Volume 2, #1

When God Speaks, we must learn to listen
by Mark Ganzer

Had an astonishing sequence of experiences this weekend, starting Saturday night at the tavern across the street from the church I attend. Because of my transportation issues, if I am to make it to the 8:00 a.m. service, I need to take the train into Chicago on Saturday and then out to Long Lake Saturday evening. Then hang out in Long Lake over night (and there's not much to do - EXCEPT - I went swimming in Long Lake; interesting experience. I picked a bad point of access, with no "driveway" down to the lake, just rocks. Went about four feet out, and then sank 2 1/2 feet in the silt, which was very healing. B U T ... met this young man at the bar, and the following poem is self-explanatory:

I met another Holy Man of God tonight;
and only once before had I (knowingly) met one younger
(my son, Adam James).

One does not become a Holy Man of God;
one is born to and called to being a Holy Man of God.

And there was nothing I could offer him, and yet,
he taught me two great lessons self control and pacifism.

Be still
my impulse
to confront.

Be
very
still.


The following morning in church, the first lesson came from Ephesians 4: 1-13.

Ephesians 4

Walk in Unity
1 I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, 2 with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, 3 endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you[a] all.
Spiritual Gifts


7 But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift. 8 Therefore He says:


“ When He ascended on high,
He led captivity captive,
And gave gifts to men.”[b]
9 (Now this, “He ascended”—what does it mean but that He also first[c] descended into the lower parts of the earth? 10 He who descended is also the One who ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.)
11 And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, 13 till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; 14 that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, 15 but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— 16 from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.

----------------------

Oh cut me like a knife; strike me with an iron-gloved fist:

2 with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, 3 endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

...

13 till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; 14 that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, 15 but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ

These messages were sent to me, I have no doubts, directly from heaven. It IS time now, to begin the fund-raising tours; but I must be far more humble in how I address LIFE, the daily interacting with strangers, trying to get from hither to yon, and trying to be a useful cog in the wheel of life. Stop perpetually jousting with windmills on the irrelevant; if you are going to use your “weapons” (words, personal experiences), you will win each and every debate you enter in to. Your experiences are so much deeper and your understanding so vast. Waste not your time on mice; remember the Latin expression:

Elepantus non capit murem


The Art of Leetter Writing is not (Completely) Lost!
A Beautiful Happy Birthday Greeting
by Gay Linda Ganzer-Offutt
05/18/05
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARK!
You are a wonderful son, brother, brother-inlaw, father and uncle. You are intelligent, wise, creative, and talented. You are a person that cares and cares about others. You take the time to know who you're talking to, and are interested in what others have to say. You are interesting, well informed, and passionate in your interests. You are open with you son and nephew, and offer them not only your playful side, but your peals of wisdom and experiences as well. Scott and Adam are very blessed to have you in their lives ... I am too!
You are a storytell, writer, musician and singer. You are a teacher, a student of knowledge, and have a desire to help others. You have experienced much and embrace new experiences. You are a traveller, and an adventure seeker. I have always loved to hear you speak of your trips. You describe your experiences in such a way that I always feel as if Ive been right there with you. You have a greast sense of humor, love walks at night and star gazing. You are loyal to your family and friends, and are a truth-teller. When you speak with others, you meet their eyes with yours, and give the impression that what they have to say is so important to you! You're just the greatest!!

It is my joy to honor you on your birthday

I LOVE YOU MARK
Gay

Stanford Forgiveness Project
 Carl E. Thoresen, Ph.D., Principal Investigator and Professor of Education
Psychology and Psychiatry, Stanford University
 Frederic Luskin, Ph.D., Project Director, Stanford Center for Research in 
Disease Prevention, Stanford University
Forgiveness of others and of oneself is the poignant theme that emerges as a painful end-of-life lesson for a dying man, in the best-selling book Tuesdays With Morrie by Albom (1997). Like so many of us who are deeply hurt when a friend disappoints us, Morrie had never forgiven his friend for not coming to see his wife when she was terminally ill in the hospital. Although his friend later asked for Morrie's forgiveness, explaining that he had shown his own weakness and inability to cope with illness and death, Morrie was not able to forgive him. On his deathbed Morrie realizes the pain and emotional suffering that he has carried with him throughout his life because he could not forgive his friend. Failing to reconcile unresolved anger and blame for past hurt or offense can cause immeasurable physical and emotional health problems in people's lives.
All major religious traditions and wisdoms extol the value of forgiveness. Forgiveness has been advocated for centuries as a balm for hurt and angry feelings. Yet effective means for engendering forgiveness as a way of dealing with life's problems has often been lacking. While these teachings are often based on exhortations to forgive, limited practical training is provided on how to actually forgive an offender. Professionals have observed from clinical practice that clients who were able to forgive saw improvement in psychological and sometimes physical health. Many sources suggest that forgiveness can lead to decreased anger, depression and anxiety, and stress as well as enhanced well being, including peace of mind.
Research based on controlled studies has recently shown that forgiveness training can be effective in reducing hurt and stress. The Stanford Forgiveness Project will focus on training forgiveness as a way to ameliorate the anger and distress involved in feeling hurt. This can have important implications for the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular and other chronic diseases. The need for forgiveness emerges from a body of work demonstrating harmful effects of unmanaged anger and hostility on health. In AO er .g--Kills, Williams and Williams (1993) summarized studies on harmful effects of hostility on cardiovascular health as well as on interpersonal relationships. Research has suggested that heart attack patients were often able to demonstrate less anger and hostility and thus reduce morbidity when they acted in a more forgiving way. They also reported improved overall quality of life.
In addition, increased forgiveness can be a tool for enhancing existing interpersonal relationships. An earlier Stanford study conducted by Dr. Frederic Luskin, found that young adults who felt hurt or offended made substantial improvements in reducing anger and blame and increased their willingness and confidence to use forgiveness in offensive situations. For example, the students had a 70% reduction in how much hurt they felt as well as a 20% reduction in their general experience of anger. Of note, the results of this study suggest that women may forgive more readily than men. Our new study plans to clarify those differences, and provide information for developing gender specific forgiveness training.
Through our work we have developed a unique and practical definition of forgiveness. Our definition of forgiveness holds that forgiveness consists primarily of taking less personal offense, reducing anger and the blaming of the offender, and developing increased understanding of situations that often lead to feeling hurt and angry. This study will train participants in new ways to both think and feel about interpersonal hurts. Forgiveness can be thought of as a transforming experience that fosters more positive emotions and less negative thoughts about others as well as oneself
If successful, this study could have important implications for healthcare and education. Forgiveness could be offered as part of primary as well as acute and chronic care health programs. Forgiveness holds great promise as one approach to conflict resolution and violence cessation. Programs in home and work settings could be developed and made age specific. The Stanford Forgiveness Project is supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.
If you are experiencing unresolved anger towards another person at work or in your personal life and would like to learn how to reduce interpersonal hurts and feel more at peace with yourself and others, we would like to invite you to join the program. Please call Stephanie Evans, Ph.D., Project Coordinator (650-400-5050, or email sevansgieland.stanford.edu).
The Stanford Forgiveness Project is seeking individuals between the ages of 25-49 to participate in six-week program, with meetings scheduled once a week for up to 90 minutes, beginning early in 1999 and continuing throughout the Spring. Meetings will be held on the Stanford campus or at a mid-peninsula location, towards the end of the workday for the convenience of the participants. There will be ample parking, and a $25 award for each participant on completion of the program.
Why debasement of English matters / antidotes
By George Orwell

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties.

(MG) note, Orwell gives examples in support of his statement. Concrete examples. I'm convinced.

Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements.

(MG) note - again, more examples in support of a declarative statement, an opinion supported with facts and examples. Like fresh air in spring after the house has been closed all winter.

Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, "I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so." Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

(MG) another concrete example. A second grade child can follow Orwell's meaning. Sheesh, even a true believing GOPper would understand what Orwell is saying (although, cognitive dissonance may cause the GOPper to flinch. Just because one understands does not mean that one will convert.)

While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.

The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. (MG) anyone ever consider how sincere Blush Limppaw is? Or Will O'Ridescreeds? Anthrax Cancer? When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. (MG) like a cuttle fish spurting out ink -- I'm tracking Krauthammer here In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." (MG) an opinion shared by the late Molly Ivins ... and one that ought to be shared by any and all patriotic citizens. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find -- this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify -- that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one's elbow. ...

I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. ... perhaps it is best to start by saying what [the defense of the English language] does not imply.

To begin with it has nothing to do with archaism, with the salvaging of obsolete words and turns of speech, or with the setting up of a "standard English" which must never be departed from. On the contrary, it is especially concerned with the scrapping of every word or idiom which has outworn its usefulness.

(MG) start by outlawing the "Horse Race" coverage story line of the presidential campaigns. Sheesh ... Tribune Headline, Front Page, Above the Fold WHAT OBACK MUST DO TO WIN ... and it didn't once even suggest that he win a majority of votes in the electoral college .. fancy THAT

It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one's meaning clear, or with the avoidance of Americanisms, or with having what is called a "good prose style." On the other hand, it is not concerned with fake simplicity and the attempt to make written English colloquial. Nor does it even imply in every case preferring the Saxon word to the Latin one, though it does imply using the fewest and shortest words that will cover one's meaning.


(MG) what good is having a college degree if you can't show off your big words to let everybody know you can use big words? Even if they are clueless about what you're saying. Well ... when I use big words and somebody calls me out on them ... I often get embarrassed to come up with the meaning.
What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is surrender to them. When yo think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing you probably hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose -- not simply accept -- the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impressions one's words are likely to make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never us a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

(MG) I'm gonna cut, paste, copy and put these on every mirror in every bathroom in the house. AND about the TP roll too.

These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad English, but one could not write the kind of stuff that I quoted in those five specimens at the beginning of this article.
I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought. Stuart Chase and others have come near to claiming that all abstract words are meaningless, and have used this as a pretext for advocating a kind of political quietism. Since you don't know what Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities as this, but one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
6. (MG) well it's a one, a two, a three what are we all fighting for? We the people got caught .. caught up in the emotions of 9/11, the fear of the DC sniper attacks, and the anthrax attack ... fear is the lock ... parse every freaking political speech, every supercilious political op-ed column ... lies, lies, lies and more lies in your face ... resist the lies

One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase -- some jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse -- into the dustbin, where it belongs.
Selected Poems – Mark Ganzer

The mirror beckons.
I heed its call.
I dare to look.
My eyes burn.
My heart blackens.
My mind is repulsed.
No generosity of spirit
No sense of fair play
An exploiter
Woe is me.

Okay. Get over it Mark. Forgive yourself, and start treating people more fairly in your financial dealings. Sheesh, quit pretending to live a life in your own head. It's WAY to limiting a space, and not really all that interesting.

All thanks to You, Allah, for opening my eyes
For Your tender mercies,
For Your Kindness, Compassion
For Your Loving Forgiveness
For the insights You Grant even unto me
the least worthy of all your creatures

What could I do for my dying brother, to let him know? I know what I'll do. I'll write. And write him I did.
And I wrote from the heart
And I wrote from the soul
I did not know how well I wrote
It just made me whole

Allah, grant that we might find political leaders
Who will use the power of their office
To help make our country a better country,
To help make our world a more peaceful world,
To help uplift the downtrodden,
To help ensure peace for our children's children's,
And for our children's children's children
Unto all the generations.

Oh Most Magnificent,
Oh Most Merciful
Oh Most Wise
If it be Thy Will.

Today, hell hath no power o'er me
and the world holds no attraction.

MEDITATION ON FEAR & BELIEF

There are some days, sadly few,
but recently more frequently occurring,
when I seem to breech the barrier built by humankind,
ever thicker and ever higher, which prevents us
from sensing the touch and guiding hand of the divine.


But these past few days I've felt, aye, e’en seen,
the hand of the Creator, gently on my shoulder,
guiding me in His pathways.
I do not resist.
I am open to all possibilities.

It was always thus, I believe.
It was always thus, I fear.

In the child's soft fresh openness to the universe,
I believe,
having watched my son grow in wonderment,
grow in delight, and grow in love,
the presence of the Divine surrounds, and glows;
sings beauteous melodies and choral anthems --
the lullaby of the cricket,
the woodpecker's wake up knock,
the call of the gently flowing stream,
the power and grandeur of the lightning bolt.

It was always thus, I believe.
It was always thus, I fear.

I believe for I have seen God's glowing love
reflected in my son's mirthful eyes.

I fear for I remember not my own childhood's wonderment.

I believe, for no other explanation fits the facts --
and this is good.

I fear, for no other explanation fits the facts --
and this is not good --
that I once held the universe in a grain of sand
in my small child hand
and cannot remember.

I believe, for to not believe means
that death conquers all.
And greedily, for to not believe means
that death conquers all.

At one time, I must have known that
love is, was and ever will be the answer.

At one time, I must have chosen to forget that
love is, was and ever will be the answer.

Aye, the world's pleasures and temptations o’er came me.

I believer, I fear.
I fear I believe -- for reasons all wrong.

And to believe for reasons all wrong means
that death conquers all.

And yet,
There are days
When I breach the barrier
And feel the touch of the Divine guiding me.
And I am open, to all possibilities.

I believe, I fear.
I fear, I believe.

And since I cannot reconcile these outliers,
I choose instead
the middle path.

I choose to hope.
To hope to be a follower of The Way.
........Monday, August 28, 2006
........After a weekend in God's country where
........an alien, I was not.