Watch for Signs

Watch for Signs

“In 18 months I’m turning over the keys.”

A legitimate successor to him might not qualify.

Perhaps the chief thinks himself free

The Constitutional succession mandate to mollify.

What is his mind’s detection?

What really is he thinking?

Should he think the “wrong” person win election,

An executive order for his continuance could be his linking.

The signs of the times require watching,

For progressive power never wants to relinquish

Its ubiquitous control without botching

Individual freedoms to extinguish.

One day later a third-term he muses

To foreign masses who don’t care.

Patting himself on the back he chooses

Another constitutional brush he might dare.

Be on guard and prepare, you domestic "subjects."

Your freedoms already usurped.

Ruled six years by ideological sects,

Washington, Jefferson, and Henry silenced by left-loud chirps.

Which branch of the tree is now most reviled?

Nine split needing only five?

Their “subjects” they ignore, with law they beguile,

Or the impotent house and one hundred incapable to revive?

There was a countdown

In the “Seven Days in May.”

James Mattoon Scott forced to mount down.

For the twenty January days in 2017, a new order could be in play.

There’s Nothing Wrong with “Me”

There’s Nothing Wrong with “Me”

There’s really nothing wrong with “me.”

And frankly it’s just sad

The way some people leave “me” out

As if I’m wrong or bad.

Instead they use my cousin, “I”

Where he does not belong.

He’s simply not objective case. My

Goodness, that’s just wrong.

“Please contact Jane or I today”

Is said by more than some.

They’d never say, “Please contact I.”

They’d know that that sounds dumb.

There is one truth we all should face,

One truth we all should see:

For compounds in objective case

There’s nothing wrong with “me”!

This poem was composed by English Professor and novelist J.N. Sullivan.

Theologia Ecclesia Corruptionem

Theologia Ecclesia Corruptionem

They met in a hot summer’s fortnight

Beneath the Wasatch peak

Constructing a self-serving foresight

Enlightened solely by political thought and speak.

Tossed the tradition of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,

Not to mention that of David and Jesus,

Their new religion now makeup

To them “An easier gospel to please us.”

As was to the ecclesia in Galatia,

But not astonished at their post-modern desertion,

Worshiping not Him but Crustacea,

A new gospel is the zeitgeist’s insertion.

Stunned at your turning to a new gospel,

Incomprehensible that you walked from Grace,

Not that there is another ark in the hostel,

Like Marcion your faith a vacuous space.

From whom do you seek approval

And why is your denial so fervent?

The richness of faith your intended removal,

It is man, not Christ, you are servant.

New Book "From My Father's House" by J.N. Sullivan

Woody Norman and ARCHDEACON BOOKS announce the publication of a new novel by J.N. Sullivan.

Link to CreateSpace eStore

Link to Amazon

Coming soon in Kindle edition

Purchase my Cabaniss biography with a discount

Click Link below to go to Amazon's CreateSpace eStore

Cabaniss Book - use discount code

Then click ADD TO CART,

Next, you will be asked to open/create a CreateSpace account.
Enter discount code VNWVZQ9X and save almost $4.00 on the list price.

The High Horse

The High Horse

Berating those who disagree,

With perceived self-insight

Of the highest degree,

Loathes he any opposition with all might.

When speaking to followers of the way,

He chastises their beliefs, of course,

Keeping criticism of the prophet at bay,

While seated regally on his own high horse.

“Detruncations and any violence you should expect.

Your crusades a despicable volition.

It is pass time for that sect

To play out its true core and mission.”

Only with inner municipiorum he sees

Identity with those the majority he thinks oppresses.

But to prophet he prays on his knees,

At the way he explicitly down dresses.

When other varia are killed or suffer,

When national protectors downed,

Ignores them he, creating a buffer,

Not to tilt his anointed crown.

Redefining lone lupus triumphs,

While hugging the mater proditionem,

Showing contempt for traditional roots, he trumps

The nation's heart and soul with ad hominem.

“I am the new way of thinking,

My purpose to cleanse the nation.

Purging history, and it linking

To radical and complete transformation.”

American Friends of the Czech Republic

The Summer 2015 Newsletter of the AMERICAN FRIENDS OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC contains a brief article about U.S. Ambassador William Jelks Cabaniss, Jr. and my biography of him.

The article and picture are on page 6.

Click here to see (and download) The Summer 2015 Newsletter of the AFoCR

Click here to purchase the paperback edition of WILLIAM JELKS CABANISS, Jr.

and

Click here to purchase the Kindle eBook edition of WILLIAM JELKS CABANISS, JR.

Jesus and Muslims

They other day I downloaded an eBook by Fouad (pronounced 'fwad') Masri. The book is so wonderful and effective I looked up Masri on YouTube and found several of his videos.

If you have 30 minutes, watch this one video and then download the book. Masri is speaking at Ozark Christian College in this video - his talk is preceded by a short presentation about Muslims over the past 20 years.

Click these links below:

Ambassadors to Muslims

Fouad Masri speaking at Ozark Christian College

The Fall

The Fall

It was time to check out

After shopping in the store.

In the lane I turned about

And promptly crashed to the floor.

Usually I push the cart,

This time I was a contrarian

And in narrow space made a quick dart

A move not good for a septuagenarian.

With loss of all control

I could but let the flow carry on

Bracing not parts but the body whole

Descending with force to the concrete lawn.

It took only one second or two

For my steadiness to leave,

Lay on my side not knowing what next to do,

Standing I could not achieve.

Looking up, on her knees she beside me,

“Are you alright?” her petition.

“I’m not sure, I could be.”

She made me to talk to her, that was her mission.

A cold bottle of water she gave me to drink,

She wasn’t going to leave me undone.

More questions she asked made me talk and think,

While the store manager dialed 9-1-1.

“Are you married, and for how many years?”

I told her a half century one month after March,

Almost thirty years for her was near.

I was then beginning to feel parched.

“I want to stand up, will someone help me?”

The store manager suggested I stay on the floor,

That lady still talking and still on her knee,

As eight paramedics came in through the door.

They checked all my vitals

And questioned me a lot,

They suggested the ER,

I said “I’d rather not.”

Upon my release

I returned to my cart,

To pay for my groceries,

I needed to complete my transaction part.

I asked the cashier,

“Where’s the lady on her knees?”

I wanted to thank her.

She had disappeared in a breeze.

Making sure I not faint,

She unknown, a perfect stranger.

Her attention was of a saint,

Her mission, a caring angel.

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson

How different now is it

From Thomas Jefferson’s day?

What aberrant political skit

Is presently in play?

Tom’s enemies abundant,

From Hamilton to John Adams.

His love for political order constant,

Endless pursuit of harmony he fathomed.

His ways and means paradoxical

His peers appear wiser, George the smartest,

Tom’s mercurial enterprises clear and more logical,

When we see his natural vocation as artist.

Politics to him not a dispiriting distraction,

An avenue making almost anything possible.

Never a man of inaction,

A creative impulse for the plausible.

Personal and political contradictions

Notwithstanding, a brief dynasty enduring,

He generated an executive legacy of successful convictions

With Madison, Monroe, Jackson, and Van Buren.

Religious freedom superior to state-defined civil rights, ABC says to Parliament

I find this English Parliament contribution by the Archbishop of Canterbury to be quite interesting. To me it is surprising. It is not a timid statement, nor is it ambiguous.

Archbishop Addresses Religious Liberty in Parliament

The Crushing

The Crushing

After rowing and wading

Through years of litigation

The virtue in new life began fading,

And the shameless saturated our nation.

Coldness and indifference the new norm,

Legal rights and privileges Supreme.

Only selected lives now allowed to form,

Crushing the unwanted not seen as extreme.

When was the point made pivotal,

When did conscience lose its mooring?

Revulsion of the biblical, cynical,

And unfettered freedom then went soaring.

“Do not tell me what to do,

I am the captain of me.

I can crush whatever I choose.

That 7-2 decision set me free!”

At our ancestral founding

Creation was honored and accepted.

Now in affluence the crushing compounding,

With no borders, boundaries expected.

In recent, hubris within the Supreme Five

Reverse rendered positive law

What the natural makes thrive,

Catering to the unnatural, from the natural they claw.

Now more than six years progressive

The nation torn apart,

Becoming increasingly repressive

And guided by a marxist chart.

No boundaries, no borders

No limits to follow,

Removing our history is in order,

Leaving America utterly hollow.

Jeremiah 31:31-34

Jeremiah 31:31-34

My bride is you,

The House of the North,

And the House of the South.

A newer pact with you I now bring forth.

My new agreement is an eternal act,

Something intended in My original law,

Broken by both ancestors’ tract:

The letter, not the heart, they held in awe.

Those were the days past.

The new law I now impart,

An agreement to last,

Because I write it on your heart.

No more teaching about Me to your neighbor,

No more approaching your brother.

For in the future there will be no labor:

I will forgive your iniquity, and sin I will smother.

On the River Jordan

On the River Jordan

He appeared to them

Cloaked in camel’s hair.

A good news message, he brought a gem,

To turnaround and escape despair.

They came from the City of Peace

And its greater region from afar,

A flood of people never cease

Drenching in the river looking up at the star.

Overwhelmed by his power

To forgive all their sin,

Quickly denied he being that flower,

But revealed the true Forgiver was kin.

“I prepare you for change through water,

I make way for Him who will come.

For you He will go to the slaughter,

The Son of the Father He is from.”

“He Who is to come is mightier than I.

But to the world He will become a scandal,

I unworthy to stoop down and untie,

The straps of His sandals.”

“I baptized Him in the Jordan,

An act in cosmic reverse.

Adornments of glory fell like a cordon,

The great heavenly blessing, not a curse.”

Woody Norman publications

Links to Woody Norman publications

Woody Norman LLC website

Woody Norman's Amazon Author's Page

Waiting

Waiting

“It is difficult to accept that politics, like history itself,

Is a never-ending process in which nothing is ever definitely over.”

Václav Havel

Paris, October 27, 1992

                                                                                                                  

At one end of the great wide spectrum

Some waited for Godot,

As their saving welcome

To freedom from bondage, at minimum a furlough.

This kind of continual waiting

In bondage one learns to cope.

But the idea of Godot is baiting

A falsehood killing hope.

The opposite end of the spectrum

Lives a waiting of another kind.

It is a longing and vocation that beckons

The practice of patience in the heart and mind.

Certain types of waiting have no meaning,

Those of hopelessness and personal inaction

Plant nothing but false leaning,

Wishing for some reversing traction.

The breadth of life requires understanding,

World, Being, and History move on their own.

Impatience makes no mark on their processes,

Patient waiting slowly tarries, sometimes with a groan.

Rational plans move forward

Envision Utopia, a well-documented plan.

Enlightenment thought notwithstanding,

Incapable of controlling and to fully understand.

The art of patient waiting is something to be learned,

Like sowing a seed and watering the land.

There is nothing that impatience could turn

Life’s processes rapidly around and as grand.

1958 School Desegregation in Norfolk City Schools

In an earlier post today I wrote about the passing of Andrew Heidelberg, I wish now to place more detail about the context of that period of history.

Over the years many of my fellow 1962 graduates of Norview High School have kept in touch. Thanks to emails, the Internet and such, communication among us has been fairly easy. Due to this technology those fellow graduates who remained in the Tidewater area throughout their adult lives planned our 50th class reunion. That reunion was well-attended.

Andrew was unable to attend. He was missed and so were many others. In all there were 17 African Americans who entered previously all-white schools in 1958: the three high schools (Granby, Norview, and Maury) and several junior high schools.

From one perspective, the 17 were social test cases. From another point of view, the white students, teachers, and parents were test cases. It was painful for everyone, but for the 17 it was also dangerous. Few knew what might happen, and bad things did happen. Some of the seventeen dropped out and returned to their original schools. Andrew Heidelberg was one of those who stayed.

Though Andrew may have trembled in silent fear, his outward appearance was strong: not defiant, but strong and confident. Quickly he became friends with many. Likewise, many did not hold him in any high regard. These were some of the signs of that era. Many of us 14-year-olds at that time wanted to make good of an unwanted and potentially violent situation.

In 1959 when the closed schools were re-opened by a federal court order, the Norview campus was crowded not only with students but with the press. I, among others, was interviewed by some reporter.Pictures of that day can be viewed on Google Images.

Andrew wrote about his high school experience in a book (see link below). He pursued a successful career as a banker and late in life he began a masters degree program at Old Dominion University. In his book he told of his walk to school and his thoughts while approach the campus in February, He also wrote of his football friends especially on a football game trip to play EC Glass in Lynchburg. His football buddies ate with him in the kitchen of a restaurant because Andrew was not allowed to eat in the public dining area.

History was made that February and Andrew went on to be the engaging personality eliciting the best hopes from his white fellow students. Finally in his senior year he was allowed to play football and became a hero. He was fast. After graduation he played for Norfolk State.

I joined the United States Marine Corps just days after high school graduation. In my final year in the USMC I was stationed at Quantico, Virginia. I was a military musician in the band at Quantico. One day in 1966 there was a college sporting event on base. After playing the national anthem the band marched off the field returning to our barracks. On the march - I was on the left column when I spotted Andrew walking to the athletic field with his NSC teammates. I yelled out his name. He looked into the ranks of the band but could not find his caller.

In 2012 when talking to Andrew on the telephone I asked him if he remembered. A couple of years earlier I had emailed him about the same. He did. I wrote about that moment in my first book (see below).

Andrew Heidelberg, in my opinion, was the face of the history-making Norfolk 17.

Andrew Heidelberg's book

Woody Norman's book

Remembering Andrew Heidelberg

Remembering Andrew Heidelberg

Life was quite different in the year 1958,

Not a century since the end of the war.

‘Separate but equal’ had been law of the land,

The 1954 court declared its 1896 decision lore.

Suddenly change became rapid and real,

And certain states declined to accept.

The Old Dominion was one such commonwealth

Closing certain schools reacting to the ruling dealt.

Instead of us entering Norview High

As a freshman with the world’s promises ahead,

The governor shut down all those selected schools,

The start of that school year appeared dead.

Seven African American students

Assigned to the school,

Were thrust into political spotlight,

Though probably necessary, an awful and unwanted tool.

Andrew, the six, and all others near

Were denied their schooling rights that fall.

But the 1958 school year

Did not stop, but came to a crawl.

Pad locks and door blocks

On the school were fixed,

Because of a certain way of thinking,

That races could not mix.

Alternative schooling took root very fast,

Some churches acted quickly seen as their task.

The Feds and the Dominion worked on a solution,

And in February 1959 schools re-opened with no diminution.

It was rough new day for Andrew and the six,

Walking to school with some trepidation.

Their hearts beat fast

With anxiety, yet with hopeful anticipation.

Not all went smoothly

The four years of school,

But successful in the long,

Would prove the rule.

Andrew died just the other day,

After the Fourth of July

In the year 2015,

A grand old man with whom many identify.

Rest in Peace, Andrew.

 Class of 1962

Norview High School

Norfolk, Virginia

Charlottesville Television Report on Heidelberg death and legacy

A Prophet Without Honor and His Apostolate

A Prophet Without Honor and His Apostolate

He departed from where He was

With fishermen to His hometown.

Teaching on the Sabbath was His cause,

Unexpected amazement by the crowd to His sound.

Though He not a stranger, people overwhelmed by His skill,

How did such wisdom come from His soul?

Only a carpenter, His miracles brought chills

And offended those who thought Him too bold.

No prophet, He certainly knew, is honored at home

By neighbors and family in their unbelief.

He lay His hands on His own

People, to those sick He brings relief.

He went on to other villages and about,

Sending His fishermen out by two

With authority to rout

Impure spirits they knew.

Before their departure

Instructions He gave:

“No bread, no bag, no money,

Enter a house, stay and be brave.”

“To those who offer no welcome,

Nor listen with love,

Shake the dust off you feet,

But leave the spirit of the dove.”

To others the fishermen did preach

To new believers whose lives repent.

Out drove they the demons each,

Anointing sick people, then on to others they went.

Taken from Mark 6:1-13

Arrogance of Supremacy

Arrogance of Supremacy

Of the branch in itself,

The five were a majority.

To render Caesar’s particular ruling,

They lacked cosmic authority.

As a delegated power

From the Creator’s own hand,

Its power intentionally limited

To stability in their land.

But usurpation of the Eternal’s

Planned breath for living,

An arrogance coded journal

Superseded Creation’s giving.

A rump court at best

With no precedence basis,

Changed world history none the less,

Hide on the high bench iconostasis.

We struggle not against flesh and blood,

But against rulers, powers, and authorities.

And so the dark world spreads like a flood,

When only five constitute a majority.

Fourth of July 2015

Purging for Purity

It’s the year twenty fifteen

On the Fourth of July,

Revelers holding in esteem

Their freedom and honorable defenders who died.

Internal detractors’

Minds distorted about history,

Giving no thought to many factors,

Create anti-monuments to be shrouded in future mystery.

There was a period

Not long ago,

When Bolsheviks deadly serious,

Forged an ugly human low.

History was banished,

A new dictionary born,

Making levels of human classes,

Minor ranks to be mourned.

In their own self-righteousness,

Those communists moved on,

Eliminating history and people

Not meeting their imposed norm.

Some in this universe continue to assert

Their disdain for Yahweh’s Chosen.

In vitriolic rhetoric they flirt

With destroying their enemy in a nuclear explosion.

“There was no holocaust” they insist.

History re-cast, they urge

The State of the Chosen to vaporize into mist.

“No remembrance, let’s purge!”

America now on the tipping point,

She could fall either way.

Her social structure forced out of joint,

Dare the chips fall where they may?

Where are America’s true thinkers, defenders, and believers?

After Virtue is gone, a disquieting suggestion:

The charlatans and deceivers

Will gather remaining pieces and lead by deception.

When Victory Is Not Enough

When Victory Is Not Enough

Things could have been different

Had a certain grace been in play,

When some spat on in victory

A sacerdote that day.

In exuberance of celebration

Through a mandate of a few,

They gloried a perceived new nation,

Collecting what they deemed due.

Not enough to claim victory

And move on in life,

Sticks of intellectual hickory,

On their enemy they swipe.

The sacerdote in passing

Accepted spit in his face;

Though an object of trashing,

Silently he radiated His grace.

This is not the first time

When retribution was employed.

Remember when Thaddeus and Georges,

Wanted their enemies destroyed?

Thaddeus loathed his southern cousins

During four years of strife;

Even after his victory,

He twisted more his knife.

Had compassion taken hold

Of his heart and his mind,

Perhaps something bold,

Could have converted the blind.

Georges's enmity toward

His eastern border,

Thwarted any possibility

Of a redeemed new world order.

Instead of forgiveness

He piled on the guilt,

In hope of destroying his neighbor

While grasping the hilt.

Charleston appeared a flash in reversal

Of payback, hatred and retribution.

Forgiveness and love was their constant rehearsal

Mother Emanuel’s church expressed the solution.

But haters and loathers

Took over later on,

Shouting shame to grace encroachers

With all sharp tongues they don.