Independency

 It's our turn.

Living Well

 Depends on your parameters.

If it's financial, it might be one can budget even a small amount.  Or one can accommodate more correspondingly.  

Wants and needs can be determined along the way.  

It could be driving a beat up car built like a tank and good on mileage compared to a gas guzzling sportster.  

It could be a matter of quality/quantity.

But it's not just financial.

Seeking like minded people and a quest for Freedom factor in.

Forgiveness, ie, letting go hatred helps.  Keeping your neck on a swivel and never forgetting are essential.  Being kind to oneself is too.  That is, not browbeating but asking forgiveness for one's own mistakes.

This is NOT some false salve for those in any position in life.  It is to be lived by all.

Explore love and doing good w/o recompense.  Random acts as it were.

Guard Freedom and Light and teach the young all these things.

When it comes time, transition in the same way.

Living well?

Being well.

Cover...

 The cover attracts.  What's within may vary.  The cover can be a world within itself.

Very few Playboy covers inspire imagination.  Make what you want of the mag pics included.

February 1963 cover is a rarity.

A dreamlike girl (old timey ref to young women) sipping champagne.  The glass reflects an urban skyscape.  I call it a prelude to a kiss.  No ref to any play/movie.

No morality here.  Just the cover.  If you read PB judge for yourself.  I don't base my life on it.  It's just a factor within so many in a kaleidoscope.

It comes back to affluence/wealth.  Of itself it is neither good nor evil.  It's how you acquire and what you do with it.  

Remember you can't take it with you.  OTOH while here we can enjoy material things.  ONTOOH 'what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?'.

Living well is subject to definition.  It'll be covered soon.

Suffice it to say a lot of living is ignored aka the spiritual.

Then again a lotta folks don't believe the spiritual.  Pick your path.

There's more.

We'll delve past the cover.

We'll see next time.

1st Lutheran

 On 12/24/24 fire swept through the former 1st Lutheran Church downtown Indy, gutting the building.  

Since decommissioning, it has been a party venue place, offering facilities for receptions and other gatherings.

Learning of the tragedy, I was gob smacked with shock and grief.  It was the first place I served as a student assistant, including many church duties.

When I came along, the church was about to close and move.  The old tale of urban blight was taking churches  and much more away.

So many memories.  Helping the area kids and offering Sunday school.  Ministering to the growing elderly congregation.  Getting to know the people, many friends.  Work in the hood and ministering to shall we say people of the night.

My first sermon was there.  It was 20 minutes lol.  They got shorter and pithier -s-.

The congregation voted to stay.  They survived only a few years when I left.

It was the first Lutheran church downtown, under the name of Mt Pisgah.  It fostered 5 more in the area, which survive.

I won't detail but I'm chock full of memories; loving, sweet, bitter, sad and joyful.

I was proud to serve the Lord there.

We hosted the Syrian Orthodox church for a while.  I learned their name, Arabic for God.  Made many friends.

Campus ministry was one of my specialties and worked with St Bridget's Catholic church.

The fire was total with an emergency demolition that morning.

I don't think they'll find the cause.

I used to preach we must not contain ourselves just within 4 walls.  We must reach out everywhere.

So it was at 1st.

The building is gone.

But not the faith.

God's love lives forever.

Tunes

 People forget there is a spiritual aspect to everything.

Sure, in the workaday world it's easy to overlook it.  But good and evil wend their way through all our lives.

And music is ever so spiritual.  It touches our souls.  

There is so much variety.  Many flavors, colors, frequencies flow in and out to delight, frighten, comfort evoke every aspect of our lives.  

There is a current movie which speaks in part to this.  I'm not gonna trip the bots etc, but you might understand re the music involved.  As said in the movie, it can attract good or evil.

Legend has it that among its duties God gave lucifer charge of music.  Originally it was to inspire faith and exalt glory.

When it fell, its use of music did just the opposite.  

Of course, music can go in either direction.  It can inspire or seduce.  It can comfort or scare.  That scare btw is not horror film stuff.  That builds suspense, startles even gets creepy.

No.  When evil, music tries to do what all evil does, as in isolating, depressing leading down.

We seek music that uplifts, inspires, comforts.  We can party and praise.  Heal.

Griot, fili, firekeeper and many more, are people with connection to spirit and connects in a timeless flow to unite past, present and future, ancestors, ourselves and descendants.

There is a variety of music.  Many cultures contribute to the whole.  Some prefer different types, but there is a connection and in several cases, similarities evince themselves.  

There is indeed an attraction and like a moth to flame, evil hovers even as Light flows through a kaleidoscope of tunes.

Yes, there is actual evil music.

But there is so much more good.  It defeats the darkness.

Open to the Light as tunes sing in blood, bone and spirit.

After the fall, God gave us that gift.

Same...

Nothing to do with a bawdy anecdote which is best left for my autobiography/tell all -s-.

It could be called a tale of two revs.

There is a real life pastor who led a church in what became a black neighborhood.

There is a fictional pastor in a predominantly rural black area.

Not the same?  A similar mission?  Let's talk attitude.

H the real rev prided himself on his liberal viewpoint.  He claimed participating in the March on Washington and was a follower of Dr. King.  Yet, his church suffered from dwindling numbers, while there were many folks all around.

It reminded me of a dying tree in our old backyard.  Death slowly wended its way up til there was a thin scraggly branch wilting.  Then, no green no life.  The tree was cut down.

So it was in this changing hood.  

There was no attempt to reach out.  The opportunity presented itself for new life.

Some said it was a matter of culture.  Well, you don't know til you try.

I lived nearby.  I got to know several people.  Yet no bridge was built.

Was it hypocrisy?  Laziness?  

I saw what could be called 'all show and no blow'.  Just a lot of head shaking, the routine of caring only for parishioners.  

I left only because my methods were not H's standards.  I dealt in courage and they in fear and manipulation.  Products not people.

The fictional rev, J, was huddled with his people in an island of security that maintained their existence.

They eschewed outward things.  Lack of worldly goods left them keeping to themselves.  Outsiders were suspect.

Was it racial?  Fear of change?  Stagnation.  

The only perceptible similarity seemed to be a self righteousness that ultimately glossed over fear.

Of change one way or the other?  

Of fear.  

Same...

Angels And Vamps

 Some believe in angels.  They serve Light and aid humans.

Oppositely fallen angels serve darkness and seek human destruction.

Among the darksiders, there are stories worldwide of vampires.

Think what you want, the stories are everywhere.  Explain any way you want.  But remember this: History becomes legend and legend becomes myth.  Also, if there are demons and fallen angels and disciples of evil, well who knows.......

I'm reminded in movies and TV angels appearing as humans.

The running comment is/was humans don't know how painful it is/was for the angels to be in human form.

A mystery.  Consider being pure spirit and assuming physical being.  No matter the reason we might be able to remotely understand their pain.

Now, vampires and there might be several kinds, are consigned to darkness and addiction, craving for blood.  They are slaves who serve themselves.

They are stuck between life and death.  A far different creature than angels.

Angels serve God.

Two different kinds of pain.