SAINT THERESA OF AVILA'S SPIRITUAL WISDOM

The words of St. Theresa of Avila encapsulate the unexpected fruit to be found in disease and despair. Helplessness of incurable illness, such as mine, can carry a hidden blessing in our brokenness. Do not overlook this.

PLANNED PARENTHOOD SCANDALS CONTINUE

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw2xi9mhmuo

PLANNED PARENTHOOD AND RACE: MINORITIES R US

DEMOCRATS VALUE SOME CHILDREN. OTHERS? NO SO MUCH.

WESLEY J. SMITH ON THE "DESPERATELY SPINNING PLANNED PARENTHOOD'S UGLINESS"

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/421598/desperatel-spinning-planned-parenthoods-ugliness-wesley-j-smith?D7JDQ6qsjcrBLyZs.01

Wesley J. Smith

See Wesley J. Smith's excellent article under the title "Desperately Spinning Planned Parenthood's Ugliness" in the 24 July 2015 online edition of the National Review online. 
Link above.

PLANNED PARENTHOOD: FRANKENSTEIN REVISITED

Dr. Deborah Nucatola

If good can come from evil, perhaps we are seeing it with the Planned Parenthood sting video showing the Senior Director of their medical services, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, offering to sell part parts of aborted children people posing as potential buyers. Planned Parenthood is usually a media darling, but this egregious violation of ethics seems too much for most of the mainstream media to stomach.

The following editorial cartoon appeared in the 15 July 2015 Waco Tribune Herald. It's not the New York Times or USA today, but neither is it the scandal being brushed under the proverbial carpet. People of good will can use this opportunity to expose the barbaric activities of Planned Parenthood and their racist, eugenic history. (See previous blog post: "Planned Parenthood harvesting fetal organs only latest chapter in their dark history" http://www.humanlifematters.org/2015/07/planned-parenthoods-harvesting-fetal.html

PLANNED PARENTHOOD'S HARVESTING FETAL ORGANS ONLY LATEST CHAPTER IN THEIR DARK HISTORY

There's an old saying that says "A catchy slogan can stifle rational thought for 50 years". And that's the story with Planned Parenthood. They have a great name an a catchy slogan "Every child a wanted child". In actual fact, Planned Parenthood is a horrible organization with an equally horrible past.

We all can agree that every child should be wanted -- but you don't kill children to get it. Planned Parenthood would not agree. They are prepared to kill unborn children to achieve that goal; they have been doing that through abortion by the millions for decades. We still have unwanted pregnancies.  

Planned Parenthood may say every child should be wanted, I say every child is wanted. Countless childless couples would love to adopt the children Planned Parenthood aborts. Planned Parenthood kills unborn babies (for money) then strip the organs from their bodies (for money). Remember, this infernal organization also receives 100s of millions of dollars from state and federal governments. Planned Parenthood is a darling of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.[1]

[Click on image below of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjxwVuozMnU for Medical Director of Planned Parenthood admitting to selling fetal organs.

___________________________________
[1] See Barack Obama's addresses to Planned Parenthood Gala https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laYQ2DDFmCg & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUl99id2SvM. See Hillary Clinton addressing Planned Parenthood gala and speaking glowingly about its racist founder and eugenics advocate Margaret Sanger at  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4o4WizW2mQ

For more about Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood and their dark connections to eugenic history aimed at black genocide see "MAAFS 21 - Black Genocide in 21 Century America [a documentary on eugenics and genocide]" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eWxCRReTV4 . This excellent and exhaustive documentary is nearly 2.5 hours long but is worth your commitment of time to watch. It's an astounding eye opener. 

You will find specific references to Hillary Clinton's racist hero

Margaret Sanger and the odious history of Planned Parenthood throughout the documentary. Of special note of times: 20:42-22:10; 32:25-34:22, 35:25-38:24, 44:24-45:14, 1:02:28-56; 1:04:30-1:06:26; 1:06:48-1:10:17, 1:19:07-30, 1:26:25-1:27:01. See Margaret Sanger's speech to the KU-KLUX-KLAN at 37:29-37:55. See Margaret Sanger's attempts to neutralize church's opposition to birth control and abortion at 1:27:24-1:28:16. Hear Richard Nixon's comments about aborting "little black bastards" at 1:28:29-1:30:22. Complicity with eugenics, abortion and Planned Parenthood involves both Republicans and Democrats: 1:32:33-1:36:10. The connection between government and Planned Parenthood and black genocide through funding, see 1:37:16-1:39:08.  

TRADITIONAL FAMILY VICTORY AT THE U.N.

Center For Family & Human
Rights Rights President
Austin Ruse

I received an email this morning from the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam) at the United  Nations in New York. C-Fam President Austin Ruse addressed a resolution supporting the traditional family that was passed by a UN Council for human rights. Apparently sex activists at the UN were not pleased.[1]  Ruse wrote:

"The pro-family resolution that passed recently at the UN Human Rights Council is the gift that keeps on giving. We report today on the angry response from the sex activists. Did I say they were angry? Read for yourself. They hate the family because it is “oppressive and patriarchal.”  Totalitarians throughout history have always tried to destroy the family because the family is the best and most natural protector of the innocence of children. The sex activists can’t abide that. They want at our children." 

For defenders of the traditional family, we can celebrate this small victory for the traditional family. We must be vigilant and resolutely defend what we believe, not only for our children and grandchildren but posterity. 

Thank you Austin Ruse for your tireless work for faith and family.
___________________________________

[1] To read more on this story see "Sex Activists bemoan passage of pro-family Resolution at UN in Geneva" https://c-fam.org/friday_fax/sex-activists-bemoan-passage-of-pro-family-resolution-at-un-in-geneva/

CHIEF DANGERS TO CHRISTIANITY

William Booth (1829-1912) founded the Salvation Army. His prophetic words speak volumes. As individuals and nations we must return to fundamental truths that lie at the foundation of Christianity. 

LEGACY OF FAITH AND VALUES

COMPLETE ABANDON TO CHRIST AND THE PURPOSE OF OUR EXISTENCE

Pope Benedict XVI

At the beginning of his papacy, by Pope Benedict XVI’s 2005 homily for the Mass Imposition of the Pallium and Conferral of The Fisherman’s Ring For the Beginning Of The Petrine Ministry Of the Bishop Of Rome, His Holiness said:

 “There is nothing more beautiful than to be surprised by the Gospel, by the encounter with Christ.” The Pope continued, “Only when we meet the living God in Christ do we know what life is. We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.”

This fundamental truth lies at the heart of human existence. So why do so many people resist surrendering their lives to Christ? The Pope addressed this too:

“If we let Christ enter fully into our lives, if we open ourselves totally to him, are we not afraid that He might take something away from us? Are we not perhaps afraid to give up something significant, something unique, something that makes life so beautiful?”

We fear change. We fear losing control of our lives if we surrender to Christ. We fear where He might take us. We are comfortable with what we know and fear what we do not know. Like the story of the rich young ruler, Jesus might ask us to give up our worldly comforts ─ that which gives us security, status or pleasure ─ and follow Him. The Bible tells us that Christ is the way, the Truth and the Life. But the way is narrow and Truth demanding. 

Bishop Fulton Sheen told us that many people are afraid to make Truth personal, intimate and incarnate because they know it may involve a Golgotha. Indeed it may. The Truth will set you free but not before it breaks your heart. 

And yet it is broken hearts that are most pliable and discerning to that “still small voice” and will of God. Proud hearts refuse to kneel or bend, stone hearts cannot understand, feel or weep.  God can not use either. 

Atheists slam shut and bolt the doors of their lives to any possibility of an encounter with Christ.  Many lukewarm believers would rather leave the door of faith slightly ajar than throw it wide open in complete abandon to Christ. 

But it is only in that state of complete abandon that the Redeemer reveals the reason for our existence. That is when we discover a surprising irony: In our spiritual surrender and abandon we discover liberation and freedom.

I know it may seem strange that a man confined to an electric wheelchair would write about liberation and freedom.  Stranger still, I will tell you that it was because of that decrepit physical state that my spiritual state began to mature.  

It was from within the confines of serious disability that a fuller understanding came to me of what liberation and freedom in Christ really means. It took the torments and humiliations associated with neurological dysfunction to smash my insidious Pride and illusions of self-sufficiency. It was a sea of tears that eventually turned my stone heart back to flesh.  

We need a broken heart to understand the critical necessity of pure and undefiled religion worthy of our interior being. Christianity that is reduced to academic study is dead. A living Christ awaits entry into human hearts; He does not want understanding, he wants his love for us to be returned.  He wants us to love him with complete abandon for that is how He loved us.  Jesus calls us to a perfect union of lover and loved. There is nothing more beautiful, for this is why we were created.

   

At the center of human existence lies a desire to love more perfectly and lastingly than is humanly possible. We are incapable of giving or receiving such perfect love. And so the desire remains unsatisfied and eventually recedes to a dull and remote longing.  Encountering the living Christ reawakens the possibility of possessing and giving perfect love. But it cannot be fully given or received without surrendering to Christ with complete abandon.

Suffering can be seen through the lens of faith as serving the goal of perfect love by detaching the sufferer from things of the world that can distract us from seeking God’s perfect love. It is crucial we not get distracted. Christ’s perfect love will reveal to us the reason and purpose for our existence. -- Mark

[Clink on image below or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjR_A2pGPrY for "In Christ Alone" by Travis Cottrel (5:20)]

U.N. SPONSORED FUN AT A HAITIAN ORPHANAGE

The orphanage where my wife and daughter were serving had a water-fight! Believe it or not a U.N. truck pulled up to the orphanage with water, balloons, sponges, and buckets. This was serious fun. 

There's good times in having an old-fashioned water-fight on a sweltering hot day (42 degrees C). 

Gotcha!

Grandma LaRee watched all the antics with a shy little orphan. The children at the orphanage had silly fun while being cooled down. Special thanks to kind-hearted United Nations workers!

ABORTION: SOMETIMES THE WORST LIE IS SILENCE

http://abort67.co.uk/facts/dare_to_see_the_truth

WARNING! The link above is to actual video of abortions. It is shocking and gruesome.  

For the most part, abortion has been kept behind closed doors hiding its cruel inhumanity. Keeping the gruesome reality of abortion out of sight has allowed unspeakable violence against the most vulnerable members of the human family for more than 40 years. Every so often photographs of abortion's carnage comes out into the open to howls of protests by its purveyors. Sometimes the truth is ugly. Sometimes the worst lie is silence. But as long as the barbarity of abortion is suppressed, the barbarity will continue. I post the link above knowing it will offend some people. So be it. It shows the horror occurring behind closed doors thousands of times each day in abortion clinics across North America. 

Abortion is the choice to kill a baby forming in the womb. Think before you click on the link. 

PRO-CHOICE? SOME CHOICE!

Either way, the next time you hear someone glibly say they are "pro-choice" ... notice they do not complete their own sentence -- they are too deceitful and dishonest to complete it on their own. They are in favor of the choice to kill unwanted or inconvenient babies in utero. They say a woman has freedom of her own body ... but there is another body at stake quite separate from her's that may lose its right to life so that she has the right to chose. 

BLOB OF TISSUE

If you look at the bloody video of dismembered limbs, heads and dead bodies of babies, remember the abortion advocates' terrible and diabolical lie throughout the years that it's just a blob of tissue. They appeal to wicked logic of darkness and present it as though enlightened. They promote a lie and suppress the truth.

PRETENDING SCIENCE 
DOESN'T KNOW WHEN LIFE BEGINS?

When you hear abortion advocates pose the ridiculous dated old question, "When does life begin?", please understand that they are either woefully ignorant, failed freshman biology or are trying to quell the biologically established truth that a new human life begins when sperm penetrates egg. At no point of pregnancy is the unborn child potential life, it is always actual life. This is not a matter of taste, opinion or metaphysical contention, it is plain scientific evidence, a known fact. We knew this long before Roe v Wade, and scientists stated it many times since to governments -- only to fall on deaf ears. 

"Biologically, at no stage can we subscribe to the view

that the fetus is merely and appendage of the mother.

Genetically, mother and baby are separate individuals 

from conception. Physiologically, we must accept 

that the conceptus is, in very large measure.

in charge of the pregnancy."

Dr. Albert Liley

Professor of perinatal physiology, 

Women's Hospital, Auckland in

U.S. Congressional testimony, April, 1981

LEGAL AND JUDICIAL BIGOTRY


When you hear people say that life in the womb is not a person remember that is only a legal definition -- judicial bigotry cloaked in legal vestments. At one time or another Blacks, women, Jews, and now unborn children, have all been denied recognition of their legal personhood. 

"Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny."

Edmond Burke

UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHTS

If universal human rights really do exist then they must apply to

U.S. Supreme Court

every human life. That what the word universal means. Human rights begin when human life begins. The right to life is inalienable. Human beings may be robbed of their inalienable right to be alive but it is a crime against a moral law despite what any legislature or court may say. 

"Life is a continuous spectrum that begins in 

utero and ends at death. The bands of that spectrum

are designated by words such as fetus, infant,

child, adolescent and adult."

Dr. Bernard Nathanson

in the New England Journal

 of Medicine, 1974

The right to life is the first and highest right because all other rights depend upon this first right. Without the right to life guaranteed and protected, all other rights become arbitrary and uncertain. When the historic cultural taboo was crossed to systematic kill one segment of the human family at will, it coarsening conscience.[1] We must stop the killing those waiting to be born. No  life is despensable.

"If life begins at conception -- and there 

has never really been any doubt about

 that -- then abortion is murder."

Dr. C. Everett Koop

Pediatric Surgeon &

U.S. Surgeon General (1982-1989)

Canadian Supreme Court

There is something wrong with a Supreme Court that maintains or allows the legal fiction that any person has the right to have another killed because they are inconvenient or unwanted and protect the killer (the abortionist). There is something wrong with legislators in Canada and America who refuse to enact laws that value, protect and care for every human life. They are cowards, corrupted more by fear of the press and not being re-elected, than doing what is right.  

Do not refer to abortionists as abortion providers as though they are provide a service. They are baby killers who should have their medical licences revoked. They should be jailed and their clinics shut down. Abortionists are the seedy bottom feeders sniffing around the edges of society and should be treated as such.

The women and unborn children they prey must be helped to make life-affirming choices where nobody dies. True liberty is never found in the death of an innocent.  

It is by embracing all human life in a spirit of love that we can finally turn from abortion's dark December skies to the warmth of sunlit uplands in a new Spring for life. Make your voice heard. Sometimes the worst lie is silence.

Mark

________________________
[1] That is why euthanasia and assisted suicide are not the cultural anathema they once were. 

NEW LOVE: DAY 3 - GRANDMA LAREE AND THE ORPHANS

This post gives an update on my wife LaRee and daughter's mission trip to Haiti. 

Yesterday, temperatures reached 42 Celsius (about 104 degrees Fahrenheit). For readers in southern U.S. or other hot areas that may be nothing but for my Canadian wife it was oppressive and the high humidity added to her misery. 

LaRee shows orphans
sewing principles

Never one to shy away from her responsibilities, LaRee soldiered on and taught sewing to children at a Christian orphanage and school. 

I've peppered this post with photos of

The orphans will learn to
clothe themselves & develop a
marketable skill

yesterday. If the text seems disjointed, it's because, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. The children love sewing! LaRee says they have amazing attention spans, taking in everything she has to teach. Their minds are like sponges soaking in all LaRee presents.

LaRee helps a student with a pattern

Sewing involves more than just sewing as any seamstress will attest. It involves planning, math, drafting, following a pattern, cutting, pinning, understanding dimensions and dynamics of different fabrics.  

After the sewing classes were over for the day, it was time for fun. They celebrated Canada Day (July 1st) with fun and games. Laughter was abundant and joy infectious.

LaRee takes the hand\
a hatless little orphan

The littlest orphan was running about without a hat at the Canada Day party in the sweltering sun. She is a little girl of about three years of age who was suffering from malnutrition when she was brought to the orphanage a number of months ago.  LaRee wrote and said,

LaRee pours water
over the child
to cool her down

Ah, relief!

"This little girl was outside in 42.8 in the sun celebrating Canada Day. Her hat was nowhere to be found. I took one look at her little head covered in teeny tiny braids and could see the perspiration dripping. I  took her by the hand and started to wet her head down. She was absolutely elated and so was I, just to watch the expression on her face!" 

The children love Grandma LaRee and she has fallen in love with them. 

LaRee when at home
in Canada

LaRee said she would like to bring them all home to Canada to safe and wholesome grandmotherly nurture. And if we had the resources, I have no doubt LaRee would build a big house where we all could live as a family, rich in arts and crafts and saturated in Christian love where Jesus Christ is Lord.

Sweet fantasy, isn't it? But is it? If you read my previous post, the fantasy will become a reality for at least one small child. Our daughter and son-in-law are adopting a Haitian orphan. That child will be an orphan no more. Our family awaits with home and hearth and new love.

When LaRee's stay at the orphanage ends, she will never forget her children back in Haiti. And they will not forget her. She will leave them with something to remember: Love abides even in separation.

[Click on image below or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSATOECyIYw for "God Loves You", Jaci Velasquez. (3:36)]

WAITING FOR MY HAITIAN GRANDCHILD

My last blog post dealt with my wife LaRee teaching sewing to

Grandma LaRee teaches
sewing to orphans in Haiti

children at an orphanage in Haiti. Yes, she giving of her talents to the orphaned or abandoned children but she is getting so much back: Simple humanity despite abject poverty responding to the grandmotherly love of LaRee. 

LaRee told me today that Christ's presence is almost palpable but Satan is sniffing and prowling around the perimeters too. The spiritual stakes are horribly high -- for nothing less than the minds and souls of children. Pray for the children, the orphanage, LaRee and my daughter. They come together in faith to create a chain of a larger Christian community leading the children to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. 

LaRee is also gaining perspective of the environment from which our next grandchild will come. Our daughter and son-in-law are in the process of adopting a Haitian orphan from a different orphanage. They will envelope the child with the love of a mom and dad and siblings. A family and a happy home -- who could ask for anymore! Of course, Grandma LaRee and I will be there to encourage, love and adore all our grandchildren. 

Knowing my daughter -- an evangelical Christian -- she will keep her Haitian-Canadian child well connected with the a black community that's rooted in Christian faith. The family of God expands connections and interconnectedness just you can see below. 

My daughter and son-in-law live three hours away. When Grandma LaRee and I visit them we'll attend church with them. This spastic old white grandfather will be dancing -- granted from the waist up in my wheelchair -- toddler on my lap, thoroughly embarrassing my teenage grandchildren. Hey, when in Rome ... go with the flow gramps!  (Actually, if I was in Rome, I'd be at the Vatican in Saint Peter's Square or participating in Eucharistic centered worship.) 

At any rate, Click on image below or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk_1ZE7Rwcg&list=RDPk_1ZE7Rwcg for "I'm Not Tired Yet" by the Mississippi Mass Choir and soloist Mosie (Mama) Burks. Although the entire performance is 15 minutes and enjoyable, I direct you to the first 7.10. A foreshadow of things to come? I hope so. Grandpa's still got a lot of love and nurturing to give. I'm Not tired Yet. Whether Evangelical or Catholic, may Jesus Christ be praised!