Tag Archives: Angels

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’26 A To Z Challenge – A

The Advent Of
Archon

The basis of my Archon alias is lost in the mists of history – literally.  My Grade 11 Greek history text had a story about the king of Sparta dying in battle.  His only son was just 12 years old, and the law insisted that he had to be 18 to assume rule.  Seven of the king’s closest friends and advisors formed a group of mentors called The Archons, who protected and trained him until he became of age.

That seemed to be the type of person I wanted to be, so I dragged the term with me through my life, applying it here and there, instead of my all-too-common and easily-confused real name.  When I registered with LinkedIn, it was as The Sage.

Later, I found that the term and concept also applied to other, and older, situations, especially among the fervently religious.  The name comes from the Greek, Arch – first, most powerful, most important.  My Bible with a concordance, says that there are 13 references to Archons, but they all speak of clan elders, city rulers, or chief Rabbis.  I cannot find the word Archon in the Bible.

Opinions are like assholes – everybody’s got one.  Some of the more-zealous Bible-thumpers think/believe that the Archons were the Nephilim – the giants who lived on the Earth before man was created.  Other equally-gullible convinced, feel that they are the seven arch-angels.  Another – just-as-sure and just-as-wrong – group insists that they are the seven major demons.  I found this bunch when I made negative comments on Christian blog-posts, and had them dismissed because I was obviously an agent of Satan.

There is only one Archon©™, accept no substitutes.  My super-hero name is much better than my secret identity.  Under it, I have had a paroled convict check in by phone – at 2 AM.  We finally listed the phone under the wife’s initials.  It helps sort out the scammers who want to talk to MR. J. T. Smith.

A teacher at the local Community College where I once attended, and worked for three months as a substitute teacher, has the same name.  I’ve been sued because a contractor from 50 miles away, cut down a tree to build a house further up my street.  I’ve been threatened – by phone – because somebody’s transmission fell apart.  The bank bounced three rent checks, because they couldn’t keep two accounts straight.  I got someone else’s dental anesthetic – and then I got my own, and my face fell off for the rest of the day.  Recently, I received mail for a guy who lives four miles away, in a different voting district.  I’m trying to find how the sender got my address.

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Fibbing Friday #296

Pensitivity101’s questions last week were originally posted by Frank aka PCGuyIV in 2019 when he and she alternated as hosts.
His post is no longer available, but the questions are great so she recycled them. Thanks Frank.

1. Why was January chosen to be the first month of the year?

January was chosen because after the blinding hangover fades, it has to go uphill from here.

2. Why does the Chinese New Year not start until February?

The Shen Yun tour schedule isn’t complete until then.

3. What’s the point of eating black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day?

A lot of people imbibe a little ‘hair of the dog’ to take the edge off.  Eating something that looks like the dog threw up, reminds you why it’s necessary.

4. Why do we make New Year’s resolutions?

Because we are so gullible that we can fool ourselves into believing that we’ll actually change our bad habits.  Believing this is one of our bad habits.  Change is inevitable – just not from the break room vending machine.

5. What will Santa Claus be doing now that Christmas is over?

3 to 5!  😮  How do you think he got that ‘naughty’ list??  “He sees you when you’re sleeping.”

6. According to tradition, in the Twelve Days of Christmas, the 1st day is Christmas, itself. So what is the 12th day known as?

Rehab relapse

7. Why are so many of the gifts listed in the song, The 12 Days of Christmas, birds?

Because the redneck relatives keep arriving late, as they get bailed out of jail, and not one of them thinks to bring so much as some Cole slaw, or a butter bean casserole.

8. What earthly event marks when an angel gets its wings?

Distracted driving with a cell phone

9. What happens on the Winter Solstice?

The Election Monitor General sees his shadow, and we get four more years of Trump.

10. How did the tradition of the Yule log originate?

From a Charmin Ultra-Strong tissue TV advert

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It’s All Greek To Me Fibbing Friday

Pensitivity101’s theme last week was It’s all Greek to Me.
Have some fun with dreaming up who these ‘familiar people’ were or what they could be remembered for (or whatever your mind comes up with).

1.  Perseus

He was the god of men’s tote bags.  Don’t ask – don’t tell – but he swished when he swaggered.

2.  Ares

He was a blurry little godlet, who was the twin brother of Hi-Res.  It was never clear what he was the god of – perhaps Optometrists.

3.  Achilles

He is the owner of a small chain of physiotherapy and rehabilitation clinics, specializing in lower leg injuries.

4.  Poseidon

This is Elon Musk’s younger brother, who is making a name for himself with an impressive line of battery-driven boats.

5.  Medusa

She used to be the goddess of marijuana, with the problem hair, but all her followers got stoned.  Now she’s working as a guardian angel for all those wearing MAGA hats.

6.  Athena

This lady loved the arts and craft revolution so much, that she took up a few and then got so hooked, she dove down the rabbit hole of creating.  Spinning, weaving and other crafts filled her days.  She also had a thing for watching the “WAR channel” on Olympus TV.
Before she was adopted by the Greeks and got busy with them, she was a minor deity to the Arabs.  They gave us the concept of ZERO, so she was the goddess of absolutely nothing.

7. Hades

After doing the training of Cerberus, he decided to get into the dog training business.  I mean once you have trained a 3-headed dog to behave and follow commands, regular canines are a breeze!

8. Apollo

He’s an entertainment mogul who owns several theaters and music halls named after him.  I saw Jimmy Carr at one in London.

9.  Cronos

Is a watchmaker who started out with Timex, but, given time, has worked his way up to Piaget.

10. Hermes

He is the god of very expensive, pretentious scarves.

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Ten Nein Ate Fibbing Friday

Here are your ten questions from Pensitivity101 last week:

1.  Who invented Elf on the Shelf?

A father who hoisted his midget son up to the kitchen counter, but got interested in the game, and forgot to lift him back down.

2.  Have you been naughty or nice?

Yes to both – numerous times.  Santa’s list is clouded with cross-references.  I receive enough coal to run a small generator…. to charge my new Tesla.

3.  Who or what is The Beast from the East?

Lenin is gone.  Hitler is gone.  Heir-apparent is Putin – balanced by Trump in the west, to keep Earth from tipping over.

4.  Who was Santa’s Little Helper?

Meth!  Beans!  How else could the corpulent UFO pilot and his crew of illegal aliens work 24/7 for months??  😮

5.  What is a Yule log?

A list of all the stations, when, and in what order, the Christmas train will visit.

6.  What is marzipan?

It’s a small, independent principality, on the border between Namibia and Paraguay.

7.  What is Egg Nog?

A healthy excuse to drink copious amounts of rum.

8.  Why is there a fairy on the top of the Christmas Tree (be polite!)

See #7 – Egg Nog/Rum – above

9.  What are baubles?

It’s how we tell boys from girls – boys have ‘em…. girls don’t.

10. What is a tree skirt?

What a Scottish lumberjack wears

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’22 A To Z Challenge – C

 

 

I am green, but not with envy, when I can Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.

Christian Apologists sometimes ask, even if the claims were false, what is the problem with believing “If it’s not hurting anyone?”  A YouTuber recently held up a newspaper headline – “Woman scammed of $160,000 by mother/daughter fortune tellers who promised to rid her of demons.”  There is no ‘not hurting anyone!’

Anyone who believes one thing without good reason, has a mental predisposition to believe other false claims.  Her Christianity had convinced her that angels and demons existed, and she paid the price.  That brings me, highly incensed, to the word

Crucible

a container of metal or refractory material employed for heating substances to high temperatures.
a severe, searching test or trial.

Arthur Miller wrote a book titled “The Crucible.”  It was a rebuke against McCarthyism in the early 1950s, disguised as a novel about the Salem Witch Trials.  There was only one death attributed to McCarthyism, a wrongfully-accused Senator who committed suicide.  Scores of careers and lives were ruined.  In Salem, 24 people died.  19 innocent women were hanged.  4 more died from appalling jail conditions, and one man was tortured to death – all because of lies and fake news, gullibly believed.

Lightening up just a bit, I’m going to recycle a story about a friend who also reused  and recycled by melting down beverage cans, and broken lawn furniture and storm doors in small crucibles which he purchased online, to produce little aluminum hexagons that he used to pave a portion of his back yard, around the barbecue pit.

That whine which you may have heard when you arrived, was not a quad-copter drone, providing Neighborhood Watch security.  That was my mind desperately trying to grind out refills for my random facts posts.  We’ll see how well I do.  Y’all come back now, ya hear.   😎

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Book Review #23

more research into Christianity vs. Secularism. The author has more than 20 books about the New Testament. I just can’t believe that he points out all the mistakes and contradictions…. yet says that he still believes.

Christian Apologists insist that Atheists “rebel against God,” or “deny God,” or, “have something against God,” usually attached to a baseless claim that they do it so that they can ‘sin’.  This old Atheist – especially as I get older and older – certainly doesn’t.  My sinning days are long past.  Substitute the word unicorn, for God.  I don’t rebel against unicorns.  I don’t deny unicorns.  I don’t have something against unicorns.  I would love it if they actually existed.  I just don’t see any evidence for either.

Like most other Atheists that I know, as the specter of my imminent demise looms closer and closer, I would welcome the existence of a God, a Savior, Salvation, Heaven and Eternal Life.  In the futile hope of some proof, I sometimes seek the knowledge and opinions of experts.

The Book: Jesus Interrupted

The Author: Bart Ehrman

The review:  I start with an author whose name made me suspect that he was Jewish.  I thought that I might get a glimpse of the New Testament from the outside.  I was mistaken and disappointed.  Still, he attended three prestigious theological colleges, has degrees, and letters behind his name.  He should know something.  He has published over 20 books about different aspects of the New Testament.

He now teaches at a theological college.  He says that, almost without exception, each year’s new batch of students think they do – but really don’t – have any idea of what the Bible actually says.  He laid out a trail of over a hundred examples of Biblical errors, contradictions, misinterpretations, insertions, deletions, forgeries, books credited to Paul or the Apostles but actually written by someone else.

A couple of the forgeries made it into the Canon.  A few of the books which seem valid to researchers were left out.  The four Apostolic Gospels, and Paul’s writings, don’t agree with each other.  He admits that they were intentionally skewed (deceptive propaganda) to mislead different groups, to get them to join the movement.  Of the graduates who go on to become priests, preachers or ministers, he has never heard of one who teaches, or even mentions, any of this to their congregations.

As I was reading this book, I encountered a female Atheist blogger who was reading one of his other books.  She thought that he was, at least, an Agnostic.  In my book, he says that he is a non-denominational Christian.  He shows how modern Christian dogma and Orthodoxy came into being, just because the group centered in Rome – weren’t true and correct – just better organized and more powerful. 

After all of this, he says that he ignores all these inconvenient details, and believes in Christ as a Savior, because the underlying story is so uplifting.  He claims that he will not officially join a particular religion or Christian Denomination until he finds one which doesn’t harass or marginalize females or LGBTQ.  😯  Well, good luck with that.

Each year, when it comes time to teach why the Jews do not accept Jesus as the Messiah, he shows them how He does not fill the requirements in Hebrew religious law.  To them, Jesus was just an itinerant, apocalyptic rabbi, who claimed to speak for God.  He uses the analogy of how foolish it would be for Christians to accept the similar claims of David Koresh, of Waco’s Branch Davidian.  Each year, at least one student complains on their professor evaluation form, “I can’t believe that Ehrman believes that David Koresh is the Lord of the Universe.”  He finds it amusing.  I find it amusing that he does not see the irony.

As always, I had hoped to learn something new.  All I learned was to choose my reading more carefully.

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Flash Fiction #206

Angels

PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

WE STAND ON GUARD

Okay, gentlemen – and ladies, Mardi Gras is still a couple of months away, so this will be our first, get-to-know New Orleans tour. We will be focussing on safety – ways that people can hurt themselves.

Are there potholes where someone might trip and fall in front of a float? Is there a loose power pole, or low-hanging wires? Are there steep brick steps leading to the street, from a bar that’s overstocked with liquor? Is there a tree that some drunken moron might climb to view the parade?

Stay sharp! It will be a busy week for us Guardian angels.

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Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

friday-fictioneers-badge-web

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Flash Fiction #73

Gutter

PHOTO PROMPT © C.E. Ayr

NEFARIOUS NEGATION

He surreptitiously followed her as she tottered out of the bar into the dark.  The cheap booze and clunky heels made her bodycheck a couple of buildings before stumbling left onto East 48th Street

He mustn’t lose this one.  She’d be SO enjoyable!  As he quickly sidled toward the corner, he could hear/feel a vibration – a deep hum.  A bright, blue-white light bathed the intersection.

When both had died away, he cautiously poked his head around the corner, to see only an empty street – no, there, in the gutter.  Now where had that drunk bitch gone with only one shoe?

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Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

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I extend a wish for a happy and joyous Thanksgiving to all my American readers.  Enjoy, but watch out for DUIs and too much turkey.  After the fuss raised about Starbucks’ ‘War On Christmas’, which is really Commercial, not Christian, I was pleased to see last evening, TV ads for three large store chains who are staying closed for Thanksgiving day.

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Poet’s Corner

Poetry

On Thinking Of My Love

And love Thee; And need Thee; And have Thee not,
Yet the Light of Thy Presence banishes the darkness of my loneliness,
Joy and sweet Happiness personified.

But the great pinions which would fly to Thee
By dark and dreary mundane passings, are clipped.

Oh Beauteous One!  Sweet life itself Thou art to me.
Full well know I Thou art my soul,
And my heart be not full and complete without Thee.

And forget Thee?
Say nay!!  For with me always art Thou,
In both angelic face and soul,
In sweet remembrance.

Thy kind, pure person,
With ever-happy, smiling countenance
And silvern, crystal laughter,
Desire I by my side.

Yet despair not and nor will I.
Soon, Love, shall we be rejoined,
That I may again drink deep of the pure, clear stream
Of my devotion, and offer Thee

On humble knees,
The obeisance
Of my love to thee.

Phoenix-Maker Thou art; Truly,
Shaper of Fate and Fortune,
To burn away the nothing detritus
Of a nowhere life,

And from the ashes, draw,
Hot and molten, the nub of an almost forgotten past,
To be forged on the anvil of Reality,
Into a tool with which to garner a fuller future.

Guide Thou art, taking by the hand
A soul, lost in the wilds of mediocrity and suburbia,
Drawing a willing spirit past
The traps and pitfalls and morés
Of reliability, and respectability, and responsibility,

To a haven of a life to be lived
And savored and enjoyed,
Not merely observed and endured.

Friend Thou art, and much, much more.
Lover even, to give of the heart and soul and mind and body
To one so unworthy of Thee.

Treat me as Thou will,
Yet I hope it be not ill.
Spurn me not, nor leave me lonely,
For now Thou art my one and only.

In the ongoing Autumn Housecleaning, I came upon this, one of my first (and fortunately few) love poems, in free verse and archaic language.  The wife and I are coming up 48 years married, so you can imagine how old this attempt is.  Be kind to the callow 21-year-old me, who thought he could impress a woman with poetry.   🙄

#459

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Protection From Demons

Oops, sorry!  That title should read Protection, From Demons.  When the glaciers marched into and out of this region ages ago, they dug up and left behind a lot of stone.  This is one of the most geologically varied areas in the world.  When we moved here, I hired a separate van to move 3000 pounds of rocks that we’d obtained over the years, to be used for landscaping and garden accents, quartz, marble, sandstone, agate and shale, often with fossils in it.

Over the years, we have also purchased a variety of garden figures.  Not silly little gnomes, these guys have some character, like the characters who own them.

Igor 2       Igor

This is Igor.  He came to us blind, because he had one eye closed, and the other one missing.  We provided him with a blood-red marble to see with.  He spent years beneath the wife’s magnolia bush, which didn’t do well in sandy soil near the river, when we lived on the other side of town, but has grown and branched and bloomed in the clay-ey soil here.

a New Magnolia

The first photo shows the small, but blooming plant 15 years ago, before we moved.

Bare Magnolia TreeThe next shot is the same shrub, transplanted, after we moved, 12 years ago.  Not much more than a stick, we didn’t hold much hope for it.  You can see a couple of the accent stones we brought along.

 

Magnolia [2] 2009The blooming shot is from five years ago.  It blooms in the spring before it leafs out.  The last pic is from the same spot as shot number 2, giving some idea of how it continues to grow.  It’s a shrub magnolia, not the tree variety, but 14/15 feet tall.  We get some re-blooming, especially on the sunny top, mid-July/Aug.

Magnolia 1, 2013

 

Igor bade goodbye to years of Halloween trick-or-treaters.  He’s an anorexic 7.5 pounds of fibreglass and resin, easily talked into walking down the street with a teenager, like a three-pound pottery angel which disappeared off a flower table on the front porch.  Or maybe she was just embarrassed by the company she was forced to keep, and flew away.

Goliath [1]Goliath

When we had the chance to adopt Goliath, we gave him a Moonstone evil-eye – and Igor’s spot under the magnolia.  Goliath is 75 pounds of pure concrete, promising a hernia or broken foot to any potential thief.  Igor moved to the back deck.

Go Away

Go Away (front)

Back on the deck, he moved in with “Go Away”, my personal mascot.  I was going to use his photo as my gravatar, but decided on something a little more welcoming.  There are (un)welcome mats which also read Go Away, but it’s cheaper just to ignore the doorbell.  Back beside Go Away, is the wife’s final word to her flowers, “Grow Dammit”.  Seems to be working.

GrowDamnIt

They are watched over by Winged Victory, who can’t fly off the fencepost because of a six-inch spike up his little fiberglass ass.  He was the painted display model and the last of his discontinued line that we brought home from a Mediaeval Faire.  He is a grotesque, because only waterspouts are correctly named gargoyles.

Fence Boy [1]Winged Victory

Continuing in the son’s hear-no-evil, etc. theme, are the matched set of concrete goblins which he purchased.  I managed to set them out in the correct order.  The child whose head is full of even more useless trivia than mine, says their Japanese names are Mizaru, Mazaru, and Mikazaru.  Some sets include, “Do No Evil”, with the hands over his crotch.  As well, there’s the vertical, resin, green and white frog-set version.  He has others, indoors.

See No, Hear No, Speech No 1 Froggies

Back around at the front, keeping intruders out of the washroom window are two of three concrete goblin-lions.  They’ve been out there 24/7/365 since we bought them.  Sadly, the third must have had a crack, and this spring, freezing split it into three unequal pieces.  For backup, they hang out with a demented Sesame Street-like character the grandson formed in pottery class in grade eight.

                          Window Sill Grotesques [2]

If anyone manages to get through the window, without upsetting the goblins, or our cats, they are not welcomed inside by Hellboy’s younger brother, Redboy.

Red BoyLurking near the door, waiting to trip up unsuspecting Jehovah’s Witnesses, kids selling school chocolate, and other ne’er-do-wells, is The Thinker, looking like he just climbed down off an Aztec sacrificial pyramid after ingesting a bit too much peyote, and thinking about who he’ll have for lunch.

Porch Thinker [1]Thinker

Providing a stumbling block in front of a three-tier brass plant-stand and the aforementioned plant table, at the end of the porch, is Todd The Toad.  While not much for rending undesirables limb from limb, after the rest of the Wrecking Crew do their number, he eats up any incriminating DNA evidence.  He hopped home with us all the way from the three-ended bridge in Zanesville, Ohio.

Toad

Tod the Toad [1]Having written about a Yankee transplant in Kentucky whose God-fearing neighbors wanted him burned at the stake for having two little concrete demons out at the end of his driveway, it occurred to me to wonder what the neighbors thought of our unusual “pets.”  One weekend, when the neighbor-lady’s father was visiting from Buffalo, I asked if they were offended or worried in any way.

Logical thinkers, they had no problems.  The dad asked, though, “Shouldn’t they be facing outwards?”  He don’t know us very well, do he?  On the wall, just inside the front door, is a small parchment which reads, “Remember, as far as anyone knows, we’re just a nice normal family.”  They’re there to protect the rest of the neighborhood from us!

SDC10459