The Hole in My Head

 

The Hole in My Head

By Craig Willms

 

Note: I started writing this in 2021 when I was 59. I had already made my decision to retire. I started to suspect I was at the beginning stages of some sort of dementia, senility. When I've mentioned my concerns in casual conversation, I've been assured it's just age and to a person they all have stories about how bad their memory is. Fine. Fair enough. This is my warning to my loved ones and friends - it's happening.

Getting old is hell. 

Regardless if the previous statement is true (it is) I’m afraid there’s no getting around it. The fact that modern life expectancy has risen into the 70’s and 80’s for many people is wonderful, but our final years are often fraught with pain and suffering.  It’s the physical self takes the brunt of it, without a doubt, but we’ve all seen people whose bodies betray them, yet are razor sharp right up to the end. What of the rest of us, the ones whose mind goes first?

 I’ve reached sixty years of age and with any luck I should have another 10 or 15 years to live. Enjoying life and experiencing new things without the weight of small children and the daily grind of a job should be looked on with joy. We toil our whole lives for this time, do we not? Yet I peer into the future with trepidation.

 A year or two ago I started to notice that my normal outgoing type-A personality was gone. I noticed it with work first. I had started at new company after 21 years with the previous company. After being on the job a year and half I just wasn’t getting it. By now I should be catching on better… The boss started pushing me to be more engaged, ask questions. I was thinking – I don’t even know which questions need asking. I was able to do rote work, often very technical work without a problem. I could process requests and troubleshoot, but when I was thrust into a stressful situation with dozens of people looking to me for answers I froze. I had done this hundreds of times, knowing just where to look and what to do, but not this time. It really shook me. That my boss was also sitting on the call was a double sting.

 A few months before this particular event I noticed that my head was constantly in a fog. My brain was cloudy. I convinced myself it was due to all the medicine I was taking for the heart, blood pressure and other maladies. I sought out a meeting with a clinical pharmacist and we re-arranged the time of day I took certain pills. It seemed to help a little. Still the problem persisted, it's hard to be sharp and reactionary when your head is foggy.

 Shortly after I started having dizzy spells and then started suffering episodes of double-vision. They were short episodes, but I could not work through them. Thoughts of stroke crept in. I know strokes, and I knew I wasn’t having a stroke. After more than a month of this it was time to see a doctor. I would need and MRI of my head and a good neurologist. What followed was a literal circus show and one mad hombre (me). I ended up in the hospital unnecessarily – but I got the MRI and saw a neurologist.

 I learned that the same thing that ails my heart is affecting my brain. It’s probably not going to get better. It’s likely that the diseases of modernity have claimed me and my days of even knowing myself might be numbered.

I am losing myself – I can feel it. 

Most of us lose a step or become forgetful as we get older. Right. This is more than that. Not being able to think or express the things we know does not happen at sixty, but it is happening with me. I can eventually get there, but sometimes there is no there there. This is not right.

I've read that people with metabolic diseases succumb to some kind of mental illness or mental incapacity many, many times more often than those without metabolic maladies. Those with cardiovascular disease or stroke even more so. I've got the trifecta going. In a moment of clarity, I was able to do an intensive cognitive test to generate a baseline, for all the good it will do me. 

Again, it's coming, or rather it's going. My poor wife doesn't need this. I'll just say this, put me in the "home" when you need to, don't worry about what I or anyone else thinks. 

 

 

The Plan to Destroy the West: Covid and beyond

by Craig Willms

Naomi Wolf in her 2023 book Facing the Beast sought to expose the failures of the public health response during the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent tyranny, censorship, and totalitarianism let loose on the world. Wolf is (was) a liberal democrat who has now fallen out of favor with the progressive leftists. She's had an awakening, a spiritual transformation that most would have thought impossible before 2020. Her previous persona was lodged firmly in leftist progressivism, feminism and Democratic politics, including working for Democratic presidents directly. Wolf alongside a broadening number of hard-left Democrats are now sounding the alarm. Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, Bari Weiss and Brett Weinstein come to mind, but also folks like Douglass Murray, Eva Vlaardingerbroek and James Lindsey among many others not of the left. I think we should listen.

During the covid pandemic a number of very prominent and reliably liberal public figures and journalists began raising concerns with government, corporate and the media's actions against anyone who balked at the forcing of vaccines as a condition of employment. The shutdown of small business, churches and public education was a total and complete overreaction to the danger posed by a serious illness that was lethal to only the very old and the very sick. The rest of us recovered. Clearly part of a larger agenda to destroy the U.S. and the West, Covid-19 was a planned operation. 

Timing is everything, and I contend covid was let loose when it was to force Donald Trump out of office. Approximately a year before the presidential election covid was timed to exact maximum damage to Trump's chances of reelection. Impeachment and all the accusations they hurled at Trump did not turn the public against him. The economy was strong, and America's challengers were on the ropes. It's quite possible they had covid sitting on the shelf in the event Trump appeared to have reelection in the bag. The pandemic gave them an avenue to implement election fraud schemes in the name of public safety. This is no conspiracy theory, because it happened. Joe Biden did not get 81 million legitimate votes - more than any President in history - not possible.

Why? Because Trump was able to show, however crudely, that the West's decline is not inevitable. The far-reaching global agenda that was launched to hobble the West after the fall of the Soviet Union sought to bring about a nefarious plan to deindustrialize Europe, cripple the U.S. and above all begin the de-population of the world. Trump and his unlikely success were so unexpected that this plan to destroy the West, and in particular the U.S. was in jeopardy. What is still a mystery to me was the near total capitulation of nearly all advanced liberal societies. Does the West really say, "how high?" when the U.S. says jump? Stranger yet was the total absence of any condemnation of China for releasing SARS-CoV-2 on the world. It was, in a word, eerie. One thing that is clear, Covid-19 was not spontaneous or random.

Don't just take my word for it listen to what Dr. David E. Martin has to say, though you won't find him on YouTube - he's been taken down, try Rumble. He tells us that a coronavirus pandemic was planned for years. He explains that shortly after coronavirus was isolated in the mid 1960's it was identified as a vector for modifying into a deadly human virus. Enter Dr. Fauci and people like him pushing gain of function experiments to uncover strains deadly to human beings. Dr. Martin went on to explain that Pfizer's own patents on spike proteins for battling corona virus developed in 1990 does not speak of warp speed. Pfizer soon determined they didn't work anyway. So, it's been known for decades that spike proteins in vaccines for corona viruses did not work. Put on the shelf indeed. 

But the vaccines were the key. The damnable lies behind the push to vaccinate the young and even small children were patently evil. Children and young adults were not at risk whatsoever, this is not arguable. The damage done is incalculable and those people who pushed it on the young will have no tears shed for them as they reach old age with no grandchildren in their lives. The fact that the vaccines did nothing to stop the spread or prevent the disease seems lost on them. 

Even now, just a few short years after the Covid pandemic, the effects of the vaccines are becoming evident, and they are devastating. We don't know what horrors the long-term effects from these vaccines will bring. Already there has been an unexplained 13-20% drop in babies born worldwide. The incidences of myocarditis in adults, young adults, especially young men and in teens has suddenly cropped up worldwide. Young athletes, dropping dead on the field was almost non-existent before the vaccine. More concerning is people in and out of the medical profession are becoming alarmed about the future fertility of vaccinated women. There have been numerous reports of severe menstrual cycle disruptions following vaccination. All over the world vaccinated people are dropping dead in their prime. The term 'excess deaths' is now common, where it was never uttered before Covid. These are things we should know about, all of us. 

Again, this is not merely my conjecture. Consider the study conducted by Dr Nicolas Hulscher called 'A Systematic Review of Autopsy Findings after Covid-19 Vaccination' found that of 325 autopsies 73% of the deaths directly attributed or significantly caused by the Covid-19 vaccines. Published in The Lancet, it was unceremoniously pulled down within 24 hours. After a year of battling with naysayers the study now peer-reviewed is re-published and online again. This is explosive to say the least.

Consider also that numerous acclaimed doctors and scientists have nearly had their careers destroyed for bucking the authorities over covid from the beginning. All of them had the facts just as the aforementioned American Dr. David Martin did when he addressed the European Parliament. Why the European Parliament? He was not welcome in America. Dr. Robert Malone, the inventor of mrna vaccine and a vocal critic of the covid vaccine, Dr. John Campbell, Dr. Peter McCullough, Dr Aseem Malhotra, and co-signer of the Great Barrington Declaration, epidemiologist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya all spoke out during the pandemic decrying the official reaction (overreaction) to Covid-19. They were all shunned in their own countries. All have been vindicated by what has followed.

To this day there is still a mainstream media blackout of covid vaccine fallout, it will get you kicked off social media platforms if you post anything contradicting the approved narrative. Don't dare mention that China did not participate in Western vaccine distribution. Consider in this era of maximum Jew hatred that Israel is the most covid compliant country in the world. If it is an anti-fertility program, why not sterilize the Jews.

Covid was but a front in the war against the West, the battles go on unabated. Consider the open borders in America and Europe. It is a literal trojan horse. One has to wonder how the current opposition party in the U.S. the Republicans, can be so passive about the invasion of our southern border. In Europe it's understandable, there is no real opposition movement in Europe. Only time will tell if there's any real hope for America.

Europe has other problems too that are not that much different than America's, but with such weakness the necessary national pride is so easily subdued. Global Climate Change "concerns" lead the efforts to deindustrialize Germany and destroy Dutch farmers and the like. Climate Change is essentially a religion in Europe. Almost no one in Europe opposes its validity. Something has to replace Christ in their lives. There are rumbles of life in recent European elections, some Europeans populations have reached their breaking point. Are they are finally waking up? We can only hope. 

America has been largely deindustrialized already. They are now targeting the energy industry here as they did in Germany.  The U.S. has the patriots and the concerned citizens, but the power of government, big business, the progressive media means that only overwhelming numbers at ballot box will defeat this cabal. Sorry to say I'm not convinced there is enough.

Note: To those who contend that anyone with thoughts along these lines is a conspiracy nut, a fool and a waste of time, need to consider that they are the ones who are being deceived. The modern news industry is agenda driven and has been for decades. The infiltration by the intelligence community into newsrooms is well known. They have been instrumental in the misdirection of media investigations and planting false narratives. To ignore the evidence of this is self-deception. Conspiracies are real. The actual concrete details of such things are likely never to be known; they are conspiracies after all. The nature of conspiracy is secrecy. To believe that conspiracies do not exist is willful and extreme ignorance.

To conceive of and implement an operation of this scope and magnitude (Covid) seems to stretch credulity, but each passing day we are hearing more and more truth eke out. The picture emerging is that nothing is beyond imagination, and it is more frightening than ever. 

Civilization Day

 

by Craig Willms

Civilization day comes on Wednesdays in my neighborhood. Before you wonder if you missed a new holiday, you haven't. The guys in that loud clanging truck come by on Wednesdays and take my trash away. It's the way I know civilization has survived another week. It was late this week, and I panicked at first before I realized Monday had been a real national holiday, and therefore trash was delayed by a day. Whew.

If there's one thing that defines civilization it's garbage day, or trash day as we say up here in the upper midwest. When it all goes to shit, and we're expecting that sooner rather than later, the signs will be litter(ally) everywhere. The first thing we'll notice is that no one is coming by to pick up trash and it will be everywhere.

It won't be long after and the electricity will go and then so will running water and gas service.

Civilization over...

Any faith we might have had in our government to deal with a crisis rationally was destroyed by the official reaction to Covid and all of Joe Biden's presidency. In fact, both seem to have been designed to foster the coming collapse. I never thought I'd see the day when America was over, but it seems more likely than not. We certainly can't expect our military or National Guard to step in out of fear they might not be sensitive enough to everyone's pronouns. We can't be having that. Next thing you know we'd find the army may not have proper trans representation and that would be unfair. I wish I was just kidding, but my friends there are signs that the incompetence we see all around us is not by accident. We are being herded by it into a new feudal system. 

The elites and most of the upper crust like to think they will be spared, but they won't. Once all their parked money is deemed illegitimate by the coming CBDCs, the overlords will then control everything and everyone at every level. There will be no hiding money the old fashion way anymore. Once we lose faith in the financial system, a system built on pure faith, it all goes belly-up. I fear the baby boom retirees will watch their nest eggs shrivel up faster than a dead worm on a summer sidewalk. With the Federal deficit at 34 trillion and growing, the recent news of Donald Trump's bogus conviction along with other bad news, the American economy seems poised to crash. I just heard in this morning's business news that dozens and dozens of restaurants have announced the closing of some or all of their locations soon. One third of the restaurants are gone or are on the brink. Retail in general is near the tipping point... 

The canary is dying. With most new job growth being in government and health care it's not a sign of a healthy economy. Honestly, things do not look very good. The younger generations are losing faith and losing hope. They are becoming are neurotic and depressed. 

I'm a retiree, my wife is just a few years away. We thought we were in good shape since we saved and prepared, but I'm losing faith as well. Biden and his puppeteers have got to go! If he is reelected, it's over for America. I'm not being dramatic; the border crisis alone is like playing a game of Jenga with our country. In Europe they are even further along in their cultural suicide. It's alarming to see. There are signs that Europe may be waking up, but it might be too late. It's not too late for America, but that day is coming - in November 2024.      

Is it any wonder... We need a miracle

by Craig Willms

With all the trouble in the world we'd be wise to understand what is at the very heart of it. That's easy. The obvious answer as well as the true answer is - the eternal battle between good and evil. Great, fine, now define in sociological terms the good side and the evil side. Not so easy is it.

We exist, all of us, in a world of contrast and balance. Everything is in flux, moving from one place to another, from the ever-expanding universe right down to the sub-atomic level. Atoms, which are just states of energy, are in motion and are never in the right place or wrong place, they just are, if they stop, they cease to exist. The same goes for our lives and our place in the grand scheme of things. We can't stop in place or shun the natural energy and rhythms of our existence. This is just a long way of examining this current civilizational juncture where good and evil in eternal opposition are an intrinsic part of the continuum of existence, and our utter powerlessness to do anything about it. Good, evil, we can't eradicate either, just as we can't do away with the light or the dark. There could be no good without evil. We have to come to grips with this dichotomy. We see our friends and enemies as either good or evil, but they are both. So are we.

The left/right enigma we find in the world today is out of balance. We need to understand that the right-wing, believe it or not, has evil elements as much as the left-wing does. Conversely, both have a bright side. When one side dominates, both their good and evil elements dominate. Let that sink in... 

The side that dominates, in the end, will destroy both. Today in the West the left, the collectivist elements are beginning to dominate politically, socially and economically. With an insistence on starving the productive populace and the poorest of the poor the efficient and abundant energy they need to live, as well as effectively outlawing dissent in the name of saving the world from a human induced fiery death the hard-left rules by fear. As such we now behold the beginning of the end of the modern order itself. 

In sociological terms both the good and the evil under the total domination of one political view or the other, leads us to mentally erase this good/evil duality. We become blind to the concerns of the other side. While other populations outside the West resign themselves to misery and go numb, or drown in a bottle, in Western countries we tear each other apart. We turn to hate and aggression, in total opposition to the other side. That may be inevitable when it comes to ideological survival, but until we all come to the realization that we need to be 'in balance' we will see nothing but strife and destruction. It would be great if we didn't have to pick sides but pick sides we must.

I'll start. I say the forced collectivism sought by communists and socialists is evil. They, on the other hand, might claim evil is the greed, the inequality of individualists and capitalists. Who is right? I can't really answer, how could I? I am firmly in support of the rights of the individual and free markets. The leftists who seek full control of every aspect of human life are quite sure they are right; they have no qualms about forcing their "beliefs" on you and me at every turn. Capitalists and those who promote individualism are in theory supportive of voluntary participation. The collectivists are not, they demand of society the false equity of equal outcomes regardless of individual effort or ability (or so they say). Collectivism, as in, to each according to his needs is only correct when it comes to infants and babies, and those who cannot possibly fend for themselves. Everyone else has to work. One should be rewarded according to their effort and their talents. Am I right? Of course, I am.

Ah, but this is where it falls apart. The destroyers, the collectivists and communists, tend to get all the ammunition they need from the capitalists themselves! The capitalist system is broken, probably always has been. Can it be fixed? Good question. What we have is cronyism, crony capitalism, or what I'd call stacked-deck capitalism. This bastardization of what capitalism should be is giving the bullies and shamers in the collectivist camp everything they need to derail those things that are actually good and righteous. In this crony system the winners collect the lion's share of the rewards. The deck gets stacked in favor of those within their sphere and their families. Where they can, they expertly finagle government policy to quash the competition, or they buy the competition outright. These elites easily usurp every liberal platitude or conservative bedrock principle, valid or not, into the feel-good about yourself ideology and shape them to their own advantage. It's become a very tangled web of diversions, deceit and favoritism. Our elected officials play along, often out of the necessity to survive.

Remarkably this broken system has thrived around multiple centers of gravity for many decades. Not anymore. Slowly over these last few decades the power and wealth has concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Maybe this was always the inevitable outcome, I can't say, but it's where we are now. Countless wars, hot and cold have been waged between the so-called free world in the West and the dictators of the collectivist cults, just to keep the machinery of war well oiled. None of these wars have ended well for either side, save the defense industries.

So, which is the real evil? Is it the dictatorial collectivists and communists whose lust for control knows no bounds, or these oligarchical crony capitalists with all their depravity? Don't ask the defense contractors, the finance managers or the pharmaceutical industry you will get self-serving answers devoid of any humanity. Don't ask college students or their professors you'll get only slogans, fantasy and fluff. Don't even bother with the hard-core leftists, for whom humans are either hapless victims or diabolical oppressors. Don't inquire among the always sanctimonious marxists, who cannot see beyond the boiling rage that anyone might have more than they do. These power centers are blinded by their hollow greed or their disingenuous envy. No good solutions will come from any of them. They are quite evil. The rest of us are stuck in the middle. 

Is it any wonder the world seems to exist on a razor's edge. Do we live in an illusion of order and stability? We seem to teeter on the edge of turmoil raging just below the surface. When this order and stability inevitably break down, we will ask how this can this happen? How can it not? 

Looking back there was a point when the world might have ended the infatuation with communism/marxism. It was on the United States of America to foster the new age. Not that the true believers would have miraculously transformed and joined team Corporate America, but the faint hope that lingered for global collectivism could have been rubbed out for good. For a time, the West lifted billions out of abject poverty via the global systems built to defeat the Soviets during the Cold War. It wasn't going to last. Peace, love and understanding is the stuff of pop songs, not reality. Within a decade the American defense industry and their bought and paid for political stooges soon settled on a new enemy to justify greasing the cold war cash machine once again. That enemy was Islam... Islam could only fight back with terrorism. The result has been two decades of the worst of both of these absolute evils. America lost its chance to be a truly great global hegemon. The West lost its moral compass, if it ever had one.

For the love of money is the root of all evil... (Timothy 6:10 KJV version) seems appropriate here but I would rewrite it: "the love of money and power". Money is necessary, power is intoxicating, the combination of the two is lethal. Clearly this is not an original thought, but nonetheless true. Efforts have been made to separate the two, but never successfully. The reason reform never works is the multiple sets of perverse incentives to prop up the broken system. Doing what's right rarely wins converts or enthusiasts. Is there anything that can be done? Our current situation is so deeply entrenched and the vested interests, including our own, make it nearly impossible to see a way out. 

The pot is starting to boil. The left has the mechanisms of government and culture gripped firmly and the crony system is vacuuming up the money with which it feeds both sides of the fight. We'll never climb out of the water we're drowning in. The money elites and their billions have allied with the cultural marxists in some misguided notion that they'll somehow escape the destructive crash the collectivists have been orchestrating. Leftist collectivists have all kinds of plans to control us, all in various stages of completion. We need to face the facts. 

As for our biggest cultural ally in the world, Europe it's the same but worse. All of us watch our freedoms slip away, our economic power being stripped away, our ability to express opinions that don't "comply" with the leftist orthodoxy degrade. We are being threatened everywhere, in everything we do. How long can this go on? 

What to do now? Is there any hope? Marxist collectivism is like a debilitating rash that won't go away, it clearly is not an answer to anything. Can capitalism be saved? Maybe in some form. Obviously not in this current crony-ized form. Then what? Has the power and money been so concentrated that a wholesale collapse and rebuild is the only answer? I truly hope not. Something needs to change, also obvious, but can anyone articulate what that change should be? Or how we can initiate it without sowing chaos? If marxist nonsense is out and this stacked-deck capitalism is unsustainable what is an actual third way?

I clearly don't have any simple answers. I'm not sophisticated enough to solve the modern dilemma. Getting tainted money out of politics is one obvious play, but that's easier said than done. Just paying elected officials more and financing campaigns with public money isn't going to work, it's been tried in various places and to varying degrees. It just doesn't address the second part of the equation, the craven lust for power. Considering that the people with the money have the power there's not much chance anything will change short of a societal collapse, which the hard left with their socialist dreams seems to crave. Perhaps someone will come along that can see through to our warped situation with common sense solutions, or something approaching simple sanity. Someone who can stand against the entrenched money crowd while showing us in black and white the nefarious plans the socialists have plotted. I know it's asking for a miracle. Once in a while we deserve one. 

UPDATE: Since this was written the tide has turned. The right has pushed back. It's not clear where things will land. The right side of the spectrum has clearly picked up steam in America and other places around the world. The Covid-19 pandemic opened a lot of eyes. Still, even before Covid there was a sense that people, that everything had been pushed too far by the left. They are calling this a return to common sense. I doubt it will completely tip the state of the world, but anything is possible. The vile hatred for conservatism and the "right-wing" is greater than ever. This has happened before. In 1980 with the  election of Ronald Reagan things improved for millions, but it did not last. The hate was great then as well. It's not likely to last this time. Balance between the two extremes is needed but the world exists on a spinning teeter-totter. We lurch back and forth, up and down. The hope is that we do not come crashing all the way down. Will something fundamentally change with this swing to the right? Impossible to say. Obviously I welcome it.

CW

My Fathers Son

My Father's Son

by Craig Willms

I don't often think of my father. I don't necessarily feel bad about that. Maybe I should? I think about my mother all the time. I suppose that's the way it is for a lot of people whose parents are gone. Dad was not a happy soul. He wasn't so much angry as he was bitter. Yes, I think bitter is right descriptor. Mom had a much sunnier disposition that would attract you to her. Her encouragements were in the form of praise and a sense of joy for you, where my dad's were more like, "you can do better than that?", pointing out the shortcomings of an otherwise laudable effort. That was his way. I assume it was the way he was raised. It was deflating for a young boy; you'd rather not show him your art or have him come to the game.   

That was a long time ago. My dad is long gone. He is sadly, as suggested, mostly forgotten. The truth is, he is always present - he lives on in me. He makes up part of the circuitry of my being. He is clearly connected to the negative pole to take the analogy to fruition. 

I suspect that deep down my dad had a low opinion of himself, and he unconsciously took it out on everyone else. Because he was a chauvinist, he took it out on my mom and older sister the most. But no one escaped whatever particular kind of hell his life was. I expect his life was hard, probably beyond what my memory can conjure up when I recall being around him. Did he do the best he was capable of? I can't answer that. Putting myself in his shoes I can't imagine being the head of a small household with seven children and the chaos that produced. It might drive me to drink too.

We knew almost nothing about his young life. He never talked about it. The little time we spent with his side of the family we learned very little about his childhood. Be that as it may, I can surmise it was much like the existence we lived. I don't think he was shown an abundance of love and encouragement by his own dad. The question is, how deeply did his negativity and self-loathing get buried in my own sub-conscious? Is it the reason I tend toward the negative, despite my life-long battle to resist it? 

I made a conscious decision early on that I would not be like him. I didn't want to be a negative presence, a bitter, angry man. To a person all my siblings made this decision. On the outside it seems we have succeeded. I can't speak for my brothers and sisters, but unfortunately my kneejerk, unconsidered reactionary self always seems to descend into Gordon-like behavior as a default condition. 

I quit drinking 30 years ago to the surprise of everyone including my wife. I started to see history repeating itself and I had to put a stop to it. Looking back, it was one of the most important decisions of my life. Who can tell, but I might be dead by now had I not stopped. I was never accused of or even suspected of being an alcoholic, but I knew that was my destiny had I not pulled the plug. I never attended AA or any recovery program, I just quit cold turkey. As AA alums know the drinking may stop but the self-destructive behavior does not necessarily end. For me it manifested in a negative attitude toward anything or anyone that was better than me. It was easier for me to drag someone down than to consider my own short comings.

I hated this about myself. When I'm aware of my tendency to descend into negativity, I fight it, I fight it with everything I've got. When someone shows me their fabulous house or magnificent truck, something that I never could hope to afford, I am genuinely happy for them, not jealous. They either worked really hard for what they had, or somehow had tremendous luck, I am not any lesser because of it. When something good happens to another person, or they accomplish something truly meaningful I am happy for them, and my praise is real. However, when I am not on top of it, my mind goes into Gordon-mode.

For my dad no one was all that great. I don't ever recall him truly admiring anyone. He would talk over the back fence with the neighbor for an hour and then walk back into the house and declare that guy a jerk. We'd be confused, weren't they just laughing and joking, having a good time? The only time he was at all pleasant and not negative toward the world was when he was drinking. Fortunately for us he was a happy drunk. He could be a mean, bitter man when he was sober. So, when he finally quit drinking, you can imagine his demeanor 24/7.

Dad had his good points, obviously. He bore his responsibility to his family. He went to work every day; I never remember him taking a day off or calling in sick.  He instilled in us a good work ethic. He brought his paycheck home, not to the bar. He paid his bills and put food on the table. Although we avoided him every chance we could, he was there, he was not an absent father. Ironically, uncharacteristically, he did something that absolutely changed my life. One day out of the blue he brought home a really, really nice guitar and gave it to me. There had been this old nylon-string guitar in the house that was handed down from brother to brother through the years. When it landed on me, I learned to play it. He must have heard me playing through the closed bedroom door and it spurred him to do this completely unexpected act - for me. He gave me a real guitar! I became a musician and continue to play to this day, probably due to that one act. For that I'm eternally grateful to him.

I'm now 60+ years old, he's long gone, but I still struggle with his legacy. My early programming is still in resident memory, but it's unfair for me to lay the blame for my attitude on him. By now I am my own man, and my negativity is my own. I've already seen my own negative behavior manifest in my son, and it's disturbing. He's an adult and my time with him is now limited, but I try to be a positive influence when we're together. The damage is done as it relates to his formative years. My daughter is a different story. We never had a relationship built on such negatives. Outside of the usual behavioral corrections we had a pretty good rapport. Although there's no telling how my demeanor back then infused her with the instant anger that I showed toward inanimate objects and things. I see it in my son directly. I am confident I've shown them both love and encouragement as well. Now it's just me and my wife, and I know sometimes I need to act better toward her. I am trying, to be sure. I am a work in progress.

My Guardian Angels

by Craig Willms

Three times in my life I believe I've received the help of a guardian angel at a critical time. One of these was a life-or-death situation. I'd like to tell you about them. If after you read this, you can recall a similar situation that happened to you please share it with someone. It's important people know about these angels. We live at a time in history when we see and hear such evil things, perhaps we've even had evil perpetrated against us. We need to know there are angels, angels that appear in human form that roam the Earth and are sent to protect us.

Breakdown

It was a cold winter day and I was driving home on Interstate 35 when my car died. I was pulling a trailer full of firewood. I had spent all day with a chain saw cutting up a couple of cords of wood from some fallen trees on a friend's land. Needless to say, I was cold, worn out and bone tired. 

Fortunately, I could see a freeway exit in the distance and the glow of a gas station, I say fortunately because this was a time before cell phones. So, I got bundled up and started walking down the freeway in the dark toward the exit. In short order an old white van pulled over in front of me. As I walked up to the passenger side of the van I looked in the side windows. I could see what looked like a bunch of survivalist gear and there laying on a cot on an unrolled sleeping bag was a rifle in plain sight. Instantly my self-preservation radar was flashing red. 

The driver flung the passenger door open as I approached. He was a middle-aged white man with long hair and a beard, wearing a dirty one-piece snowsuit. He asked pleasantly "Do you need some help?"

Thinking fast I replied " No, that's all right I can see there's a gas station up the road where I can call someone. But thank you!" This guy looked scary and considering the gun, dangerous.

He scoffed "Seriously, it's cold out there, man, what's the problem with the car?" 

"It just died on me. No big deal" I said nonchalantly.

"Tell 'ya what, I got my chains we can hook it up and I can at least get you off the freeway."

"No, that's OK, you don't have to do that," I insisted.

"C'mon, it's no big deal, let me help you," he insisted.

Before I could say anything else he waved me in "C'mon, get in" he said. I reluctantly climbed in and closed the door and began planning my moves if this guy tried to pull something on me. I sat tight up against the door with my hand on the handle. Since we were now quite far from my car it wasn't viable to go in reverse down the shoulder of the freeway in the dark. That meant we'd have to go up to the exit and go north up the other side of the freeway for several miles to the next exit where we could turn around to get back to my car. It was probably 15 to 20 minutes, but it seemed like hours. Of course, my mind was racing. Would I just disappear, and my car found in the morning by the highway patrol? It was grueling. He just made some small talk, no mention of what he had been doing and I sure wasn't going to ask about the stuff in the back.

Finally, we reached my car, and he pulled over in front of my car and jumped out to retrieve his chains from the back. I thought - this is it - he's going to whack me with the chains and throw me in the back of the van. But no, he went about hooking my car up to his van. 

We drove the mile or so to the exit, and as we pulled into the gas station I started to relax. He was offering to drive me all the way home. I had to convince him I could get my buddy to drive up with his truck and pull me home.  I thanked him profusely and bid him farewell. He had none of it. He told me he'd wait until I got a hold of someone. There he was when I got back to my car after I had called my friend Rob. Again, I bid him farewell, and again he insisted on staying until my friend got there.  

So, after better than an hour of small talk Rob showed up. We hooked up my car and trailer to his Dodge Durango. Once again, I bid him adieu and many thanks, but he was adamant that he would follow us to make sure we got there. Good God, I couldn't get away from this guy, he still scared me after all that - now he was going to know where I lived!

I told Rob the whole story on the hour ride home and with Rob being a big imposing man he told me not to worry. When we finally got there, I walked over to his van to assure him we were good and thanked him again. He rolled down the window and just said "Hey man, Jesus loves you" and he drove away.

I stood there, gob smacked, thinking 'what just happened?'.

Out of Gas

One blisteringly hot day driving home from work, and I ran out of gas in rush hour traffic on Interstate 94 in St. Paul's Midway. Now considering I had a company vehicle with a company gas card I should've never ever run out of gas, to call me stupid would not be unkind, but... Anyway, I had driven hundreds of miles that day and I was hot and tired, I just wanted to get home - I was not paying attention, obviously. I was able to get the vehicle to the shoulder as it was, as mentioned, rush hour and nobody was going anywhere fast. Again, this was a time before cell phones, I could not just call someone for help. 

So, I began walking down the freeway shoulder toward the nearest overpass. Now keep in mind that Interstate freeways are always fenced in, and in this particular overpass was also fenced with a seven-foot chain-link. The freeway was more or less a gully with steep inclines up to the fence. Walking the ramp was out of the question in light of all the traffic. I was forced to climb the fence knowing that a slip or fall would send me rolling onto the freeway. This was the first hurdle I would face this day.

I made it over the fence and began walking back toward a main city street where I was bound to find a gas station. Eventually after what seemed like miles of walking, I found a typical gas station/convenience store. They would've been glad to sell me a gas can had they had any - they were sold out. They directed me to a gas station that was a more traditional type where they fixed cars. All in all, I ended up walking several miles in 90 plus degree heat with typical mid-summer humidity. When I finally reached the next station, they were unwilling to lend me a gas can at all. Eventually I was able to talk them into selling me a gas can for $18, something that cost maybe $6. Apparently so many people never brought back the gas cans they "borrowed" they were not in a friendly, helpful mood. 

Now that I had a gallon of gas I began walking back to my vehicle via the frontage road until I reached the spot. There I was on one side of the fence and my vehicle was on the other. How was I going to get over the fence with a gallon of gas. I could not simply climb the fence, which only five feet high, and drop the gas can over it to the ground as it would roll down the hill into traffic. I suppose I could have strung it through my belt and climbed that way, but I wasn't wearing a belt. Besides what were the chances that I would stumble when I reached the ground, which was pitched very steeply downhill, and burst into flames as I rolled onto the freeway. My only choice was to keep walking to the overpass ramp and take my chances.

By now I was completely miserable, sweating like a pig and getting sick from the fumes. Here I was getting ready to walk on a narrow shoulder of a freeway ramp in packed rush hour traffic where drivers are not expecting to encounter pedestrians. 

Just then an old junker of a car pulled up next to me. The old black woman behind the wheel yelled out at me "would you like a ride?" To say I was shocked was an understatement. To this day I don't what would have compelled an old woman to want to help a complete stranger, a sweaty twenty-something white guy holding a gas can. I got in gladly. She told she lived nearby and said I was lucky because she had always made a point not to drive during the rush hour, but that day she got in her car and found herself in explicably driving down the frontage road where she saw me. I must have looked pathetic. 

She ended up driving a few miles out of her way because of course we had to backtrack to get in the traffic jam so we could come up to my vehicle from behind. When we got to my vehicle, I thanked her profusely and offered her money, but she wouldn't have any of it, she was glad to help. Charolotte, I believe she said her name was Charolotte, just said "God bless you" as I closed the door. It was then the thought of guardian angel first crossed my mind.   

 

Death Bed

Many years later I'm now in my fifties, I found myself in an ICU room of a major hospital suffering heart failure. It was New Years Eve and the hospital was operating with a skeleton staff. The two or three previous days I had undergone at least three procedures hoping to insert stents in my heart to open severe blockages. They'd all failed. They said I was going to need open heart surgery, but there was a problem... 

They had put me on a blood thinner early on in an attempt to get blood flowing to my heart. It didn't help. The problem with that was I was now going to have to wait five days for the effects of the blood thinner to clear - or I could bleed out during surgery. I made it one day. I was rushed to the ICU where they pumped me full of the maximum amount of the nitroglycerin a human body could tolerate. Nitroglycerin dilates blood vessels and can save people from heart failure. For me the pain/pressure in my chest was increasing by the minute. The nitro was doing nothing.

I laid there alone in the bed, my chest aching and I contemplated my death. I hadn't even reached 60 years old, and I was dying. I kept thinking this would be the day that I die. So, bye bye Miss American Pie... This song repeating over and over in my head. Dying was one thing, I guess I could handle that, but I didn't like the suffering, and dying alone seemed so cruel.

Enter Katie, my overnight ICU nurse. Katie was a stunningly beautiful woman; you could say angelic. This is not hyperbole, she was gorgeous. But that wasn't what made her my angel. I had been in ICU for at least three shifts and while all the nurses were competent Katie was different, special. She knew I knew I was dying. She stayed with me and took care of me, encouraged me. She was confident that I wouldn't die, her confidence and calmness made me hang on. She never left my side. She wasn't condescending, she wasn't telling me what she thought I wanted to hear, she was true and straight. She asked me about God in a way no other person has ever done. I'll never forget that night or her. 

At about 11pm the attending cardiologist was able to get the team that was on call that night to come to the hospital to attempt the cath procedure that had failed three times before. There was nothing left to try, open heart surgery at that point was out of the question. This team was made up from staff from all the area hospitals that agreed to come in on the holiday for just such a case.

Needless to say they succeeded! I lived! I never saw nurse Katie again. I did write the hospital administration a letter commending her, but it was never acknowledged in any way. For all I know that's totally normal, I hope they showed Katie the letter, but I'll never know. 

I choke up to this day when I think about that night and my guardian angel. 

The Mental Fabric

 

The Mental Fabric

by Craig Willms

There is no there there. 

What does that even mean? We hear this, or some form of it all the time. It simply means there is nothing to it - whatever 'it' is. An empty suit so to speak. We like to think that we can put everything in its box, sorting out what is and what is not, what is real and what is fantasy. The key to the previous sentence is the word think. We think, yes, but what is that? Thinking is mental, it's immaterial, there's nothing to it. Now we've come full circle. 

Clearly, we exist in material form. It's also obvious we exist in thought, possessing an immaterial mental presence that is tied to our bodies. Fortunately, our lizard brain autonomically keeps our life-sustaining physical processes going, no thinking needed. Our bodies have inputs and outputs all of which can be measured, that is all except our mental output. Our thoughts are invisible, silent, odorless, tasteless and tactless. So, what are they? Spent energy? Where do our thoughts go if that's the case? It's a good question.

We all live a material life. We also live an inner life. As unlikely as it would seem we can be materially poor, our lives tough and miserable, while at the same time our inner lives are rich and fulfilling. It is possible, it does happen. Certainly, the opposite is true.

This dichotomy between our minds and bodies has been the source of speculation and disagreement since the beginning of time. The greatest minds to have ever lived have wrestled with it and yet we still have no definitive answers. Once materialism became the dominant tenet of existence the interest in the mind/body relationship has waxed and waned but has never been declared solved and dismissed. Recent years has seen a resurgence of interest in this so-called ultimate question. The advent of AI technology has ramped up the interest to new levels. Will one day we declare machines alive, conscious and capable of self reflection? Who can tell... 

It's fun to speculate, and as long as you do not commit the ultimate sin of bringing God into the discussion, it can be illuminating. 

_____________________________

"Are the thoughts we have any less real than the star dust we are made of? I don't think so."

_____________________________

We humans don't usually consider the universe as a whole when we contemplate our personal existence. The physical universe is so large, potentially endless, that we can't really wrap our minds around it. Yet we are part of the universe and to whatever degree we consider our place in it we need to understand that without us to ponder these questions the universe may not exist at all. That's a difficult concept to comprehend at any level. Interestingly enough we don't consider the endless potential of our mentation in the same way. Are the thoughts we have any less real than the star dust we are made of? I don't think so.

We accept the fabric of spacetime and our presence in it, but what about the mental fabric of the universe? Are we not present in our own minds? Since each of us is connected to all of existence at a physical level simply by being, why wouldn't we consider that we are all connected at a mental level? I contend we are. 

______________________

"The impersonal will is like a silent partner you don't even recognize." 

______________________

What if I tell you there is a part of your mind that is humanity's and not solely yours alone. Call it the impersonal will. Consider it an aspect of your mental being that does not care what you think, what you want, or care one wit about you or anyone else. It is that aspect of you that does things that are not necessarily in your best interest, the reason you occasionally say things like "I don't know why I did that, it's just not like me". It's the part of us that makes connections with others in an instant without our even thinking about it. The impersonal will is like a silent partner you don't even recognize. It's the part of us that joins the madness of crowds. Sports fans and rioters will understand this. It's the reason we can fall prey to the rhetoric of a wannabe dictator, the reason we can fall prey to seduction of all kinds. 

The universe, it has been said treats all of creation with pitiless indifference. It's true, it is a cruel existence that is essentially endless suffering and pain sprinkled with fleeting moments of joy. If we were simply instinctual biological creatures, we would not consider our own suffering let alone the suffering of another, we'd exist and then we'd die. But we do acknowledge suffering in ourselves and others. We rise above the impersonal will; we do the necessary to alleviate pain and suffering where we can. Therein is the difference we make by the power of our will, the personal will we impose on our beings. 

Where does the personal will come from? If it isn't material, if it isn't physical, does it really exist? The empathy we feel for ourselves, and others isn't something that can be quantified or measured scientifically, does that mean it isn't real? Or is it actually what makes us truly human? I pick the latter.

The impersonal will is something we don't control. We can only exert influence through thought and contemplation. We have to do this; we would be crushed by it if we let it run us. It is a force of nature; it is nature. It can be as merciless as a violent, raging firestorm. People who don't try to mitigate the impersonal will, being too meek or indifferent to the wake it creates, can be dangerous, even deadly. Others harness the impersonal will for their own benefit by bringing it to the surface and triggering it in others. When we say "so and so pushes my buttons" it's a recognition of this phenomena without real understanding. We've all been there. 

Childhood is all about learning to live with the impersonal will. Spend enough time with an infant through early childhood until the age of reason, and you'll actually see this battle of the wills develop. This skill isn't something we have innately, we learn it. 

We all know exceptional people and we know people that seem to fail at everything. They both face struggles, but what do they really, deep down struggle with? We say about the failure "he's his own worst enemy". We say about the successful guy "he's a force of nature, strong willed!" Just picture the image of little beings perched on each of your shoulders whispering in your ears... One says, "just do it, you know you want to" while the other says "it's dangerous and someone could get hurt". One of these imps is portrayed as the devil, uncaring of any consequence, and the other an angel, with everyone's best interest at heart. This concept illustrates the battle of the wills in simple terms, it is for all intents and purposes the epic battle between good and evil.

__________________

"This dance, this battle we must all face, defines us."

__________________

This dual nature we all possess sits at the basis of all our human stories. This dance, this battle we must all face, defines us. We don't know it intuitively; we rarely recognize its significance, yet it influences every decision we make. How do we know which of these natures is right, which one should we listen to? Humanity has been struggling with this since the beginning of time. It would seem we need some guidance, a teacher perhaps. 

Is it any wonder we conjured God? Of course not! But what is God really? Where is God? What if God is that part of our will that rejects the cold indifference of spacetime and brings compassion and empathy to the suffering. The man who says he doesn't believe in God doesn't realize that "God" is in him whenever he acts like a decent person or helps out when asked. God is right there, in him. We don't have to get hung up on religion to understand this. God is there when a new mother welcomes her baby, ready to sacrifice everything for it. God is there at the accident scene in the actions of the paramedic and then again at the hospital in the emergency room where doctors and nurses save lives. God is there in the woman who drops off groceries at the food shelf. God is there in the teenager who comforts his friend who has just lost her mother. God is at the lab in the scientist who is exploring a new treatment for disease. God is the hedge against the cold, cruel impersonal world. 

All these actions and millions more happen every day in every corner of the world. We may call it common decency, we may consider it simply doing what's right, but it is caring, compassion and empathy put into action. We are choosing to act Godly through the power of our will. We do this without conditions, without expectations of recompense. This is where God is. It doesn't have to be any harder than that.