Prayers for my son

Prayers for my son
         Roark and Reia surprised me this weekend, helping celebrate my 80th birthday. It was a wonderful time. We spent hours and hours in the pool. Reia does so love the water. She is an absolute of joy.
       Roark is a remarkable young man. Everything he does he does with his whole heart, mind, and soul, with full commitment and attention. I remember my sister Solveig commenting on that focus when he was a toddler, “I’ve never seen a little one who could focus so much energy playing with a few stones.”
       We entered him into a Suzuki violin program when he was three and so enjoyed watching him develop a great ear for music. In elementary school he switched to trumpet. He practiced three hours at a session. In high school he made all state band all four years. That’s the kind of kid he was. I have been so blessed.
       When Roark was five, we took him to Lompoc, California to watch my brother launch the last in a long line of his Delta Rockets. It was a glorious launch. The rocket tail streaming through the night sky was a sight to behold. The next day my brother took us back to the launching pad and Roark got to climb into the towers and tour the block house where the engineers sat controlling the launch. He made up his mind that day that he too would be an engineer.
       When Roark registered for his freshman year of high School, he realized that if he would register for both jazz and concert band every year, he would not be able to get all the math he would need to prepare him for his engineering program in college, so he decided to get a head start by taking college algebra during the summer after 8th grade graduation.
The problem was that the summer school program started on Monday, and he didn’t graduate until Wednesday. Consequently, by the first day of class he had already missed three sessions of summer school which is equivalent to a couple of weeks of work in a college algebra class. He spent the entire weekend at the coffee table in the living room catching up on his homework, all day Friday, all day Saturday, finishing about 2 o’clock Sunday afternoon. That’s the kind of kid he was. I’ve been so blessed.
       After college, he got married to a beautiful woman. Unfortunately, the marriage did not last, but they were blessed with a beautiful child, Reia. Roark loves being a father.
       As an adult he refuses to compromise in two areas especially. He is completely devoted to being a good father and to live a healthy life, and he is and he does. The one thing that worries me is that he questions himself so much, as though his dedication, his intense focus, compromises his ability to fully engage in joyous relationships.
       I believe that the relationship he is missing is his relationship with the almighty.
     I was raised in the church and been searching for that relationship myself over the years. I used to think that the Bible was largely metaphorical, a guide to the good life. I bought into the whole evolution thing, but the more I search and study, the more I recognize that the Bible is a remarkable web of truth. Truths of science discovered in recent years and recent unearthing of historical truths, especially those brought to light by Nehemiah Gordon’s recalculation of the original Hebrew calendar, have revealed that those some 66 books of the Bible written by a couple dozen authors over a period of thousands of years are stunningly interwoven with historical truth. My solemn prayer is that my son will find that kind of joy.

I expressed that concern to my friend, Michael Dovi and his response is a song in my heart.

"My mother blessed me every single time I left her presence. I could hear her whispered prayer as I walked away. What a proud piece of dung I was, always brushing her whisper off with my haughty, “God helps those who help themselves."
“Each and every one of those mother son whispered prayers would later spring forward and bloom in my life as the Holy Spirit convicted me after she was long gone.
"Thanks Mom!
Keep pressing out prayers for your son.”

Prayers for my son
Roark and Reia surprised me this weekend, helping celebrate my 80th birthday. It was a wonderful time. We spent hours and hours in the pool. Reia does so love the water. She is an absolute of joy.
Roark is a remarkable young man. Everything he does he does with his whole heart, mind, and soul, with full commitment and attention. I remember my sister Solveig commenting on that focus when he was a toddler, “I’ve never seen a little one who could focus so much energy playing with a few stones.”
We entered him into a Suzuki violin program when he was three and so enjoyed watching him develop a great ear for music. In elementary school he switched to trumpet. He practiced three hours at a session. In high school he made all state band all four years. That’s the kind of kid he was. I have been so blessed.
When Roark was five, we took him to Lompoc, California to watch my brother launch the last in a long line of his Delta Rockets. It was a glorious launch. The rocket tail streaming through the night sky was a sight to behold. The next day my brother took us back to the launching pad and Roark got to climb into the towers and tour the block house where the engineers sat controlling the launch. He made up his mind that day that he too would be an engineer.
When Roark registered for his freshman year of high School, he realized that if he would register for both jazz and concert band every year, he would not be able to get all the math he would need to prepare him for his engineering program in college, so he decided to get a head start by taking college algebra during the summer after 8th grade graduation.
The problem was that the summer school program started on Monday, and he didn’t graduate until Wednesday. Consequently, by the first day of class he had already missed three sessions of summer school which is equivalent to a couple of weeks of work in a college algebra class. He spent the entire weekend at the coffee table in the living room catching up on his homework, all day Friday, all day Saturday, finishing about 2 o’clock Sunday afternoon. That’s the kind of kid he was. I’ve been so blessed.
After college, he got married to a beautiful woman. Unfortunately, the marriage did not last, but they were blessed with a beautiful child, Reia. Roark loves being a father.
As an adult he refuses to compromise in two areas especially. He is completely devoted to being a good father and to live a healthy life, and he is and he does. The one thing that worries me is that he questions himself so much, as though his dedication, his intense focus, compromises his ability to fully engage in joyous relationships.
I believe that the relationship he is missing is his relationship with the almighty.
I was raised in the church and been searching for that relationship myself over the years. I used to think that the Bible was largely metaphorical, a guide to the good life. I bought into the whole evolution thing, but the more I search and study, the more I recognize that the Bible is a remarkable web of truth. Truths of science discovered in recent years and recent unearthing of historical truths, especially those brought to light by Nehemiah Gordon’s recalculation of the original Hebrew calendar, have revealed that those some 66 books of the Bible written by a couple dozen authors over a period of thousands of years are stunningly interwoven with historical truth. My solemn prayer is that my son will find that kind of joy.
I expressed that concern to my friend, Michael Dovi and his response is a song in my heart.

”I told you that my mother blessed me every single time I left her presence. I could hear her whispered prayer as I walked away. What a proud piece of dung I was, always brushing her whisper off with my haughty, “God helps those who help themselves."
“Each and every one of those mother son whispered prayers would later spring forward and bloom in my life as the Holy Spirit convicted me after she was long gone.
Thanks Mom!
Keep pressing out prayers for your son.”


Sent from my iPad

Celebrating Solveig's 60 years.

My gosh, you made it. 60 years !

And without all that many beers?

Enduring is endearing. I guess it must be so.

Fiercely counting blessings is the way to go.

A social butterfly and a hermit,

That’s quite a pair.

How do they not get into one another’s hair?

Those five kids are something to shout about

Four mitt und von mittout

They have brought the entire extended family joy, yes, so much.

Knee slapping full throated laughter and such.

So we celebrate you both this special day

You stuck it out. Wow! What more is there to say?

There are those who are SHOCKED that Republicans support a president who proposes tariffs.  "Republicans have always been free traders!"  Are you blind?  Are you deaf?  It is not free trade if your partners are not free traders.  If Canada imposes 200 per cent tariffs on US goods and we impose none, that is not free trade.

The earth is yours. Glory in it.

        Pseudo-science has, over the years, plagued us with doomsday fads. In the sixties those who bought into the Drake Formula believed that there were thousands of star systems in the Milky way system that could sustain life and they lived in fear of confrontations with extra-terrestrials.  In the seventies we faced the “Nuclear Winter.”  They convicted us that if we did not change our ways, we would face a new ice age.  In the eighties we were convinced us that over population would destroy the earth.  At one point scientists had convinced us that a nuclear blast would lower the temperature of the earth by 40 degrees and make the entire planet inhabitable. 

      Now that we understand our earth and our solar system better, we understand that habitable plants would be extremely rare.  The fear of an ice age has turned into a fear of global warming, and when that didn’t happen, into fear of disastrous climate change. 

     Within a year after the Nagasaki and Hiroshima blasts, the soil was producing melons. Months after the great oil spill off of the coast of Alaska, the waters were pristine and flourishing with life. 

       Bjørn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist  destroyed the environmentalists theories in 2001 and was ostracized by the scientific community. 

        Michael Crichten lectured scientists at Caltech about the climate change fiasco in 2003 calling it a “well-orchestrated media campaign,” false science pernicious garbage.  “In science consensus is irrelevant. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.” 

     Any thinking man knows that Skepticism is the soul of science.  However, the greenies are relentless, convinced that they can save the earth.  No more gasoline, no more coal, no more air travel, no more cars.  No more mining. They, of course, will not deprive themselves of those luxuries, inflicting us with their bogus views on cell phones while flying across the Atlantic in order to hike the Alps in their Gore Gear.  How long would they survive in a cave without what man hath wrought.     

    They love the earth and its pristine beauty and curse modern man for abusing this perfect planet.  We have not destroyed our creator’s work.  We are making it habitable as God intended us to do.  Yes, He created a perfect world, but he cursed it because of Adam’s sin, and He demanded that we subdue it.  Every plant and every animal was created for our enjoyment and our benefit. We are instructed to mine the earth of all its precious gifts.    

     Pseudo-science attempts to cripple the world.  We had almost eliminated malaria until the pseudo scientists spread the myth that it was causing cancer.  Real science has now proven that it does not, but malaria still takes millions of lives every year, mostly out of Africa, so guess it doesn’t matter.

       Man has managed the fallen world and made massive improvements. We overcome threats with human ingenuity.  Unscrupulous elitists blame the plight of the poor on our propensity to destroy the earth, but who is harmed most by lack of energy?  The poor.  The rich have the wherewithal to escape the problems they create.

            The earth is not fragile.  Evolutionists don’t understand that because they buy into the theory that this majestic universe was created by random chance.  The balance could be easily destroyed.  No.  This amazing world was made for man, and it cannot be destroyed until He decides.  Until we’re ready.  Einstein mourned at his death because he regretted that he hadn’t been able to identify the power that holds everything together.  Scientists recently discovered that is the numberless swarms of gluons and quarks and antiquarks.  That’s what God told Job in earliest written book of the Bible

       Don’t give into the pernicious garbage of pseudo-science.  This earth was created for us to subdue and use. Enjoy it.  It’s all for you.  Everything.