Jitsu against people who want nothing less to express themselves in the best way they can in this fighting art. Eventually they learn how to take those lessons off of the mat and put them into effect in their regular lives. Jiu Jitsu is amazing stuff. Jiu Jitsu will turn savages into fighting aristocrats. I love it.

 

Jissoseph out!

 

 

Love Was a Battlefield in Iraq

 

 Love Was a Battlefield in Iraq

5/31/2015

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGVZOLV9SPo

 

“As the time drew near for him to ascend to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. He sent messengers ahead to a Samaritan village to prepare for his arrival. But the people of the village did not welcome Jesus because he was on his way to Jerusalem. When James and John saw this, they said to Jesus, ‘Lord, should we call down fire from heaven to burn them up?’ But Jesus rebuked them saying, ‘You don’t realize what your hearts are like. For the Son of Man has not come to destroy people’s lives, but to save them.’ So they went on to another village “---Luke 9:51-56

 

“Then he (King Ahab) sent an army captain with fifty soldiers to arrest him. They found him sitting on top of a hill. The captain said to him, ‘Man of God, the king has commanded you to come down with us.”

But Elijah replied to the captain, ‘If I am a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and destroy you and your fifty men!’ Then fire fell from heaven and killed them all

So the king sent another captain with fifty men. The captain said to him, ‘Man of God, the king demands that you come down at once.’

Elijah replied, ‘If I am a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and destroy you and your fifty men!’ And again the fire of God fell from heaven and killed them all.

Once more the king sent a third captain with fifty men. But this time the captain went up the hill and fell on his knees before Elijah. He pleaded with him, ‘O man of God, please spare my life and the lives of these, your fifty servants. See how the fire from heaven came down and destroyed the first two groups. But now please spare my life!’

Then the angel of the LORD said to Elijah, ‘Go down with him and don’t be afraid of him.’ So Elijah got up and went with him to the king.” –2 Kings 1:9-15

 

From the above passages I see and love the fact that the bible is a very brutal book. People see organized religion in the world and they see a humble Christ on a cross with a sad face and twisted body, assuming that he was weak. That is very far from the stories painted about him in the bible. Religion has made either an excuse for power hungry men to manipulate weaker men of society, as it tries to usurp human rights and dignity from such men (of whom the bible said were just as equally created in the image of God), or it has taken the true warrior-king attributes of a mighty God and his messiah, and made them both a weakling. Both are utter blasphemies.  

In the first passage, we see a rejected king, about to walk his final journey to his destiny on the cross. His disciples had spent enough time with Jesus, that they were not rebuked because of their lack of faith, but because their hearts were not yet pure in the knowledge of Jesus’s mission on earth. I believe that their faith was so pure at this point, that they could have moved mountains if they had been given the permission from the Almighty.

In the second verse we see a prophet, named Elijah, take a stand against an Evil Israeli king. The setting was thousands of years before Jesus’s times. King Ahab not only carried a kingdom that perverted justice for the poor, had zero mercy, and took widow’s property for bribes, but this was the first kingdom which introduced child sacrifice as part of a pagan worship. I think the burning of a hundred soldiers with lightning (the fire from heaven) was fair vengeance on a brutal king who had betrayed his office of trust and the citizens of whom God had placed underneath his authority.

You see, the Christian message is all about a kingdom. It’s all about a just king. It’s about a king who will one day bring retribution to the wicked. He will one day cause the good to no longer suffer in the world, but the good will actually rule the world alongside God’s messiah. And who are the good? The best example is the example of the criminal who was executed next to Christ, and who placed his faith in the messiah and asked, “Please Lord, remember me when you come in your kingdom!” Jesus promised him that that very day this condemned criminal would be in Paradise. You see, religion is about works. Faith is about believing something has already been done on your behalf; there is no need for work, but only a celebration and the freedom to live your life in joy until you one day go to be with your King, forever…

So what is the point of this preaching and what does it have to do with my time in Iraq? It has everything to do with it. While I was there I felt such a huge evilness in my heart, or in my spirit that I was actually angry with God, and I one day took my bible out of my living quarters and threw it outside into the sand, hoping that a strong easterly wind would carry it away from my life and my heart forever. My heart raged. My heart roared like a lion. I did not have the answers to my questions and my throwing away of my bible was my way of being defiant to the one who sits on the highest heavenly throne. Elijah called down fire on the bodies of mighty men, but there was already a fire burning on the inside of my heart.

Obviously, I am not in that place anymore. This was nearly 7 years ago and I have since walked with my LORD through the deepest abyss and back. I’ve realized that God is love. I realized that in this world, we/I will experience the greatest of pains, hell, tribulations, sadness and disappointments. There are no demons in this world back then, or now, who can keep me from the love and protection of Christ.

I always pray for my kids. I always pray that when I am not around, that they are protected. I tell my son that we are Jesus’s boys. What that means is that no matter what happens to either one of us, we will always be together. I will always be there and I will always love him. I always pray that my adult daughter will return to me and forgive me for not being there the way that she needed me to be there when she was younger. I pray that she will one day realize that there is a higher being who loves her more than anyone could possibly love her. There is no need now, or will there ever be a need for her to find love with another human soul, as far as in the sense of making her feel the bliss that only her creator can give her.

While I was in Iraq, I wondered how my heart could rage so much. Where I was located, was about 50 miles northeast of the city of Baghdad. It took me awhile to realize that if the bible is correct, that is exactly where hell has reigned for ages and ages. It is the real life pandemonium. My heart was sensing the spiritual warfare that has been around since Elijah called fire on the troops of a wicked king; since Jesus had to rebuke his disciples from executing humans in the name of God; and since before the time when evil spirits in the world first tempted mankind into thinking we could do it all without God. Iraq is the location for the ancient Babylon. I have often wondered if we as American Veterans who came from Iraq were not only effected by the psychological disorder called, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but if many of us were also touched by a very evil spiritual environment based on the one I have described.

 

“We are strong. No one can tell us we’re wrong. Searching our hearts for so long, both of us knowing love is a battlefield.” –Pat Benatar. Love is a Battlefield

Enemy at the Gates

 

Dewi Gotcash

History 3121-M01

May 27, 2013

Final Essay Option 2

Due: June 6, 2013

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVzcQ4_khsM

 

Enemy at the Gates

            The battle of Stalingrad is an epic battle between the nations of Germany and Russia. The movie Enemy At The Gates is about the epic battle of Nazi invasion into the most symbolic city of Mother Russia, at that time. The reason Stalingrad is so symbolic in history is because it bears the name of the ruler, Joseph Stalin. If the Nazis would have won this battle, the people’s will to fight would have ceased to exist, and the new economic resources available to Hitler would have made the country collapse. The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether or not the movie, “Enemy at the Gates” is a factually accurate depiction of the battle at Stalingrad. After reviewing the sources, I discovered that the movie is only non-factual when it comes to some of the intimate relationships between the characters. The battles are real. The people are real. Some of the war details are left out, as well as some of the other accomplishments of the main character. At the end of the day, this is a great war movie, as long as the viewer can deal with some of Hollywood’s normal interjections of romance, and inflated character traits.

            The historical value of the battle for Stalingrad is not in question today. Historians know for a fact that the actual battle took place. Stalingrad was in fact destroyed by much war during WW2. According to the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, the Red Army suffered total casualties of 1,129,619. The movie does not go on to misrepresent that, but it does not mention these statistics. 400,000 German soldiers are said to have been capture, killed or wounded at this battle (Jewish Virtual Library).

What is in question in this essay, are the historical facts of the two main characters of the movie; A young Russian sharp shooter by the name of Vasilli Zeitsev, and a German aristocrat by the name of Major Erwin Konig. The movie traces the beginnings of the eventual Russian sniper, Vasilli Zeitsev. Struggling to survive the days he arrives at the heart of the battle, he eventually saves the life of a Russian Political officer by the name of Danilov. Danilov goes on to use Zeitsev as a symbol of hope and the Russian virtue of love for the motherland. The rest of the movie goes on to show Vasilli’s heroic actions as a sniper. The drama begins to unfold when Germany sends its best sniper, Major Konig, to hunt Vasilli Zeitsev down because Zeitsev is killing a lot of Germans and demoralizing the Army.

            To recreate the scene, the production crew went to great lengths to find a scene that would best mirror the actual battle scenes depicted. Because the actual city of Stalingrad does not exist anymore, they chose a city in Germany (Enemy At The Gates).  I have been to Germany and, in fact, this makes sense because the climate in Germany is very cold, muddy and dirty which made for a perfect place to create the scenery needed. The original city of Stalingrad was located on the river of the Volga. To recreate the opening scene where Russian soldiers are sent on boats across the Volga was actually filed near open mine pits towards the Polish border (Enemy At the Gates).

            After deep searching, I was able to find a credible analysis of the factual background to this film. Reviewer John C. Tibbets of the American Historical Review, pointed out some flaws in the historical accuracy of the film. Some of the facts are left intact, while other events were highly inflated to make a good Hollywood film.  For example, he points out that there is no historic documentation to the romantic rivalry between Danilov and Zeitsev, as far as the interest of a young female Russian soldier goes.

            Here are some truths. There was a young Sheppard boy in the Russian Army who rose up to be one of the great heroes to Russia out of WW2.  Tibbets goes on to explain that the film was created from the classic text written by William Craig Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad (Source 1). This text backs up the facts about Zeitsev. It also backs up the account of a German aristocrat coming from Berlin to hunt him down. Political officer Danilov, who helps build up the propaganda surrounding Vasilli Zeitsev was in fact an actual political agitator at the scene (Source 1).

            H-Net Online. Reviewed by David R Stone, puts this film on the equivalent of a teenage love film, with the exception of the great war scenes, and set production (Stone,H-Net Reviews). Here is one thing Stone had to say,“To end on a brighter note, Enemy at the Gates has at the very least boosted the number of my students who drop by the office to ask questions about Stalingrad. I only wish it had done a better job of giving them good answers.” (Stone,H-Net Reviews). It seems that Tibbets has company from David R Stone as to the melodramatic way this battle was portrayed by Hollywood.

What becomes inflated is the accounts of Zeitsev’s romance with a young Russian soldier, whom Danilov had a love interest with. This creates a major problem in the movie because Danilov betrays the very man he has publicly built up because he is jealous that this young Russian has not returned his love. In the movie, she falls madly in love with Zeitsev.  Tibbets says that the romantic injections create what he calls a “hokum straight out of the standard Hollywood combat films of the 1940s”(Tibbets pg 1108). He also criticizes the missing information on how the Russians did in fact defeat the Germans at the battle for Stalingrad. Tibbets is kind enough to enlighten the reader to the fact that the Germans were flanked by the Russian Army which cut them off from reinforcements and supplies. It was a miserable battle for the Germans as a quarter million of them died from starvation and disease. Only about 100,000 of them were left to live to surrender. The Russian Army was able to shatter the image of an unbreakable NAZI army. (Tibbets pg 1108).

            In conclusion, the above information is the limit of complaint from my reviewers as to the factual accuracy of the movie. He noticed a few other minor details such as the ending credits have a musical theme that sounds note for note with the theme from Schindler’s List (Tibbets pg 1108).  The movie produces a lot of human emotion because of the strong appeal to nationalism on both the German and Russian side. It is the first war movie that I have seen where the American point of view is completely left out of the movie. Americans are generally not very keen on our own history so I assume that most people generalize that the war in Europe always had American involvement. This movie proves otherwise.

The characters are very strong. The problem with this movie is that if you had to make a movie just on the facts alone, it would end up no farther than an epic tale on the Discovery Channel. Hollywood has to bolster up the scenes to capture as deep of an audience as they can. In that regards, the movie did very well, even through the minor factual misrepresentations, or inflations.

 

Sources Cited

1.      www.jstore.com American Historical Association. is http://www.jstor.org/stable/2692531

Accessed May 27, 2013

2.      H-Net Online. Reviewed by David R Stone. Published on H-War Jun 2002. http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=15019 Accessed May 31, 2013

3.      Jewish Virtual Library. A division of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/ww2/Stalingrad.html Accessed May 31, 2013.

4.      Enemy at the Gates. DVD Movie starring Jude Law, Joseph Fiennes, Rachel Weiz, Bob Hoskins, and Ed Harris. Special features include behind the scenes featurette, exclusive cast and crew interviews.