Category Archives: preacher

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When did we lose control?

I suppose you’d need to admit that you have lost control, if you intend to read farther…

And what is control anyway? It was always fake, right? I mean, you get the house cleaned, balance your checkbook – and you sit back and say, boy, howdy, I am in control! But on another day, when you don’t get that stuff done, have you lost control? Or, even though you get that stuff done every day, something comes along, like my current favorite – RTO (return to office) – and now you’ve got an hour’s worth of commuting, which you used to use to balance your checkbook, but now, there’s just no time!

So, you say, with exasperation, “there is just no time.”. And so now, you’re not in control?

Well, the Hindus would tell you that’s samsara – it’s a cycle of chasing control, by doing things, setting goals – all the things your society tells you to do to get ahead. But you don’t get ahead – you get further behind.

Last night, couldn’t sleep, and I was reminded of a valuable truth: the reason you are unhappy is because you look for happiness in the future, not in the present. Luckily, at that moment, in the deep dark of night, I was sleeping with my warm furry dog by my legs, and my warm and loving wife by my side, with my beautiful and vivacious daughter asleep in her room down the hall. And so, I was easily able to recount all the happiness that was around me, in my immediate present. And so, was happy, and went to sleep.

Now, there have been times, I tell you, people, when I was totally alone in the night, with no money, no heat, no lovely wife, no dog, and no daughter. So don’t be fooled, or, better yet, don’t be dismayed. Happiness is not counted by the number of blessings. Instead, it’s a kind of contentment with what ever you do have, no matter the number or quantity. Because in those destitute times, I did have a warm bed, and I could feel the world around me, full of wonder, and full of love. But I had to open my mind and heart to feel that, and I had to let the material wants melt away. Not an easy task – seemingly impossible for many.

And again, at my worst times, without even the warm bed, I could always remember that my mother loved me, when she was alive. And that is not the future, nor the past. It’s ever-present.

Hate to put out a spoiler, but, you never had control, if you were busy counting up the things you controlled in your life. Without your knowing, the number of things you will NEVER control loomed like a zeppelin above your resting head. Control is a losing game, probably planted in your mind when you were very young, unintentionally, by a society locked in a battle for control – control as the carrot on the stick, which you will never taste, but always yearn for.

Looked at a different way, as long as you can know the peace of the present, as long as you can feel it, know it, and live in it, then you are indeed in control, and will always be, as long as the contentment with what (little or a lot) you do have is apparent and tangible to you. Peace.

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JD Vance (and the polar society)

I don’t think many people (Democrats, and a million other American moochers who don’t vote, don’t’ give a fuck) really know who JD Vance is. I don’t really know either, except that I read his book, Hillbilly Elegy, and saw the movie – and really like them both.

Also know:

Investing

In 2017, Vance joined the investment firm Revolution LLC.[63] It was founded by Steve Case, who also cofounded AOL.[63] Vance was tasked with expanding the “Rise of the Rest” initiative, which focuses on growing investments in underserved regions outside Silicon Valley and New York City.[63]

So, in the world of sound-byte knowledge, I am a genius! A know-it-all, because no one wants to know-it-at-all, right?

Now I have also been to Appalachia many times, and not as a sight-seer. I’ve hung out with them hillbillies, drank, and played music. I know ones who died, and many who will die from inhaling heroin, for example. Last year I attended Healing Appalachia, and got my Narcon certification. Talked to a hundred junkies, all of them despised by the elites of our country, ’cause of the way the talk and jes’ lie around all day (sarcasm – it’s hard to spot these days).

Here’s my point: there is no doubt who will vote for JD Vance – lots of poor busted people from the hills, who finally see a guy that could understand him. Will there be the same amount of poor, working class people from Scranton NJ voting for Joe Biden (well, moot point now – but not totally). Will the poor working class people of Scranton ever going to vote for Joe Biden? Did Joe Biden write a book called “Scranton Elegy”, to honor “his people?”

But here’s the other side of the coin: JD Vance is a millionaire now, who went to Yale. He’s got a bit of Southern accent, but, he ain’t going back to Appalachia any time soon. And, while he may take their votes, greedily (why Trump chose him, of course), those people aren’t paying for the campaign, vis-a-vis paying for the Presidency. So is JD Vance disingenuous? I think (my opinion) that he can’t be completely disingenuous. Watch the movie.

The Presidency is indeed paid for. If you think that’s conspiracy theory, you are very, very confused about the fundamentals of American politics, or, you think that Mickey Mouse is not an actor inside a costume at Disney World, or you think that Disney Corporation is all about kids. These are not cynical conspiracies – this is America.

The question you need to ask yourself is: are the Democrats or the Republicans going to change America, to loosen the stranglehold of corporate greed?

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Standardized Childhood Assessments: I Fear for our Children’s Emotional Safety

My father dedicated his life to education.  He dedicated his life to children.  He defended children against an ever-growing Orwellian machine that classified and branded children, and its only goal and end. I wish he were alive to help me.

In this article, Selecting an Appropriate Infant-Toddler Assessment, from Kaplan, the criteria they use are particularly instructive:

  • Screening and assessment materials should be developmentally appropriate and created specifically for the age group in your care.
  • Assessment should utilize a variety of tools and processes, including children’s representative work (artwork, stories they write, etc.), observation records, and progress summaries.
  • Assessment should be inclusive and recognize diversity in children’s backgrounds, learning styles, and rates of learning.
  • Assessment tools should support children’s development and learning; assessment should not make them feel bad about themselves. A focus on what a child can do independently and with assistance is the best marker of his or her growth and development.
  • Assessment should rely on procedures that occur during real activities and classroom experiences instead of putting the focus specifically on skills testing.
  • Regular and periodic assessment should occur in a wide variety of circumstances with information about children’s growth, development, and learning being systematically collected and recorded.
  • Teachers should be the primary assessor, but assessment should also promote parent involvement and encourage children to participate in self-evaluation.
  • Assessment should encourage parent-teacher collaboration with information about children’s growth, development, and performance being shared regularly by both parties.

I won’t deal with each one, but you should read each one carefully, and think about any experiences you have had that either support or deviate from these.

The first  point is: Assessment should utilize a variety of tools and processes – it should not be limited to a short interview, or really any assessment kit (I will list those later). Clearly, an on-the-spot test, in any subject, for any purpose, will NOT be reflective of the actual state of the person taking the test. This is often referred to as the observer effect, although this, and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle are misused in the context of psychology.  The correct notion is the Observer-expectancy effect.  This should be well-known by anyone who is assessing your child.  If your assessor is not aware of it, and is not able to cite its origin, then you should not trust their qualification.

 

Second, Assessment should be inclusive and recognize diversity.  This should not be dumbed down to only refer to cultural/ethnic  differences.  Often overlooked are the learning styles and rates of learning.  By and large, the childhood assessments I have seen are completely devoid of Howard Gardner’s Theories of Multiple Intelligences .  And that’s not OK. You certainly would laugh at someone assessed a visually-challenged child with flashcards, right?

Probably the most important for me is: Assessment tools should support children’s development and learning; assessment should not make them feel bad about themselves.  Standardized assessments are the antithesis of this!  They e-value-ate individual children on the basis of social and cultural norms, in alleged cognitive skill areas.  Nothing could be further from support.  It’s just evaluation.  And mostly, de-valuation.  Regardless whether someone tells the child “how they did”, the know – from a very young age – that they are being evaluated.  Further, subtle changes – or sometimes drastic changes – in the behaviors of parents and teachers after an assessment will be picked up by the children!  Do not think you are above this!  If you were raised in America, you have been damaged by the cult of performance.  We are NOT put on this earth to produce or to entertain!

Assessment should rely on procedures that occur during real activities and classroom experiences.  Ok.  Pretty obvious that an interview or testing situation does NOT meet this criterion, and should be invalidated.

Teachers should be the primary assessor, but assessment should also promote parent involvement.  Nothing here about a third-party evaluator.  Nothing at all.  Rest-assured, there ARE plenty of “professionals” who hire out for this.  Mercenaries who play on the insecurity of both teachers and children in their ability to assess the children they interact with every single day!  Preposterous!  Enable yourself!  Be the solution!

Once you have digested this, you could begin to look at the assessment instruments that are available – and COMPARE!  Here again from Kaplan is a handy chart. Look carefully, because it is NOT the case that having check-marks across the graph is the best!  Indeed, give the above discussion, only three of the tools listed do not use standardized (normative) comparisons. Particularly, a discussion of E-LAP and LAP-D used in rehabilitation could possibly change the way you think . This study uses Functional Independence Measure for Children (WeeFIM). E-LAP  (or E-LAP3) is neither standardized nor normative, whereas LAP-D and the WeeFIM are normalized.  The point here is, it’s not easy! But these tests can provide some insight in cognitive disorder, which could supplement (only!) teacher and parent awareness.

I particularly like the series Reaching Potentials.  There are two volumes, and you can get the PDF online right now and begin reading!  Here is the

Description:

Designed to assist early childhood professionals in applying the guidelines for appropriate curriculum content and assessment developed by NAEYC and NAECS/SDE, Volume 1 addresses reaching developmental potentials for all children—including those with varying language and cultural backgrounds and children with disabilities—and reaching the potentials of teachers and administrators.

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The Dead are like Seeds

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians%2015:20-26

In my opinion, this is the most mystical passage of St. Paul’s writings. Not that there is any particular merit in being mystical. But I do sense a deep message in this passage, embedded and encoded by a Higher Self. And I do not want to miss such communication.

But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

The first image, that of “first fruits “, implies that the dead are not dead at all, rather, only sleeping. And so, if you consider this the truth, you would not say “goodbye” to those who die, rather “good night. ” As we comfort little children who are afraid of going to sleep, because of some genetically transmitted Victorian fairy tale of infant mortality, reassuring them that morning will come, that sleep is not death, that turning out the light is not extinguishing the flame, that closing the door is not the same as rolling the stone over the tomb, so we could comfort ourselves that death is but rest for the soul. Rest in peace. We will see one another at the dawn.

21 For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man.

I don’t exactly know why Paul, or any Christian, needs to buy into the Hebrew notion that Adam cause Man to fall. This can remain an allegory in my book.  The only prerequisite that Paul requires is that “Man” – humans – have caused their own misery, through their constant rutting in material, thus transient, “pleasure”, and the seemingly uncontrollable urge to kill one another. For this, we don’t need some guy named Adam, and his girlfriend, nor their murderous child.  I think we all know it. But we may not know how this behavior causes death. I believe that the constant sorrow we cause ourselves makes us live in death every day, and that without this incessant self-loathing practice, we would indeed have life without death, without the fear of death. Thus, “since death came through a man” – since we create the conditions for death – “the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man” – only we can bring ourselves, our souls, our collective souls, back to a true life, a real life, a life without fear and death.

For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. 23 But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits;then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power

Indeed, the spiritual plan, from the dawn of creation, was to bury all, and raise all. A definitive plan. But there is more to it.

The plan is to make out of the chaos, a Kingdom. No doubt this suffers from Paul’s editorial chauvinism and deep seated desire for some kind of earthly power. Jesus himself was not in the habit of using the “king” allegory. His words were “in my father’s house there are many rooms. ” Regardless the Paul’s confusion, the image presented is that of God giving humanity a creation – a wild and beautiful creation, driven by free will and protected, but not curtailed, by Divine will. As we know such a creation can bristle with beauteous creativity, swirl with the rush of the beauty of it all, and also , erupt with violence hatred lust, boil over like a cesspool,or  overflow like a fountain. There is creation that comes from the destruction – the final piece would be shallow without including the pain of birth and life. But in the end, what is given back to the Creator, should be finished, perfected, and this would require removing the cancer that comes from the abuse of will – dominion, authority, and power.  Because these are delusions.  There is no human who has power, nor dominion, nor authority. Humans are creatures, not creators. Once perfected, this “kingdom” will be a living entity, comprised of only the living – those who chose to live, by giving of themselves to the creation as a whole.

For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

A little confused – death is not a thing to be conquered. Paul has already said we are only sleeping, and without worry, since Jesus will awaken us. If anything, it is the belief in death as an end that is the enemy.  It is the fear of this thing we think of as death, that kills us. This is the enemy to be destroyed.