Time the task master.

 Well, it has been a while since I've posted anything. I was updating my picture on my YouTube space and I just happen to notice this link to a blog I had started years ago. So I decided maybe I should write something more current. Just  to get you caught up, I am now an Anglican priest in flowers Cove Newfoundland. I graduated from Gordon Conwell I still have three lovely children and a lovely wife. And, unfortunately  Trump is president of the United States. I have to say that I really enjoyed being the parish priest. Even though the weather is very cold most of the time, the people up here are lovely. I think that's all for now .

Welcome to the matrix

Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work... when you go to church... when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth. 
Neo: What truth? 
Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind. 






My Sunday school teacher did not show up last week, so we decided to to talk about occupy wall street, and our responsibly toward the poor as Christians.  
Near the end of our talk I made a prediction about the occupy wall street movement.  I said the give the naive nature of the people running the protest, that criminal elements will take over the protest site and start running things there way. 
Well, I hate to say I told you so, but here are at least two examples of what I'm talking about.

Tragic death rocks Occupy Vancouver site

This is a heart wrenching tragedy and it behooves us to look in the mirror and assume some social responsibility. A young woman died Saturday afternoon at the Occupy Vancouver site from what appears to be a drug over dose. Tragic indeed. I can tell you she didn't over dose on pot.

Thursday there was a heroin overdose and if there wasn't medical aid on site, that too could have needed in a fatality. These two tragedies illuminate the real problem in East Vancouver. Gangs get rich off of hard drugs and society enables addiction instead of helping to curb it. Vancouver Coastal Health has been handing out free needles on site part of their “harm-reduction” service. Once again they ignore the other three pillars and assume legal liability for handing out free needles without enforcing the law.

In case they didn't notice, it is a public protest not a safe injection site. The police have every right to arrest people for using hard drugs on that public protest. Tolerating it and handing out free needles is socially irresponsible. Then again it's likely part of the NPA's plan to shut the site down. Create a problem so you can rationalize shutting it down without examining the public urgency of the protest. 

And then there is this

Deranged homeless man goes on violent rampage in Zuccotti Park
This is the new face of Zuccotti Park!

A deranged homeless man who has been squatting among the Occupy Wall Street protesters in lower Manhattan went on a violent, early-morning rampage yesterday, cursing incoherently and kicking down tents.

The only thing that could stop Jeremy Clinch from his Godzilla-like rampage was a left hook to the face delivered by a paranoid fellow protester who claimed to be an ex-Turkish diplomat -- and charged that his assailant was carrying out a plot hatched by Mayor Bloomberg.

“I’ve been here from Day One! I haven’t got a tent!” the Cleveland-native Clinch shrieked as he furiously kicked down tents onto sleeping protesters at about 8 a.m.

Now you might want to argue that its not fair calling the homeless person the "Criminal element"  But what would you call this behavior?  My point is the power abhors  a vacuum, and giving the empty headiness of the people who claim to be in the occupy wall street protests, its just a matter of time before some not so nice adults decide they want a piece of the free action. 

Meanwhile, there are people who are making a deferring in the lives of the poor.

Anglicans are transforming lives of poor

I know its Africa, different culture and all, but if the protesters expended the same energy just helping the poor one on one, I think It would make a much bigger difference, they just would not be in the spot light all the time :)

All hallow's eve!

I've been waiting on this a long time, free candy for the whole weekend culminating in that sugar Xanadu is Halloween.  There are those in our evangelical world that loath this holiday.  For example, I found this quote that pretty much sums up the anti-Halloween feeling.

"My family does not celebrate it or participate in it. We do not believe that our children are “missing out,” and neither do they. 
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/halloween.html

But we Christians, and especially we Anglicans, should not forget that that for us Halloween is actually the lead in to all saints days, which kicks off 8 days of remembering all the saints that have died.   Yes there are those in our society who like to emphasis the pagan elements of the holiday, but do you really think not letting your kids get all the free candy you can stand is teaching them good Christian ethics?  Or is it just one more thing they can't do that there friends can?  I choose to stand with the Saints and the candy :)

When the poor get bored.

I've been watching the Occupy wall street protest, from my unemployed perch, with a mixture of envy and anger.  Envy because white people, and most of these new hippies are white, always find the funnest things to do, and they find people who will pay for these flights of fancy.  Want to walk around Europe for a year after high school?  No problem! How about free shoes?  Here you go!  you have got to have a little envy for those people who can pull these things off!

But wait, it gets me mad too..

I'm mad because whatever their demands might be, it will not put one more dollar in my pocket.  This is what puzzles me, what do the protesters really want?   A soviet style economy?  Well, we all know how that turned out for them.  Maybe living like they do in Cuba?  Good luck with that.  No, it angers me that when people get bored, they get angry, and then they demand things they can't possible get, and all the cities involved have to spend millions on extra police presence, and guess who that affects, that right the very poor that they are protesting for.     

Now hear me out, I'm not letting the banks of the hook for one moment.  Here is a story about how banks are kicking military families out of their homes illegally!   How about demanding that these robbers be fined adult money like 500 million dollars.  If you see how much profit they make, you will understand why these banks constantly rob the poor and the underclass, and happily pay the fine.  

gee now I sound like one of these hippies :)

Hello world! Yes its my birthday!

Why write a blog??

Well, I thought that for my birthday, I would do something totally new.  My lovely wife Jennifer has always encouraged my to move forward in my life, and in a sense this is my way of moving forward.  

Its very daunting for me to write.  My life have always revolved around speaking, something that I'm very good at, and write has always been a harsh taskmaster in my life.  That does not mean that i despise it. I, like most men , don't like things that can't be done right away.  Never the less, I'm going to give this a shot, and see where it take me.  I wanted to start out with  a brief introduction of myself, and then speak to a topic that has gotten under my skin recently.

I was born in Brooklyn New York, the son of two immigrants from the Dominican Republic.  My father left us when i was three, although he away managed to insert himself into our lives form time to time.  I was baptized a catholic, but for reasons only my mother would know we never went to Catholic Church.  My first experience at a church was at Yogi Bear Sunday school.  I was about 7 when I went, and I remember a carnival like atmosphere prevailing in the church.  Upbeat music, lots of flashing lights, and a spinning wheel to get prizes.  I only when once, I don't think my mom like me being picked up by strangers once a week, and then nothing until I was about 11.  

And then everything changed

I met my best friend Jose Ortiz, and I started going to a bible study run by the Jehovah's witnesses.  Jose Was  a Pentecostal, who loved science almost as much as I did, and was not put off by me being a Jw.  We became fast friends and ended up going to the same High School.  Brooklyn Tech

While in High School Jose convinced me to join his christian High School fellowship, Ecumenical witnessing at its best :)   It was a very strange experience, Everyone except me was Pentagonal except me.  But it work, less than 6 months in I received the Lord into my heart.

After that I graduated from High school,  Joined the Army, saw the world, came back to New York and work on wall street for a while.  Then I went to Columbia Bible College.  

Then I graduated met the love of my life Jennifer, and went to seminary at Teds and Andover Newton.  Jj and I came back to Columbia, Sc were she was in the Military.  She got out of the military to have our first son, Azriel

We have be here about 12 years and have had two other beautiful sons Tennyson, who is Five and Vadim who is 2.

We are now planning to move to Huntsville Al, Were I plan to work with the local Anglican church there, and JJ plans to help her family since they are getting on in age.  That was a brief introduction to my so called life.  Now here is somethings I think all of you should know about.  

Bishop Under fire

It never fails to amaze me how myopic the Episcopal Church can be, and all in the name of survival.  About a month ago Bishop  Mark Lawrence of the diocese of South Carolina was served was charged with abandoning the episcopal church.   

Now given the theological state of the episcopal church, this seems like a Aprils fools joke, but this is October and now the Episcopal church is pulling its version of trick or treat.  I have linked various sites so all of you can decide for yourselves how serious this is, but I would ask if you come to the same conclusion that I have, which is to say that the episcopal church is pulling its own version of night of the long knives, then we need to pray for this bishop and his Diocese.  

Thanks for putting up with my long post, I'm hoping this is the start of something special.  Oh and may thanks to all of you that have wished me a happy birthday, especially my lovely family who just showed me my birthday cake, which of course looks like a cheeseburger ( pictures coming tomorrow!!)