A Little Salt - And the World Comes to Walmart

Mike Phelps is famous for his pre-competition scowl.

When Team Jackson has a BBQ, several traditions are honored. One is the Admonition To Avoid Burning the Bacon. Grandson Alex delivers that warning each time, sometimes with great emotion, simply because I burnt the bacon to ashes one (1) time. I asked him, "Why do you protect the bacon with such energy?" He said, "Because bacon is life." We bought him bacon band-aids, which he enjoys using.

He also likes to salt his own selection of meat. He uses generous amounts of salt and tosses some over his shoulder each time. His sister, now almost done with college, asked why he did that. "The Jewish people tossed salt over their shoulders for luck."

Josephine smiled and said, "I think they counted on more than salt for luck."

Latest Saturday Morning Meeting

We have so much fun getting together. I drove LI to the latest Walmart meeting. Mike Phelps spoke about saving water when brushing our teeth! I was thinking, "What about swimming pools, Mike?"

Rod Rosenstein and Rachel Brand in DC. She joined Walmart recently and interviewed Rob Lowe at the latest WM meeting. Rod's and Rachel's names may be mentioned again in the next few weeks: FISA.

 Rob Lowe maintained his smirky look while Brand interviewed him deadpan. She said, "You're looking good," and the audience began laughing about her termporary thaw and adlib.

We still laugh at the pastor from the Alcoholism Capital of America (Appleton) calling this area - Podunkville - in his fake blog. The whole world comes here, so we just sit in the 4,000 seat auditorium (usually the second row) and watch.

"Wie die Armen muessen leiden, Ja?"
"Ja."

From 2016 - Some Significant Church Historians. PS - Metaxas

James Hastings Nichols - History of Christianity - free copy:
Church Historian, Academic Dean, Princeton University
student of Roland Bainton.

We visited Princeton in 1972, in time to enjoy hurricane weather. The New Jersey town was beautiful enough to be a museum by itself, and the campus was very attractive from the outside. Many buildings had that dank, crumbling atmosphere that comes with the Ivy League.

I was directed to the office of James Hastings Nichols. A request for a great church history book reminded me of this. He was required reading in the field, the editor of the journal Church History, and the academic dean. He was very kindly, always assuming I would be accepted - Never "if you come here," but "When you come here..."

The Princeton staff was warm and welcoming, always bragging about professors who had Yale degrees. I thought, "Maybe I should start there." Strangely enough, I did.

Roland Bainton was on the divinity campus often and lectured for special occasions, the year we arrived in the Fall of 1972. In the 1980s he offered to xerox some pages from his book on Yale, to help me with my dissertation at Notre Dame.

Bainton was famous for the telling details in his books and lectures. While others bore us to death with enormous studies that never omit a single detail from their research, Bainton would offer a narrative that combined understanding with a picture. His study of 20 languages showed that learning a new language was no barrier to his research.

Nichols showed that narrative ability, mentioning in his textbook that the first slave ship to land in America was named Jesus.

George Hunsinger, Princeton, 
exposed the Marxist sympathies of Karl Barth.

Speaking of Princeton, one of their current professors is George Hunsinger, whom we met at Yale when he was a graduate student and his wife was at the Yale Medical Library - where I worked.

He was in our apartment, telling us stories about their experiences in Germany. He wrote a book that every admirer of Barth and Fuller Seminary should read.

Karl Barth and Radical Politics shows how the "red pastor of Safenwill" worked with the Communists to spread their propaganda.

I know Evangelicals who explode like the Fourth of July - or more appropriately, like Guy Fawkes Day - when I mention Barth's extreme apostasy and love for Marxism.

Barth is responsible for Fuller Seminary's abandonment of their inerrancy stance (which was pretty weak to begin with) and remains their official and beloved theologian.

Another study of Barth, buried in my library at the moment, describes his enormous insecurity at becoming a theology professor without any graduate study. His able-bodied mistress - Charlotte Kirschbaum - prepared the research for him and likely wrote most of his Dogmatics (as claimed by Frank Fiorenza, former president of the Barth Society, my professor at ND, now at Harvard).

But this is yet another important detail about Barth, which supports the idea of Kirschbaum writing most of his famous work (the fine print) with the professor writing only the outline (the large print).
Barth had graduate students and associates look over this drafts. Some added lengthy clarifications, which Barth simply copied into the final draft without attribution.

Fuller seems to have spawned a whole generation of plagiarizing apostates like Barth. WELS has made plagiarism a virtue, practiced with this motto - "Why re-invent the wheel?" They have group sermons they copy from a private server and steal Craig Groeschel material, slogans, and graphics without attribution, as shown by the Appleton Alcoholics.

 Eric Metaxas, Yale graduate, wrote a fine study of Martin Luther, which is selling very well. Most of the Christian world appreciates Luther more than the Lutherans do.

 By their own admission - No.
They are Halle Pietists who despise Luther's Biblical doctrine.

Butterfly Garden - New Addition. Mailman - "Best Roses I Ever Grew After Reading Your Creation Gardening Book!"

Ruby Spice Clethra - Summersweet.
 

When we dug up one Big Leafy Weed (Hidden Lily), we had an empty space to fill. I looked at various options locally and those on sale at Springhill (no shipping!). The free shipping had me hypnotized because that opened up the options without adding a big cost.

I concluded - this is for the butterfly garden, which is stocked with the best butterfly plants and a prize mega-comfrey plant - always in bloom, always a haven for pollinators. The Summersweets have already impressed me in the main rose garden, because I catch their Cinnabon aroma all the time. One more in the bee and butterfly garden would make our yard a Butterfly Destination.

Mrs. Ichabod asked, "How will you know when it has become a destination for butterflies?" I said, "When I go out for the mail and I am covered with butterflies showing their gratitude."

Books by Norma A. Boeckler

Mailman's Roses - Courtesy Creation Gardening

I was making adjustments in watering the rose garden when the mailman stopped and got out of his mini-truck. He commented about our October drought and added, "I now have the best roses ever, thanks to your book. I convinced my wife we needed to prune and now they are beautiful!"

Earlier I gave him two copies of Creation Gardening. His adult daugher was allowed to borrow one from him, if she gave it back.

Herman Otten complains about his UOJ seminary - Concordia, St. Louis - not teaching Biblical Creation. Creation Gardening is my third, but not last, Creation book. I am being shun-banned by Otten because I teach Justification by Faith, as the Holy Spirit does in the Scriptures - even Paul does. But what is the witness of the Holy Spirit compared to the ravings of CFW, Bishop Stephan's pimp and enabler?

Otten's supporters all teach Justification without Faith, so why does he complain about the natural results of rationalistic Halle Pietism? Howes, one of his UOJists wrote about Election in the Formula of Concord, with an icon of CFW Walther on the cover. Even John Sparky Brenner has to admit that Walther's Election without Grace is just another part of Justification without Faith.

LCMS co-produced this Book of Concord with ELCA's Timothy Wengert, one of their premier gay activists.

 The Missouri sect only has problems with Justification by Faith. 
Everything else is A-OK!