O-Dark-Thirty

Here’s the question put to me: What do I think of the statement - The goal isn’t to “speak with God;” the goal is to let the Holy Spirit pray through you. (referencing Romans 8:26) My first reaction contended with that statement. Surely, we followers of Christ have the ability to pray without “channeling” the Holy Spirit. After all, James talks about prayer in this way: James 5:16-18 ( NASB1995) The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the earth for three years and six months. Then he prayed again, and the sky poured rain and the earth produced its fruit. I am certainly not a prayer warrior like Elijah. Prayer is a constant thing with me, but not with that sort of power. Yet, the idea of the Holy Spirit praying through us certainly has biblical merit. Rom 8:26  NASB1995 26 In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do no...

Before I launch into this post, let me just say that I know it all sounds like nothing but complaining. I don’t intend to do that. What I want any other readers to know, especially if they have the same cancer or know someone with the same cancer, is that you are not alone. The pains are real. The side effects will drain you. But we are all together in this. It’s the fatigue that gets me most. I hear the same from a friend of mine who has prostate cancer in remission. His cancer was also a Gleason Scale 9, but it did not metastasize into his bones. I’ve been reading the notes posted by my doctor and I seem to be quite a complainer. That saddens me. I did have a bit of a rant about drug prices with him on our last visit (via phone – Covid, you know). I guess since I was paying for the visit, I can talk about anything, and he is a good listener. Here’s the upshot of my rant… The Apalutamide (Erleada) costs over $14,500 per bottle! Ouch. I carefully typed that number and put i...

  We saw Thor yesterday. The movie started, the lights went down and it was LOUD. My Darling hands me a couple squishy things and I think “Wow, she remembered earplugs.” I almost put them in my ears before I realized they were Hot Tamales. I know. You expected something different, didn't you? Just letting y'all know (both of you) that I'm still here.

This is an interesting time in my life. I usually abhor the word "interesting" since it means so little, but I also dislike "ly" words, so I'll just let it go at that. So, a bit of time has passed since my last cancer update. People are asking. Some folks we know came for a visit and expected to see me bed-ridden and gasping my last breath. Not yet. I still do all the things I've always done. If you didn't know I had cancer, I'm hoping you couldn't tell. I do walk a little slower. Sometimes, when my right hip hurts a lot, I limp a bit. Maybe that's just arthritis. Who knows? Let's compare my two bone scans, the one from this past March and the one from October before I really started treatment.   The first one is the latest. You can see that the spine is not as brightly lit, nor are my pelvic bones. That means the treatment is removing the cancer from my bones, though it isn't all gone. Still, good news! My PSA results...

I occasionally have talks with the younger generations about language. I had trouble with bad language, which seems odd in hindsight. As a young man, even through college, I abhorred foul language, even going so far as to rarely use the word "damn" and never any harsher word. Then I worked for a few decades in a chemical plant, quite often out in the Units with rough, tough language-crippled individuals who seemed to compete to speak with foul adjectives and expletives. Before I even knew it, I slipped into using many of those words myself. Not at home, not in front of my children, but certainly in the Units among my fellow workers. I even began to think so little of my words that I used them to descriptively berate a piece of software while among colleagues while in the company offices. Next thing I knew, I was in the Plant Manager's office where he informed me that he placed a permanent record of a complaint about my language in my personnel file. As I left his office, ...

 Wikipedia says this about the Grandfather Paradox: the time traveller went back in time to the time when his grandfather had not married yet and killed him. As a result, the time traveller was never born when he was meant to be. If he was never born, then he is unable to travel through time and kill his grandfather, which means the traveller would be born after all, and so on. The same Wiki entry on the Grandfather Paradox also explains the "Novikov self-consistency principle [which] expresses one view on how backwards time travel could be possible without a danger of paradoxes. According to this hypothesis, the only possible time lines are those entirely self-consistent—so anything a time traveler does in the past must have been part of history all along, and the time traveler can never do anything to prevent the trip back in time from happening, since this would represent an inconsistency. … Seth Lloyd and other researchers at MIT have proposed an expanded version of ...

And there isn't much more that needs to be said about that! Enjoy the holidays. It's my favorite time of year, because even mean people act nicer. Too bad it cannot last. God bless you all which is what He did at Christmas!