The idea of cultural relativism is nothing but an excuse to violate human rights. ~Shirin Ebadi

This is a household of strong opinions.  Ever notice?  Just the same this is the scariest thing I have read in a long time.  We have so lost our way if our children can no longer distinguise right from wrong. 

Tuesday's trivia.

Hey diddle, diddle, right in the middle!

I like my history raunchy ~ & I do not like politics!  History as she is all too often taught is the history of politics & events ~ & why should any of us care about any of it?  BUT, when history is the history of people rather than things all that changes.  Which is why I am enjoying Ranulph Fiennes Mad Dogs & Englishmen so very much.

It is, first & foremost, a family history but when you can number amongst your ancestors a murderer, a wife poisoner, a poacher, England's greatest female traveller of the 17th century,  an extortionist Lord High Treasurer, teen cousins who eloped, a noble  lord who was hanged for manslaughter,&  another who was hanged for adultery with the King's wife, plus many who won famous battles as well as the women who spawned half the medieval Kings of England, well history is likely to mean something different than  to the rest of us poor plebs.  My lot tended to be the lot the English were stomping on.

So what have I learnt?  Well, the politics of the times have fallen nicely into the realm of a major family squabble that got rather out of hand.  The stakes rise when you can lose your head for being born in the wrong family at the wrong time!  The Wars of the Roses finally makes sense.  The whole caboodle is only what you could expect of a lot descended from William the Conqueror, who was quite the nastiest piece of work to ever sit on the English throne.  Look up what happened at his burial some time.  Way too gross to write here!

Anyway....Edward the 3rd.  And we do remember from our history, don't we girls, that the longbow was attribued to England's military success during the medievial period?  Star & I were doing archery for a bit.  Those fancy leather bits on their forearems?  They're there for a reason! A bowstring pinging you there leaves the most glorious bruise!  Edward paid his archers 6pence a day.  Remember when you could buy an icecream for sixpence?  Most of his archers came from Wales.  Or Cheshire.  Or somewhere else where the inhabitants were considered expendable.  And they practised from an early age.  The government went so far as to pass laws expressly forebidding other sports such as cockfighting & football because it distracted people from archery practise.  However all this practise resulted in deformed people who could fire as far as 400 yards fairly accurately at the rate of an arrow every 5 seconds.  That's 6 times quicker than a crossbow.  You were all just dying to know that, weren't you?!

Then there's Henry the V & VI with Fiennes not only dabbling in the real history but scampering through Shakespheare as well.  And at this point, thanks to a succesion of kings who thought they should own France as well, & the internal politics of a nation that was never adverse to lopping of the heads of its kings, 5% of the King's army consisted of murderers & outlaws redeeming themselves through military service.  Seems like a good idea to me.  Three quarters of the army at this stage consisted of archers ~ who were mostly professionals.  If you had to fight being an archer was the thing.  The Irish were your cannon fodder regular foot~soldiers & fought barefoot with only a dagger while a knight, who mostly did not fight mounted, might be better protected by his armour but was disadvantaged by the simple fact that if he fell over it required 2 men to lift him up again & he was so incapable of movement once fully armed he was likely to drown in a puddle.  Tales abound too of knights suffocating, unharmed in any other way,  having been unlucky enough to land at the bottom of a pile of fallen comrades!

I'm still reading & giggling.  All history should be taught like this.  And yes, technically it is Wednesday in Australia but Blogger says otherwise & I was otherwise occupied yesterday!

Nine out of 10 Quakers can still find consensus that there’s nothing better than a group of Friends gathered together and breaking spontaneously into silence. Just don’t try taking this door-to-door like caroling. ~ Rob Pierson





There is a tendencey amongst those of us who are conflicted about Christmas to take ourselves over seriously so I was delighted when Pen passed this one on via Facebook.  Don't you just love the internet!  The top 10 ways Quakers, who did not celebrate Christmas [or Easter, just as they don't do a lot of the things today's church still does], got to celebrate this particular day.

You can read the whole article here.  It explains why the rest happened. So here goes!

1. Slaughter hogs.  Yep.  Dis~gusting!

2. Sell things.

3. Repair windows.

4. Accumulate debt.

5. Employ seasonal workers

6. Get arrested

7. Avoid frolic

8.Go Green.

9. Sit & Wait.

10. Celebrate Christ.

I particularly like 9 & 10. Rob Pierson is the author of this rather timely piece.  It is still what happens when Christians, for whatever reasons, go against the flow.  Plenty to think about.  Why do we so persecute each other?

Someone posted this on youtube.  AVAE is down in the left hand corner.  I think there were 5 of them this particular concert.  Enjoy.

News from Chile.

By now those of you who subscribe to Liddy's newsletter should have received the latest update.  Due to the formatting the letter arrives in I have a lot of trouble downloading snippets onto the Chile page attached to this blog.  This month's newsletter is longer than usual so I have decided to forgo struggling with the formatting had another go &  I put up the pertinent praise & prayer points here & there.  If you would like the newsletter for more in depth information please contact us on ganeidasknot@live.com.au ~ which is the e~mail attached to this blog~ & I will forward the newsletter on.  Please indicate if you would like to continue recieving updates as I will add you to the mailing list.

There is much to be grateful for but as you can imagine this is a difficult time for a young & relatively inexperienced team.  Skype is dodgey at best so we are immensly grateful that Liddy was able to catch up while her brother was home & we had a really good session.

Praise points.

• The books. They have been very revealing, challenging and helpful to my walk with God and what it means to bare fruit for his kingdom.


• The Spanish progress

• The relationships that are build ing outside of OM

• That I've found a church to attend and am very happy with it

• The calm inside the Intensive Training program at this time. We should be hitting a low, which hasn't happened... yet

• The continued financial support

PRAYER POINTS

• The children's ministry. I haven't been able to settle properly. Jona, the team leader, was away for some time and is now no longer a part of the ministry. Please pray for the children as they adjust but also the team for the boys of El Arca.

• The 3 month period. This is the time that we will all, supposedly, enter into the phase of culture shock.

• My relationship with Intensive Training Leaders, Tineke and Whitney but also Kellie, another I.T participant.

• Spiritual Warfare, the team is cur-rently experiencing many different things.

• For the arrival of a new team member, Bec. For her settle-ment but also for us as we adjust to another person being in the house, making it 9 in total.


Once again, a huge thank you to all those of you who support us one way or another.  You may never know how much this means to us or what a difference it has made but we are eternally grateful!  May God bless you & all those you dwell under your covering. *Ganeida*.

Suffering from Double Vision.

The story is told of an atheist that was debating a Christian. The atheist said ‘I’ll prove to you that there is no God. God, if you are there, I dare you to strike me down and kill me right now!’ With the atheist still alive, the Christian turned and said ‘All that you have just proved is the love, grace, and patience that God has towards a wicked and proud humanity.’~  Unknown

I've noticed it for some time now ~ & it's not because I'm getting old.  I swear it's a disease & I know of no cure for it: double vision.

Have you noticed?  Do you suffer from it too?  Some days it feels like I'm losing my mind.

Nope, not the sort of double vision that requires corrective glasses & multiple  [& expensive!] trips to the optomitrist.  I'm talking about the other sort.  You know, where you're having a quite ordinary conversation with someone until they suddenly say something & you slam up against the fact the pair of you are not living in the same world at all!   

 Because I own a pair of spiritual glasses & though I think a good bit of this world is very lovely & I certainly get why God pronounced it Very Good after He made it, bits of it, quite a lot of bits are...not so good.  It makes me sad.  The sort of deep dark sadness that can't be allieviated because while you know the cure you also know most people don't want to know about it because it does not fit in nicely with their world view & it really requires some rather radical adjustments on their part.

Sometimes I wish I could take my glasses off.  It's like being on board the Titanic.  You know the iceberg's been hit.  You know the ship's going down but the band plays on merrily.  As in the days of Noah: "As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the Son of man, They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all (Luke 17:26-27)."


How close is close?  Closer than you believe.  Did you know, for example, that there is an Israeli sect [they have a web site too] dedicated to the third temple.  They have all the priestly garments made.  They have the musical instruments ready.  They have carved the cornorstones.  Seriously.  Pics & everything if you are interested.  They are ready to build.  All that prevents them is the ongoing dispute over the Temple Mount but so long as that dispute continues the rest of us get to breath because once the temple sacrifices are once again halted we've got about 3 years before all hell breaks lose.


Christ warned us to read the signs of the times ~ not for scaremongering.  Not for any other reason than that we should be prepared; that we should know what to expect; that we should arm ourselves in advance with the things of the Spirit.  And that we should stand at the very gates of hell rescuing as many of those who are perishing as possible.


Today's absolute trivia: This is my 1oooth post & I haven't crashed my blog yet! ☺

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me. ~ Emo Philips

We have run all term & now, suddenly, we have stopped. No singing. No dance. No concerts. Not even caroling this year. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Star is dying of boredom. Her time is usually so accounted for she treasures her free hours. Now she has more than she knows what to do with.


Naturally Queensland's weather has chosen the official start of the school holidays to drip miserably all over everything & pretend it is winter rather than the middle of December & only a fortnight from Christmas. It should be stinking hot. Humid. Muggy. We should be dripping with sweat & lying under the whirring fans dreaming of cool breezes while drinking long iced drinks & scoffing cold ices.


We rocked up to the pool once. The lady informed us the water was icy & she was closing in 15 minutes. Star chose not to spend her hard earned cash on 15 minutes of icy misery! I only like my water at bath temperature ~ which means I almost never swim.


And I don't like chlorine ~ particularly chlorine the kindergarteners have been learning to swim in! Nope.


We have done all the new DVDs. We have been to the library. We have dragged out the cards & jig~saws but sometimes you just need to get out of the house & look at something you aren't responsible for. So I took Star down to the island thrift store. If you're going to do thrift stores it really pays to do upmarket ones in the flash part of town ~ which, sadly, is not the island. More out of desperation than anticipation of finding anything we'd want I detoured to a garage sale & there, sitting on the lawn, was a brand new, unused ladies bike, almost, but not quite, exactly what Star has been wanting for some time.

I agreed to go halves. The crash helmet was thrown in for free.

Now Star is not the most physically dexterous of my children but as there was no way that bike was going to fit in my little red car the only way for Star to get it home was to ride it there! I watched her set off, rather wobbly & terribly self~conscious, then toddled off behind her. Waited by the P.O to make sure she made it up the hill ok ~ seriously necessary. She may be 16 but well~co~ordinated she is not! Once I was fairly certain she was going to make it home in one piece I headed off, Star doing a wobbly zig~zag in my rear view. And that child has a liscence to drive my car!


Then I waited. And waited. And waited. Not that I expected her to be fast but even by Star's standards the child was taking her time. Finally she hove into view....walking the bike. And carrying a pedal!!! The men in my life are now discussing spanners & threads [I thought that was [a] either slang for clothing or [b] what one used to sew with] Only Star. *sigh*

"If I have a monument in this world, it is my son." ~ Maya Angelou

Two of the three musketeers returned whence they came on Thursday.  It was a flying visit but at least we saw the lad.  Drizzly rain saw he actually rested!  His brother saw he got some crabs.  The rest of us just held on for the ride.

In His Own Words.

"The greatest Ag Pilot and Lover ever"

Mark 1962~ 2006

                           Photo c/~ The Duchess. 

Unpopular Opinions & Politically Incorrect ideas.

America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings." ~ Barak Obama




Ever notice the media has a thing about the world not being big enough for all of us?  We gotta reduce the numbers, don'tcha know, because it's not sustainable.  Zero Population.  One Child Policies.  Condoms for India & mass sterilization for whoever *they* can convince needs it.  I have 5 kids so I guess you can figure what I think of this one. And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." ~ [Genesis1:28] .  And that being the case I loved this post!  Pause for thought.

Which brings me to an even less popular thought; we are being out~populated because instead of following the biblical mandate we're following man's.  What the Ottoman Empire failed to achieved back in the 13th century they look like achieving by default in the 20th simply by having more babies. Don't believe me?  Have a look at some of the birth stats: 40% of all births in France, for example, are now to Muslim women.  It doesn't require a mathematical geniuses to see where this lands us ~ eventually.

And if one dare, and most won't, express a politically incorrect opinion there are shrieks & cries of racism, religious intolerance, ethnic hatred & all the rest ~ which is insane when you consider Christianity is the only religion others can dump on with impunity & without fear of reprisals.  So, for the record, I do not hate Muslims.  However I know my history. The stated aim of Islam is to bring the whole world into subjection to Islam & to this end a Muslim is allowed to lie, cheat, even murder with impunity because there is a declared jihad against all infidels ~ like you & me. *sigh*  Can't get more politically incorrect than that.

Scare mongering?  Bigotry? Well Daniel talked about this.  And Ezekiel. Isaiah, John ~ book after biblical book talks about the harlotry Israel committed with the surrounding nations, about how God dealt with that ~ & about how He will continue to deal with it.  What is happening in the middle east just now was foretold centuries before Christ was born.  Because all the nations surrounding Israel are Islamic.  What's more, without reading a word, Islamic allegiance is declared symbolically because you see it everywhere in the Islamic nations: the crescent moon.  Even I get this one.  Archaeology, people.  The crescent moon belongs to the mother goddess; to Ishtar, to Andaste; to Manat.   From the middle east through Asia minor & into Europe you will find the crescent moon depicted on artifacts & in every case it denotes mother goddess worship ~ however that transmuted over time.  You will also find it in certain Catholic & Anglican artifacts ~ which is another story again.

And the point of these politically incorrect meanderings?  We still have a little time; not much, but a little, in which to strengthen ourselves in the Lord.  When the world as we know it starts coming tumbling down Christians are not going to be magically wafted out of the mess.  God didn't refrain Nero from using Christians as human torches to light his garden parties & He didn't stop countless scores of men, women & children perishing in the arena to die by lion or sword.  What He did do was give them courage for the journey.  They went singing praises to their martyrdom.

Which is why speculation about which bits of the bible people believe bothers me so much.  I know the savagery depicted biblically about the end times is accurate.  It is not, unfortunately, metaphorical.  It means exactly what it says.  I may not always know exactly what it means but God does & we have been warned to prepare ourselves; to count the cost; to walk by the Spirit.  We will need to.