Mark 10:25 – “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
Some things don’t need to be said
And a jet plane can mess with your head
Oxygen deprivation
While preaching salvation
Makes camels appear to be thread.
Old Jules
Posted in 2018, Christians, limericks, Poetry, religion, Spirituality, YouTube
Tagged camels, Christians, jet planes, Kenneth Copeland, limerick, limericks, Mark 10:25, needle, Preachers, preaching
This was a follow-up to the post about the old guy wearing a Vietnam Veteran cap so’s to try to get people to listen to him talk about his Satanist religion. This was posted October 1, 2013.
Hi readers.
The old Satanist wearing the Vietnam Veteran cap I wrote about a couple of weeks ago was at the coin laundry again. He was telling me the difference between Satanists and devil worshipers, which he isn’t one of, he says.
“Even the devil worshipers,” he explained, “Just aren’t all that evil. They try, but it’s mostly just waving a bloody shirt at it.”
“Devil worshipers try but can’t pull it off?” Me, thinking this over.
“That’s right. You’d think there’d be plenty of evil for them to get into, but the really evil people don’t want anything to do with them. Not even the somewhat evil people, Catholics, Jews, Baptists and Muslims. They find out a person’s a devil worshiper they think poorly of him. Even when they’re jumping the hurdles for award-winning evil.”
Shaking my head. “I never knew that. You’d think especially Catholics and Zionists and Muslims would open their arms and their hearts to honest-to-goodness no-shit devil worshipers. Why is that, do you think?”
He shook his head, too. “I don’t know why it is. I’m not a devil worshiper and I’m not any of those others. I’m just a Satanist trying to get through life as best I can. But if I wanted to be really evil I’d have one hell of a time managing to do it. I wouldn’t know where to start.”
Old Jules
Posted in 2013, 2018, Christians, Human Behavior, humor, Kerrville, muslims, religion, Senior Citizens, Spirituality, Veterans
Tagged Christians, devil worshipers, evil, Jews, Muslims, Satanist, veterans
Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.
Most of you have declared among yourselves you’d never trust an Arab, which is prudent. And Israel’s certainly made it plain over the past few decades that it, also can’t be trusted. Which shouldn’t come as any surprise now that DNA proves they’re all the same folks, Israelis and Arabs.
But surely, you might be saying to yourself, there’s SOMEONE over there who can be trusted.
Well, in fact there might be people with a more trustworthy gene pool than that found among the Palestinians, Israelis, Syrians, Jordanians, Egyptians, etc. In Lebanon. People more European genetically. Probably descendants of Crusaders who occupied a bit of the region for a couple of centuries.
That is to say, if you’d trust a descendant of a Frenchman, Italian, or Englishman. Or German, Spaniard, any of those bastards as far as you could throw them. Trade a headache for an upset stomach, I suppose, and trust the Lebanese. Send them a few thousand tanks and helicopters, artillery. Flack jackets and M16s.
Pat them on the back and tell them to bring some European style honor, justice, compassion and ethics into the region. Crusader style.
There’s not enough confusion going on over there at the moment. Even with Syrians running amok with weaponry, Israelis grabbing every inch of territory they can see and killing anyone standing in the way of it, chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Russia forgetting what WWII felt like, there’s room for US diplomacy. US leadership that’s proved itself time and again in Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans, you name it.
Time for the US to either get behind Lebanon or get out of that entire part of the world the way we got out of Vietnam when the going got tough. Hanging off helicopters while the getting was good.
Besides, those Lebanese are probably headed for hard times when the cousins quit fighting long enough to notice Lebanon’s not family. Bunch of dirty Europeans occupying territory which rightfully ought to belong to Israel or Palestinians.
Old Jules
Hi readers. If you’ve been noticing the Hamas terrorists and the Israel government sponsored terrorists composing their military all seem similar, there’s a reason. They’re all genetically identical.
Israel is behaving the way the fanatics in the countries around them behave because they’re all just kinfolks. There’s no difference in them aside from a sprinkling of religion, mainly Judaic in nature. All going back to the ancient Abraham who was ready to sacrifice his son with a knife on an altar. Because he thought he heard God tell him to do it. Is it any mystery Muslims and Jews have a lot of issues with THAT seething down underneath it all?
Hell, there are probably legions of modern-day self-proclaimed holy men over there on both sides declaring God’s telling them they have to sacrifice their genetic cousins. And legions of others on both sides listening and believing.
It sure as hell wouldn’t surprise me.
And I should mention, legions of people in the church-houses all over Europe and the US are cheering for Israel. Because there’s a trophy if Israel land-grabs the temple mount and builds a new temple where the Mosque sits.
Got that? Tears down the Mosque on the temple mount which doesn’t belong to them. And rebuilds the Hebrew temple that used to sit there.
The prize, Christians believe, is the Second Coming of Christ. As predicted by John the Divine or someone. When Solomon’s temple is rebuilt Christ will return.
Well jeeze. No wonder everyone’s ignoring these temporary acts of savagery Israel’s doing on the cousins. It’s only temporary because everything will be set straight when Christ comes back. According to the Bible or something, I reckons.
Need to read through this again, or have you got it tucked together in your minds in ways you can understand it?
Old Jules
Posted in 2013, 2014, Christians, History
Tagged Christians, culture, History, Human Behavior, humor, Israel, Jews, Life, lifestyle, Muslims, Palestine, philosophy, religion, society, sociology
Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.
I’ve got a lot of questions for Old Sol, but I have to take them slowly, easily.
Me: So, what’s the deal on all this Middle East extremism? That seems to be escalating.
Old Sol: Some celestial object deities have a delicate touch, some don’t. I’m more into playing Chopsticks than a piano sonata. I get up on the wrong side of the bed and things happen. French Revolution. Russian Revolution. No harm intended. It just happens.
Me: So all these Muslims and Zionist extremists are fired up because you let one of your moods get away from you?
Old Sol: Partly. Of course, I didn’t tie up some loose ends a while back. I had it on my list to do something decisive so those people weren’t running around thinking they’re Chosen People. But other things came up and it slipped my mind.
Me: But what about those Muslims? That whole thing seems to be on the upswing?
Old Sol: You’ve got to understand. Back then things were chaotic. No sooner got the Roman Gods put to sleep and the Jews scattering than Christians and Muslims popped up and started fighting one another. It isn’t as though putting out fires is all I have to do. I’ve got these other planets, moons, comets, asteroids to keep doing their jobs. And that damned Jupiter.
Me: Jupiter?
Old Sol: I swear, between Jupiter and Saturn it’s a wonder I find time to do anything else. All those moons and rings, posturing and strutting, throwing out magnetic fields from hell to breakfast.
Me: So what are you going to do with the Zionists and Muslims?
Old Sol: They’re just going to have to take care of one another for a while. I’ve got this hormone thing. You people in the US are the new Chosen People, but I think you’d be better off staying out of it. You’re the best I’ve got, and I’d like to see some land left down there people can live on once all the ice melts. Not much chance of that in the Middle East or downwind from the north Pacific.
Me: Thanks for the wakeup call.
Old Jules
Posted in Adventure
Tagged chosen people, Christians, environment, History, Human Behavior, humor, Jupiter, Life, Middle East, miscellaneous, Muslims, Old Sol, other, politics, random, Revolutions, Saturn, Zionists
Hi Readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.
After we prayed Old Sol up this morning I was explaining to the cats about how and why God picked the Jews for his Chosen People and didn’t give a hoot in hell for any of the rest of humanity.
He did it out of hunger, I explained patiently. God looked around and, while nobody down there was any great shakes, there were a lot of them. Trying to make human beings as a species Chosen instead of a single pocket of them was just not worth the effort. The Jews would do okay for a while until something else came along.
Things began to look up after 1492, and after 1776, God could see he finally had some worthwhile raw material to work with down there on earth. And the more He looked at the situation the better He liked it.
Today God couldn’t care less about any Jews besides the ones living in America. He’s completely indifferent about Roman Catholics living all over the place except America. Same with Zen Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims. Same with Latter Day Saints, and the various Native American religions. Americans are Gods Chosen People today. All of them. God cares more about an American atheist than He does about a Roman Pope, because at least that atheist is an American. Chosen.
Just like before, when it was only Jews, God doesn’t give a hoot in hell about anyone else on the planet.
God loves American Jews, Muslims, Mormons, Christians, Taoists, you name it. And He has perfectly good reasons for doing it, same as he had originally when he made regular Jews His Chosen People, and they blew it.
The competition back then was just no great shakes. It still isn’t.
If you don’t believe me look at all those shale oil deposits they’re suddenly finding under the United States every time they poke a hole in the ground. If that doesn’t convince you look around a bit more. Americans have Chinamen working three shifts to build their toasters. They’ve got Japanese designing and manufacturing their cars instead of worrying about having two-headed offspring. They’ve got Middle Easterners giving them excuses to keep a military establishment big enough to fight the USSR in the golden days of the Cold War. They’ve got Israel keeping things stirred up so’s there’s no danger anyone much will survive what’s going to happen there.
If Americans aren’t God’s Chosen People why are they building that big fence on the US Border with Mexico? Do you think all that starving and killing going on everywhere, say in South America and Africa happened by accident? Hell no it didn’t. You don’t see that kind of crap happening to God’s Chosen People.
God bless America.
Old Jules
Posted in 2013, America, History, Human Behavior, Spirituality
Tagged chosen people, Christians, culture, Education, God, History, Human Behavior, humor, Jews, Life, Mormons, Muslims, Native Americans, Nature, philosophy, religion, society, sociology
So what the hell was that all about?
I can see how Warren [or anyone else] might justifiably refer to me as an SOB. I’ve no argument on that score.
But why a BIGOTED SOB? [The Mormon post comments]
Everything I said about Mormons was positive, and I could have said a lot of other positive things about them. For instance, Howard Hughs trusted them, always hired Mormon bodyguards, caretakers and administrators. Because they were honest, dedicated, hard working.
For that matter, Mormons also have legions of people researching and identifying their dead ancestors, baptizing them ex-post-facto to Mormonism so they won’t be doomed to hell. PHDs in history could learn a lot from those uncredentialed Mormon researchers because they’re better and more accurate doing it than most PHDs I’ve ever come across. When I’ve run up against a brick wall doing historical research I’ve frequently found help among Mormons doing genealogy.
Is that cool, or what? When those researchers run out of relatives to be unknowingly baptized, likely someday one of them will find my name and make a Latter Day Saint of me without me having to do anything, even know it. If they happen to be right, which I personally doubt, it’s still a win/win. Cheap insurance.
So Warren couldn’t possibly be calling me a bigot on behalf of Latter Day Saints.
Okay. Maybe he was damning me because I said I didn’t trust Christians. Or that I’d trust a Mormon more readily than I’d trust a Christian. But the truth is, that opinion is just based on my personal experience.
Some of my best friends have been Christians. Sure, I dropped a lot of them off the list because they pestered me to death with their evangelizing, but I still thought of them as best friends. And as such, I was able to recognize the human flaws they carried around with them, including a weakness for falsehood, many of them. Along with a weakness for personal betrayal, abstractions over personal loyalty. Doing things involving me ‘for my own good’.
Maybe trusting members of one religion over another is lousy judgement, but I can’t see it as bigotry.
The only other thing in that post that might be construed as bigotry was my saying this king is a black white man. But hell, that’s being said all over the web by black folks. They’re calling him an ‘Oreo’ [black on the outside, white on the inside], an Uncle Tom. All manner of things suggesting they don’t consider his decisions, demeanor, perspectives to be similar to their own. Their self-stereotyping of their ethnic attitudes and opinions exclude his. They believe he matches their stereotype of whites, more nearly.
So how can me calling him a black white man be a sign of bigotry?
Brings to mind the Hispanic wife of an Anglo friend of mine during the nineties. They’d built a new house and were showing signs of affluence and the other Hispanic women of Socorro, New Mexico, whispered, shouted, sneered, snarled, “She’s trying to be white!” “She’s pretending she’s white!” Boycotted her beauty-shop business.
Crazy world we’re living in.
I ain’t ‘trying to pretend to be black’, ain’t trying to ‘pretend to be a Mormon’, ain’t trying to ‘pretend to be a Christian’.
Maybe that’s the problem. I wonder which one Warren was trying to pretend to be.
Old Jules
Posted in 2012, America, Relationships, Spirituality
Tagged bigotry, Bigots, Christians, culture, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, Mormons, musings, psychology, racism, religion, society, sociology
The sign and that line of people outside the building suggests the Christians in Washington mightn’t have anything in common with regular old actual Christians of the old actual Christianity faith.
I don’t know what they’re doing to help those people in there, being a non-Christian, but they must be doing something. That line stretches all the way out into the parking lot.
I don’t need a gas grille, but if I did I’d have snapped this one up from the Salvation Army:
It’s missing the burners and regulator, cheap to add and retrofit, looks barely used, but the price is amazing:
Only thing I can figure is the Chinese have bought out Harley Davidson:
Damned thing is 200cc and has a pull starter like a lawn mower. They charge extra for ape-hangers.
But it looks as though they’re also wanting to cash in on some of the automotive company bailouts:
Notice the suicide shift above the right fender. You have to turn loose the steering wheel to shift gears. Can’t imagine how they got that through Ralph Nader’s US Department of Transportation and Welfare.
Best for last, though. Here’s a free crapper and exercycle from Habitat for Humanity:
Tempting, but I’ve already got the one, and I get my exercise just trying to stay alive. Fact of life.
Old Jules
Loudon Wainwright– Glad To See You Got Religion
Posted in 2011, America, Free, Human Behavior, Kerrville, Thrift Stores
Tagged Christians, environment, home, Human Behavior, Kerrville, Life, lifestyle, musings, Reflections, society, thoughts, Thrift Stores
I’m not an admirer of human beings as being particularly inspirational, on the whole. Yeah, a lot of human sentences find themselves trapped between quotation marks in fragments people find supportive of viewpoints that won’t stand on their own hind legs. Pithy wisdomoids giving authority to vapid premises. Often this does happen in a synthetically inspirational context. But the sources of those quotes usually don’t appear so wise or unblemished under careful scrutiny.
Maybe ‘inspirational’ isn’t the appropriate word to capture the concept I’m hoping to convey.
Maybe ‘has had an influence on your life you believe helped you to be a person you came nearer admiring than the one you were previously’ would more accurately describe it while filling the need for cumbersome rhetoric. The inspiration derived from firing wisdomoids back and forth at one another isn’t made of the strong stuff I’m trying to communicate.
For instance, I used to be acquainted with a Vietnam vet, who lived in an Econoline van in Albuquerque. He had a route of parking spots and a time schedule he’d follow to hang around each place for a while. The street guys who were dumpster-diving knew his schedule. They also knew he’d pay a fair price for anything he could get his money back on that they’d salvaged out of the trash. After making his rounds, the Econoline would head to the flea market and he’d sell first to the crowd, then whatever was left to the flea market merchants.
By reselling it from homeless guys dumpster-diving, he provided them a means of getting some cash for a lot of things they’d have no way to sell for themselves, or would have had a lot of difficulty getting more than a few cents for. His route superimposed an economic network devised to offer those submerged in hardship a trickle of income, a safety net. He provided a valuable service.
But what I particularly admired was that, when he came across someone he believed was ready to try drug or alcohol withdrawal he’d pack them up in the van and head off somewhere to the middle of nowhere, usually a small town with a restaurant or grocery store where he could pick up food and supplies. Once out of the city environment, he’d keep the addict in the van a week, two weeks, a month, drying them out, getting them clean, being there for them.
I came across him once parked at Vietnam Memorial Wall park in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. I didn’t realize at first what I was seeing. I just saw his van with the white Ministry sign roughly painted on the side and recognized it and him outside it. I stopped to chew the fat with him, then heard the moaning in the Econoline. He caught my eye and shrugged.
“Trying to kick smack. He’s on his second week. It ought to start getting better in a few days.” The odor of vomit, urine and human excretions was strong near the truck, so we drifted further afield as we talked. Probably he was used to it, but I wasn’t.
Christian guy. One of the Christians I’ve known that kept me believing there are honest-to-goodness bona fide Christians in the world.
I surely admired his guts, his determination and compassion. There’s a lot about him I’d admire in myself if I looked inside me and surprised myself finding it there.
Nice to come across a Christian occasionally who isn’t all hat and no cattle.
“I wonder what Jesus thought about sin. Jesus did his talking about loving neighbors, compassion, peace-making, mercy, that sort of thing. Hardly said anything about sin. If he could speak his mind today I wonder if he’d forgive Saul of Tarsus the way he did Judas.” Josephus Minimus
Here are a couple of blogs you might find of interest:
Old Jules
Kingston Trio-Reverend Mr. Black
http://youtu.be/sKJiDbvKbZs
John Lennon– Cold Turkey
http://youtu.be/n6wxTkkfLqM
Posted in America, Current Issues, Human Behavior, Senior Citizens, Thrift Stores, Welfare, YouTube
Tagged Christians, cold turkey, culture, Dumpster Diving, environment, homeless, Human Behavior, Life, lifestyle, ministry, miscellaneous, New Mexico, personal, society, survival, thoughts
74 years old, a resident of Leavenworth, KS, in an apartment located on the VA campus. Partnered with a black shorthaired cat named Mister Midnight. (1943-2020)
Since April, 2020, this blog is maintained by Jeanne Kasten (See "About" page for further information).
https://sofarfromheaven.com/2020/04/21/au-revoir-old-jules-jack-purcell/
So Far From Heaven 
