Morality and Spirituality

When challenged on my morality and spirituality, I lean on the Word of God, even if there all those who scoff at it.

Hebrews 10:26-31

If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay," and again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

My friend overseas posted this on his Facebook wall and I thought it was fitting. How we over here in the US think of ourselves and our faith (primary Christian), we rarely think of how others deal with their faith and the trials that they must endure. This is something that I have spoken of several times during our Men's Ministry Meetings, I have spent a small amount of time overseas and have several people that I consider to be a friend but of another faith. As with all religions, there are good and there are bad "representatives" of the faith. Don't let the "bad" sway your view of what you believe in.

What is Freemasonry?

What is Freemasonry?

Probably the finest definition ever devised for Freemasonry is: "It is a beautiful system of morality, veiled in allegory, and illustrated by symbols".

It's not a religion or a political party, it's a fraternity of men meeting together on a common level, to share ideas and views that they have in common.   The saying is "we take good men and make them better".   Now myself, being a Freemason and also a proud member of Michael Dempsey Masonic Lodge # 327, F&AM, I believe this to be true.  This is something that I really enjoy being a part of.   I think it is a great organization.  There a lot of good charity work through it's various branches of Freemasonry.  There are the Shriner's, Scottish Rite, York Rite, OES, and a few others.  All of which help raise and donate money to those less fortunate.  In the state of Louisiana, our main charitable organization is the dyslexia foundation.  Other Masonic charities are Shriner's Hospitals, Dentistry for the Handicapped, Scottish Rite Learning Centers, Scottish Rite Children's Medical Center, Hospital Visitation, The Museum of Our National Heritage, George Washington Masonic National Memorial Scholarships.  The fraternity is very patriotic, the Pledge of Allegiance is said at every meeting.  Prayer is all ways done at the opening and closing of every meeting. 

The Bible used is a very large, very old King James Version of the Bible and it is right in the middle of the lodge.  Is it a church then you wonder, no, I go to a church and a great church it is.  Krishae calls it a boys club, something to do that gets me out of the house.  I have read a lot of the Internet stuff out there, it will blow you away, how bad it is.  I have yet to see anything bad.  The only God I prayed to is the God of the Bible, as I do everyday of my life.    I have not seen not one thing that was bad.  I have not seen the blood oaths.  I have not rode the goat or sacrificed a goat.  I haven't seen any dark figures with hoods hiding in the shadows.  I told Krishae and my family this, if at any point I thought that there was something bad or evil in this organization, I wouldn't be apart of it, then I would quit it, simple enough huh.  But it's so secretive, so what, when you go to college, you do the same thing.  When I was a boy, we had a secret club.  There is not really anything secretive about it, except the password, handshake, and the way you stand.  If you wanted it bad enough you more than likely could find out what it is.  Most of the people that I know who are apart of this are good people, of good moral character, and who have firm religious beliefs.  Some are Sunday School Teachers, Deacons, Dentist, Mechanics, Doctors, Lawyers, Police Officers, Oilfield Workers, Politicians, but most are just regular ordinary people, who live normal lives.  Now you may think, hey, I know a guy who was a Mason and he did this bad thing......really, you have bad apples in every batch.  Just as you have bad people in politics, government, schools (no get me started on that, maybe another blog), and yes, believe it or not, churches.  You can't be perfect, there was only one perfect person, you are human and all we can do is try to be better than the sum of our parts.  People make mistakes.

What do I like about it?  Well, besides the charity work.  I enjoy lodge  because in my personal view, it is just good clean fun.  It's fun for me to go and visit with the guys, find out what is going on with them, and local events.  In Jena, there is a lot going on.  Some of you may have seen it on the news.  I just enjoy going to the lodge on Monday evenings.  There are only 2 meetings a month, a meeting every other week, so I miss most of them, but I try to go to the one that occurs while I am home.  This is good for me, mainly, because it is close to home.  I would not want to do something that is going to take me far from home, I am gone enough as it is, if Krishae needed me, I could be home pretty quick.  I love my wife and my kids, I do not want to do anything that is going to take me too far away from them, if at all possible.  Since, I am not one to go out and party at the bars, nor do I hunt or fish, I would much rather stay at home and do things around our house, my shop, ride the four wheeler, or just watch a movie.     The extra activity does not consume all of my days.

I took Kassie and Cole's with me to the lodge one day when they were small and to see the look in their eyes when they went inside the lodge with me for the first time.  Kassie thought it was really cool to see the portrait of George Washington hanging on the wall and the American Flag, you will see that in every lodge in the United States.  Of course and the first place Cole went was to sit in Master's chair, that chair is so big that a 7 foot tall person could sit in it, he looked small in that huge chair, but he picked up the gavel and said "one day I'm gonna sit here" in his little country voice, then I said "But not before me".

The 1 Gallon Pickled Egg Recipe

A good friend gave this to me and if done right, it is some of the best pickled eggs you can make.

1.  Boil Eggs (2 ½ dozen)

2. Cool Eggs

3. Peel Eggs

4. Put eggs in glass jar, run jar through dish washer first

5. Salt, three table spoons

6. Black Pepper, two table spoons

7. Garlic Powder, 3 TBS

8. Tony’s, 5 TBS

9. Cayenne Pepper, 3TBS

10. Three Jalapeño Peppers

11.  ½ bottle Italian Dressing

12. 3 bay leaves

13. 4 Cups Vinegar

14. 1 Onion Sliced

15. Water to cover eggs.

Let sit three weeks in the fridge.

1st Attempt at Growing Tomatoes

Last month, I had the idea of trying to grow tomatoes, something that I have never done before, my Mom is the one who is the gardener in the family.  My wife and I were at the local Wal-Mart and saw the small little pod kits in the gardening section.  There was 12 of these pods in one kit and I picked up 1 package of tomato seeds.  The instructions were pretty clear, so before I left to go back offshore, I seeded them as the instructions stated, then I threw the rest of the seeds in the yard.   I really didn't think this would do anything but I was surprised when my wife emailed photo's of the plants.

 

These were sprouted at about 12 days, sitting in my kitchen.

The instructions that I cut from the package

I told Krishae to continue to water them as the instructions stated, hoping they would make it until I got home and she did a really good job of it, so much so that she had to remove the lid because they were getting tall.  These photos were at 19 days.

After I got home, I picked up a few small pots to transplant these into and used some Miracle Grow Potting Mix.

Now, out of the 12 pods, only 9 of them actually grew and those are the ones on the left.  The ones on the right are from the seeds that I threw in the yard.  The drain line from my air handler drains into the yard and imagine my surprise to see them growing and better than the ones we started in the house.

Years ago, my Daddy had taken some 55 gallon drums and cut them in half, he had them behind their house.  My kids and him had planted tomatoes in them and when I was looking for something to put these in, my Mom told me that they were still out at her house.

My son and I went to pick them up, we stopped at Wal-Mart, picked up more Potting Mix and some more top soil.  We mixed it up and transplanted these tomato's to the drums.  These drums already had holes drilled in the bottom of them for drainage.

I also took a few pieces of PVC pipe, drilled a few holes near the bottom and put them firmly in the ground.  My thinking on this was that as I filled them up with water, the water would get straight to the roots.

Another thing that I did on this drum is that I took a 5 gallon bucket, drilled a few holes in the bottom and the sides, put in the mix and soil.  Now when I fill it up with water, it slowly drains to feed the roots.  

Linux Ubuntu

Here is another one of my many hobbies, repairing computers, especially older ones, just basic stuff though, I am by no means an expert.  I discovered the Linux Operating System about 5 or 6 years ago and at that time I had only heard of Microsoft Windows or Apple's Mac OSX, of course Windows being the most popular.  Within the world of Linux, there are many different distributions or Distros as they are sometimes called, for example, there is the most popular one that is called Ubuntu​; some of the other ones are Fedora (Red Hat), Mint, OpenSUSE, Debian, Arch Linux, Tiny Linux, and one even called Puppy Linux.  Some of these Operating System's such as Tiny Linux or Puppy Linux are less than 512MB in size, so if you have an older PC that doesn't quite have the power to run the new Operating System's that require a lot of power, something like this is your best bet, and the most important thing that I like about these OS's is that it is all free to download.  Also, most people aren't aware of this but Android is a mobile operating system (OS) based on the Linux kernel and currently developed by Google. So, everyone with a Samsung or LG google smart phone in essence, is using a form of the Linux OS.

It has been nice to take an old desktop computer, wipe the Windows off of it and install a Linux based OS like Ubuntu.  You can get many more years out of the computer by doing this, and save money in the long run.  I recently acquired 2 old desktop computers at a garage sale and paid only $5 for each one.  I powered them up to see what is going on with them and they were just slow, really slow, running the old Windows Vista on them.  One good thing about the Linux Distributions is that when you download the OS file you can burn it to an ISO image on a DVD disc and you have created a bootable disc similar to the disc that you get when you purchase a new computer, you have to power up the computer and enter the BIOS and change the boot sequence to enable the machine to boot from the DVD tray so that when you put the disc in, it will try to boot from the DVD 1st and then the local hard drive.  The bootable disc is helpful if you want to just try the Linux system but while you have it running testing on the old computer, I am able to search the computer and retrieve the photos.  There have been many PC's that people have asked me to work on.  The number 1 thing that I am asked is if I can at least save the photo's from the affected computer, and normally I am able to help out on this.

I did a full install of Linux Ubuntu on a laptop that was giving to me by my Father-In-Law last week, I believe that laptop was maybe 3 years old and it had Windows Vista on it, the machine was very well taken care of with no hardware issues, it just had an old OS.  Since, I did that install and all of the updates which took about 30 minutes, it is working like a brand new machine.  I also acquired another laptop that is maybe 2 or 3 years old and it was an ASUS laptop.  Again, it was very well taken care of, it had Windows 7 installed on it, the only issue was that the owner needed a computer with more power for a certain program and the old ASUS just would not work correctly for him, so I left the Windows 7 installed, partitioned the hard drive, and did a dual-boot with Ubuntu and it works great so far.  Now I have 2 more working computers.  Using this system is different and I usually say that you need a little computer knowledge but it's not hard.  Most issues that I have encountered, I was able to solved simply by performing a Google search.  To re-purpose an old desktop machine and then pretty much set up it up for internet, music, and watching DVD's would be the way to go if an older person needed a basic computer.  For those people who think that using these Linux computers is just for internet only, this is not the case at all.  They are comparable to the Windows based computers as far as applications goes and I have performed some testing to see if I can really do everything that I normally do on my Mac.  So far, it's been pretty spot on.  For comparison, there is Microsoft Office which almost everyone has used and Linux has Libre Office, which will open Word, Excel, and PowerPoint; it will also save as.  I have used it and seems to work fine.  Windows uses Media Player and Linux uses VLC Media Player. There are many other programs out there that will do almost the same thing, you just have to find right one.  Of course, if your a true Microsoft Gamer, then this is not for you at all.

Now, having 2 perfectly good "newer" laptops has been much different, than using regular desktop and since I have had Oral Surgery the other day and on pain medication, this is all I have done is sit in the chair and play on the computers.  Below are some screen shots of the OS.

This is the shot of my laptop.  It uses a Unity Tool Bar on the left hand side.  System information is located in the top right.

I have been using the Linux version of Chrome for a browser.

This shot show the office package.

The "my computer" or "my docs"

My First Gun

Daddy got me this gun when I was about 8 yrs old. It is so nice to shoot still today. It's a New Haven by Mossberg .410 Bolt & still looks good. Does anyone else still have their first gun?

Religion and Faith

The Bible must be read in it’s entirety, by my Faith I believe that it is the Word of God, written by men that were inspired by God, it is not meant to be picked and chosen to push ones personal belief/opinion of a subject. A lot of folks like certain verses, like God loves them, but they don’t like the ones that says God will judge sinners. I am not talking about the Gay Marriage issue that is being debated right now, but when it talks about sinners and sin, really think about what this means, most think that there are levels of sin, a really bad sin vs a small sin, a rapist vs just a plain old liar. We can’t just pick and choose what we like and disregard the rest of it. Many have tried and this is why we have many different denominations within the Christian religion and if I over think it, it can be overwhelming. A preacher told me one time, that you just have to take your brain out of your head, hang it up on the wall, and then you will be forced to believe with your heart, the Faith that comes with knowing God. I always that thought that was so simple an analogy to use when talking with someone who over thinks everything.

With everything going on in the world today, there are some things that I know for sure and it’s what I believe. Jesus is the only way to Heaven, there is a Heaven and Hell, Good and Evil, Just and Unjust Causes, Right and Wrong; this is so ingrained in me that I stand steadfast in my beliefs and there is not anything that anyone can say to change my mind, I am who I am. I’m not going to worry too much about everyone’s opinions on everything, because in the end, I am the one responsible for my family. “Your word, Lord, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens” Psalm 119:89