Cranford Coulter

Tithing: 10% of what?

In recent years there has been a lot of talk in different circles relating to the tithe principle of the Mosaic Law. People think that a flat tax sounds fair. Those who earn more would pay more. Those who earn less would pay less. This seems to make perfect sense on the surface, but when we examine the reality in the light of Scripture, it is not so simple.

Many evangelical churches and cults teach that one should give 10% of one’s income to the church. The Mormons require members to file an income tithe return to the church. Among evangelicals there is always the discussion of whether this tithe is to be on net or gross income. The practice of ‘tithing’ has now spilled over into the Antiochian Orthodox Church as Metropolitan PHILIP introduced it as a prescription for stewardship. Many people have rebelled against it, saying that it is not biblical, since it is from the Old Testament and we are not under the Law. Apparently, they have carried over their dispensationalism with them into Orthodoxy.

The tithe pre-dated the law of Moses. Moses only codified it for the Israelites and for our example. However they would be correct to say that a tithe on income is not biblical. It is, in fact, found nowhere in either testament. The concepts of measuring annual income and of income tax are quite modern, and thus, of necessity, measuring and giving a percentage of income must be modern as well. To be fair to Metropoiltan PHILIP, he was just trying to get Orthodox Christians to support the Church, on a level on par with how the “schismatics” support theirs. He was actually going easy on most members relative to what the New Testament standard for giving truly is. Dues paying is hardly New Testament, after all.

This is where things get exciting. For years, demagogues have been citing the Bible to support a flat tax, claiming that it would be fair, all the while knowing that it would favor their rich supporters, while shifting more of the tax burden onto the middle class and working poor. They got many people to support the concept, because it sounded fair and it sounded simple, and it resonated with what they ignorantly claimed the Scripture taught. The tithes of Moses (yes, there were three!) were on property, not on income. Furthermore, they were not the only taxes. No, they were not voluntary.

It always sounds fair and simple that everyone just pays 10%. What is interesting is that churches that teach “tithing” only receive on average about 2% of their members’ average income in offerings. That percentage is lower the wealthier the members are; a bit higher, the poorer the members are. People who have more money tend to hold onto it more tightly. The New Testament pattern for giving and that taught by the Church Fathers, most notably and most eloquently, St. John Chrysostom, is not tithing, but rather jubilary giving. It is not based on what one starts out with, but on what remains once one has given. What is right to give is determined by what is left. The goals are to further the Kingdom, to live in the Kingdom, to recognize that we own nothing, to use everything as stewards to further the will of God and His Kingdom, knowing that his mercies are new every morning. The Mennonites, Brethren, Amish, and Brethren in Christ used to all teach jubilary giving. When they did, their average giving compared to their members’ income was over 5%. This is still not great, but more than double the “tithing” churches.

I said that the Mosaic tithes were on property, not on income. This is an extremely important detail. This makes them much higher taxes. Every year, a tenth of the crops was to be paid to the Levites. Do not be distracted by the language in some translations that say the “increase” of the wheat, etc. to think that that means the net increase. It does not. It just means the yield of the land. There were no deductions for hired labor, for purchases of tools, for land rental, feed for draft animals, tool repair, work clothes, medical expenses, legal expenses, etc. It doesn’t even matter if there was a drought and one harvested less than one planted. 10% went to the Levites. That was not all. Actually before the harvest was taken, the first measure of grain was harvested and presented to the Lord as a wave offering. The harvest was also not done in such a way as to squeeze every last bushel of grain or fruit out of the field. It was an abomination before the Lord to harvest the corners of one’s field and not leave them for the poor to glean. It would result in being ejected from the congregation, in other words, losing one’s citizenship and inheritance and land.

When it came to the animals, they were all put in the corral and driven through a cattle shoot under the Levites’ rod. Every tenth one went to the Levites. This is interesting. It is by nature not regressive. It is not going to take a man’s lone cow. The tax only starts on a minimum herd of ten. Again, it matters not if the herd has increased or decreased during the year, or what the rancher or dairy farmer paid for feed; or how much he may have had to pay his hired help or what it cost to feed, house and clothe his slaves. One in ten went to the Levites, randomly. If he wants to redeem his prize bull from the offering, he must give an equivalent plus 20% as a substitute. This is all spelled out in Leviticus 27.

It is very interesting that there are going to be many who will read this and start screaming about ‘how is this relevant to a modern society’ and ‘do you want to drag us back to the stone age’ before giving up their concept of a flat tax that they claim to be just, because they think they took it from the Law of Moses or it resonates in peoples minds that it is from the Mosaic Law. You can’t have it both ways. Just because it is 10% or just because it is a flat tax, doesn’t mean it is fair. It all depends on what you are taxing to begin with.

Who decided that what happened last year is the only thing that is important? You could have a very good year and get nailed with high income tax, even though you had several years before where you had terrible years of losses and expenses. By the same token, you could have loads of money and no income at all last year, millions of dollars of assets. Is it right that you should be afforded all the privileges of protection and citizenship and community without paying your fair share? No. Not according to the Law of Moses, which was the only model handed down to us by inspiration of God for a pattern for human government. The model we are given in the Mosaic Law for taxation is not an income tax at all, but a tax on actual property, so that everyone who has means bears their fair share.

I the mighty robin, am quite a feeble bird.

My playmates for the first six years of my life were my sister Sue Ann and our neighbor across the street, David Ericson. They were two years older than I was. I was the youngest of four in my family. David was the youngest of four in his family. There were other children in the neighborhood, but these were my closest friends and constant companions. Our family built a bigger house and moved two miles away in Golden Valley, MN, the summer between kindergarten and first grade, but we stayed in touch. We spent 4th of Julys together and got together around Christmas and did some other outings, as well. We ended up going to the same high school: Robbinsdale Senior High.

When we were little and playing cowboys and Indians, David always managed to get killed right outside his back door. He would lay there for a moment then he would get up and run into the kitchen and pour some ketchup on his face and lie back down; you know, to add bloody realism. The next time we would come by, he would still be lying there, but he would be scraping the ketchup off with potato chips and eating them. You just can’t waste food like that! There were children starving in Africa.

I have written about the Ericsons before. David’s parents, Les and Lois prayed for our family daily and brought us kids to church whenever my folks didn’t go, and to vacation Bible school, to their little Bible church in North Minneapolis. Lois particularly prayed for me daily from the time she heard my mom was pregnant with me until the day she died just a couple of years ago. I played with David’s toys while he was in school and my mom was working for the 1960 Census. The Ericsons’ house was the safest place I knew as a child. Playing with David’s Lincoln Logs in the middle of the living room floor with Mrs. Ericson in the kitchen was as good as life could get.

David grew up to be a serious, well-mannered, Christian, young man. He graduated RHS, Class of 1971. He decided to take a year off to do a short term missionary assignment with Wickliffe Bible Translators, helping his sister and brother-in-law, Jim and Carol Daggett, in Peru, instead of starting college. While there, he was accompanying a young girl on a flight to Quito, to get to a hospital for an emergency surgery. It was Christmas Eve. The flight went down and we did not know for weeks of what had happened. Finally, we learned that only one German girl survived. The plane had broken up in mid air in a bad storm. Pieces of the fuselage had fallen from the sky. Her mother died in the seat next to her. She was carrying her wedding cake on her lap. That may have helped save her. A tribe of natives who were known to be cannibals took her in and treated her wounds. She was finally found and rescued. So we lost David. He died on a mission of mercy. He was Les and Lois Ericson’s only son. Later that year, each of his three married sisters gave birth to sons.

When I was little I would tag along with Sue Ann everywhere. Of course, she was trying to tag along with our older sister, Alison, much of the time, so there were times they were trying to lose me. By the time Sue was in junior high, we were tight. I was a couple of inches taller than she was. She would take me to the 7th grade dances. Some people would assume that I was her date. Others would assume I was her twin brother. I would dance with all her friends. The 7th grade boys just sat there. I was in 5th grade and I was dancing with 4 or 5 girls at a time. I would help her with her math homework. By the time I was in junior high, she and I helped replace the useless student council with a Student Service Organization. We both served on the executive council. We were involved in the musical together. I was the third Ozian general. Sue Ann did make up.

Sue Ann & I became the ones that people would call if they were depressed and considering suicide. We appeared to be so stable. We were not always successful. There were attempts. Sometimes I would drink half a can of root beer, fill it up with six ounces of Scotch and drink that, just to go to sleep at night, in 8th grade. We played hard, too. We snow skied and water skied together. Sue Ann would waterbike while I would swim three miles around the lake in the summer. We read all the works of Hermann Hesse together, sometimes by firelight in the basement, while listening to psychedelic music on the Magnavox. I helped her on her English papers. She was a perfectionist, and I used to read dictionaries and the thesaurus. I tend to remember everything I read. She joined the yearbook staff in her junior year. I secretly helped her with that, even some of the all-nighters. I was still in junior high. The next year they had a poetry contest for the yearbook. I submitted a bunch of poems. They wanted to include several. Sue Ann already had me secretly working on staff. They made an exception and made me the only sophomore on staff and limited my published poems to one short one. We had the most intense year working together. The book won national awards, including one of my spreads, for which I had done the writing and she had done the most ruthless editing. I must admit, it is her voice in my head, editing, when I write. It is a painful process, but I tend to be succinct. I am told that people appreciate my style, even if they don’t always agree with my content.

We were so busy with things in high school that I didn’t see David much apart from family gatherings. We were all very involved with different things, but enjoyed our times together when we did see each other. It hit us hard when we got the news of his plane crash and we were in touch with his family daily, when it happened.

In the Spring of my sophomore year in high school I joined a fundamentalist, Baptist church, getting re-baptized with the whole born again thing. I was as serious with that as I am with anything in my life. We had our arguments over that, but she stuck by me. I still pulled all-nighters with her and helped her write some of her English papers for college. I even helped one of her girlfriends write a theology paper. It was kind of funny at one point. She had a prof. at Augsburg who was the husband of my British Lit. II teacher at RHS. They compared notes. I said there was good reason why our styles were so similar. Sue Ann had taught me how to write. And I edited her papers. They had a good laugh over a glass of Chardonnay that night.

By the time I was 21, three of the 100 kids in my 6th grade class had committed suicide. One had killed his sister and his parents with him. Another six friends from junior high and high school were gone by the time I was 24.

Sue got married in 1974. Bethann and I got married in 1975. Our friendship continued. She introduced Bethann to Creative Circle and I learned all sorts of needle crafts to help build the sales presentations. We stayed in constant communication, even though we were in PA and she and Bucky were in MN. Then communication fell off and I got a call from my older sister, Ali, that Sue Ann had checked herself into a rehab for alcoholism and was wanting everyone in the family to seek treatment as well. She had started the process by trying to do an intervention on our dad. While she was in treatment, she accused him of doing unspeakable things to us as children. My sister, Ali, would call me, at night, and ask me if these things were possible. She started the first phone call by asking me what the color of the living room was in our house on Shoreline Drive. That was the house where I was born. Then she asked me what my earliest memory was. I told her it was being carried through the crowded dining room in that house by Uncle Gordy. Uncle Gordy died when I was about two. I have the longest, most reliable memory in the family. She wanted to know whether what Sue Ann was accusing our dad of were at all possible. I told her, absolutely not! Apparently Sue Ann had been subjected to that regression “therapy” and given suggestions of false memories.

So I read the books about adult children of alcoholics that Sue Ann sent. When we visited MN and stayed with Sue Ann’s family, we went to AA with her. They would all come out and start chain smoking as soon as the meeting was over. It was like they had traded one addiction for another, or maybe for two: AA and smoking. She was more obnoxious about us joining AA than I had ever been about her being born again. But turnabout being fairplay, our friendship tolerated it. Unfortunately, she did have an addictive personality and that was a foreshadowing. We were out to MN for my dad’s wedding in 1994, we stayed at her house. Late at night she and her girls were talking to our girls about some of their Young Life activities. She said I could take part in the conversation. I said that of course I could. She talked about how they went out “witnessing” with a Muslim and a Christian paired together. I asked, “How could that possibly work, since Jesus said, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life.'” She went ballistic. It was 0 to 70 with nothing in between. She was going to throw us out of the house then and there, on the edge of Minnetonka, at midnight, at about 0°, with no car, before cell phones. Bucky got involved. We came to a truce after he scored a few points. We got to stay the night and catch a ride to the train station the next day. She never spoke to me again. That was just five months after our mom had died. (I guess we exchanged pro forma Christmas cards for the sake of our children, after that.)

She told my dad a completely different story about what happened that night, a total fabrication. He wrote me lambasting me about it, without hearing my side of the story. I was completely blind-sided, since what I was accused of was so outrageous. Bethann had been there. She was equally shocked. My dad and I had had a rocky relationship. This was part of why my sister and I had been so close. It was part of our protection. My dad had physically thrown me out of the house when I was just shy of 16 just for asking him if he wanted to listen to a gospel quartet; actually it was at the lake place in Wisconsin, at night. My mom came after me and said, “If he goes, I go.” My dad said, “B.J., You know that isn’t fair. I will take you, even with him.”

Way to make a fellow feel loved, dad.

So, when I got that letter, I had had enough of the ups and downs, of the manipulations and intrigues. So rather than explain myself, I wrote my dad a letter telling him that he obviously had no interest in the truth. He had already judged and condemned me. I reminded him that he was a lawyer and he had taught me better; that people were to be considered innocent until proven guilty. I told him I had just had enough. I wasn’t going to play his games any more. I would grieve for him now. I didn’t want to hear about it when he died. So I lost my mom, my sister and my dad, in the space of six months. I did wonder why my dad believed her implicitly, after that which she had previously accused him. Later, I did try to reconcile with him, but he would have none of it.

In late 2000, I got the call from my sister, Ali, that Sue Ann had been found dead. I’m glad she got a hold of me before I checked my email with the subject line “Regarding my sister’s death” from my brother, who was too cheap to call. I flew out for her funeral. It took my sister, Ali, and I several months to uncover that she had committed suicide by a drug cocktail. My dad had told my brother and brother-in-law and the kids to keep it a secret. Sue had become addicted to gambling and had embezzled money from her boss. Her boss had just called her to talk about this. She had just separated from her husband. It was her old girlfriends from college that had the super unlock her apartment after she missed their dinner date, who discovered her.

It was just so awfully sad. I wish we had not fallen out so badly. I am not sure why I am writing this now. I just know that I love my sister. She was a wonderful person. She was a wonderful and creative mother. She was beautiful and talented. She had painted herself into a corner and couldn’t see any good way out. She should not have been alone with her illness.

So my earliest playmates have been gone for some time now. This month is Robbinsdale School District’s all year, all high school reunion and my class’s 40 year reunion. I can’t afford to go. The people I most would want to see are all dead. This is not where I thought I would be.

I just remember being so much happier and four and saying, “Alison, can you help Sue Ann and me cross the street so we can play with David?”

Today’s Window Installation

Today I finally installed the last replacement sash kit on the first floor. I still have to finish some of the exterior trim and install two screens. and paint. It’s kind of an involved process for each window. The sashes are painted on the exterior sides and varnished on the interior sides. I apply adhesive lead to the interior side of the glass in a craftsman pattern that I devised. On the lower sash, I add faux stained glass paint in the corner squares. Then I add the hardware. I remove the old sashes and combination storms and add wood to the sides to make the opening exactly 28″ wide. Then I attach four cleats to each side to attach the sash tracks. The tilt in sashes then snap into place.

Our house should be cooler next winter. You read right. The thermostat is in this room. It will be less drafty, so now the heat should not come on so often, and the rest of the house won’t be so hot.

The awesome tool was used to trim the bottoms of the sash strips to fit the sill.

Educating Doctors

Yesterday I saw my neurologist and my primary care doctor. I see the neurologist for my migraines. My migraines cause strokes, so it is imperative that we do all we can do to prevent them or to stop them if they start. I am not one to just blindly follow doctors’ orders. My dad was a medical malpractice defense attorney. I was raised to take responsibility for my own health. My dad would regularly lecture us on how it was the medical profession’s fault that they were getting sued so badly, because they had been so arrogant for so long. They expected you to take their orders and prescriptions without question, as if they were gods. The problem was that created an expectation of infallibility. So honest mistakes and judgment calls now became malpractice with astronomical, punitive damages. That was the 1960s.

Needless to say, through the years my approach has raised the hackles on a few doctors. I simply explain to them my background and ask them if they would rather I trust them totally and implicitly, and if anything goes wrong, I will sue their pants off; or we can work as partners and friends. Yesterday demonstrated that I have stumbled upon some pretty amazing doctors. Of course, they have demonstrated this to me before this by their expertise and care. But yesterday they let me teach them.

At 11:30, I had my appointment with Dr. Cindy Wang, my neurologist. She is a delightful Chinese woman with a great sense of humor and a keen scientific mind. Computers frustrate her, though. (Of course, we all have days like that. I digress.) We had to cut back on the Verapamil, because I had started to react to it with hives. I had been up to 360mg morning and evening. I had tapered myself back to 90mg morning and evening. That took care of the hives, but the migraines came back. So we had increased the Topamax to 150mg morning and evening and inched the Verapamil back up to 180mg morning and evening with no ill effects. I still was having migraines more frequently than when on the higher dose of Verapamil. I wrote this just to give you some background.

We started the appointment with Cindy asking me how things are going. I told her that I had learned about ginger and had added it to my treatment routine and that it had helped tremendously. I told her about the studies that had been done that had shown that it was as effective as Imitrex for stopping migraines and was not contraindicated in people who had had strokes, like Imitrex is. It is also effective at preventing migraines. One of the studies was from the NIH. It is a very useful anti-inflammatory. She asked me how I took it. I told her I took two 650mg capsules per day as prevention and two at the onset of a migraine instead of the Ketoralac. She asked me if that worked. I said I was having far fewer migraines and when I did they were much milder. Rarely did I have to resort to Percocet or Ketoralac to stop a migraine anymore. She said, “You don’t just eat the ginger root? That capsule is not as natural.” She told me I should cut it up and put it in hot water with some brown sugar like they did for her when she was a girl, when she had a cold. It’s very good for colds. I told her that I really didn’t need the sugar and I do use fresh ginger, as well, in my cooking, but it’s not very convenient, as a twice daily thing. When I have a migraine starting I need to get it quickly; no time for all that prep work. She made a face and said it really tasted bad anyway, and grinned.

Then I told her that since we reduced the Verapamil, I hadn’t needed to get more Synvisc shots in my knees; that, perhaps, it was causing more inflammation for longer than we were realizing, and aggravating my arthritis. I said the ginger should help with that. I told her that I had also started turmeric, which is an even more powerful anti-inflammatory. she was not at all familiar with turmeric. It is related to ginger. It is another root spice. It gives mustard its yellow color and it is a main ingredient in most curries. Since I had already brought up my knees, I told Dr. Wang (rhymes with bong) about how I had started to take turmeric to ease the pain and inflammation in my spine. I also informed her of the study that had been done that showed that just 150mg of turmeric per day was more effective than 20mg of atorvastatin, Lipitor, in reducing bad cholesterol. She took notes and she thanked me. We moved on to the squeeze the fingers and tickle my feet part of the interview. We made sure my ‘script’s were all up to date. Then it was, “See you in four months.”

At 2:30pm, I saw Dr. Niccole Oswald, my primary care physician, concerning the excruciating, constant pain in my back that I have been experiencing since June. I told her about the ginger and the studies. She was very pleased to hear about that. She said she had a patient with heart disease that could not take Imitrex, so she did not have an effective way to treat her migraines. We discussed how to treat my back pain. The infection from October 2010 had eaten into my spine and damaged my vertebrae from T5 to T12. We don’t dare use steroid injections, since that could compromise my immune system and I am allergic to six classes of antibiotics. The choices were either a topical anesthetic cream or a topical patch. I then mentioned that I had been using turmeric to help manage the pain, since it is a good anti-inflammatory. I had started taking two 600mg capsules daily. She asked if it really helped. I told her that it took the edge off, but I was still hurting plenty. Then I broached the subject of stopping Lipitor. Atorvastatin has been known to increase the risk of type 2 diabetes (especially in women). A couple of its common side effects are headache and back pain. So it seems like it would be a good thing to eliminate this drug from my system. She was very agreeable to that and seemed to understand the science behind it. She said it takes four weeks for Lipitor to get out of your system. So she ordered blood tests for Oct. 22 to see how we are doing. I guess it is “trust but verify.” She also told me that turmeric is especially useful for treating arthritic psoriasis. We decided on the adhesive anesthetic patches. CVS just got them in this evening, so I will start using one tomorrow. Maybe I will be in less pain and less grumpy.

It was so refreshing to have doctors not only open to the idea of alternatives to pharmaceuticals, but pleased at the possibility and willing and happy to share it with others. I think maybe I should send them a bill for the seminar, though.

A Saint for Our Time

By the mid 14th century the Byzantine Empire had accumulated quite a few enemies both external and internal. They had forgotten to let their theology inform their economy and government as in earlier days and it had cost them the empire. They had lost most of their territory to the Ottoman empire and most of their people to Islam. Then there was the civil war with Serbia, where they lost most of the remaining territory to Stefan IV. 100 years later Constantinople finally fell. When it did, the nobles and church leaders could not even raise an army among their own people, because they had neglected them for so long. Why should they come to the aid of the elites? It wasn’t their war.

It was during this time that there was a significant devotion to Prophet Nahum in the rural areas of Europe, in areas that felt oppressed and neglected by the powers that were vying for dominance. St. Nahum wrote a beautiful prophetic song about Nineveh, the capital of Assyria. It came to pass very specifically then. We are told that the Old Testament is given to us for our admonition and instruction. There are lessons and warnings for us so we do not repeat the mistakes of those nations. The Byzantine Empire fell and it is not coming back, just as it was prophesied to Nineveh: “trouble will not come a second time.”

There was a cult of the Prophet Nahum as the Byzantine Empire was waning and that is interesting. The parallel is not as compelling as it is to the USA today, however. The Byzantines were basically enjoying their privileged position and trying to hold on to the vestiges of a bygone era without understanding and applying the elements of the faith that had given them that greatness. The US, through its corporations, its banking, and its massive military presence and 10 to 15 active military engagements at any given time, controls, colonizes and oppresses an overwhelming majority of the world’s population and consumes the lion’s share of the world’s natural resources. The US likes to think of itself as bringing freedom, but it does not. In Yugoslavia, we brought death and elimination of most of the Christian population. In Iraq, the Catholics and Orthodox and Jews who had been living and worshipping there safely and undisturbed for generations have been killed or driven out and their temples burned. In Afghanistan, the heroin producers are the only ones who have benefited by the US occupation. In Syria, we are supplying arms to massacre Christians. Our plants in India and Africa pollute and kill the ground. We export death in our GMO seeds and Round-Up. We are the only nation that openly discusses and approves of torture methods. Internally, we incarcerate more of our own people than any nation in history, with a strong racial bias against blacks and Latinos. Income disparity is well beyond the tipping point at which other empires (including the Byzantine) have fallen. Upward mobility has vanished. Elections have become a sham due to gerrymandering and dirty tricks and corporate ownership of lawmakers. So-called Christians have been more concerned with being blue or red than being Christian, so have lost effective witness.

We have become a pariah state.

Judgment is coming.

Nahum 3

Woe to the city of blood, full of lies,
full of plunder, never without victims!
²The crack of whips, the clatter of wheels,
galloping horses and jolting chariots!
³Charging cavalry, flashing swords and glittering spears!
Many casualties, piles of dead,
bodies without number,
people stumbling over the corpses—
⁴all because of the wanton lust of a prostitute,
alluring, the mistress of sorceries,
who enslaved nations by her prostitution
and peoples by her witchcraft.
⁵“I am against you,” declares the Lord Almighty.
“I will lift your skirts over your face.
I will show the nations your nakedness and the kingdoms your shame.
⁶I will pelt you with filth, I will treat you with contempt
and make you a spectacle.
⁷All who see you will flee from you and say,
‘Nineveh is in ruins—who will mourn for her?’
Where can I find anyone to comfort you?”
⁸Are you better than Thebes,
situated on the Nile, with water around her?
The river was her defense, the waters her wall.
⁹Cush and Egypt were her boundless strength;
Put and Libya were among her allies.
¹⁰Yet she was taken captive and went into exile.
Her infants were dashed to pieces at every street corner.
Lots were cast for her nobles, and all her great men were put in chains.
¹¹You too will become drunk; you will go into hiding and seek refuge from the enemy.
¹²All your fortresses are like fig trees with their first ripe fruit; when they are shaken,
the figs fall into the mouth of the eater.
¹³Look at your troops—
they are all weaklings.
The gates of your land are wide open to your enemies;
fire has consumed the bars of your gates.
¹⁴Draw water for the siege,
strengthen your defenses!
Work the clay,
tread the mortar,
repair the brickwork!
¹⁵There the fire will consume you;
the sword will cut you down—
they will devour you like a swarm of locusts.
Multiply like grasshoppers,
multiply like locusts!
¹⁶You have increased the number of your merchants
till they are more numerous than the stars in the sky,
but like locusts they strip the land
and then fly away.
¹⁷Your guards are like locusts,
your officials like swarms of locusts
that settle in the walls on a cold day—
but when the sun appears they fly away,
and no one knows where.
¹⁸King of Assyria, your shepherdsslumber;
your nobles lie down to rest.
Your people are scattered on the mountains
with no one to gather them.

¹⁹Nothing can heal you;
your wound is fatal.
All who hear the news about you
clap their hands at your fall,
for who has not felt
your endless cruelty?

A Woman Saint on a Deacon’s Door?

We customarily think of icons of Archangels or Archdeacons for the deacon’s doors on our iconostases, but during the Middle Ages in the Balkans, there were several churches who opted for St. Marina for one of their deacon’s doors. They chose her because of her power over demonic forces and those possessed, so she could be there always to protect the altar from intruders.

St. Marina was born in a pagan household in Pisidian Antioch. When she heard of Jesus Christ when she was twelve, she immediately converted and determined to live her life totally committed to Christ as a virgin. Her father disowned her for this. The governor, Lopharius Ebrotus, wanted to take her for his wife. When she refused, he tried to persuade her to sacrifice to idols. She refused to honor any but the living God. So the governor tortured her by having her body scraped and combed with iron combs and rubbed with salt, vinegar and lime, then threw her bleeding into prison. She was miraculously healed and encouraged by a resplendent vision of the Cross with a dove on it. At night, a demon came to tempt her and she exposed him and bound him with the sign of the Cross and cast him away. The next day the governor was amazed that she appeared totally unharmed. Instead of being convinced, he had her thrown into a cauldron of boiling lead. She asked that it be made like her baptismal waters and blessed it in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and was unharmed. Her tormentors were so enraged that they finally beheaded her. At the moment of her beheading the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to receive her, as witnessed by many who were there. She suffered in the year 270, during the reign of Diocletian. One of her hands is preserved in Vatopedi Monastery on Athos. There is a St. Marina Monastery in Albania, where more of her relics continue to work wonders and healings.

This Icon is tempera on wood and woodcut. It is an altar door from 17th century Bulgaria. Margaret is an English translation of the name Marina.

O glorious Marina betrothed to God the Word, thou didst abandon all things earthly and contest victoriously as a virgin. For thou didst trample on the invisible foe when he appeared, O holy trophy-bearer, and thou dost now bestow gifts of healing on the world.

Re-use McCormick Pepper Grinders

We go through a lot of spices. I like to use fresh ground, black pepper. It is better for you and more tasty. We don’t have the budget or the space for those ornamental, high end pepper grinders, but to constantly be buying throwaways from McCormick isn’t that economical or ecological either. Here is a solution:

Easy way to refill a McCormick pepper grinder.
Warm the black plastic grinder top a little with a hair dryer.
This makes the plastic pliable enough that you can pull
the black plastic grinder top off the glass bottle with your
hands. To reattach push back on until it snaps over the
glass bottle lip.

This works for the salt grinders, as well, obviously.

Chilé con Elote

This is the recipe for another dish we served at our rent party. It is a meatless chilé with corn. It is a hearty vegan dish.

4 cups cooked kidney beans
1 cup finely chopped onions
3 or 4 cloves garlic, minced
1 green pepper, chopped
2 cups diced, canned tomatoes
1 jar Simply spaghetti sauce
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon cumin
1 cup or more of frozen corn
1-1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Sauté vegetables. Then add tomatoes & spices. Cook awhile. Add beans & sauce. Cook more.

Poftă bună!

Tenderhearted Shepherd’s Pie

Several people asked for Bethann’s recipe for meatless shepherd’s pie. It is from the Foods for Paradise cookbook. It did have milk in it, in the mashed potatoes, since it was cheese week, but it could be made without.

Ingredients:
1 onion, chopped
2 Tablespoons oil
1 pound, cooked, chopped broccoli
1 package chopped spinach, thawed
1 sweet. red pepper, diced
pepper to taste
garlic to taste
4 carrots, shredded
3 cups mashed potatoes (We used instant made with milk and butter.)
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon basil
1 teaspoon salt
15 oz. can of petite diced tomatoes.
Optional:
Shredded Swiss cheese or grated Parmesan or soy cheese for on top.

Sauté onion and garlic in oil. Add vegetables, spices and tomato, and stir. Simmer over low heat until vegetables are tender crisp. Put vegetables into 9″ x 13″ greased baking dish. Spread potatoes over the top. Spread shredded Swiss cheese on top, to taste. Shake paprika over the top. Bake at 350° about 30 minutes, until heated through.
You may use soy cheese as a vegan alternative.

Bon Appetit!

Thank You, Everybody!

As I am writing this, on Saturday evening, it is just Bethann and me in the house. Last week at this time, we had a house full. Our rent party was a roaring success! I was amazed at the variety of people who showed up and then there all those who sent well wishes and checks or cash with others, by mail, electronically, or the next day at church. One friend brought six other friends with him. So we made some new friends!

The evening started with Tadesse Abay offering a blessing for the food in his native Ethiopian. I don’t understand Ethiopian, but I know he did more than pray for the food. He blessed our home and family and our continued ministry. It was a real honor to receive this blessing from such an honorable and godly man.

Kevin Paige was an amazing minstrel. He started out playing the ukulele in the kitchen. He moved to the front parlor and played more on the ukulele. I walked through at one point and he was playing “The Girl From Ipanema” and a half dozen little kids were dancing like it was a rock song, looking like the kids in the Charlie Brown Christmas special. It was a happening! He switched to the guitar and then to the Dobro, at some point. Deacon Herman played a few songs by Dylan and a couple of his own. It was great. It wasn’t like a concert. It was party music. Conversations kept going. Kids were dancing and playing.

We met these friends over the span of nearly 40 years, but there is one thing they all have in common. They have all been involved in the work of The King’s Jubilee at some point, from the first person who responded to the first ever newsletter in February 1989 to the friend who drove me home from Phila. in the TKJ-mobile two nights earlier.

We received over $4,000 in gifts plus a sizable gift from the church. We used $500 as a first fruits offering to help a neighbor restore his electric service; and $300 to The King’s Jubilee to buy a computer for a recently homeless, faithful volunteer who needs a laptop for community college.

I started negotiations with the mortgage company for a loan modification to hopefully lower the interest rate, so we can manage better. I mailed in the payment to cure the default. When I spoke to the loan modification counselor and told him about how much we received in gifts, he was amazed. I told him that we have a lot of friends who care. We are quite frankly amazed! We need to send him a copy of the blog entry advertising the rent party and other evidence so the bank knows the story.

There are some takeaways for me from this. The first is that when one gets in trouble, one should not just go down quietly. I have heard of people watching their neighbors being evicted and they didn’t have a clue beforehand they were in trouble. If they had, they may have done something to help. People got through the Great Depression by working together. Of course, back then, people didn’t have cars, air conditioning, in-home entertainment and large suburban lots to keep them separated from one another. Make an effort to get to know your neighbors. Then there are people who work hard and still fall on hard times, but don’t have any friends who can help. This brings up the problem posed by the question, “Who is my neighbor?” We all know that Jesus answered with that it is the one who is in need, according to the parable of the Good Samaritan. That is where ministries like The King’s Jubilee come in. It is also why we need to protect our safety net as a society. If we can come together to help a friend or neighbor, why can’t we learn from the parable of the Good Samaritan and as a society help every neighbor?

We are trying to write thank you notes or send thank you emails to all who gave. We are not sure if we are remembering all who gave, since there were bills slipped in handshakes and stuffed in pockets. Just know that we are very grateful and feel very blessed to be surrounded by such a community of caring and generous souls. May God bless you all!