I find it interesting, that the day on which I returned to basketball,
August 28, was also the first day of the FIBA Championships. When I returned
to basketball after focusing on other sports for at least a year, I had no
idea that the FIBA Championships were starting. Yet I felt impelled by some
almost irrestistible force, to return to basketball.
You can read about my recent basketball exploits and tactics at
https://coolname001.angelfire.com/soccaireighteen.htm.
The web-page describes the very fast progress I've made in basketball shooting
and weightlifting of a type designed to increase sprint speed, jump height and
upper body strength without impairing skilfulness. From the August 28 entry
on, there are entries concerned with basketball.
I am a person of average height but I must admit that I have encountered
beautiful who are very tall in the Boston area. Examples: Elizabeth Drumwright
who was a Radcliffe student at Harvard, and the lady nicknamed 'Fishgoose' who
used to work at the 'Fishmonger' store in Cambridge MA.
Sometimes I think of such women as being almost saintly; other times I
think that they misbehave.
* * *
I don't claim to have seen the hidden book containing God's hidden
thoughts re how Yvan
Mainini should behave with regards to myself or with regards
to religion in general; nor can I say I have seen the hidden literature
re how I, David Virgil, should behave with regards to people
such as Yvan Mainini. I do realize that in three different places
the scriptures declare that most of God's thoughts are not in the
scriptures. I think I could honestly say, that to at least a slight
extent, I have some idea regarding what these thoughts are.
In brief, when a drummer hits the drum, you would not be able to hear the
sound of it, if God intervened to prevent the sound wave from hitting your
ear. Likewise, when a person in his mind thinks benevolent benedictory
thoughts, God can allow such thoughts to have effect. I figured this out
myself, but by now it has been explained to alot of people. More of this
further down.
---------------------------
The poem on the main page of my website, written by myself,
engages the mind in benedictory thoughts. Christ is referred to as Yayzoos
(how his name is written in the original scriptures). One of the lines in the
poem is in extra large type, because due to an error, it had previously been
accidentally left out:
LOST SILVER
Now I pray in remembrance of ancient scriptural
parables
which show that through repentance human beings are
repairable
parables which show that I was adhering to God's
lessons
when I suddenly felt close to God and given a fresh start
when
I was feeling the feeling of repentance in my heart
and thirsting for the
spirit and believing Jesus is God's Son
Remembering how when Yayzoos
walked the earth then drew near
tax collectors and sinners hoping his
teachings would reach their ears
When the Chief priests and scribes saw
them join Yayzoos for dinner
they murmured, saying, this man receiveth
and eateth with sinners
Then Yayzoos told a tale in reply to their angry
spirits
Saying, if a woman has ten silver pieces and loses one
she
lights a candle and the searching of the house is begun
and she seeks
diligently for the lost piece until she finds it
And when she hath found
it she calls her friends to gather around
and says, rejoice with me, for
the piece which I had lost I have found
Likewise I say unto you, God's
angels are glad
when one lost sinner repents of things that are bad
So
help us God so time spent hearing these words we have heard
becomes time
that helps us to repent in accordance with God's Word
Help me God so
these memories of the words of God's Son
help me to draw closeer to God
and His angels in heaven
And in general aside from the silver
pieces
help me to draw closer to the spirit of God's son Jesus
Forgive
me for my sins and heal me of injuries inside
that I have caused to
myself through my sins and my pride
so my desire to draw closer to God
will not be denied
And excepting those for whom it's not the will of the
divinity
that we should ask such things for them from the God of
infinity
all things that I ask for myself through these words of the
prophet
I ask also for all people everywhere on the
planet
I ask these things of thee God in the name of thy Son
Yayzoos Christ
Yayzoos who by the name Jesus now draws people to the
light
In this email I talk about for lack of a better word, 'telekinetics',
a 'sign from God', an experience in which I felt Christ on the cross within
myself, metaphysics and theology. Also included are a couple of other poems I
wrote. My tracker programs indicate that alot of people bookmark my poems when
they find them on the internet, that is they put them in their favorites
folder and come back to read them a second time. Such is a reasonable test of
the quality of a poem.
So that you might be able to easily find the
latest thing I have put up on the net: I have a blog at
http://davidvirgil.blogspot.com/; my
newsgroup posts are listed at
http://groups.google.com/groups/search?q=author%3Avincemoon%40rcn.com&start=0&scoring=d&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&num=10;
my website main page is at
this link, and my soccer training
log is
here.
By the way this email is @2009
David Virgil Hobbs--could be that I will use some things in this
email in some other context.
"It is easier for a camel to
pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of
God...it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a
rich man to enter the kingdom of God...it's easier for a camel to pass through
the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God...there's
something wrong with you...you should be rolling out the red carpet for
me!"
The fact that such a statement as this about camels and red
carpets is conceivably a respectable statement in certain situations means
something. I estimate that Christians who are not rich, especially the best of
this group, are an under-rated, under-respected group.
Confusion Regarding Whether 'Good Works' are Relevant to Salvation is
to a Significant Extent Merely Semantic
I estimate that due to confusion re the exact meaning of scripture,
Americans have for a long time been lackadaisical with regards to good works.
I think I've attained to a good original insight: the confusion re faith vs
works has to do with confusion re the definition of works. If you define the
attempt to live a conscientous life as good works, that's one definition of
works. If you define actually doing exactly what God wants as good works, that
is another definition of good works. One can adhere to one's conscience while
being in contradiction of God. The scriptural authors who are the favorites of
the good works are unimportant crowd, and the scriptural authors of the works
are important crowd, were according to scripture, loving brothers in the unity
of the faith; how then can it be said, that they disagreed vehemently
regarding the most important doctrines? St Peter said there were things in the
letters of St Paul that are hard to understand, which the 'unlearned and
unstable wrest to their own destruction'. Yet these same difficult scriptures
are the scriptures that many American Christians who are not good at
understanding hard-to-understand stuff make a big deal out of, while they
ignore the art of balancing a scripture against other scriptures that take a
different slant. It's dangerous to take scripture out of context.
Unreasonable to 'Tolerantly' Prohibit Teaching that One
Lifestyle is Superior to Another
Seems that gay culture and pagan culture are becoming more
powerful while Christianity is getting weaker. A prime cause of this is
alleged Christian intolerance, with regards to persons such as pagans and
gays. Concise response re this 'intolerance': Why not persecute 'alpine
skiing' coaches who are impertinent enough to favor one style of 'alpine
skiing' over another? Just as there are various styles of 'alpine skiing',
there are various styles of life; one life-style is gay, another life-style is
straight. According to the scientific mainstream, the living creatures found
in nature 'progress' through a mechanism wherein some of the creatures mutate
into forms which are more successful in terms of the number of offspring.
Similarly, when society tolerates various schools of thought teaching that
various lifestyles are superior, one can expect that eventually the truly
superior lifestyles will become popular. If government were to intervene by
forbidding basketball coaches from advocating one style of shooting over
another, it would be reasonable to expect that the result would be damage to
the quality of the national basketball performance.
REASONABLE TO DEPEND ON NOT JUST THE SENSES BUT ALSO FAITH
DERIVED FROM STATEMENTS OF OTHERS WHEN EVALUATING RELIGION
Many
people apparently believe that in developing opinions re religion, one should
reject information that does not come from the eyes, the ears, the sense of
touch, or one's own inner mind. A simple parable I invented checkmates such
ideas. Imagine being lost but having to get to the hospital because your son
is sick. You encounter someone and he tells you the directions for how to get
to the hospital that you have never seen. You believe what the person tells
you and find your way to the hospital. Then when you get to the hospital you
know that the hospital exists whereas previously you only believed that the
hospital existed.
Likewise in the sphere of religion, it is reasonable
to depend on not just what one's senses tell one but also on what others tell
one. When you believe what others tell you, you have faith; then later, after
you have experienced epiphany via a transcendental state of mind resulting
from your obedience to the dictates of religion, you attain to knowledge, a
step above faith. Just as you have an ethical responsibility to get your sick
son to the hospital, so also you have an ethical responsibility to get your
spiritually sick son (we are all spiritually sick) to the hypothetical
spiritual hospital of the parable.
The "sign" that led to
me becoming serious about christianity
In high school on the
South Side of Chicago David Gottlieb and his brother Alan Gottlieb were
friends of mine. They were generally hospitable, you don't appreciate such
hospitality until you spend time in the less hospitable communities.
Once I was at the Gottlieb residence, socializing with the Gottliebs
one or both of them. I left their place and walked down to 55th Street,to the
intersection of I think Dorchester or Blackstone at 55th St., in Chicago Il.,
on the south side near the University of Chicago. There at the playground
where there is now a pool next to the big twin apartment buildings, I ran into
my friend Wayne Braxton and Linda Skinner. I had taken some pill, I know not
for sure what it was.
We played frisbee, I could tell that I had
charmed Linda. She was smiling and clapping her hands together and her body
language and facial expression were that of one who considers themselves to be
something less than me. I was on the slide and she got on the slide
in front of me and leaned backwards into me, but I leaned backwards politely
to avoid contact, she was 14 and I was 17. I felt like a God, like Mercury; I
felt on top of the world. I felt as if the top of my head had come off,
thereby unleashing all the joy and transcendence that is usually suppressed.
Then later when I tried to talk to Linda Skinner (the playground was
the first time I had met her) she would not be my girlfriend. I became
despondent and a few months later returned to the playground, where I left an
offering to God on the slide, a date, one of those things you eat, and prayed
to God for a sign to reveal to me how I could be the charming person I was
when I met her in the playground, for it seemed I was like two people, one
person who was the way I was when I met her in the playground, and another
person who was the way I was in my usual state of mind. It seemed that I could
not get Linda for a girlfriend because she liked one side of my "split
personality" but did not like the other.
As I sat on the slide praying
for a sign, a car started honking. It sounded as if it was sympathizing with
me. I went over to look inside the car, and inside of it, there was a "Holy
Bible" on the front dashboard. This led to my becoming serious about
Christianity. I noticed that a very small percentage of cars have a Bible
visible in them.
Persons such as Linda may think I became serious
about Christianity just to please them, but actually, I became a Christian
before I was five years old, while I was living in the bungalow at the Prince
of Wales Museum in Bombay India, surrounded by Indians from India, Hindus, and
my non-Christian parents. I became a Christian before I ever got to know
a Christian. But I did not become serious about Christianity until
this incident with the honking car.
Dream
about being a Russian commando that preceded me waking up feeling Christ on
the Cross Within
Not so long ago, I (a citizen of the
USA) dreamt that I was a Russian commando, spying on the German Army in
WW II. I was watching them hold a Christian church service. The Germans
troops noticed me up in the rafters of a big building spying on them--they
heard or saw something--but they let me go--it was as if, they were afraid
that their bosses would find out about me. I was admiring the German troops, I
felt more akin to them than to my Russian comrades. Later the Germans came to
get my surrender. I was trying to decide if I should fight to the death as a
matter of honor or surrender. At this point, I woke up, and could feel Christ
crucified on the Cross within me for about an hour. I did not feel the pain of
it but still crucifixion was a boring experience. I could feel the
supernatural quality of Christ on the cross within me, I could feel that
Christ was more than a prophet.
There were some other details to the
dream and how I felt when I woke up but I have given you the basics of it. I
would have to spend a few hours digging through a small mountain of my spiral
notebooks to find the account I wrote of the dream when I first had it and
come up with the details.
The crucifixion was the only time in Christ's life when he was
reduced to the state of a slave, without control over his body. It was
probably the only time he was bored. Yet we humans spend alot of time being
bored even though we are never crucified, our boredom stems from our sins.
Seems God effected some kind of union with us humans, by becoming bored on the
cross the way we often are bored without being on a cross.
Telekinetic Nature of Prayer or thoughtsMy idea is to
if possible use the--for lack of a better word--telekinetic action of the
minds of people such as yourself (this is rational continue reading for just a
minute and you will understand I will explain), to help improve spirits of
people everywhere (except the ones who should not be uplifted), especially
some group you might wish to specially focus on.
This is rational I'll
explain to you an original insight I figured out. Just as you could not hear
the drumbeats produced by the mind of the drummer if God blocked the sound
waves, so also another type of action of God, interference as opposed to
non-interference, allows the benevolent thoughts in the mind of a praying
person to have effect on others. Another way of looking at it is, if I had my
finger on the remote control trigger of a nuclear bomb that would destroy the
devil, My brain activity that led to me pushing the button would not be able
to detonate the bomb if God intervened to prevent the signals sent from the
remote control device from reaching the bomb; the signals would be able to
travel to the bomb only if God allowed them to (this does not mean God
approves of everything he allows to happen). So if you do something such as
read the two poetic prayers I wrote you can find below,(keeping in mind
a couple of unwritten lines of special focus on some group of your own
choosing), you might actually be able to accomplish something. One poetic
prayer is entitled "Overcoming Sins that Prevent Us from Catching the Divine
Game" and the other is entitled "the Sport of Virtue". In these poems Christ
is referred to as "Yayzoos" the name by which he was originally referred to in
scripture and by the early church.
Scripture Reveals
Part of God's Mind Many people these days are wont to argue
with "religious" persons who are similar to myself. The best way I know to
deal with this kind of discord is to point out that the Old and New Testament
scriptures have three times officially declared that most of God's thoughts
words and actions are not recorded in the scriptures. Perhaps the world would
be a better place now if in the past the religious had been more aware of and
expressive regarding the fact that scripture does make such declarations.
Conscience Must be Based on a Pure Mind
Another new original insight discovered by myself into theological
basics that has somehow escaped the minds of humanity throughout the ages: The
excuse, "but it was not against my conscience", is invalid if the conscience
has been polluted by various pollutants such as greed, selfishness, arrogance,
willful ignorance, and intellectual laziness. Supposing in the presence of
anger or some other mental sin, a person's conscience dictates action A; but
in the absence of anger or the given mental sin it dictates action B. If,
affected by anger or some other defect in attitude the person follows his
conscience and does action A, how could this be better than if, in the absence
of anger or some other defect in attitude, he were to commit action A even
though his conscience dictated action B? That would imply that the presence of
anger or some other defect in attitude improved the person over what he would
have been in the absence of the defect.
'Religion-produced' Stress Can Be Healthy Some people
may feel "stressed out" by what they read in this letter. The idea that a
person's fate in the afterlife is affected by their conduct in this world, the
idea that the fate in the afterlife is NOT predestined, both ideas I adhere
to, are ideas that have been denied by some new forms of Christianity, they
are ideas that can cause stress, because of the implication we have to worry
about what we think say and do and the implication that what we
think say and do can effect our fate in the afterlife.
My response to
such persons, in part:
Stress can be good for you. Physical exercise
is a form of stress. Mental exercise is known to ward off certain types of
senility. For hundreds or thousands or more generations, mankind has,
generation after generation, been subjected to mental and physical stresses
that exceed the level of stress much of mankind is exposed to in modern times.
Religion, properly understood, is more than simple tranquilizer or sauna like
relaxation. If you are walking across a street, and a car is about to hit you,
do you condemn the person who warns you that you are about to be hit, on the
grounds that he is a source of stress?
People fail to understand, and
I also partly fail to understand, why some should face unfortunate afterlives;
in their inability to understand such things, they proceed to reject the idea
of a deity who would condemn some to unfortunate afterlives. But despite my
lack of understanding, I know for a fact that Christ is the Son of God, and I
know for a fact that certain portions of the scriptures are inspired by God.
My understanding of the matter at this time, is, that, some are condemned to
unfortunate afterlives, because such acts as a kind of brain surgery for those
who enter into fortunate after-lives. A lifetime on earth, twists the brain of
the person who experiences it into something that is a shadow of a divine
brain; and something has to be done to bring such brains back to a divine
condition.
St. Paul never said that the christian was freed from the
burden of obeying his conscience, though he did admit that due to the physical
pressures of his body he St. Paul in certain ways violated his own conscience
without being separated from God or damned as punishment for such certain
types of violations of conscience.
'Good Works' Can be
Necessary; all is not PredestinedIn general regarding religion,
I feel that there has unfortunately been amongst almost all protestant
denominations, a misinterpration of St. Paul's words regarding works and
predestination. This misinterpretation was spoken of by St. Peter, when he
said that there are certain things in Paul's letters that are hard to
understand, that the "unlearned and unstable" misinterpret with the end result
that they destroy themselves. The fact is that Paul did not mean that for all
persons it does not matter what they do so long as they have faith; and the
fact is that Paul did not mean that for all persons it is predestined from the
time of their birth whether they go to heaven or hell. You can find my
explanation of what Paul actually meant when he was talking about faith and
works in my
newsgroup
post. And if you scroll down to look at the scriptural quotation taken
from a letter of Paul's that appears on all of my resumes, you can find
further proof that yes what a person does can matter it is not just faith.
Another
newsgroup post of mine explains what Paul really meant when he talked
about predestination.
In a nutshell, regarding works, I believe that
when Paul talked about faith without works, when he was talking about
works he was talking about the works of the Jewish law in the case of the
Jews, and that no Jew successfully keeps all the works of the Jewish law; and
he was talking about the conscience of the Gentiles with regards to
Gentiles, the idea being no Gentile succeeds in following his conscience
perfectly. Thus in and of themselves such things cannot justify men. What Paul
meant was that good men are justified by faith not perfect adherence to
conscience or law, in combination with their general goodness. He takes it for
granted that he is talking about good men being justified through faith not
the works of the Jewish law or perfect adherence to conscience.
Things
must be taken in context. The whole tone of the gospels is about a preacher,
Christ, urgently advising the people that if they do this they will make it if
they do not they will not. There is no implication in the narratives
describing Christ's life, that it was all a silly exercise because it does not
matter what men do and all is predestined. In context, there are plenty
of scriptures emphasizing the importance of good deeds.
However, I
think that youths, and the conscientous, can be justified without doing
anything, get the Holy Spirit, when they first repent and turn to Christ, but
thereafter they have to be careful to behave themselves.
If God is love, why do 'christian' leaders increase the importance of
factors other than love when it comes to social life? Religion
is supposed to be about love; yet still there are outwardly religious persons
who are obsessed with turning "how much money does he or she have" into a
prime consideration in marital and other social decisions. What sense does
that make? If money becomes so important in such decisions, then love becomes
unimportant in such decisions. I do not believe that this constant ratcheting
up of financial pressures re marital and other social decisions, is
eugenic or truly religious.
perhaps the selective
persecution of certain drugs/herbs has reduced the spiritual intelligence of
mankindOne reason people have become so ignorant about such
matters, is that governments have been banning some herbs and plants and drugs
while they have been promoting other herbs plants and drugs; they have been
banning the substances that produce religious experiences while promoting the
substances that produce a kind of sacrilegious dopiness. As a result an
imbalance has developed in society, an imbalance that produces a profane state
of mind in society.
I personally have had "religious experiences"
without using any kind of herb or plant or drug; but, if persons find
themselves unable to escape their ignorance without consuming a substance,
maybe they should go ahead and consume some kind of substance in a disciplined
fashion. Maybe they should for a few days abstain from cigarettes and sexual
passion for those they are not married to, exercise, read the scriptures, and
pray, and then proceed to consume some kind of substance that will help them
transcend their ignorance. But it should be kept in mind, that this kind of
approach varies with the individual and should be put into effect in ways that
do not violate the law.
Personal Motto:
My
resume has
the following quote in the upper right hand corner: