Heart of Sanity

Posted on March 19, 2016 by ehurst

Privacy is dead.

That is, to the degree your sense of identity and personal integrity depends on keeping some part of your flesh and psyche away from the view of others, it’s gone. This is the ultimate failure of Western Civilization in terms of the dehumanizing factor.

Let’s back up just far enough to get a little perspective. One of my candy-sticks is that this world cannot be saved, and that attempts to make it better are generally stupid — okay, it’s “folly” in the sense of moral idiocy. That does not excuse making things worse. Does that not seem obvious? It’s a sin to make life more difficult than it has to be, and one of the worst sins of all is dehumanizing people. Rulers dehumanize us for their convenience in ruling. Dehumanizing people is an unmitigated and inexcusable sin, a flagrant poke in God’s eye.

The nature of the Fall itself is the decision to enthrone human reason and cut off the supremacy of the heart-mind. Whatever complex of failures that may manifest as any individual human travels the path of surrendering their will — the moral decision-making and sense of commitment — to the heart is not the point. There is no single factor in human life that will do them more good — humanize them — than helping them find their heart-mind. We can surely afford to trust God for how He works through something He designed for His own purposes. Since there is nothing we can and should do to steer things beyond some declaration and demonstration of how the heart-mind works, the rest is in God’s capable hands. This is about as un-fallen as you and can make other folks be.

Western Civilization presumes there is no heart-mind. Indeed, the whole of our social mythology vehemently denies it’s even possible. In the worst sense, Western mythos embraces the Fall as the basic truth of reality, as good and right. The presumption that human reason is capable of judging from the facts what is morally proper and just is the Fall; it’s the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Even when Western science discovers that the heart has it’s own sensory apparatus and a full-blown nervous system of its own, with a separate “brain” to boot, the rational mythology so deeply stains everything that those scientists have no clue what to do with the facts. They don’t know what the heart-mind is for because they fundamentally reject what it does best — sense and process the moral truth already woven into the fabric of reality. It’s the one part of us accessible to conscious awareness that can touch God and make it possible to fully surrender to His authority.

This is the real ESP, folks. This is the ultimate optimal operation in our fallen universe. Engage the heart-mind as best you can discern and run with it. Make the most of it, because whatever good you will receive from what God placed in His Creation can come no other way.

And this heart-mind stuff will always be outside the reach of anyone grounded in Western Civilization. They can’t touch it, in part because they can’t believe it exists. Nothing in the full range of Western science can deal with it, so if you operate this way, that part of you is forever beyond their grasp. It’s the one part of you completely wrapped inside the wings of God’s covering on your soul while you live on this earth.

Satan himself can’t touch that.

There’s an old mythology attached to some branches of mainstream Western Christianity, and it’s one of the few things that approaches the truth: If you are “born-again,” Satan can’t read your mind. This is not precisely accurate, but is looking in the right direction. Satan can estimate a Hell of a lot from observing you, and can make observations on a level above humans, but he cannot see what transpires between you and God if you are committed to God. A practical application is that you praying inside your head is silent to the Devil. He can’t tap that communication. If he can’t, then neither can any human force or technology ever tap into it, either.

But if you are a Western human, then you have no access to anything beyond flesh and reason. Thus, your sanity rests on a sense of self that is hopelessly fragile. With rising technology, your physical privacy is long gone. Maybe you didn’t know just how far gone, but it was presumed in government policy long ago. And not just US government policy, but the global shadow government had this written out quite some time back (longer than a century). At this point, it is feasible to read your mind in terms of brain-waves without implants. Implanted technology devices would simply make it easier to track and collate the same as, say, the NSA’s vast recordings of all cellphone and Internet transmissions. Whether they can record as much as they can read is doubtful, and we already know they can’t process even a tiny fraction of what they have, but that’s not the point. If they target you, your goose is cooked.

Unless your sense of identity rests in your heart-mind, that is. At that point, whatever sanity is possible in this fallen world is within reach. You might not succeed, but you could in theory hang on through a complete collapse of the universe itself. That’s because your heart-mind is in some indescribable way a piece of your eternal self. When this is all over with and we stand before God in Heaven, it’s the heart-mind that remains from our life here.

So the thing to study is how to make our best use of that faculty because it’s the only thing Satan himself can’t mess with.

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Your Servant

Posted on March 18, 2016 by ehurst

Just a reminder folks: I am your servant.

Some of you already communicate with me — comparing notes, asking questions about something I’ve written or even seeking pastoral counsel. At least a couple of you call me from time to time. It’s all good; I have the so-called “unlimited talk and text” service on my cellphone. So far, nobody has sent any text messages, but that’s your choice. I do have time and inclination, so don’t be afraid you’ll irritate me. That’s what I’m here for.

So if you need something private and/or individual, start by emailing me using ehurst909 at gmail OR br073n at outlook.com. At the Kiln blog (edit: now closed) I have a private message input form you can use right there in the right-hand column. I’m not posting my phone number here, but if you check my resume it’s up near the top. Ignore the mailing address because that’s out of date. I’ll send that by email or whatever.

If you take a notion to see what I’ve got on my FTP server, just ask for the password.

Put me to work if you need me.

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If People Can Talk Out of Their Butts…

Posted on March 18, 2016 by ehurst

It’s typical of Western intellectual processes to get things backward. We have a long, fat record of theologians and teachers insisting that we have to lean more toward a literal rendering of Scripture. This legalistic approach has caused no end of folly when it is thrust backward into a language that is inherently parabolic and symbolic in nature. Hebrew seldom expresses anything literally.

But there are times it does come close to it. Scripture is loaded with references to Creation testifying of God. Our Western culture insists that this is a mere figure of speech, but I contend that the folks who wrote it would have meant it more literally.

This is where you stop reading if you aren’t ready to entertain the notion that a tree would talk to me and I could understand it on some level.

We have precious little lore on this in our Christian religion. That is, while Scripture seems to take it for granted, almost nothing in Church History addresses it without first adding a major taint of Western intellectual assumptions. And given that the English language is so very poorly suited to the task, we stand in the place of having to start from scratch rebuilding a lost legacy. Why do we struggle so hard with the story of Balaam’s onager talking to him about an angel standing in the road (Numbers 22)?

Over the past couple of years I’ve often tried to explain the doctrine of Two Realms, that we are inside of a constrained bubble that suffers distinct limitations that don’t exist outside of it. We are under the Fall in a realm where time and space are limitations upon us, but that God and His angels are not affected by such things. God’s Person is rooted outside of our realm of existence; He is in the Spirit Realm. We are in the Fallen Realm. I use language like that as parable, because Jesus set the pattern for discussing such things, relying on parables to convey things that can’t easily register in the intellect. He’s the one who established the basic principle in John 3 about Two Realms, and in other places told His disciples that parables were necessary to separate between those who are redeemed and those who are missing something critical in moral awareness.

I’ve also tried to describe a realm of awareness that bridges the chasm between this Fallen Realm and the Spirit Realm. I refer to it as the Moral Realm, a boundary layer we can touch that is reflected in all of Creation, but only with our heart-minds. God created all things and quite naturally we should assume that His Creation is a product of His moral character. Further, the Bible keeps saying flatly that Creation is a living thing in itself, so we shouldn’t struggle so hard with the idea that Creation operates by His moral character. I keep referring to Paul’s statement in Romans that all Creation is groaning with torment in hopes that some of us would catch on and start sensing this moral fabric of reality. We have the capacity to read this moral fiber in all things as the signature of God’s Person living in Creation.

So I struggle with the words to tell you that moral content is supreme, far more critical to our grasp on reality than any factual knowledge. The whole concept of “miracle” is that factual reality can be altered for moral purposes. Moral awareness trumps facts because facts can be changed; morality can only be observed. All the facts in the universe with a full grasp of how they interrelate will not answer any moral questions at all. Our Western obsession with facts is why there are so few miracles among Western Christians.

When I rode my bicycle (11 miles) to the spot out there where Aubrey McClendon crashed his SUV, I clambered around to see things from a perspective most folks wouldn’t bother trying to get. I climbed up the steep embankment where the construction crew had cut down into the earth to make the road pass under the interstate highway. All up the embankment grew a smattering of trees, shrubs and grasses native to this area and able to maintain a grip with their roots in the soil. Among them was an Oklahoma Redbud tree, standing near the top and among some other kinds of lightweight trees. The best I could do was capture with my camera one branch of this thing, and it’s mixed in tightly with all the other stuff growing there. I climbed around the end of the fence meant to limit access to the turnpike and took this picture from behind a fence, facing across the cut for Midwest Boulevard.

I’ve had communion with trees in the past and wrote about it on my other blog. I still have that polished oak stick in the mementos I keep near my computer. Our dear Sister Christine (Wildcucumber) writes about such things on her blog, but I didn’t get all of this from her. My experience is my own. This is the first time I have encountered anything quite like this: The tree seemed urgent to pass onto me some moral impression from that crash. Not factual information; I have no salacious secrets from McClendon’s life to reveal. On the other hand, who’s life does not include things they’d rather keep private? What the tree wanted me to get was something of the peculiar moral sorrow of the bigger picture. That tree watched McClendon’s life bleed and burn away in the wreckage of that SUV. Something about that whole event speaks of a critical moral truth about our world.

Maybe it will be awhile before I quite know what to say about that experience. As noted, I’ve communed with trees before, but this was like a heart-broken child asking someone to hold them for awhile. So my immediate reaction is that this crash carried a moral importance that I need to consider and pray about. It’s meant to result in a decision somewhere in the future that I might not make without that impression. Balaam eventually kept going down that road to Moab, but he definitely needed to stop and notice that there was something critical he needed to consider before he continued his journey. Would you want to claim our Creator no longer speaks through His Creation? We have all kinds of folks “talking out their asses” but we can’t take seriously something less spiteful?

At least some of you will be impressed to take this seriously. Let’s consider ways we can put this into words and develop a teaching that matches Scripture, because I, for one, would like to have all that God left us in Creation.

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Win10 Upgrade as Malware

Posted on March 17, 2016 by ehurst

Honestly, genuine IT managers are treating the upgrade with the same intensity and depth of analysis as a malware attack. They do this because they say that the unwanted upgrade acts just like malware.

Go ahead and keep your Windows installation, but I submit you might get a lot of mileage out of learning an entirely different strategy for handling updates. I suggest you try Autopatcher. Their primary contention is that not all the updates are in your best interest, so their own technicians look them over and encourage you to ignore just about anything that isn’t a genuine security update or bug fix. But honestly, it requires you spend time reading and studying how their patcher works and completely disable the Windows Update Service. In fact, it’s complicated enough that the Autopatcher guys start you off reading their forum posts to find out how to start using their stuff.

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Cycling: McClendon Memorial Area

Posted on March 17, 2016 by ehurst

AubreyMcClendonMemorialThat redbud kept calling my name, so I went back out to visit. There is no good way to capture it with a camera; I’ve tried a couple of times but there is no good angle. Instead, I’ll let you see how elaborate the memorial has become for Aubrey McClendon: numerous hats, t-shirts, flowers, posters, signs, crosses and even a small spotlight powered by photocell. There were plenty of other odds-n-ends people drop at such sites. I did climb up the slope and stood holding onto one of the tree limbs for awhile. I’m not sure I can explain a tree that begs for human company like that, simply because I rarely encounter it

FarmDouglasHefnerFarmsnrHefnerMWB English language can’t express the odd sense of divine Presence I felt on the ride, so I’ll just let you see some of the shots I took in no particular order as I rolled out in the northern hills near the crash site. It was just a long peaceful ride with very little motor traffic most of the time.

Memorial-n-MWBNCdnnrHefnerMWB Maybe the images will be self-explanatory as to why I took the shots. Frankly there are some places that look better in the winter brown coat and some that definitely need the green.

NCanMWB

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We Have This Treasure

Posted on March 17, 2016 by ehurst

What we have here is powerful, rich and sweet. Do we need any further excuse to offer it to others? Actually, the thing itself won’t tolerate silence. It would be wholly unjust to keep this divine justice to ourselves.

But the same justice constrains the means to sharing. It is inherent in this justice and cosmic sense of harmony and peace that we tend to be peaceful about it. There’s no bait and hook, no strings attached. We help those who ask; otherwise we seek God’s command in defending what He has given us. There’s no doubt we end up helping a lot of folks who don’t tell us.

Most of you know this instinctively. Once you surrender your reason to the convictions of the heart, everything changes. No two of us experience it the same, but the only real agenda here is restoring the divine justice that was missing internally. It’s a mission that we expect to find unfinished in some ways when the final call comes to stand before our Creator. This thing we do carries with it the ultimate confidence in Our Creator to remake us, and in similar fashion to remake everyone else who shares this thing.

So on the one hand, we cannot possibly keep this to ourselves. On the other hand, we dare not transgress anyone else’s boundaries in any way. This whole thing is about divine justice, God’s character, cosmic moral truth, etc. It’s all the same thing. The highest art form is discerning the fluctuating contextual boundaries to satisfy God’s moral imperatives in the moment. But we can’t avoid this moral justice oozing out into the world around us. It’s the miracle of our Father’s Presence in us as we go about shining His light into every corner of our own existence. We can’t avoid bumping into other people who happen to populate portions of our private world.

You have to find your own path, but I would never presume to infiltrate my person or my teachings into an existing religious organization to disrupt things there. That will surely happen to some degree, but not by my design or intent. People who absorb what I share will eventually come into conflict with the existing system of their world and handle it according to their own calling. But there is no conscious effort at shaking things up. The truth of God does that by itself. It certainly shakes me up, and to all appearances, does the same to some of you, dear readers.

So all we have to do is live out the implications of that shaking and shattering before the world. God will catch the attention of whom He will, by whatever means pleasing to Him. To the degree we are any threat to the existing order, it’s simply because we exist as proof that there is something not right in the system. God is adding to our number. We aren’t keeping count in any human sense, because too many will need to move along and take this thing with them once they get what they need. Others will stay to help with the incubation process. Today I’m addressing myself to those who feel led to stick around for awhile.

Don’t worry about cooking up a strategy. Just be and the actions will become apparent in their time. By all means, notice how it works, insofar as you can discern it. That’s part of the incubation process: We can tell others what we have seen. So sometimes I get the craziest ideas in my head and they won’t let go, yapping at my heels and demanding action. It’s because I’m not God and can’t comprehend what He’s planning, so I do well enough to respond when I can discern something rather concrete that I should try. It’s not even the doing, per se, but moving in the right direction to intercept something I can’t possibly see coming.

Just those things we find calling from within our convictions is enough. It tends to be more than we can handle anyway, so that’s plenty without trying to devise a plan that might interfere with God’s moves. Stay loose.

Some practical implications for me: I haven’t seen the end of this ghost server. How I use it now is not how I’ll use it somewhere down the line. There is a lot I can’t see in the misty future, but my heart tells me this is just a passage along the way. This thing is parish property, so to speak, and I’m simply the guy tasked to handle it. I still need a serious laptop, but this is a prayer request, not a call for funds. All I understand right now is that I’ll need to isolate my personal stuff from the server some day because the server will be somehow open to the public. Just pray with me; computers are the primary way I carry out my mission. I’m not a gamer and this is not about feeding my ego, as most of you already know. I’ll share the specs if you ask.

And the mission is not confined to some future exodus from mainstream churches. That is a major focus for obvious reasons, but we’ve long had a stream of folks coming here from outside of organized religion. God uses our limited grasp of the situation, too, but it seems this thing we do here calls to a lot of folks from all across the human spectrum. Divine justice is sweeter than any siren song and certainly does no harm. However, my conscious effort is mostly a matter of reaching out to folks consciously professing Christ who bear a sense they are being held back from really serving Him. I remain convinced that something ahead on the road for humanity will cause an exodus of conscience. I’m trying to be ready to help them and asking you to consider joining that effort. That we are sure to bless others is hardly a mission failure.

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Not Just the Dispies

Posted on March 16, 2016 by ehurst

While I’ve made a lot of noise about the need to be ready for some level of exodus from the Zionist-Dispensationalist claptrap in churches, that’s not the whole story here. I’ve also predicted for quite some years that churches in general are at high risk of alienating a large portion of their membership on a whole range of issues. A lot of what I write and offer on my FTP server is aimed at this broader set of problems.

It’s bad enough that way too many folks attend church only as a social ritual. They don’t go to get closer to Christ but to fulfill some cultural obligation. As far as they are concerned, it’s all one thing, which is as much proof as we need to show this isn’t a spiritual activity at all. It’s just called that.

But particularly here in the US, there is a serious underlying compromise, a time-bomb waiting to go off. That tax-free designation comes with a cost. We’ve already seen where FEMA went all out to enlist as many pastors as possible into their system to help herd folks into compliance with the kind of murderous takeover we saw during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Just use any search engine with the keywords “pastor” and “FEMA” and you’ll see plenty of references. FEMA was being nice when they made that first appeal; they could have simply ordered the pastors to comply. That tax-free stuff comes with strings attached and saner folks have been talking about that quietly.

Let’s put this in perspective. I’ve noted several times that among the global ruling elite there are at least a few who would relish the thought of a civil war here in the US. They would profit from it regardless who fought whom, and would profit regardless who won. So we are watching the Republican primaries and already the GOP leadership has said things like, “The voters don’t decide who runs for office; we do.” And they’ve already said Trump will not be allowed to take the Republican nomination. And Trump has said quite plausibly that when the GOP leadership shut him out, there will be rioting and revolt that destroys the Republican Party as we know it. Meanwhile, Soros is funding rioting leading up to that moment on the left side. But if there is rioting either way, as many commentators have warned, this plays into the hands of Washington DC, “forcing” them to shut down the election and maybe even declaring martial law. That’s all plausible, and maybe even the plan of some.

So if there is any kind of social unrest on a scale that approaches what we saw in the Vietnam War protests, I’m quite certain there would be martial law on some level, at least in some locations. We can speculate why, but I sense that TPTB have lost touch with reality and are quite willing to destroy everything in their impatience with humanity. But in the midst of all this crap, we should be totally surprised if they don’t pull out that tax-exemption card and demand churches do their part to bring the herds under control. You can check for yourself, but legal analysis of the actual tax code and associated federal policies tell us that government officials can restrict what pastors say in the pulpit, and demand some kind of assistance in emergency situations.

As always, I have no plans whatsoever to get involved in advocacy for any side in this mess. What I do plan is to keep this ministry going and prepare as many of you as feel the call to have some idea how you can help folks disillusioned by how the churches will be forced to act. This is a major element in how we can exploit the situation for the glory of God. As much as possible, I’m trying to establish a collection of backups, ways I can keep this virtual parish intact. If I lose this account, if I lose the server hosting the other blog, then I can still quickly run the whole thing from my ghost server at home and pray that a dynamic DNS service is available so I can at least maintain some kind of online presence. Or maybe we can come up with some other kind of service somewhere that will help fill in the blanks.

No, I don’t have all the equipment I would like to have, but I can get by. I’ll do what I can and trust God for the rest. Would some of you like to keep a copy of my stuff? Just ask; we’ll work something out. Need guidance in writing up your own? Again, ask and I’m sure we can work something out.

This is not me waving my hands in panic over some imaginary nightmare scenario. I’m plotting ways to keep the message out there where we can help folks who need it. Keep your eyes open. Read the news sites, as much to see what they are lying about or hiding as to see what’s new. Read alternative news sites, whatever appeals to you. I find it hard to imagine this will all blow over and things will keep stumbling along as they are now. But I’m not in any kind of panic. I’m praying and watching and trying to be ready to move at His command. I’m preaching that you should do the same in your own way.

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Reminder: No Encryption Needed

Posted on March 15, 2016 by ehurst

They don’t take us seriously in the first place.

A fundamental element in this online parish, and of all the vast pile of stuff I write day after day, is that the heart is a sensory organ harnessed to a higher level of consciousness. We teach the science, and I keep a copy of some references on my FTP server. Not that we endorse everything in those documents, but they do carry some of the factual background that points back to our main contention about the heart as a separate “mind” in your chest.

So while we can probably get most of the world to nod at the scientific data, it’s quite a jump from that data to my contention that the Bible as a document of Hebrew culture, sitting as it did in the center of a much wider Ancient Near Eastern intellectual tradition, took quite literally the idea that your heart had a mind of its own. Further, I teach that the Bible assumes the heart as a “mind” is the only part of us capable of sensing directly the Spirit Realm. At any given time, in any given context, the vast majority of folks exposed to that idea will not be able to accept it. They can’t swallow the idea of a separate Spirit Realm and they can’t swallow the idea that the only possible way you can know God is with your intellect linked to your heart and letting your heart rule. They might tolerate the idea of “convictions” as stronger than reason, but they would choke on the idea that we can and should consciously cultivate a habit of listening to our convictions all the time.

What we say sounds pretty much like the New Age stuff (it ain’t) or some kind of Eastern Mysticism (it is). Because I say that we should not trust the intellect for very much, that it rightly bows the knee to the heart/convictions and that your Western morals are all wrong — that knocks us out of any serious attention. (And I don’t mean one kind of Western morals versus some other kind, but that all the Western moral traditions are inherently anti-Christian.)

I said the other day that our whole religious orientation here starts with an awareness that what everyone else does has failed, so if people don’t come here with that, we can’t help them. They have to sense a need and start looking for an answer. And then they have to be ready to hear our answer as the one they need. We aren’t even trying to persuade; we offer this as a friendly invitation to take a look. And we flatly deny any interest in politics except as entertainment or academic curiosity. Our kingdom is not of this world.

So we can chatter quite openly about our religion and faith and The Powers That Be are wholly unlikely to feel threatened. I suppose mainstream Christianity could see us a threat. I do bluntly say they are wrong and we hope their members come to us for a better answer, but I would never attempt to disrupt what churches are doing. That’s just human politics with Bible verses painted on the outside. I also would love to draw out the New Agers and pagans and Luciferians and just about everyone else — anyone who senses a need for what we have. Or you can stay in your organization and just come here to laugh or whatever.

We’ve had plenty of folks post comments here more or less attacking what I teach, or attacking me for what I teach. Most of the time my answers sort of end the conversation, largely because they were taking potshots in the first place. Only one persisted and I eventually got tired of his noise and told him his comments were blocked. That’s only because he was what Paul called a “disputatious man” wasting time with no honest intention of trying to understand (1 Corinthians 11:16). It was interfering with the ministry. He didn’t operate by the heart, so far as I could tell. I recall telling a few others to take a hike, but it was for outright senseless spite. Folks like that are very rare in the seven years or so I’ve had this blog.

Most of the time they ignore us, so I really don’t waste time with encryption. My emails, text messages and calls are all unencrypted. I don’t keep a list of members and most certainly receive no significant amount in donations except on rare occasions for something really special — and I can account for how every bit of it was spent on this ministry or kept me alive. Do you imagine that I couldn’t make more money doing something else? I live in relative poverty on purpose; it’s God’s calling on my life. And if the donations stopped at this point, it would likely change nothing. You have to understand: If people give, I use it, but that’s not why I write. I’d much rather you drop a note telling me you are praying for me. Or chat about something that needs my advice or my prayers. The personal touch is the real treasure for me.

We aren’t a target because we do nothing that matters to anyone else.

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When It Doesn’t Work Out

Posted on March 15, 2016 by ehurst

How does the heart handle disappointment?

The problem is our minds and limited understanding, not the heart. As we progress from a worldly viewpoint to a heart-led life, we drag with us a lot of mental baggage. It’s not all evil, so nobody here is telling you to pretend you can empty your consciousness and start from scratch. That’s a myth that comes in the package with certain Eastern religions and it’s bullshit. God doesn’t work that way and we aren’t designed for it. The baggage is part of the journey, but it requires repacking and changing the contents.

You most certainly can step outside your customary fleshly consciousness. That’s challenging enough, but when you manage it, and to the degree you manage it, changing what’s packed in that baggage is much easier. It’s more like an attempt to step into a private room and disrobe. Get rid of the stuff that doesn’t actually fit and put on something that does. (And there’s nothing wrong with someone else picking up your cast-offs.)

But as your life progresses on the path of redemption, yesterday’s togs may not work for tomorrow. So an idea, plan or commitment that was good and righteous in one context won’t work in the next. The problem most of us run into is thinking. Our intellect does its best to interpret the message from the heart, and the mind needs as much work as the rest of this fleshly shell. So we might imagine that we understand the nature of our calling and even announce the plans according to that passing grasp. But somewhere down the road it becomes apparent our best understanding was still flawed.

God help us if we ever come to imagine that there’s something wrong or embarrassing about changing like that. We should learn to celebrate with each other that something unfit to go the distance has been discarded. Some of us will change more frequently and more loudly than others. That was a part of what made people tease Peter about his name, and what made the declaration by Jesus more surprising that Peter was a rock. Peter changed his mind every few minutes, if you asked his friends.

Yes, there probably comes a point when that stuff settles down, but that has more to do with with how we express ourselves and stop making major declarations about minor changes. It’s the chatter that’s silly, not the changes. We can look past the silly chatter and see that it’s just a difference in personality. God help us if we ever start to think someone who takes God seriously is a goofball just because they don’t work through their fallen nature the same way we do. How about not taking yourself so seriously as the divine model for humanity?

I can’t turn off the turmoil in your soul any more than I can turn off my own. But when something that seems so divine fades into mere mist, this is no time to wallow in condemnation. The same can be said if you find yourself forced to rain on someone else’s parade. See the incident as another step on the path, another corner somebody has to turn to dodge something they didn’t see before. Learn to see it as normal. Learn to see it as God taking you down a convoluted path because there’s a lot of crap in your life that doesn’t belong and it’s no simple matter to drop it. Those things have roots and you cannot rip it all out wholesale without destroying something valuable (see The Parable of the Tares).

It’s the journey, not the sights and campgrounds along the way.

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Win10: The Hits Keep Coming

Posted on March 14, 2016 by ehurst

Look at the Reddit thread on Win10 forced upgrades. I took the time to wade through most of it. The Microsoft apologists are lying — knowingly lying about what happens. Literally hundreds of people are doing everything right and still getting hit with the automatic upgrade, and I’m willing to bet that, for every one that posts on Reddit or some other forum, there are easily a hundred more behind them experiencing the same thing. I’ve seen:

1. Clicking “no” to the upgrade and it upgrades anyway.
2. Turning off automatic updates and rejecting the bad ones, yet it still downloads and upgrades.
3. Numerous upgrades intruding without warning in the middle of very important work.
4. Countless complaints about how Win10 broke stuff, including it’s own rollback function.
5. At least one person was on a cell tether and something in the Windows upgrade prevented them using the software switch to turn off their cellphone, running up a huge bill. They insisted that it literally hijacked their cellphone OS.
6. More than a couple of techies who dual-boot found that Win10 borks the partition table (not the partitions, just the location info stored on the disk). After calling MS and escalating, the phone techs insist it’s not Win10’s fault, but none of the victims have ever experienced it before, after having done this kind of dual-booting since Win98.

Maybe there are some stories that exaggerate, but this whole thing is incredible. Too many of these folks are very tech savvy and still can’t prevent this upgrade. I know I’ve had to watch things like a hawk on a couple of Win7 systems I take care of. I once suggested that this looked like a very sloppy technology, but too may of the complaints signal intentional sabotage. This takes us back to the old days when MS designed Windows to break other OSes on the same machine, and later it was admitted by MS employees.

If you want help switching to Mint, Debian or CentOS, just ask. This stuff has just gone too far.

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