Belfast Thoughts

Just a quick response to the comment on my last post.

I do not see God as an angry old man throwing thunder bolts at a sinning world. Each action of ours, good and bad is like a stone thrown into a pond and causing ripples of effect to spread everywhere. Now as we as a whole, mankind throw negative ripples, such as greed, consumerism, selfishness into the pond of the environment the ripples or Tsunamis we cause may simpy overwhelm us all. This is what is happening in our world. We are entering a time of great darkness. The end of the technological era.

Of course the innocent will suffer. But that is the effect of our sins, our negative ripples, not Gods.

I suppose you can look at the killer hurricane from many levels. Firstly politically in asking questions about why the Federal Government was slow in responding. In questions of racial equality in why African Americans bore the brunt. In enviromental terms in what part gobal warming is playing in this. And so on.

But the biggest question in all this, for the believer is what part God plays in this.
The simle answer for many believers is no part at all. God is an etheral figure up in the sky who plays no part in lived reality. Cetainly He is someone to pray to. To act as a kind of spiritual bandage and little else.

Scripture however points to something else. That when God's people leave God they face destruction. Sodom and Gomorrah to Noah's Ark. Call it justice, call it punishment call it cause and effect call it retribution call it what you will. Sin leads to destruction.

New Orleans, the epicentre of the disaster, was a "sin city" which harboured few rivals. The New Orleans "southern decadence" festival which was to take place Labour Day weekend, is described by a French Quarter tourism site as "sort of like a gayer version of Mardi Gras" which is "most famous (or infamous) for the displays of naked flesh which characterize the event," with "public displays of sexuality . . . pretty much everywhere you look."

The city is also renowned for occult practices, particularly voodoo. Voodoo is also common in violence and crime saturated Haiti.

The American Spectator reports that "New Orleans has one of the highest murder rates in the country. By mid-August of this year, 192 murders had been committed in New Orleans, 'nearly 10 times the national average,' ...New Orleans was ripe for collapse. Its dangerous geography, combined with a dangerous culture, made it susceptible to an unfolding catastrophe. Currents of chaos and lawlessness were running through the city long before this week, and they were bound to come to the surface under the pressure of natural disaster and explode in a scene of looting and mayhem".

It was no accident, I believe that the hurricane hit New Orleans, nor, do I believe it an accident that other 'sin cities' and countries are very vulnerable to the same destruction. The Netherlands with their below sea level situation. San Francisco, which sits in the San Andreas fault and a whole range of cties such as London and New York which are vulnerable to global warming.

Man has to change. Our world appears to be rejectinbg us as a dog will irritant fleas. Man will change, I believe, but not before our world is radically altered.

What we find ourselves today is not an accident, but arises through a series of choices. Those that tend towards the good and those towards the bad.None of us, unless we be that purest of creatures a great saint or sinner, make pure choices of great good or great evil.Even are finest acts are tingest with self interest and are worst with mistaken goodness. Few of us are tempted to do evil for the love of eveil. Few of us to good through any lack of sekf interest.

Life even to the wisest can seem simple shaded grey, we often grope to goodness through mists of confused, confusing greys.

But at the every evenings of our lives we are in essense the sum of all our choices , to the good and the bad. But God through His goodness and Most Holy Spirit guides these choices throungh grace. Grace the sharing in His very self.His love. Thus guided and nourished by the rains of grace, of love our reason becomes our concience to whisper gently in our ears, if open.

How fortunate we are, if at the even time of life we find ourselves still children. So that when we peer at ourselves in the mirror in the morning, we can smile and be a little happy, to find the child, who, through wrinkles, smiles back.

I see on the news this morning that another Loyalist has been shot this morning. This time in Newtownards a country town just outside Belfast. The fued has been going on some time now. with the major Loyalist Ulster Volunteeer Force vowing to eliminate the much smaler and more lightly armed Loyalist Volunteer Force.

Both paramilitary groups are heavily involved in drug dealing, with (maybe) the LVF being more heavily involved. They're all making oodles of money out of it with gold chains, fast cars monthly holidays and wicked attiude poblems galore. They all wear snide sports gear, do lots of body building, take steroids and are covered from head to foot in ghastly tatoos.Not only gangsters but tasteless gangsters to boot. You could drop them in Moscow and I guess the Comrade gangsters and them would be hugging in no time.

The Loyalists paramilitaries were founded and run by small time gangsters, recruited and run by British Intelligence as a counter measure to the insurgency of the Irsh Republican Army. Now that the IRA have gone defunct the British are left with a really hot potato, hundered of heavily armed,very violent Loyalist paramilitaries with time and money on their hands.

The answer?? Well it appears to be keep them busy killing each other. Thus they wipe themselves busy and univolved in the peace process and they self solve the problem.

I don't want to sound nasty but this isn't really a problem for me. These filks truly are nasty pieces of work. The only problem being that when they are busy firing all them guns they are inclined to get a bit antsy. The question that is inclined to enter their drug crazed minds is, 'Why aren't I killing Catholics??' And for myself being a Catholic this is a BIG problem.

Still they look like they are enthusiastic at the big wipe out. Getting more and more enthusiastic every day. Some of their leaders recognise that this is all part of a British extermination processs. But they are all on a drug crazed, hate mad slide to destruction. Death after death.

I should be happy I guess. They'd all kill and torture me laughing and smiling. But, I dunno. As they say here, 'They're some mothers sons'. All drug dealing cannon fodder. All walking dead men. All fools.

http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/765000/images/_765176_shootscene300.jpg&imgrefurl=http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/northern_ireland/newsid_771000/771330.stm&h=180&w=300&sz=16&tbnid=oE2A7xjpE44J:&tbnh=66&tbnw=111&hl=en&start=19&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dloyalist%2Bfeud%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official_s%26sa%3DG

When I was sixteen I saw someone walking in the distance. At once never having met him the thought came to my mind, 'This guy will be your oldest and dearest friend. You will be really close'. So it has turned out to be!! 33 years later we are still bosum buddies!! I told him about this a couple of years later and he was amazed. When he saw me he thought the exact same thing.

At the same age when I was at boarding school I suddenly got a very bad feeling one morning that something very bad had happened at home. So I borrowed a bike and rode the twenty miles home. There I found my mother crying. My older brother had been very badly beaten up.

Once I got a strange looking old lady in the taxi who I got weird feelings about. It turned out she was the 'Rose of Sharon'. Irelands greatest psychic. She is booked out years in advance. She charges plenty too. I was nosey and asked her to do a 'reading' on me. But she wanted the money up front. I told her I was psychic too (you can see I am not stupid) and would read her if she read me.
She told me I came from a family of seven brothers and three sisters which was true and the hairs on the back of my neck began to rise.
She told me that two of my brothers were dead and were sitting beside us. True again both dead. Hairs on back of neck bolt upright!!
She told me that I loved all animals particularly dogs and that I owned tow. Once again right!!! Hairs not only upright but snow white!!

She asked me to do a reading on her and I said I saw a lion and a blade of blood on a rose.
She went away muttering to herself, maybe she didn't think she got her thirty pounds worth.

Anyway both this psychic, Sharon and another top psychic from another part of Belfast told me that the war here is not over and that, 'The streets of Belfast will run red with blood!'
Cheerful stuff, like the witches in Macbeth. But I love this kinda stuff!!!!!!!!!!