Reject

“Starry, starry night
Paint your palette blue and gray
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul

“Shadows on the hills
Sketch the trees and the daffodils
Catch the breeze and the winter chills
In colors on the snowy linen land

“Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now”
~ from “Vincent,” by Don McLean

If this post is to have a theme song, it is Vincent by Don McLean. Take from it what you like and leave behind what is confusing or insufferable.

You may find it difficult to understand, but I have been rejected for much of my life. I suppose it was anticipated, in a way, by hemolytic disease of the newborn, which is a complicated doctorly way of saying Rh factor incompatibility between my mom and me. My dad would sometimes remark on the events surrounding my birth that I was the yellowest baby he had ever seen. Jaundice caused by being Rh positive while my mom was Rh negative is the reason, I’m told.

At various times I’ve mentioned my earliest memory in this life. I would estimate my age at two years and six months, though I don’t really know exactly. I’m pretty sure we were living in the house on Melody Lane in Colonie, New York at the time. Somehow I had seen high wire artists. Perhaps we had gone to a circus which was not at the time one of the many forms of human enjoyment now attacked by the hateful evil globalists and their anti-humanity scions.

What is deeply embedded in my consciousness is that I was in the garage. The garden hose was rolled up on the floor near one wall, and a section of it was stretched out. I was walking on that part of it, balancing myself as toddlers will do. And I was severely punished. I remember the thought of ever walking on the high wire fleeing from my mind. I remember my dad being extremely angry. Angry in a way that I had not seen before, but would see many many times in the years to come.

Now, much later in the fullness of maturity, I feel that there are extenuating circumstances. I am sure that I was missing from the interior of the house and that a missing child of 2.5 years age is a cause for much concern. So finding me unexpectedly in the garage and seeing me standing on the garden hose my dad reacted.

I also believe there was quite a lot of tension in the house at the time. I know that the following Spring my dad would let his name be included in several faculty searches which would lead to a tenure track position being offered to him at the University of Kansas. I’m pretty sure by this point in the family story dad had been turned down for tenure at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where he was an assistant professor of physics. One reject begets another, perhaps.

It is also important, I believe, to blame Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill who definitely knew what they were doing when they conspired to bring the USA into WW2 by hiding the truth about the Japanese plans to invade Malaya, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, attack Pearl Harbour, and slaughter many thousands of Americans. As a result of those events, my dad was drafted in early 1942. And as a result of being told by his uncle that while he lived under his uncle’s roof he would take a typing class in high school though he very much didn’t want to do so, my dad checked the box that said he knew how to type. So he went into the Army signal corps, learned to encrypt and decrypt messages because he was very good with maths, and spent some time in Occupied France in 1944 and Occupied Germany in 1945. By then he was a first sergeant so it was his job to pick men from his platoon who were to go down the ladders into sewers to locate the telegraph and telephone cables and re-route them toward the Allied lines.

My dad had post traumatic stress disorder, shell shock, or battle fatigue as it has been variously called, because he had to send men to die in dark fetid tunnels. Because FDR was a liar and hated humanity and wanted to enslave as many people as possible for the sake of the demons FDR worshipped. Sometimes my dad would drink. Sometimes my dad would beat his wife. Sometimes my mom would defend us when my dad would beat his children. And sometimes she wasn’t there when he did. And that’s how I come to remember being beaten at a very young age. And again and again as I grew older. When I was fourteen years old dad hit me so hard across the face that I bled for 90 minutes.

Operation Paperclip

Something happened to me when I was seven. Nobody understood it at the time. But I was bitten by a deer tick. The tick gave me Lyme disease. But the filth scum disgusting evil perverts who had brought Nazi medical experimentation “scientists” from Germany during Operation Paperclip and sequestered them on Plum Island near Connecticut and Long Island, New York hadn’t told anyone about the swimming deer. See, they wanted to pretend that Plum Island was isolated from the biome of the rest of the country. To this day they will claim that they “didn’t know” but I am pretty sure that the fact that deer can swim for miles and miles was known. Mistakes, as my friend Margaret Anna Alice says, were not made.

As a result of the tick bite, I was very ill for six months and missed much of my second grade year in elementary school. As a result of the secrecy and the lies, nobody knew about the disease I had, though all the symptoms are an exact match. So I was misdiagnosed as having “an atypical case of rheumatic fever.” I was treated with penicillin and aspirin and developed an allergic reaction, ringing in my ears, to the latter.

My brothers, meanwhile, were dealing with their own aspects of the family traumas. My two eldest brothers had been sent to Albany Academy in New York while we lived there. I don’t know whether they went out for any sports, but I do know that nobody at that academy ever made direct reference to the bruises and open wounds my brothers had. When we moved to Lawrence, Kansas, that changed. My eldest brother did have gym class and was required to be in an all boys locker room where his phys ed teacher remarked on his wounds and bruises from the belt buckle of my dad’s belt. this led to a meeting with the school office personnel. It led to a family confrontation in which my brothers and my mom alerted my dad to the fact that if he ever hit any of us with a belt again he would be taken to jail.

Many years later, I mentioned some of the things my brothers and I went through growing up at my mom’s memorial service. I did so in the context that our neighbours at the time never once so much as said a word to any of us, or anyone else that I’m aware of, about the screams and yells they heard. I can still vividly recall my dad chasing my mom around downstairs while my brothers and I were upstairs pretending to sleep or study. At one point he was out in the kitchen, rattling the drawer where we kept kitchen knives, and shouted, “I’ve got a knife.”

Much running and shouting ensued. A few minutes later my mom was in the kitchen and rattled the same drawer and shouted, “I’ve got a knife, too.” This was when I was six years old, about a year before the tick bite. My eldest brother came to my bedroom, seeing from the hallway that I was sitting up in bed. He was in tears.

He explained to me that I wasn’t to worry because he was fourteen and dad had explained that if anything happened to mom and dad, it would be his responsibility to take care of us. Only, he said through his tears, he didn’t know what to do.

To this day I don’t know how I was so calm but I believe God knows. I said that I did know what to do. I explained that we knew where mom kept the card box with all the note cards with the names, phone numbers, and addresses of family and friends. We would find the one for uncle John, my mom’s brother. He would come from St. Louis and take us back to live at his home. We wouldn’t like it, I pointed out.

(At the time my uncle was flying helicopters in the army in Vietnam. At a subsequent thanksgiving celebration at his home many years later he would relate how a Republic of Korea army officer was interrogating two North Vietnamese regular army prisoners in the back of his helicopter, asked uncle John to take the helo up to 10,000 feet, and then threw one of the prisoners out the door. The other was immediately willing to speak volumes about enemy troop positions. No written record of these events was filed with the parties to the Geneva convention, of course.)

Having a plan for how to deal with finding mom or dad dead and the other under arrest seemed to calm my brother. In the event, our parents didn’t do any great damage to one another that evening.

In subsequent years I made peace with my dad and forgave him. He apologised to me roughly 2007 and we had a good few years together after that before he died of a series of strokes. I also forgave my mom for beating my hands bloody one day when I was ten.

Sickly

I was not unhealthy, but the six months of illness took its toll. I was extremely weak in the last few months of the school year. All my brothers are over six feet tall, I am not. Sometimes I joke and say that I am “only five foot twelve.” Presumably an inch or so of growth was denied me at this formative time.

As a result of being a weaker kid, I was not picked for kickball until there was simply no other choice. Or one other choice. I remember another small child of our class, Johnny Bickford, who drowned in his own blood after the staples came loose from a tonsillectomy that I gather from rumours at the time was an unnecessary surgery. Johnny would sometimes be picked after me. He was, well, not the keenest blade in the school. They held him back in the first grade because he wasn’t able to read.

No doubt I reflect on the classmates who thought it well to bully me. On the way to school Neal Mc. would throw firecrackers at my bike. On the way home across the school yard one evening after some lengthy tedious after school event, Glenn J. grabbed my shoulders and kneed me in the back. Then he ran off, which is well because I was on the ground and quite vulnerable if he had wanted to kick me a bunch of times. Mike G. thought it wise to propose a fist fight in a nearby park. He left with a bloody lip. Some college students happened by and broke up the fight, proclaiming me the victor for having drawn first blood and telling us what complete idiots we were for fighting with bare fists. I have, of course, forgiven them their trespasses against me.

It took me a while longer to get over the bullies who tormented me in seventh grade. I remember being one of the rejects, sitting at the table of outcasts at lunch hour every day, week after week, month after month. I remember standing in the hallway one day dealing with some of the more unpleasant taunts, shoves, and nastiness, and realising that I didn’t even want to be there. There was nothing in any of my classes that I needed to study. Every single book assigned was read the first week of class, all the study problems were worked in advance, and I asked my mom or dad about anything that was a source of difficulty in my understanding. (Yeah, it turns out my dad really loved us and was a really great teacher. Which made the violence much harder to deal with in some ways, because it led to severe cognitive dissonance.)

So I broke down crying. I didn’t cry loudly. I didn’t wail. Why would I? Nobody in my age cohort cared. Nobody in the next two classes up in junior high were the least interested in a weak scrawny nerdy kid in glasses. So I stood there and let the tears roll down and the bell rang for class and I stood there. I stood in a pool of tears that ran down the inclined hallway between two of the buildings. A guidance counsellor found me. Took me to the office. Called the parents. Got sent home. Got to read the books in my room, which was, after all, much more enjoyable than listening to foolish lectures from teachers or being tormented by the other kids. I do forgive them.

Later there was a rich kid, Paul F. who was also known as Thomas F. who slammed me into the lockers in 9th grade and got both of us dragged to the office. I refused to blame him or explain any of the circumstances, so we were both sent home for fighting. He did start it, but I was beyond caring at that point. Authority was a lot less sympathetic to me than a random bully, and I wasn’t going to give the vice principal the time of day. I do forgive them, young and old.

Calling Me Crazy

It probably won’t surprise you at this point that I have been called crazy, including very recently here on Substack by Postcards From Barsoom author John Carter. He is neither the first nor the last, nor the most egregious. I do think he rejects God the Father and Jesus Christ by saluting the Greek demon Zeus in his writing, which is a matter that seemed appropriate to mention, given the spiritual nature of the war going on right now. But I don’t mind, and I do forgive him. Whether God forgives him is not up to me. Jesus Christ sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty and comes to judge the living and the dead. Which, based on my experiences of John here and on Twitter, I suspect won’t be of interest to John until some months from now.

You see, calling me crazy isn’t actually an argument. It is a cop out. It is a lazy thing to say, because it isn’t a diagnosis. It isn’t in any way dealing with any of the ideas I’ve mentioned. It is saying, “I don’t have to think very hard or respond diligently because nobody can expect me to attend to a crazy person.” It is a stupid response.

Common, of course. Very common. As Oscar Wilde once wrote, “Flowers in the country as common as people are in the city.” Of course, being called “common” was regarded as a huge insult to the self-important, self-aggrandising, baby torturing, child raping, demon worshipping filth who called themselves ladies and gentlemen, peers of the realm, and in other ways put on airs in the England of Wilde’s day. You can, if you want, look up Oscar’s fate at the hands of “high society,” but I shall not burden this essay with all those events.

I will say that one of the places I was called crazy was in a men’s room in an office building in Houston. I didn’t like the way it smelled so I began flushing the toilets. Another visitor came in and saw me doing this thing and said I had to be crazy taking the risk of getting AIDS by touching the flush handle of toilets. I just shrugged my shoulders and went back to work. At the time I was working with some people in the Internet service industry, providing connectivity to other nearby office buildings. My work involved accounting and finance. My client in that particular building had AIDS, at the time, and I knew that I was not in any danger of getting it from a flush handle, or from shaking his hand, or working in the same office complex. He would later be murdered by Anthony Fauci’s concoction of chemical poisons.

Bigotry

When I was in high school I was known as an award winning speaker. I won awards in oratory, debate, and extemporaneous speech. My work was sufficiently regarded that I was a paid lecturer at the University of Kansas debate camp during the Summer between my junior and senior years of high school. It was while working there that I lost most of my two front teeth. Someone tried to steal my bicycle and only succeeded in dislodging the front wheel. It separated from the bike while I was jumping it into the street on my way home, off a ten inch sidewalk curb. That was quite painful.

The lady who thought she hit me stopped her little red sports car and took me to the hospital. I bled on a towel she had handy. She drove off before filing any police report. But I’m confident the wheel separation had nothing to do with the impact on the rear fender of the bike. And, anyway, I got a ride to critical care, so that was nice.

I have been called a great many names. These sometimes had to do with my skin’s delightful willingness to tan every Summer. Sometimes the names had to do with my evident Jewish genetic heritage from my dad’s mom. Sometimes the names had to do with my willingness to associate in business with people who had AIDS or who were even more darkly complected than me, or who were Sons of Confederate Veterans, or who were prison-tattooed Nazis.

Of the things that I find especially remarkable is that it is lately regarded as terribly evil and wrong that I am cis-gendered and heterosexual while also being white and male. This situation was brought to my attention by some student activists in 2013 while I was living in Lawrence again, caring for my elderly mom. Apparently they were early proponents of the neo-Marxist anti-white people bigotry, there to fight against the conservative group on campus being allowed ever to have any use of any of the student union or student commons because whiteness and 1619 and whatever.

Why Say Anything?

You may be wondering why I am saying anything about any of these matters. Shouldn’t they all be water under the bridge, as it were, given that I have forgiven all the individual persons who ever in the least respect offended me or were unkind or violent? I have several reasons, so I’d like to go over those now.

First, I have been asked why I was involved in anonymous remailers some decades back. Why did I think anonymity was important? How dare I make it difficult for people in national security to keep track of who was saying what?

I think you should know that it was in defence of survivors of childhood violence and sexual assault. I chose to do what I did because people need to be able to talk about what happened in a way and without fear of being exposed to the same people who were violent toward them. And yes, rape is primarily a crime of violence, especially to the survivor of it, and not primarily a crime having to do with sex. If you don’t know that, you might want to spend some time reflecting on your life. Perhaps it has been favoured with a scarcity of violence, in which case I strongly recommend saying a prayer of thanksgiving. It wasn’t that way for me.

It wasn’t that way growing up as a child. It wasn’t that way in high school. It wasn’t that way in college. It wasn’t that way living in New York City. It wasn’t that way commuting to work in New Jersey, being beaten by the cops in Weehawken. It wasn’t that way moving my commute to the George Washington bridge to avoid the cops at the Lincoln tunnel who did threaten to arrest me if I rode my moped through it ever again. It wasn’t that way in Houston having eleven of my bones broken by the police there for the crime of “HOUSTON SUPERBOWL DRAGNET” as appeared on the ticket I was given after three days in jail sleeping on concrete benches.

Over the years, I have been requested to attend events commemorating the experiences of survivors of violence. I was at an event in Richmond, Indiana to that effect in 2019. Quite a number of Quakers were there, including the men and women at Earlham school of religion who had organised the event. We were asked to light a candle for anyone we knew who had been raped. The request was specifically to light one for each such person we knew so they would be represented there. I did try. I was able to light three of the candles before I broke down in tears there, thinking of how they were going to run out of candles or the building would burn down. A lot of people have come to me with their stories of survival, and a lot of people communicated on those anonymous remailers and list services about what they went through. And I’m not okay about it.

The woman who lived next door to me in the John Jay dormitory in 1984 was named Becky Schlisselburg. One evening while I was studying with my radio tuned to some punk rock station I heard Becky screaming. She began pounding on the wall. I ran into the hall, saw that her door was open, and she was standing at her window looking down onto Amsterdam avenue. Two men were raping a woman on the hood of a car. The woman was screaming and struggling. Becky was holding her phone, trying to convince the police in New York city to come do a single thing about it. I took the receiver from her and said, “Two black men are raping a white student.”

Becky looked at me with horror at first. The rapists were indeed black, but so was the victim, who didn’t seem to have anything to do with our campus. But then she looked away and nodded. She knew that what I had said, and the fact that my voice was male, was going to bring the police. It was only three minutes later that they arrived, sirens blaring. We had already hung up. That’s the world you live in, friends.

The Warning

You won’t like what I have to say now. I don’t care. I really sincerely want you to know that I do not give a flying flip. I have already been rejected by people far more important to me than you. It is completely understandable if you refuse to accept what I have to tell you. But I still have to tell you.

I strongly encourage you to read all of Ezekiel 33, as I was told to read it several times in 2019 and 2020. The meat of the lesson is in verse 6:

But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at the watchman's hand.

I was reminded recently of other verses to which I was led. The one that had the most impact on me was when the Bible I was reading on the 20th day of the 10th month of 2019 was changed in my hands to Malachi chapter 4 whereas I had been reading Luke chapter 7 before I closed my eyes at the beginning of meeting for worship. I was subsequently led to Isaiah 30 and to Revelation 18.

All of these verses reflect God sending fire from the sky to burn up wickedness. In Isaiah 30 it is quite clear exactly what happens, so let’s start there:

And there shall be upon every high mountain, and upon every high hill, rivers and streams of waters in the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall.  Moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of his people, and healeth the stroke of their wound. Behold, the name of the Lord cometh from far, burning with his anger, and the burden thereof is heavy: his lips are full of indignation, and his tongue as a devouring fire: And his breath, as an overflowing stream, shall reach to the midst of the neck, to sift the nations with the sieve of vanity: and there shall be a bridle in the jaws of the people, causing them to err. ~ Isaiah 30, verses 25-28

I have no power over these events. God’s will be done. Praise God. Amen. You might not have any power over these events either, though you may choose to do somewhat more than you otherwise would.

For a very long time, Mother Mary has been restraining the hand of God from striking. A great many insults and usurpations and direct, flagrant attacks on her have reduced her willingness to restrain the blow. So it will come. None of us know when, not even the Son.

Many many people have been doing terribly evil things. Terribly evil, horrible, awful, unrighteous, ungodly, wrong things. To children. To the elderly in nursing homes. To men and women in hospital beds. To babies in the womb. To young and old.

Not only have criminals been doing these terrible things, but also people who have taken an oath to “first do no harm.” Mistakes were not made. They deliberately poisoned billions of people. Tens of millions have been injured and millions have already died and many more are going to die. Tens of millions of babies have been brutally murdered by abortion doctors. Tens of millions of people have been tortured and denied access to their family members, denied access to remedial treatments for an illness they would otherwise have recovered from.

This is the world you live in, and some of you are doing something about it. And some of you are not. And I am not here about what you are not doing, but about what you are able to do and what you may yet choose to do. If you are going to do something, be about it. “I must be about my Father’s work,” said Jesus when he was 12 years old in the Temple in Jerusalem. You must be about your Father’s work.

For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall. And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the Lord of hosts. Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. ~ Malachi chapter 4

Do I say these things to frighten you? Yes, sure. I do. If it would do any good, if it would motivate you, yes. Be afraid. Don’t be afraid of me. I want to help the people here.

I have not only forgiven every individual mentioned or even referenced in this essay, but I have also prayed the following prayer: Eternal Father do not direct any anger whatever at any of the people who have ever harmed me or tormented me or taunted me in any way. I have forgiven them and am at peace with them one and all. For my sake do them no harm. Thy will be done. Amen.

I encourage you to forgive those who have trespassed against you. I encourage you to offer prayers to God. I encourage you to forsake vengeance on your own account, but to let God do as God wills.

In Deuteronomy 32:35, God reminds us that vengeance is His. St. Paul refers to that passage in his epistle to the Romans, chapter 12, verse 19, “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” Give place unto whose wrath? God’s wrath.

To whom should you turn for guidance and for peace? I strongly recommend you visit a church and pray. If you don’t like the churches in your area, don’t worry, I have been told not to attend meeting for worship in the churches in mine, either. But you can show up at a church and pray in the chapel if it is open. If it isn’t, add one more affront to God on the list of the things church leaders have been doing. If the chapel isn’t available when you come to pray, pray on the steps or in the yard. But do pray, and by praying where you can be seen, encourage others to pray. It is that time.

How does Jesus offer to help?

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” ~ Jesus, quoted in the Gospel of St. John, chapter 16, verse 33

“To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious, ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. Wherefore also it is contained in the scripture, Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded.” 1 Peter 2: 4-8

Jesus has given to us a great commission. I believe that it is our opportunity to go out into the universe once again, as the tenth great civilisation since humans like us first appeared on this planet 480,000 years ago. I believe there are humans like us living on planets and in space colonies around stars as far away as 20,000 lightyears from here. And they don’t yet know about the good news of the conception, birth, life, suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We have the opportunity to tell them. And those who believe may be baptised.

Get yourself baptised, friend, if you are a believe and have not been baptised. Be baptised in water and in the Holy Spirit. For God so loves mankind He sent His only begotten son to die for our sins and in that perfect sacrifice to be delivered from death. The resurrection means that death has been defeated. Jesus raised Lazarus. Peter raised Tabitha. Jesus has purchased for you the rewards of eternal salvation.

God loves you and wants you to be happy for all eternity.

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That’s all I’ve got for today. Come back next time when I have something new. Or old.