The point thus far is that 1.) the Aunt B really is a lovely drink that you should try, and 2.) that I actually do think about and care deeply about everything that is going on.  I think that the reason why I have seldom wanted to have any kind of, particularly public, opinion regarding our nationstate, is that I have felt powerless about rectifying anything.  I also know that a weakness of mine is living in a world of theory, where praxis is either not desirable or for someone else, etc.  So, knowing that I can waste my life by only theorizing and accomplishing nothing tangible–since accomplishment is necessarily rooted in praxis–I have resolved to try and  thus will grace you with my thoughts on the state of things and an action plan for Election 2012!!

For my sanity and the purposes of this here post, I’m going to limit my thoughts to the federal government.

Elected Officials

It boggle my mind that the American people have allowed the same people to make long and lucrative careers out of political office.  I thought they were supposed to be representing us in a thankless job.  Not everyone is rich before they begin their political careers, instead, everybody that leaves congress is a millionaire because they buy land cheaply and then earmark road money toward the area where their land is.  Their land then becomes worth a whole lot more then they paid for it.  Anyone seen the Boardwalk Empire?  This happens.  I thought there were laws against insider trading?  Is this reported in the media?  See my thoughts on taxes and guess which bracket the media owners fall into… We elect people over and over and over who write special perks into law to benefit no one but themselves.  Special healthcare, special retirement, salary increases even if CPI decreases!  It is asinine that we put up with this.  But we do.  And we continue to elect and elect because if they have a D or an R next to their name, depending on our political bent, then they are ok by us.  I’m so tired of the political rhetoric and squabbling.  It’s embarrassing.

Fiscalness

This country has spent itself under the table.  As one with reasonable mortgage being my only debt, I don’t feel out of line talking about this one.  The Bible, along with about a million other reputable sources, say that the borrow is slave to the lender.  Have you seen our debt figures lately?  Yet, we don’t seem to have any desire to get this under control.  Romney wants to fill a $35, 000 hole with $450…   he wants to remove all funding from PBS, etc. in order to pay down the deficit. (both of the above numbers have been reduced by six 0′s…)  I was watching PBS this evening, first a nature show about Polar bears that the little B was enjoying (she started laughing out loud when they showed the seal pups!) then a Frontline piece on the Opium in Afghanistan.  After watching this, I’m pretty sure (and I mean no offense to A360) that PBS is the only network that has real journalism.  As I’ve alluded to before, most everything on the networks, particularly the cable networks, is simply entertainment.

I guess I wonder if we need to spend more money on our military then the next 100 countries put together?  Looks like a good place to start spending cuts to me.  How about no more Stealth Bomber flyovers of football games?  In the current economic climate , this seems like something we could possibly do without.  I would advocate for DoD cuts first…

Taxes

I don’t like taxes.  I want to pay as few taxes as possible.  I hire an accountant to help me do that.  I feel that without question, I manage my money better than the government.  That being said, they obviously need it, but the fact that billionaire financiers pay only 15% while I pay closer to 30% and half of the country pays 0% doesn’t seem right.  If the middle class is what the politicians are fighting over then why do we pay the most?  If you are a billionaire then you make dividends and capital gains, these are taxed lightly.  If you are the middle class you make a salary and this gets taxed much more heavily.  I’m sorry but we can’t have so many loopholes.  25-30% sales tax.  No income tax.  Sales tax doesn’t include food type items so our poorer people still don’t pay anything.  Unless they buy a flat screen and an x-box and then they can pay taxes on those goods just like the rest of us…

Action!

We need term limits on every office, if the President gets 2 terms then so do Senators and Representatives.  This will help stave off human nature, which is quite corruptible.  In order to help facilitate this, I’m advocating voting out the incumbent in every race which you are eligible to vote.  We’ll continue to do this every year until the people being elected come together with some sense and impose term limits and decide to work together hopefully using the ideas above as a starting place.

I apologize for the rant.  Good luck with all of this…

Ultimately, in my universe, the only thing that really matters (probably because this is all I control) is my response to the world.

What am I going to do?  It doesn’t matter that anything happens to me.  Obviously, some experiences are more pleasant than others, but ultimately the experience is only important in so far as how I learn, grow, love in response.

Everything is a test of my own merit and ability to overcome.

Sometimes I get the impression that everyone knows this too…

We all know, or probably were taught at one time or another, that we see, when light is reflected back to our eyes.  I knew this but never saw the weight of it until now.

Everything we see is a reflection.

In my mind, this is heavy.

Paul writes that we see now like through a mirror, but we will someday see clearly.  My understanding is that the quality of mirrors in his day was something to be desired.

I’ve written and certainly still think that there is some kind of mystical oneness to us all.  The last thing Jesus said was that he prayed that we would be one.  Like he was with God.  Paul mentions this a lot too.

In light of this, what does it mean that everything I see is ultimately some sort of reflection? When I look at this computer, I only see it as much as I am able to.  I’m not seeing a Platonic ideal, at least it doesn’t seem that I am.

(So this is where I go tying into thinking about things I’ve thought before, but now have some science to validate my metaphysical assumptions.)

When I look at you, what I’m actually seeing is a reflection.  The light hits you and bounces back to me and then I see.

When I see people–and I’ll admit that I have a tendency to do this more when I see something I don’t like…–I think I’m seeing a bit of myself.  There are parts of me that I don’t like.  Parts that I know have no place in any kind of gospel kingdom. I see these people as manifestations of certain aspects of my own character.  I think this is because we are one.

We are all alike.  We have good and bad aspects to our characters.  The need is for the good to grow and choke out all of the bad, rather than our sinful desires to fully maturing and then becoming death.

I empathize when I see people who aren’t living.  I know that the root cause for suffering affects me as well.  Too often, I am not experiencing life.  But I want to.  And I know I am made to.  We all are.  So we must have mercy and empathize with each other.  Because at some level, we are each other.

This photo is indicative of who my daughter is.

Now, as we all know, the little B has been blessed with quite the measure of cuteness, so I hope you are as lifted as we are ☺

I think that this picture also perfectly captures a display of Brixton’s unfettered joy.

Many of you probably have kids, so I’m sure these thoughts are not new to anyone but me.  But, I am both inspired and troubled when I see this image.

Her wonder and amazement and excitement and gladness at being alive in this world is an incredibly powerful affecter on my own self.  It brings me incredible pleasure to watch her enjoy herself and to help facilitate her interaction with the interestingness of it all.

Jesus told Nicodemus that one must be reborn in order to really experience life.   For me, Brixton illustrates what that looks like.  A perception of joy.

Yet, I’m troubled because she is a lot better at living than I am.

I get that I’m older and thus more experienced with suffering and sadness and pain, etc. and that this clouds and obscures my perception of reality.  But I am also, at least in my mind, somewhat aware of what’s going on and with the deeper truths and concepts.  I’m aware that I have done a not so great job of overcoming the world thus far.  But I like to think that I’m better than I once was.

I want to spend more time engaging with the goodness of it all, like a child is able.

But, I also know that there is a duality to it as well.

The truth of the matter is that this world has problems. We have problems.  I have problems. These coexist in the face of the wonder and beauty that also abounds.  I’m confused about how to respond to this truth.

Is acknowledging the evil allowing it to win?  An ignorance is bliss mindset seems like a winner.

(I’ve always been very confused by the creation story in Genesis.  Isn’t the prevailing thought that the garden was a perfect paradise before “sin entered” when Eve ate the apple?  Well, how can there be a tree offering the knowledge of good and evil if there wasn’t already evil to know about?  The serpent, who personifies evil, was certainly slithering around before any apples were eaten.  So evil was there… which leads to my confusion.  How could Eden have been perfect when evil was right there to be found and known about?   We don’t typically think of evil as being able to exist in the face of perfect goodness, which is what we like to think of the Garden, a place of perfect goodness.

But with Evil there? Please.   This makes no sense. Someone, please make sense of this for me and then explain it.)

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on the perspective, I don’t have the luxury of an ignorance is bliss mind.  When I try to bury my head so to speak, I just get desperately depressed by the seeming meaninglessness of it all.

But we cannot be run down by our knowledge.  We have no choice but to work toward eradicating evil, leaving only the goodness to be thoroughly enjoyed and explored like my dd Brixton.  We can’t do it alone.  It will take everyone, and we obviously need God’s help as this is a pretty big job with seemingly really bad odds.  But I don’t see any other options, as the status quo is not acceptable, at least to me.

My favorite thing that Jesus ever said is, “Take heart, for I have overcome the world.”

I want to overcome it as well.  I think joy accomplishes this.

This link will open up a page with song and the lyrics.

For my first real exposé, I want to use The Western Man.   I think the fact that the musical aesthetic (neo-western?) was so different from most of my other pieces, this may have inspired a fresh approach to the lyrics as well. They came quickly, like never before.  I think this new spirit, if you will, helps make this one of my favorites as well.

In general, this song is a criticism of our culture, the things in it that are not good–the words and the deeds.  This Western culture dominates half of the world and it’s expanding.  And it’s disconcerting.  The more I put this post together and put more thought into examining my feelings, I’m almost a bit ashamed of my diatribe.  But my anger is toward the zeitgeist.  I pray that this is a righteous anger.

red fish, blue fish turns me on / and a holy court saint on the run

At some level, I am turned on by childish things/thoughts/desires, maybe immature is a better word than childish.  I am not alone.  And it concerns me.  I want to be mature in mind.  But this immaturity is the Doctor Seuss reference in the first line.  The 2nd half of the line is my indictment of the pedophile priests whose sins have been kept hidden and shuffled around from one Parrish to the next. And why?  For fear of the Holy Roman Catholic Empire crumbling, this wasn’t talked about and dealt with?   I know it is too much to think the Church would operate differently than a heartless corporation that makes decisions based solely on dollars.  But I wish we would be different.  I know we ought to be.

cut ‘em down, get high and low / echopsychobabblers all

I was thinking about bullys, slanderers, gossips, addicts, sowers of dissension and division, and the talking heads that are constantly babbling and complaining and rehashing the rote and the ridiculous, our media culture, the similarities between addicts of the Hannity/Maddow crowds and true substance abusers.  They are literally sick, both the consumers and the dealers.  At what point do we start uniting in our sameness rather than harboring unhealthy emotions that do nothing but destroy us.  Such energy spent in derision.  It’s painful.

the western man, I’ll do as I am told.  I’ll do it on my own

the western man, I’ll do it on my own

although the warnings tell me no man is an island or alone

The chorus.

Throughout this piece, I made a conscious attempt to connect the western musical aesthetic to the idea of Western culture, very overtly in this case.  It seems to me that one of the major flaws in Western ideology is the idea that the lone wolf is somehow better off or stronger.  I think if we really knew each other we wouldn’t be having the problems, particularly politically, that we are having.  All most of us know of others is what we are being told by the babblers.  We are being taught to be adversaries with each other.  I am trying to mock the idea of doing it on my own, whatever it is–life maybe?  Because we have all heard that no man is an island.  I think this is particularly true for those of us with a gospel perception.  We know we aren’t alone.  That we can’t make it alone.  But we need each other just as much as God.  I think this message gets lost even in the church.  But at the same time that I know all this, I am just as guilty of buying into the isolation as well.  It is a sickness.  If you see it in me, call me out on it!

slit red throats, bruised ids and arms /  the common themes are the greedy marks

I won’t go into any kind of psychoanalytic exegesis on the id, I wouldn’t be able to.  But in my rudimentary understanding, the id is basically a reservoir of desire that makes up our unconscious and influences us in conscious thought and actions.  In our fallen state, our desires are out of sorts.  We lie, cheat, kill, use, exploit, destroy.  Like murderous addicts we have the tract marks proving it.  We all bear these marks.  Again we are united.  Perhaps, we can use this to our advantage in moving forward the gospel life.

cold fusion haunts, come crashing down / disposability’s the charm

I used cold fusion as a metaphor for all sorts of things we think and do and spend time on that seem like good, but really are illusions.  We try to live in these places but they are not real.  When we chase the wind we end up crashing.  And we need to.  The crash needs to happen to wake us up.  I’m calling for a crash as well as noting that it happens.  The final part of this line is not so much related to the first, but really is another general indictment of our cultural mindset. We want everything to be disposable.  Even each other.  What can I do to satisfy me, to get ahead.

shady lights the streets at night  / all hail the green, beloved envies

fortunate fame or so they say

yeah we all are gone away / yeah we all are led astray

Shady here is a concept of a kind of mindset.  A not wholly moral or ethical one lights the way for us in the West. We laud money as king.  We also laud and reinforce the desire for money.  And anyway to get it keep it spend it.  We look at others and think we deserve it, or we are consumed with desire and jealousy.  We long for the fame and fortune of the supposedly fortunate.  Celebrities are like the cool kids in high school.  But it really just looks cool, right?  They weren’t actually that cool.  Which is an important truth.  We are believing this at some level, but it is a lie.  All of this is a lie.  And we know it.  What will we do?

I’ve been using the word we a lot.  We, us, are affected and coconspirators and complicit in the spread of this Western ideology that we’ve been talking about.  But doesn’t it seem like there is something else as well.  Something more seditious and ethereal.  As individuals we are simply sick, but where is this illness coming from.  Sin has a life of it’s own?  Does full gospel life cure it forever?

As an artist, it is my desire for the art that I create to affect people in such a way that somewhere down the line our world is restored.  I guess this would be like a chain of dominos, each impressing upon and catalyzing the motion and movement of the next.

I understand that this is quite the lofty ambition. But I’m not sure what the point is otherwise.  I’ve grown weary of everything that is wrong with this world… and I’m not even that old.  But there is also so much that is good.

Start thinking of the good.

There really is a lot!  I’m tempted to look past the goodness at times and wallow in my weariness.  How terrible.  Focusing on the good brings such life.  I don’t think this is a new thought, but it’s comforting to know I’m not alone in the struggle.  None of us are.

But the truth, when I honestly want to receive it, is that good vastly outweighs the bad.  Good is heavier.  It has more gravitas.

The Good is winning.

So, what do we ambitious aspiring passionate gospel artists do?  I think it starts with our own perceptions.  Are we practicing a gospel perception, which inevitably then creates a gospel reality?  The “do as I say” ethos will not create the affect that we long for.  The metaphysics don’t work this way.  For our art to be effective, we have to live like we actually believe this gospel of restoration, love, hope, a coexistent justice and mercy… Alive.

We have to want it for ourselves.  We have to have it before we can inspire others to take it.

And when we do, what happens?  My hope is something like this.

We’re inspired and create something good.  The goodness of this creation affects someone–or even better a lot of someones.  These someones take the the gospel that we know is powerfully life-giving and create.  They create art.  (I’m pretty sure we could argue everything is art, but that is another discussion as well.)   They create hope.  They create jobs. They create food, water, shelter.  They meet needs.  They entertain.  They lead.  They teach.  They inspire their audience of someones who do the same.

Before we know it, we are living in a world with fully alive people from all nations creating more and more good.  And then that changes everything.  This world will be much different.  It’s what we are promised.

So to my fellow gospel artists, this is what we are working towards.

There are two kinds of selfishness.

Definition:

A.   Operating from an ethos of individualized idealized isolation.  (Isolation being the perceived state in which one foolishly/misguidedly believes that his actions and desires either have no affect or, maybe worse,  knowingly and disregarding the affect on others and or being better off as a result.)

B.   Wholeheartedly believing that what is best for others is correspondingly and ultimately best for one’s own psyche, spirit and overall emotional well-being as well.

Living out definition A is depressing.  Depression is the worst state to be.  Worst of all is knowing that succumbing to the perverse seduction of definition A is depressing–and choosing it anyway.  This is most troubling.

So definition B, like a beacon in a foggy night, fleeting and unobtrusive but omnipresent.  A solid foundation upon which to build one’s next moment. Sure and confident.

Why the struggle.  Is alive somehow cheapened if there were no definition A?

A part of me says no, but my gut says yes.  I think I wish my gut would be wrong.

This has been my preface.

From childhood, we are told that we are not the center of the universe. This is a convenient way of understanding that our selfish (read: self satisfying pleasure with complete disregard for anyone or anything else) desires need not always be met, be it immediately or at all. Or maybe a better way to say it is–you can’t always get what you want.

It is also easy to believe that we’re not the center of the universe when we can look around and clearly see other people, whom we must assume have thoughts and autonomous free will of their own, right?

This seems logical.

However, I grow more convinced everyday that, in fact, I am the center of the universe.

(Weird yet?)

And in the event you were wondering, this belief is independent of any Leary-esque experimentations.

I find that it is much easier for me to exercise self-control of said selfish desire when I think the universe is my own unique projection rather than when I think I’m just one of the specks within it. It’s almost like my actions carry more weight in the former scenario. You may think this makes me some kind of Napoleonic narcissist (which is probably the worst kind of narcissist), but in my universe this kind of selfishness leads to spiritual death, depression, and the desire that existence would simply end. Not really a desirable goal.

I am a subscriber to the teaching of Jesus that love wins, that loving others is actually my true desire (even though this is often lost by me) because loving is what brings life and a joyful energized existence that we want eternal. When I practice this loving, I find that I more easily see the logos that John says is Jesus and by proxy God. The Real. It has becomes clear to me, experientially, that this is the way of transcendence.

I find that I love better when I perceive everyone as an aspect of the self. Jesus claims we are One… why wouldn’t I take this plainly at face value?

(Now, I will be the first to admit that I have some pretty substantial mental and emotional issues, so I’ll grant that it’s possible that everything written above is nothing more than being very clearly indicative of these problems. Judging from the way I often act—in a negatively selfish manner—it’s also clear that I do not always unwaveringly believe it’s all about me…maybe not even often, certainly not often enough.)

Obviously, I spend a lot (way too much?) of my mental energies on self reflection…

I could probably wax more fully on the mechanisms of how all of this might be true, but I don’t think it’s all that important right now. However, I will leave you with a final thought—after all; this is supposed to be a blog not a book, right? I’m just enough of a polymath to have a vague understanding of string theory and quantum mechanics, etc. etc.  Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m under the impression that the latest in cutting edge physics suggests that there isn’t a universe at all; rather, we live in the multi-verse…

If I believe, as a result of my perceptions, that Gray’s Anatomy is really about class warfare.  Then it is.  My whole reality will be impacted by this belief.

It doesn’t matter that Shondaland thinks the show is about making money off of some melodramatic doctors.  If my perception is unaware of authorial intent, then authorial intent becomes completely irrelevant to my reality.  Foucault  wrote an essay (or something) called What is an Author? that I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned before.  I think it is an important idea, but I don’t think I really understand the idea fully until now.

He says that the reader of a text is the one who decides what it means, not the author.  I’m pretty sure he is referring to texts where the reader (a pompous French literary critic, as an example) is aware of an author’s stated intent but decides that the author is not actually right, or does not have sole claim on the text.  This is something theorists do.  Every text is about class warfare, or gender relations, or gender identity, etc.  Because these are the stories important to them, they make every story about that as well.  They are creating their reality.

Personally, if I think (or want) a text to be about one thing, and I have a lot reasons as to why I am interpreting it as such and then find out that the author said no it’s not about that it’s about this, this knowledge would way heavily on my understanding of the meaning of the text, because my perception has changed.

I am going to make a brief caveat (because this is going to seem to be in almost direct contradiction of the thoughts I was just having) that I am a big proponent of the multi-entendre.  This is the idea that a text has any number of meanings depending on a lot of factors that all reduce to perception.  I say this to mean that Gray’s Anatomy can be a fine catalyst to discussing class economics.  I just don’t think that one could argue that it is ultimately about that.  The ultimately part is where people get into trouble.

We’ll come back to what things are ultimately about.

Now, why perception matters.  Go read Genesis 2 and 3.

In the beginning of the world there was a tree.  This tree’s fruit contained the knowledge of good and evil.  God did not want us to eat that fruit and said it would result in death.

I get a couple things from this.

1. Evil was already in existence at this time.  I’ve never really thought about what evil is (if someone knows, please tell me).  Now that I think about it, I think evil is the state of not being in right relationship with God.  Sound good?

(That thought about what evil is, might have just ruined this whole thing, but I don’t feel like stopping to consider that, so I’m just going to continue.)

2. The problems resulted from us now knowing about evil, and what makes it different from good.

Our perception of the world shifted, essentially ruining us.

I’m not feeling great and I’m getting sleepy, but I’m pretty sure that perception is pivotal to the nature of reality and our way out of the… mess we are in.

This evening I definitely had a parenting highlight as Jennifer and I took Brixton for a stroll in the Quinny (which is our euphemism for “going on a walk”).  We strolled the stroller out of our neighborhood and across the street into the commercial district (we’ve been walking to a lot of commercial establishments lately, rebelling against suburban life while embracing exercise and, in a small way, espousing our love of city) and into a liquor store because Jennifer had a hankering for a 6 pack of good beer.  I do believe we threw one of the workers there for a loop.

The following is an old writing of mine that I tried to send to a publisher when I didn’t have a job and thought they might pay me to write a book, before I had actually written one.  They definitely did not want to do that.

I still pretty much believe everything in it.  I would present some of it differently, but I only made one small change (this fact makes me think what have I been doing the last 5 years?).  It’s written in a style that I used to think was necessary in order to be taken seriously as an author or thinker… unfortunate, I know.  Thank God I didn’t get a phd…

Unpacking the devil is above my current paygrade.  This is a caveat as much to myself as anything else.

My preface would be:     I want to live in the moment.

One of the biggest things that we have going for us, as Christians, is our belief that God is in control.  The Bible makes this truth very clear.  God made the earth—the universe.  He is the God of the earth, and everything in it is His.  The earth is filled with his glory.  But what do these facts mean to us in a practical sense?  At one level they should give us a sense of peace.  If a trying situation arises, we are able to take solace in the fact that the world is not in chaos.  There is a purpose and reason to what is going on.  In Romans, Paul writes that all things work for good for those that love God.  I think that the fact that we love God enables us to see the good that can come out of a painful experience, whereas an unbeliever may not see anything but the pain and hurt.  It is often easier to see God working and showing himself to us through major traumatic events: death, divorce, illness, imprisonment, etc.  But what about the seemingly mundane events in our daily lives—the traffic light turning red, the billboard advertisement, an overheard passing comment, a butterfly flitting by the window—are these events any less significant (in a God is in control kind of way) than “major” ones?  I don’t think so.  In fact, I would argue that all things are inherently and by definition significant.

We exist in a reality created by God.  That means that He established all the laws and rules by which the universe is based.  Spiritual laws such as “the wages of sin are death” and Physical laws like 2+2=4 and PV=nRT.  But some concepts, like time, do not really fit clearly into one of the aforementioned categories.  Einstein became famous for theorizing (and essentially proving) that time is relative; whereas, 2+2 will always equal 4.  Now sitting here at work, I don’t know that I buy into the time is relative theory, but other sources seem to concur with Einstein.  Modern scientists have done experiments mixing atomic clocks and supersonic speeds that seem to back up Einstein’s theories.  The Bible tells us that one day is as a thousand to God, and theologians have decided that God is somehow outside of time.  He is, was, and will be.  I, for one, can personally attest to the relativity of time in regards to God.  He has used such time-denoting phrases as “soon” and “shortly” with me, but we—God and I—seem to have some disagreements over what these words actually represent conceptually; perhaps you have had similar experiences.  As a result of all this, we will say that time is essential to the true nature of our reality.  That nature consists of 2 main components.  One, God is wholly and totally in control.  And two, everything that exists has deep meaning and significance.  I believe God has set up reality like this in order to reveal Himself and to communicate with us—not just in obvious ways, like a sunset, but in more obtuse ways as well.  The best way to understand how this works is to look at the building block of time, the moment.

In an animation, single images are flipped through quickly producing movement.  That is exactly how reality works—a stack of moments being flipped, by time.  The key to the complexity of our reality and the unbelievable greatness of God lies in the interrelatedness of each singular moment.  Moments are universal.  Everything that makes up a moment—everything that is, everywhere in the universe—is part of the same moment.  Moments are a snapshot.  If you take a photo of wherever you are and then look at it, you will see a piece of that moment: the glare off of a window, the bend in a flower due to the wind, the relative position of a bird flying, etc.  The beauty of the universal community that God has established is that no one can see the totality of a moment but Him.  Each of us experiences are own unique piece.  It has been my experience that God uses the created order to communicate with us on a moment by moment basis.  All of us have experienced the phenomenon known as coincidence.  Christian sub-culture has invented the really dorky term “God-incident,” to describe the hand of God arranging circumstance.  Making sense of coincidence can have life-altering results, and rightly so.  I think, however, that God either has his hands on things or he doesn’t.  It doesn’t make sense that some “coincidences” are God-ordained, while others are merely happenstance.  I think if we have the faith, we will find that everything has spiritual undertones.

I was walking in front of two people having a similar conversation once.  One was remarking how weird it is when you drive past a construction site and hear hammering in rhythm with the music on the car stereo.  Is this a truly random occurrence?  Why would it be?  To me, that is another example of the greatness of God.  All things work together…  Now, I don’t think that we should spend all our time thinking about what this or that really means, as this is an easy trap to fall into… particularly if you are on drugs. Rather, we need to be aware of our surroundings as we think about stuff and stay in communion with God and then just see what happens. Too many times, I have been wrestling with an issue—where God is leading me, for instance—and feel God pushing me a certain way and then see a Christian fish on the back of the car that just passed me.  It’s a way that God validates what He has told me and encourages me to have faith.  A close friend gives this example: he noticed that whenever he and his wife would get into fights, he would see a fly buzzing around them.  Satan has been called by the name Beelzebub (Matt.10:25, etc.) which means Lord of the Flies.  The fly buzzing during his fights helped my friend remember that we fight not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities.  Was the fly a coincidence?  We don’t think it was.  Do all flies mean that the devil is near?  I don’t know, but the one that showed up during his fights with his wife did.  If we pray unceasingly, as Paul instructs us, it puts us in prime position for God to give us great insight by using the reality around us.  I would be lying to say that I always operate in this realm of faith and obedience; however, I know that this is where God is calling me and us.  Let us always be mindful and not forget the totality of God’s authority over all.