Tag: MCU

How G-d Wounds And Then Heals a Teacher

by theparacleteshammer, posted in Principles, Teacher

Mistakes…..

We all make them….

Including Prophets…..

Giggle…..

That was a razz on my Prophet friends, given the tribe, when they make decisions and judgments about items, tend to have a pretty good track record of being right. Not because they are arrogant, but because they are able to extrapolate from principles and see when things are not well-put-together or well-thought-out that the rest of us miss.

Further, they have a heart for justice, and they are centrally impacted by issues of right and wrong.

And given my last post in this series finished up how G-d Wounds and then Heals a Mercy and then dealt with the same issue concerning a Prophet, I was going to start with Servant, and the King said, “no, Teacher.”

Heading In the Right Direction versus Heading In the Best Direction

Sigh….

This is my absolute favorite gift to deal with, without exception, because there is so much potential and so much that gets undersold and mislabelled with the Teacher, so much so that many do not understand themselves. They are known for keeping their heads about them and heading in the right direction, generally speaking. However, so many of them are not known for being dialed in to the best direction of many right directions, which requires some fine-tuning and callibration, that can only be accomplished with the gentle whispers of the Executing Spirit, the Holy Spirit. (Whereas sin and defilement are the violation of principles, holiness actually means “weaving principles together”, and few can tinker and dial things in as well as the Spirit-governed Teacher who leads with their human spirit.

The Teacher, universally almost as slow as the Mercy, is also very deliberate and demonstrates a preference for telling the whole story, and also has a predilection for getting the details and the account of a thing or event right.

However, unlike the Mercy, they tend toward a predilection for the old and the well-researched, as my post on that RG shows, and they often get stuck in their thoughts, whereas the Mercy tends to gets stuck in their emotions. Both gifts can appear a bit absent-minded or head-in-the-clouds, and so they each need to have a couple of close friends that see them as they truly are, and be able to reach them where they are. The Mercy tends to find this in a Prophet or another Mercy, and the Teacher tends to find this in an Exhorter, which are typical pairings for those respective gifts.

A problem with the Teacher, as with the Mercy is the issue of being in control of a situation, versus being out of control. The King will routinely give both gifts situations and circumstances that are not neat and where they do not have control, to see how they respond to those.

See Exhibit A of the Exhorter/Teacher combo: Tony Stark and James Rhodes. And the line that hits me here, is “you got your best friend back”. Rhodey was not in control during this sequence in Iron Man 2 because his suit had been hacked by the fiilm’s antagonist, and the Prophet had to fix that problem.

Again, with the lack of control. This time in Captain America: Civil War. This time, hitting much closer to home.

And then having to be faced with the reality of his circumstances.

The fight needed to be fought, and the Teacher is central to the fight. Central with their humor. Central with their anchoring presence. Central with their safety. Central with their slowness. Central with their strength to endure.

And this whole thing with paralysis sucks…..But it is his consistency that helped Tony stay grounded.

And one other Teacher….who was saved by his divided personality….

Beyond that, there is, as with all the gifts, a certain stronghold that must be dealt with, in proper order, if the Teacher is to submit to the process by which they are wounded or broken, so they can grow into the fulness of what they were designed to be.

One of the major issues with the Teacher, and an issue G-d makes with them is the question of them being in control of a situation apart from His divine empowerment.

Teachers have to get to the point where, in order to walk in fuller authority, they give up their right to know in order to control.

Rather they know intimately, in order to wash feet and be a safe place, and to break the stronghold of witchcraft and rebellion by offensively engaging with those entities directly in the spirit. Further, they must wrestle, hand-to-hand, in close quarters, and submit (think the wrestling definition of “submit an opponent”) the predator spirit that seeks to hold hostage those they love.

They have to find the way that, through the spirit, enables them to marry what they know, to the Fire of the One Who Is All Truth, and allow the Holy Sprit, who is the Spirit that Executes, not merely Sets Apart, to lead them into all truth. It is not the biblical text that leads us into all truth. It is the Spirit of Truth that leads us into all truth. Our own mind, with all its absorbed and accumulated biblical knowledge, trivia, and understanding of the truth, is not what leads us into truth. Rather, it is the Spirit of Truth alone that can rightly divide the written biblical text, and apart from Him, with Torah in hand, we will risk killing the life-giving thing G-d gave to move us into the next realm of divine understanding.

My question to the Teachers in the crowd is this:

Do you want to continue being the one that kills with your cerebrum alone, or do you want the spirit G-d has placed in you to rule over the work of your mind, marry that to the felt work of your heart, and then your reins, and together with the thoughts, allow your emotions to emerge as your heart is strangely warmed by the Holy One of Israel?”

Apart from Him, you are incapable of exegeting at all.

I do not care how much Torah you know. If you do not know Torah Himself, the Word Himself, all your supposed truth is nothing more than the Vale of Ben Hinnom.

We go into all truth and get into all truth, ONLY by the Spirit of G-d.

And trust me, it is going to look really weird, the end product, and it is going to unsettle you and those around you, but as you grow into it, you will see the King’s faithfulness, and the Exhorter Himself walking alongside you will stay with you as you undergo this healing and transformation.

It is going to take time and a process, but it can happen, and Teacher, you are worth knowing, and being more fully known, even as you so fully know so much.

The Ancient One : But you are leaving out the most important part. In order to return the stones, you have to survive.

Bruce Banner : We will, I will. I promise.

The Ancient One : I can’t risk this reality on a promise. It is the duty of the Sorcerer Supreme to protect the time stone.

Bruce Banner : Then, why the hell did Strange give it away?

The Ancient One : What did you say?

Bruce Banner : Strange, he gave it away. He gave it to Thanos.

The Ancient One : Willingly?

Bruce Banner : Yes.

The Ancient One : Why?

Bruce Banner : I have no idea. Maybe he made a mistake.

The Ancient One : Or, I did. Strange was meant to be the best of us.

Bruce Banner : So he must have done it for a reason?

The Ancient One : I fear you might be right.

Bruce Banner : [the Ancient One hands over the Time stone to Hulk]  . Thank you.

The Ancient One : I am counting on you, Bruce. We all are.

Going beyond the science and the knowledge acquired, the Teacher has GOT TO STEP INTO THE PLACE WHERE THEY PUT THEIR HEART, FAITH, AND WILL ON THE LINE, AND RISK DANGER WITH HEART AND SKIN IN THE GAME, in order to step up to the next level of who they are, which can invite circumstances that can hurt them in the process, trusting the L-rd to make them and their very, VERY tender hearts whole again. Teacher have to risk emotional exposure in order to be made more whole, bring wholeness to others around them, and to grow reality to a place where the L-rd needs it to be, embracing a potentially painful responsibility, the one thing they are supposed to do, in order to make the potential reality kinetic.

Be at peace, Teachers, for your is the most precarious of the seven gifts, I deem.

You are truly the motorcycles among the gifts. Huge payoffs and incredibly fun when the gift is done right, but also the risk of great destruction when mishandled.

Strong Coffee, Vicious Bitter Cinema: Some Reality of Fathering Through Cinema

by theparacleteshammer, posted in Principles

A few weeks ago, I posted some thoughts pertaining to Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2, and some of the cruel realities of fathering in the last 40 or so years.

I wrote the following as part of that post:

“For those of you that have not seen Guardians of the Galaxy 2, you might not understand….but for those who have, father issues are some of the hardest to deal with…and for those of us who had messed-up interactions with our fathers who refused intimacy, and who had to attempt to make do with predators as fathers, until we embraced the Father of Lights as our Father or His Son as Father, this cut and the following posted segments from GOTG 2 are for you.”

Now, my sister, Dina, had pushed back to me, when I was remarking bitterly against the dynamic of spiritual fathering typically presented by most charismatic churches, that G-d does set the lonely in families.

So, in light of that remark, I continued in that post:

“And to Yeshua, thank you for the steadfast fathering you provided.

“He sets the lonely in families…” even if those families are Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And the nature of those family units might range from place to place.

Well, there is a place in Guardians of the Galaxy 2, where Peter Quill is forced into a major fight with his father, Ego, in which one of them must kill the other. Earlier, in the prequel to this MCU film, we learn Peter’s mother died from cancer, and during the unfolding of events in the second film, Peter is drawn into the fight with his biological father because Ego was the one who implanted the tumor in his mother’s brain that killed her.

Well, throughout the film, there are a number of alternative-family themes that are presented. As we know that Gamora was the adoptive daughter of Thanos, the Mad Titan and genocidal maniac, and Rocket, the Guardians’ very-wisecracking genius raccon mechanic, was the product of experiments that resulted in him literally being ripped apart and put back together, making it difficult for him to trust anyone. So that when Rocket becomes vulnerable, it hits on things that many of us Gen-X’er’s, and beyond, have endured: Especially being thrown-away by many of our fathers, pastors, and “coverings”, which is why so many of us are suspicious of people purporting to be apostolic fathers and spiritual leaders.

It also helps show that many of us in my generation, because the Trinity Himself has sovereignly raised us, because we were fathered by G-d, there is deep compassion in many of us who survived the loss of physical family, and many of us developed hearts to father other throw-aways.

Dorothy, a friend of mine, remarked the following, and I want none of y’all to miss it, gang:

“The idiosyncratic broken-but-healing-and-unlearning-toxic-patterns found family in Guardians was the realest part of the movies, tbh. And it needed the comedy and the satire, because it hit pretty hard sometimes. We’re all in this broken scene, somewhere, however long or briefly… On a few levels, it’s about stopping and redeeming a multi-generational saga of dysfunction.

Also, it was a tiny bit cathartic to watch [Rocket] the raccoon vent so much semi-justified distrust and pain and rage in the “safe” context of a story with a happy ending. That kind of strong-coffee vicious bitterness doesn’t show up in cinema too often, but it’s very familiar.

Dorothy

My ex-spiritual father and mother did some things like this to many of us who were college-age in the early 2000’s.

The “father” preached a sermon one December evening in which he was responding to a group of us who had taken it upon ourselves, at the direction of the L-rd, to engage in territorial warfare against the major clowns that were over the college in our small town, and we were quite effective against them.

In said sermon, he remarked, and I quote, that:

“a bunch of kids were squirting at principalities with water pistols”. And he had said this in light of the reality that we refused to submit our ministry to his apostolic oversight and covering.

Further, practicing witches had infiltrated the church’s intercessory group, which was led by the “mother”, whether or not she realized it, and launched attacks against us, cursing us in a number of ways. All in all, by the time we all left the college after graduation that year, many of us were really beaten up badly. And many of us were trailed for years afterward by a network of antichrist spirits that had connected between every town where we each moved to. It made our capacity to hold jobs and buy property all but impossible. On top of that, other things were imparted to us because these believers perceived we were not submitting to their authority.

So, when you barf on me with “submit to my covering and apostolic oversight”, that’s a trigger that I am going to probably have trust issues. I don’t do covering, and I don’t mess with control or manipulation, one bit.

And when your covering proves to provide me no significant increase of spiritual protection or blessing, but rather constrains and constricts me with the threat of cursing if I don’t lick your boot or kiss your ass, then we are also going to have issues.

What follow are a few clips from Guardians that show what real fathering is like.

Once Yondu realized what Ego was doing with children, he resisted delivering Peter to Ego.

There are other places where this fathering shows up, and it provides solid impetus for us to model some level of fathering the best we can, as many kids are growing up without a solid model of earthly fathering, even if it means the only fathering we received was directly from G-d the Father; friendships with; or through books, materials, blog posts, composed by men and women with a fathering mantle.

And granted, Yondu was probably not what many people would describe as a model father, but he did intervene to protect Peter from Ego, and he did reconcile with his clan, the Ravagers, and made peace with Stakar.

There will come a time when we each have to accept the fathers in our lives, however imperfect the packaging is, and just allow them to love on us as best they each can. And I think this is why we need things like strong-coffee vicious bitterness to help us heal something deeply that we cannot possibly heal on our own, gang.

Be deeply at peace, precious friends, and know you are each loved so incredibly, and please, if you need to talk about some of these issues, my email is theparacleteshammer@gmail.com or the paracleteshammer@protonmail.com. I can also be reached on my cell at (413) 657-1887

Deep love and mercy and peace be yours.

Responding to Murray Rothbard: Free Will Vs. Control

by theparacleteshammer, posted in Five Levels of Holienss, Principles, Time

Jotting some thoughts down here…

Tom Woods, arch-libertarian and Teacher, is refreshing me on sabbatical:

He writes:

Murray Rothbard described the free market as simply “the social array of voluntary exchanges of goods and services.’ In titling one of his books Power and Market (originally intended to be the closing section of Man, Economy and State) Rothbard was positioning “power” and “market” as antinomies. The market consists of voluntary transactions between willing parties; the state, or “power,” introduces compulsion into human relations, bringing about coerced outcomes that people would not voluntarily have chosen.

Noting Rothbard’s idea, I looked back at the idea of market as akin to free will, a gift we are unilaterally and without condition given, even if we mess things up.

I look at coercion by the government as akin to the overworn concept of control.

And the conscious or unconscious desire for control leads inevitable to structures and polity that lead to destruction of what would otherwise be a genuinely, disproportionately life-giving exchange (means of exchange for goods, or good for good).

In the case of our King, He exchanges our debt for His life and adoration.

I wonder if we are missing, in our desire to crown popes, presidents, and apostles (all usual forms of control) the legitimate and requisite aspect of the divine nature of which we were each made to partake, of releasing.

Father designated seasons of release, whether sabbaths, seasons, holidays, years, or other χρόνος or καιρός moments (and yes, Greek is good and both of those concepts are good) for us, as He designed both unique and non-unique timestreams in accordance with our divers designs, for us to unpack time-relative treasures for us.

And we need to hunt for those.

Another dynamic I have considered deeply is the concept of the “starways”.

Though I cannot find another reference to the concept of the “starways” outside of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and specifically, Guardians of the Galaxy (leave it to the Ruler Thanos to make us aware of such a reality), I know that they exist and are time-connected.

Someone, or several someones, will have to begin the process of unpacking the lightyears worth of pathways traced by the stars in the κόσμος. So that we can begin to embrace how we were MADE to be released, and not merely to control or limit or make small all sorts of things.

What is our place in being released and in giving release to others?

And what is our place in being aware of the connections between His light, His lights, the path that light and those lights travel, and the journeys which we were meant to take.

Just some thoughts here.