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Giving of Ourselves

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In Matthew 6:1, Jesus says:

Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. [NIV]

But when the poor widow imposes herself as the rich make their donations to the temple treasury, Jesus celebrates her act with [Luke 21:3]:

Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them.

Jesus justifies his opinion in financial terms: the widow’s gift was a far larger part of her wealth than were the larger contributions of the wealthy. But why does that make a difference?

I was asked one Sunday to help with the collection. When the time came to combine the plates, I found myself under a strange compulsion, and arranged matters so that the collection ended up in my hands. The deacon was a little piqued when I carried the plate up to the front of the hall. As I set it on the table, my hands hovered over it, and I felt the angel thoughts rising up out of it. On a later occasion, when I did this while the minister held the collection, I felt one wing through my chest.

In Genesis, it is said that God made us in his image. We know that the Almighty does his work in love, so one way of understanding that likeness is that we are designed so that actions taken in love are far more powerful than those done selfishly.

I think that this is why Jesus celebrates the widow. We might wonder why she made this offering: it could have been as a political statement, a reminder to the rich of why they gave. Perhaps she had longed all her life to make a contribution, and in her last days, took her wealth to the temple in gratitude for God’s provision through the Law. Or perhaps she had woken that morning with Jesus’ voice in her ears, telling her to seek under a stone for two copper coins to bring to the temple.

Whatever the reason, I believe that Jesus is recognizing that her intentions would take root in the entire collection. The rich put nothing of themselves into the treasury, because their interest was in their own image. Once the money was surrendered, they walked off with their pride. The widow, though, brought her obedience, her gratitude and her thoughts for those in greater need.  In that surrender, she invested those intentions in the entire offering. No one touching it could avoid being influenced by those impulses.

When I give money, I always give to a charitable organization. I know that many among the poor lack discipline, and so direct donations of cash can be a temptation. But when asked by a homeless person to give, I never sneer. I smile, and apologize without explanation. As I pass, my thoughts linger on them, tendering silently my hope that they will find strength and assistance that will allow them to find the security, hope and opportunity to provide for themselves.

Jobs Jobbing

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Steven Bannon is spinning his political agenda as “jobs, jobs, jobs.” His candidate, Donald Trump, is pushing three methods for creating jobs. The first is tax cuts for the wealthy and business, a replay of the failed “trickle down” economics first foisted upon us by Reagan. The second is to protect American jobs from foreigners by restructuring our trade relationships and deportation of illegal immigrants. Finally, we have infrastructure spending, long a Democratic priority frustrated by the Republican Party’s “no new taxes” policy that has locked the federal gas tax at $0.28 per gallon.

None of these proposals make much sense over the long term. Since Reagan, top-down stimulus policies have resulted in the largest income disparity in the nation’s history, with manufacturing jobs replaced by retail work. Overseas workers are themselves being displaced by automation, with electronics manufacturer Foxconn in China laying off 60,000 workers this year after installing robots, and illegal immigrants do the jobs that Americans won’t. Finally, infrastructure spending is not a permanent solution to unemployment – it will only make a significant dent now because the situation has been allowed to become so dire, with so many bridges, roads and dams in danger of collapse.

The future of employment was cast in a new light for me by a recent OECD study on computer use. In an assessment of users in advanced economies, the study revealed that only one-third of users could do more than fill out forms. This was also typical of most manufacturing jobs. As variability in sources of supply were reduced, it was less and less that the skills of the craftsman were required. Workers were trained to perform procedures.

Unfortunately, artificial intelligence and automation is assuming most of those tasks. Cortana will fill out our order forms for us. The Army is testing robot chefs that learn to cook watching videos on YouTube. In the near future, self-driving trucks will begin to erode the last great mainstay of blue-collar work, throwing 5 million drivers out of work.

From my experience as a fab tech in college, I know that it wasn’t the work that made such jobs enjoyable. People whose minds aren’t engaged by their work invest that energy in politics – whether innocent socialization or profiteering. During a year spent routing, sanding and soldering, my peers would disrupt each others concentration by squirting isopropyl alcohol on unsuspecting bums. And while I was building book cases using a wood working shop owned by one of the technicians, he took me out to a party run by a packer who had built a cinder block building behind his house stocked with goods that had “accidentally” fallen off of the forklift. I came away with stain and varnish.

While both examples sound abusive, they demonstrate an aspect of work that no machine will ever be able to replicate: building trust that allows us to have fun. Studies of laughter among apes shows that it serves primarily to indicate that aggressive behavior is regulated by empathy. Scratching, biting and hitting doesn’t progress, except accidentally, to actual injury.

One interpretation of our 24×7 political system is that this activity is being elevated as work in its own right. It is currently financed principally by mining out of the wealth held in the middle class commons. On the one hand, financial services companies no longer take a percentage of portfolio gains, they reap a service charge on each transaction, regardless of gain to the investor. Churning of retirement funds transfers wealth to the financial elite. That elite then finances the careers of politicians that vote for deregulation and lower taxes. The middle class, sensing incipient doom, then commits from its remaining wealth to fund the campaigns of revolutionaries such as Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.

This impulse toward social cohesion is not always driven by desperation. Regional currency systems ensure that neighbors buy from each other, conserving wealth in a form that the money-center financiers can’t access. Sustainable multi-crop farming requires ten times as many workers as monoculture. With the spread of artificial intelligence and augmented reality, the inefficiencies and environmental degradations of family farming can be overcome, and communities rebuilt around the social cohesion that historically characterized agricultural societies.

My friend Sister Gloria celebrates her resuscitation of plants that appear to be dead in their pots. She simply applies her will to their survival. The biological capacity to heal through spiritual investment is explored in more depth in Stephen Harrod Buhner’s beautiful treatise, The Lost Language of Plants (reviewed here and here). This is the skill exercised by our nurses, and expressed as nurturing by teachers. It is a skill that our captains of finance and industry, so focused on exploiting resources to capture wealth, have been hostile to for thousands of years.

It is faith in this capacity that I believe will restore our broken political and economic systems. This capacity of intuition, that guides living things into a mutually supportive future free of fear, will be supplemented and supported by information systems that analyze information and prescribe treatments. Those decisions, however, are meaningless without the fundamental benefit of nurturance: the transmission of the spark of joy that fortifies our desire to survive.

As was the industrial age, this economic transformation will be frightening to those that cannot perceive its virtues. We are seeing such a fundamental shift. I doubt that Donald Trump and Stephen Bannon understand its nature, for they attained power by trumpeting doom. What they fail to understand is that in the new era, it is exactly those social and emotional skills that cemented the cohesion of industrial teams that will be of most value. The information age will unleash the nurturing potential that was held captive by the industrial age, ushering in an age of healing and sustainability.

Power Seeks Truth Through Love

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A friend from yoga started following my blog recently, and yesterday we were chatting about it before yoga class. I was surprised by his statement that he always understood the Christian message to be that humanity was the focus of healing in the world, rather than a virus to spread corruption. I was about to ask him about the source of his understanding when a stranger interjected and began to tell me that I was wrong. He kept at it, point by point, until I got frustrated and told him, “Look, I am doing the work.”

This was the framing for Rachel Maddow’s profile of Steve Bannon’s career as a video producer. His recent work includes a metaphor on global warming – a crazed scientist locks a bunch of steamy bodies in a sauna and slowly raises the temperature, causing an unnecessary panic.

In the context of this blog, the more outrageous offering is a reality series that recasts the male protagonist of Duck Dynasty as the prophet of the Second Coming. Some would be outraged by this travesty, others would be frightened, but I see it as an opportunity.

Bannon, like many in the media industry, understands the power of dreams. Shared ideas are spiritual points of contact that link a target community. Seeding people with phrases and images allows other kinds of thoughts to be projected into their souls. This is something that I trained my sons to resist. When they complained that an unsettling thought wouldn’t leave them alone, I offered “Close your eyes, calm your thoughts, and form this question in your mind: ‘Where is this coming from?’ Now tell me whose face you see.”

Bannon has co-opted the conservative message with his alt-right media machine. People that celebrate freedom and independence now subscribe – sometimes violently – to his program that seeks to deny those rights to minorities. It appears that he now wishes to do the same to Christianity, whose political messaging is currently diffused across competing denominations.

But as one among a growing number that believes that Revelation teaches that the returned Christ is already at work among us, I must consider how much Bannon’s power play will affect that process of manifestation. I am happy to share that I have powerful reasons for believing that it will further it.

You see, people may subscribe to an illusion such as the one that Bannon is constructing, but ultimately their concern is for the actual conditions of their life. This is the huge difference between Christ and illusionists such as Bannon: Christ actually loves his community, and is invested in their strength. This means that the community builds strength through relation with Christ, rather than losing it.

But how does Christ break through the barrier of illusion spun by Bannon and others? Because his investment in truth gives him focus and strength that the illusionists cannot rival. Illusionists are lazy people, seeking to take power without giving anything in return. Christ focuses only on service to his community, and so disciplines himself to act in a way consistent with their benefit. There is no pause in his determination, no rest until he has manifested his will for service to them.

What killed him made him stronger.

So all that Bannon will succeed in doing is to create a nexus in spirit that will allow Christ to send fulfillment all the more rapidly to those that are held captive by illusion. Once that message is received, Bannon will lose his power over his captives, and be cast aside as irrelevant.

This is just a specific example of a greater principle: spiritual power is conscious and intelligent. It seeks conditions under which it can anchor and spread. That means that it must work in concert with truth, for without truth its anchor will not be firm. Truth is perceived fully only by those that love unconditionally – that is to say, without thought of personal reward. For, if we think of personal reward when seeking the truth, people will seek to protect themselves from our appropriations by hiding from us.

This then, is what makes Christ inevitably the most powerful person on earth: power seeks truth through love. As the avatar of unconditional love, eventually all power will accrue to him.

Trexit

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Given that Clinton appears to have won the popular vote by upwards of a million votes, some among the pundits are bandying about the idea of changing the allocation rules for the electoral college. These rules are established by the individual states. A multi-state pact is already evolving which will require electors from participating states to cast their votes for the winner of the popular vote. That pact will be triggered when states representing 270 electors agree to the pact.

Is it too late?

I recognize that this mirrors the attempts by Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz to reassign the allegiances of delegates to both party conventions after the delegates were won in the primaries by Clinton and Trump (respectively). Remember those arguments by the “never Trump” delegates that they were not bound by law to vote according to the primary results?

I was astonished and dismayed by those efforts, which I saw as undemocratic. Now, however, as we see how woefully unprepared Trump is to run the presidency – not least due to the fact that apparently the only smart people he knows are actually members of his family or alt-right white supremacists – is it too late for the Electoral College to reject his ascendancy to the Oval Office? Or could the greatest aberration in our electoral system actually redeem itself, and grant Clinton the honor that she so deeply deserves?

Inerrancy

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When I began taking flute lessons again at 50, my teacher kept on insisting that I needed to record my practice sessions. I understood why: I was substituting speed for clarity and precision. The notes came out in a blur that began and ended on the right notes, but that didn’t communicate anything in the middle.

But the thing is that I conditioned myself to that expectation of velocity, and I’ve stuck with it, slowly eliminating the extraneous motion and learning to focus the air flow. I’m beginning to sound like a flautist.

This was particularly apparent today after I came back from Dance Tribe in Santa Barbara. I felt like playing dirges, and since I don’t have any in sheet music, I just played slowly. I was pleasantly surprised by the clarity of tone.

I’ve been calling patiently to Hillary all week, and resolved to dance this morning for healing. While waiting for the doors to open, I offered Out of Eden’s Every Move I Make and the Katina’s Draw Me Close. I got part way through Sheena Wellington’s The Christ Child’s Lullaby before cutting inadvertently over to Lauren Daigle’s I Am Yours. Fifteen minutes of tears later, I realized that I could have taken another path: Shiva’s Dance of Destruction. But I held my resolve, and spent most of the first hour of the dance working my way in to the root of the pain. When it was over, I thought “You know, Hillary, your pain is a link to the things that beset us.” I walked out into the sunlight, and made them present to the Ancient of Days.

Yes, that is an intentional reference to Daniel 10.

I am hardly proud of all this trauma. Particularly because much of it originates in Christian confusion – this idea that we are “one nation under God,” which means that the Bible should be the moral law of the land.

I finally heard an interviewee on NPR explain the Evangelical premise: Christian faith requires conversion of the heart, and a belief in the inerrancy of God’s word. Politically, that departs from the ten commandments, headlined by “thou shalt not kill,” and continues through pro-life logic to a determination to see the Supreme Court recomposed to overturn Roe v. Wade. It was that determination that caused almost all white evangelicals to vote for Donald Trump.

I could tell them that they are wrong – wrong all down the line. Jesus reminds us that God “desire[s] mercy, not sacrifice.” He commands us to “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.” As promised in Jeremiah, Jesus dethrones the law, eliding it to “Love God and your neighbor.”

Why does he do this? Because the Law is not God’s word. Read the covenant with Noah: “By man shall man be judged.” The whole of the Pentateuch is a lesson in natural consequences – that threatening people doesn’t lead them to do good, it just corrupts those that mete out punishment. It’s not God’s Law, it’s man’s law propagated under the authority granted by God. This is why Jesus casts the law aside.

Look even at “Thou shalt not kill.” What does that mean? Only people, or does it also include other forms of life? And what about the capital punishments of Leviticus, or the genocide of Deuteronomy? The only conclusion to be drawn from the progression is that human priorities were present in the Law from the beginning.

So why was the Law allowed to persist? Because it served the purpose of building the capacity to reason in God’s chosen people. That fragile tool allows us to overcome our animal instincts, discerning and strengthening creative behaviors.

Jesus came when enough people were prepared to recognize the lesson delivered by the law of natural consequences – the religious and political practices of his era were a terrible abuse of faith. The people’s hunger for truth and justice caused many to accept the invitation to “follow.”

So what about our world today? There are still those that need the discipline of reason, and should they chose to follow some version of the Bible’s ethical code, that’s good for them. But there are also those that envision bringing a child into this world, and dread the prospect that that child will live a life twisted by fear and want, or casually crushed by violence. They know what it’s done to their lives, and they can’t imagine that anyone would want to repeat that experience. And then we have those that wish to have a child, but want to do it under the right circumstances, when all the benefits of family and community can be at their disposal as they grow.

None of us are inerrant. Even Jesus protested “Why do you call me ‘Master’? There is only one that is good.” We all make mistakes, and those mistakes cause us pain. Love is the tool that heals us of the consequences of our mistakes. Jesus tells us to love God because it calls that healing power closer to us. Jesus tells us to love our neighbors because that allows God to see them clearly, and so to heal them most effectively.

The soul of the aborted child will find a loving family capable of providing for its security and growth. Is that not what it would desire?

Maybe, then, we should think of the “Word of God” in the way the John invoked it: the logos that was and is with God. The source of all creative power, the force that amplifies all that is good. Simply and wholly: Love. In its infinite possibilities, love overwhelms any law of human reason. It leads people through error into repentance, and thus to wisdom. It prepares them to do better next time, rather than denying them the right to try at all.

From this perspective, all the dross of human vanity and folly falls away from Scripture. It reads as Jesus characterized it: the effort of a loving “daddy” to guide his children into maturity.

We shouldn’t be in such a hurry to write perfect laws, for love undoes the strictures of government. It is an error to chain it to law, for when the Kingdom arrives, government will fall away. We will all have the benefit of the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, and so no law except the song of compassion in our hearts.

Hillary: Next Steps

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The fundamental problem with Bernie Sanders’ socialist agenda is that governments do not respond to the needs of individuals. In delivering services, they must categorize people and compartmentalize society.

I think that Hillary and I agree that the suffering of the American middle class demonstrates that reality. Prior to the neoconservative takeover of the Republican Party, the middle class financed college education by paying itself 7% interest for loans against deposits that earned 6% interest. The deregulation of the Savings and Loan industry under Reagan was the beginning of a long tilt of the playing field, under the auspices of government, against the middle class in favor of the economic elite. This extended not only to the financial services industry, but also to the CEOs that run Main Street, men and women that dilute our pension plans by awarding each other enormous stock options packages.

Where Sanders sought to lead a messianic revolt against the system that threatens to throw the baby out with the bath water, Clinton proposed a more modest program of adjustment. Sanders, with his unfounded charges of corruption against both Clinton and the DNC, validated Trump’s campaign rhetoric. He has as much to do with the loss as anyone, and for him to claim the mantle of the progressive movement is hypocritical in the extreme.

So the electoral and political system is broken. We’re going to have to solve our problems ourselves. As a Christian, I see it this way: the idol of the federal government has been cast down. We can no longer seek security through claims of justice against the public purse. We must rely upon the compassion of others.

Love is the only path forward.

So where does this leave the candidate that I still honor? Well, finally able to focus her full powers on charitable work. Hillary, take the Clinton Global Initiative into Detroit and Flint and Cleveland. Side-step the broken federal system, and bind people together, face-to-face, hand-to-hand, in the glorious promise of healing that transcends geographical, political and national boundaries.

I am certain that Christ will join you there.

Getting Over Our Ages-Old Fear of Old Age

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I came across this delightful image today in David Stipp’s Scientific American short on anti-aging supplements. He says:

Whenever I see my 10-year-old daughter brimming over with so much energy that she jumps up in the middle of supper to run around the table, I think to myself, “those young mitochondria.”

Stipp’s article leads me to the conclusion that the recent fad for mitochondrial supplements seems to be undermined by evidence that systemic factors dominate. Specifically, our youthful vigor is not restored by supplements that improve the efficiency of the mitochondria that transfer energy from sugar to our muscles. That means other factors are at work.

My advice for those that can’t wait to be young again: enjoy this life, and don’t fight death when it comes. It’s your opportunity to be reborn with a full set of new equipment.

The Anti-Anti Christ

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I’ve been laid up with crippling muscle tightness for the last two days, spending most of my time lying on the floor and trying to stretch the inside of my thighs. I guess that no respectable masseuse will work there, so I had no idea how tight my adductors had become. Sunday night after Dance Tribe in Santa Barbara, I got out of the car and almost couldn’t stand up. My foam roller doesn’t have any instructions for that area, but I ended up laying on my side with the inside of my thigh on top of the roller, wiggling the muscle back and forth across its length, working my way between the knee and my groin. It wasn’t quite like the black-out pain that I used to get doing Bikram’s half locust posture, but it was close.

Yesterday I went in to work to push a customer release forward, but at two the pain forced me home. I spent the rest of the day watching movies between sets on the foam roller and trying to get back into cow pose. I caught the last half of Stigmata on Sunday night, and picked up the ending of The Vatican Tapes yesterday. The two movies captivated me, not necessarily because they were compelling, but because they characterize two of the central difficulties I have faced as I attempt to go about the work that I do in the world.

The dramatic tension in Stigmata revolves around the attempt by a Catholic cardinal to suppress knowledge of Jesus’ authentic teachings. This builds around a fragment of the Gospel of Thomas:

Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift a stone and you will find me.

This is consistent with the teachings of the four canonical gospels that the kingdom of God does not reside in institutional order, but is found by looking into our own hearts. That the Church is threatened by this teaching is evident from its conduct, but there are many explanations. One is that, as Jesus taught:

It is not what goes into your body that defiles you; you are defiled by what comes from your heart.

[NLT Mark 7:15]

To tell a sinner to look into his heart is to bear responsibility for the consequences of his struggle with sin.

This is a struggle, naturally, to which priests are not immune. Stigmata relates the experience of the saints that suffered from the stigmata – bleeding from the wrists and feet that reflects the depth of the spiritual bond to the cross.  The more nearly they approach to that perfect expression of love, the more they are beset by demonic influences seeking to enter into that power to work their will in the world. I would counsel any so beset to trust in love, and to do as Jesus did: offer your enemies forgiveness and a promise of healing. But what most stigmatics hold in their heart is a fear of sin, and it is that fear that runs amok as they draw to them the “demonic” spirits that seek healing.

Witnessing that struggle, many of their peers take refuge in religious institution. The institution becomes a substitute for Christ, and eventually of greater value to those that maintain it. This is not merely a point of theology: I was told as a child that a contemporary pope was torn from the throne of St. Peter because he was about to announce the return of Christ.

The Vatican Tapes explores the second great challenge to the return of Christ. This is the common teaching, drawn from the Book of Revelation, that Christ will be preceded by the Anti-Christ – a figure that manifests all of his virtues for the purpose of corrupting Christ’s purpose.

Then I saw another beast that rose out of the earth; it had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon. It exercises all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and it makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose mortal wound had been healed. It performs great signs, even making fire come down from heaven to earth in the sight of all; and by the signs that it is allowed to perform on behalf of the beast, it deceives the inhabitants of earth, telling them to make an image for the beast that had been wounded by the sword and yet lived.

[NSRV Rev. 13:11-14]

This echoes the words of 2 Thessalonians:

The coming of the lawless one is apparent in the working of Satan, who uses all power, signs, lying wonders, and every kind of wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.

[2 Thess. 2:7-9]

The interpretation by many is that the Anti-Christ is a man that will beguile the trusting with spiritual gifts, and lead them into corruption. In The Vatican Tapes, that ‘man’ is actually a woman, perhaps uniting both the anti-Christ and the Whore of Babylon in a single figure.

The problem posed by this interpretation is that it leads us to mistrust the presence of Christ among us. Christ brought fire down from heaven – the flames of the Holy Spirit. If we experience that, might we fear that we are being deceived as predicted in Revelation? And Jesus was famously a wonder-worker. Following Thessalonians, would a man that came to perform similar wonders be recognized as an avatar, or condemned (as Jesus was by his contemporaries) as a false messiah?

The way out of this trap is to recognize that Christ is not the man Jesus: Christ is part of the triune God that was, is and will be. Just so is the Anti-Christ: an opposition to Christ that since the dawn of life here on Earth has struggled against the healing power of divine love. Just as Christ’s influence reaches out from the cross through the ages, so the anti-Christ has woven its thread through our history. In the Bible, it can be identified as the serpent in the Garden, Herod on his throne, and the dragon in Revelation that chases the holy mother into hiding.

The only true barometer that distinguishes these two is our heart. Christ demands nothing of us but that our heart be filled with his love for others. Anti-Christ beguiles us with personal gifts that are twisted to command our fealty. Christ leads us because we trust him; Anti-Christ rules our thoughts with pleasures that cannot be sustained.

Here is the measure of goodness: not in what it offers us, but in the joy that it awakens through the boons received by those we cherish. Here science affirms that we are made in God’s image: if given a gift, our happiness lasts longer if we use it to benefit others.

This should be familiar to many of my readers. What may not be familiar is the allocation of spiritual gifts. This is the greater wonder, in my mind, and something tells me that it is an experience that others should now be encouraged to attempt.

Prior to Dance Tribe on Sunday, I stopped down the street at Hope. The pastor was just beginning his teaching, the concluding lesson in a series titled “A Freight Train Called Desire.” The lesson “The Loco-Motive” explored the damage we do to ourselves in seeking approval from others. I could feel a recognition in the congregation; they all knew this frustration. With that experience established in their minds, the pastor then reminded them that only one trustworthy source of approval exists: that of Jesus’ Abba (Daddy), the one that loves us without conditions, who welcomes our repentance with honor no matter how prodigal our sins.

In these moments prepared by a gifted teacher, I feel the congregants lifting their minds and hearts to the heavens. I am moved, recognizing the integrity of their desire, to guide it to the heavens with my hands, reaching up and up until I feel the angels’ responsive awareness. There is always a moment of surprise at this sense of being among the angels, and we pause there. As on Sunday there was nothing but gratitude in the experience, I raised my hands again to call them down.

Then comes the hard part: all the sorrows of this world come to the fore. Sometimes this is a defensive act – an attempt to protect ourselves from dissolving into love. But more often it is an act of healing. What comes to the fore are the experiences that must be surrendered if we are to hold on to the grace of the angels. So on Sunday, I found myself rooted to my chair as the tears rolled down my cheeks, heart breaking for the suffering of those I sat amidst.

Finally it cleared, just as the pastor completed his message. I don’t remember his closing prayer, for he had called the worship team up to lead the final song of praise. All the hours of practice focused in that moment. Sitting behind the rest of the congregation, I lifted my hands, imagining the stage cupped in my fingers, focusing the angelic presence. The introductory instrumental meditation resolved as a harmonic line, and the female lead sang directly into our hearts:

Oh, how He loves us, oh.
Oh how He loves us, how He loves us all.

Dave Crowder Band, How He Loves

It is an experience that I absolutely do not control. It is a relationship between angels and the congregation. It is something they do together when both see the possibility of service to love: us in manifesting healing in the broken world, the angels in amplifying God’s presence among us.

I am simply the witness to that possibility.

So I beseech you: open your minds and hearts to those possibilities. Do not allow fear to corrupt your love: have faith in Christ, immerse yourself in that security, and know that no power can stand against the strength of the healing we bring to the world with his angels. His love is the anti-anti-Christ. It erases the power of the anti-Christ. It makes the anti-Christ a lost, forlorn and confused figure – a withered shadow from our past that dissolves into the future we are creating together.