David C. Alves's Blog, page 9

Review of “House on the Borderland” by Hodgson

The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hard to decide if this is fantasy, horror, or romance (in the classical sense). Hodgson has really written a stunning tale of supernatural power and human madness.

Once you are introduced to the house in the garden and to the mystical happenings surrounding the house and the pit, you are wondering just what kind of mind you’re in.

A tale within a tale well worth reading. Somewhat dated, but not worse for that if you happen to like nineteenth century literature (and I do). Having read this, I’ll be scouting around for some more of Hodgson.

House on the Borderland would fit nicely beside Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland: Or the Transformation. I recommend BOTH books.

Let me know what you think.

View all my reviews

Filed under: Books, FOR READERS

When Will Doctors Really Heal?

More people die of the supposed cure than from the disease. Think of all the commercials you’ve seen that have some drug that claims to treat a symptom/sickness. It shows how wonderful life will be once you get your doctor to prescribe their product (drug/medicine). Then comes the aweful   truth. _______ can also cause, stroke, heart attack, blindness, hallucinations in nursing mothers, hair loss, and chronic, choking cough.

My response has always been: “Honey, would you please write down the name of this drug so I can get my doctor to write me a prescription right away?”

Think about it:

The entire medical-industrial complex is set up to diagnose pathology . . . we spend nearly 20 percent of our gross national product on healthcare, yet we continually rank amongst the lowest of any Western country on all health indicators. We would do much better to focus on health and prevention rather than post-symptomatic diagnosis of diseases such as prostate problems.

–Dr. David Browstein

I get the sense that many doctors may want to heal their patients, but most doctors are simply pushers for the drug companies–either from honest ignorance, unquestioned compliance to their medical education, or from willful collaboration. And the drug companies can only stay in business if you and I remain chronically sick. Their bottom line is not helped if we don’t need our symptoms treated with their drugs because our doctors actually healed us of the need for them.

I wish I could be less cynical, but I’ve lived long enough, visited enough sick people in hospitals and officiated at enough gravesides that I can reliably conclude that the prescribed treatment of allopathic medicine (which is drug/medicine-based) is worse than the condition it seeks to mask.

What I’d like to call for is doctors who will be honest enough with themselves and others to care enough about their patients to not just mask symptoms, but to identify and treat causes in natural ways that do not further the fortunes of drug company executives and stockholders.

Filed under: Consider It, Health and Wellness

Advent Christian Pastoral Ministry: Irrelevance or Life from the Heart?

From my Writing Journal:

2/13/2013

The following is a quote from the book Seasons of the Soul: Stages of Spiritual Development, by Bruce Demarest:

“The challenge facing young Christians is to live from the heart more intentionally, more reflectively, and more prayerfully.”

Many of us Advent Christian pastors are retiring. We long to see young leaders step forward and take the baton. Unfortunately, the very values that they need to succeed, we have not modeled well.

We need to be willing to risk. Stepping outside the box is not high on the priority list for pastors who are playing it safe and preserving ineffective (and often unbiblical) expressions of church life. And truth be known, we have all done this. We need to be more deliberate about escaping busyness, spending alone time with the Lord, being Marys not Marthas, and valuing solitude and quiet.

The values and actions of the previous paragraph are counter-cultural qualities that are absolutely necessary to effective ministry as we continue to move into the 21st century. We must fear the staus quo and traditionalism more than we fear change or we will become irrelevant and our churches will continue to close. Unless we embrace what God is trying to work into the church, we will become irrelevant after all these years of ministry. I do not want to stand before the Lord and hear: “Safely done, my fearful and faithless servant.” I’d prefer the “Well done . . . “

We still have time.

Before we older pastors pass the baton, we need to recognize and oppose our religious enculturation. Get quiet. Get alone. Be with him much. Deaccumulate, simplify, “live from the heart more intentionally, more reflectively, and more prayerfully”. Prioritize these values and disciplines, allow younger men to see us doing it, and we will leave a Kingdom legacy.

Filed under: Journal Entries, LIFE COACHING, ON THE JOURNEY

The 8 Biggest Problems People Voice

[I have revised and updated this post from a couple of years ago.]

Are your problems like other peoples’ problems?

Have you ever thought to yourself that you were the ONLY one concerned about . . . (name it).

Let’s take a few minutes and look at the 8 biggest problems people face (whether they know it or not). See where you fall out in comparison.

This is not a scientific study**. These are my personal reflections over three decades of serving people. As a busy, involved Life Coach I get lots of questions from clients, friends, and family. They all center around the following eight concerns:

1. Relational Issues. Human beings are relational. Those who aren’t are considered abnormal, and for good reason . . . they are. Men relate to women, women to men, children relate to parents, people to employers, teachers, and government. Everything in life revolves around relationship. Why are so many so bad at them? Relational equilibrium is what Life Coaches help to establish. People sometimes need a new or different perspective on their old habits of relating that aren’t working for them. Perhaps they need a new mental window to look through when they’re communicating with others.

If you want to see shallow, superficial relationships and attempts at “love,” just watch some of the contemporary reality TV programs. The problem with watching them of course is that they have nothing to teach you. Unless you learn from them that relationships need to be other-oriented rather than selfish and self-serving. Who would want a “friend” like some of the people you see on the “Bachelorette” or “Jersey Shore?” I’m hoping these aren’t the new “reality.” If they are, we should add a ninth problem to our list: Shallow Reality TV.

2. Fear of Running Out of Money. Will the money last? Will I have a job tomorrow? Most people are concerned about their income, especially the lack of income. They are concerned about expenses. He says, “She shops like there’s no tomorrow. She can’t possibly wear all the shoes she owns!” She says,  ”He thinks a boat is more important than renovating our bedroom or kitchen. If it were up to him, I wouldn’t have anything.”

Some have more than enough but worry that they’ll lose it. Others have just enough to squeak by today but are not sure about tomorrow. Some say they don’t care . . . and among those are the truly content and the obviously deluded.  Life and death, sickness and health are tied up in these issues. FREE ADVICE: The best place to be in regard to finances is completely out of debt.

3. Health Issues. What happens if I get sick? How will we get by? OR I’m so tired of hospitals and doctors. I’m sick of sickness! How can I keep myself healthy? Many are deeply in debt through no fault of their own and see no way out. Many folks I talk with are ignorant of healthy nutrition. Others have begun to take seriously the way our food in America is raised and processed (for a real education watch the documentary Food, Inc.–you can stream it on Netflix). They are opting in on organic produce and fruits, grass-fed cattle, and free-range foul. Some worry about their health future. There are solutions that do not involve medical insurance. More and more believers I know are taking advantage of group sharing programs like Samaritan Ministries (for those who are disciples of Jesus).

4. Anxiety over Finding or Losing Loved ones. Am I lovable? Will someone care for me? Am I worth caring about? Am I perfect enough? Can I find mister/ms right? Will I ever find someone like . . . ? Love is at the center of most relationships. All but the most dysfunctional people care deeply about finding, keeping, and losing love. Yet no two people can agree upon what “true love” is. Some say there’s no such thing . . . and they have enough broken relationships to prove it. Relational issues in families, between families have escalated since the late sixties, early seventies. I’m not a sociologist, so I can’t give you the reasons for this. What I can say is that the majority of people I speak with or coach desire whole, functional relationships. Others don’t want to pay the price to change. They want the OTHER person to change. Our difficulties are always easier to blame on someone else when we’re too immature to take responsibility for the way we relate.

Abandonment, rejection, and loneliness have attacked every one of us through some relationship. Good reason exists for us all to be love-shy. Yet, people who can’t or won’t love will remain incomplete and dysfunctional. Love is after all what our Creator says we were created for. All the negative experiences are the result, not of love, but of SELF-love.

5. Religious Questions. Is there a God? Or is this life all there is? Are we alone in the Universe? What if there is a God and I’m wrong? Do I end up in Hell or Heaven? What are the requirements? Who’s right? Muslims? Jews? Buddhists? Hindus? What’s the big deal about Jesus? Why are Christians so insistent on Him for everybody? Do we really need religion? These are not problems for some, but for those who deeply examine their lives, they have to come to terms with whether they want to live a Tea Bag Philosophy of life or encounter and relate to the One who claims to be Creator, and lover of their soul. The reason Jesus is such a big deal, the reason that every known religion has had to come to terms with Him is because He claimed a relationship with God as Father. Then he rose from the dead and was seen by over 500 credible witnesses. His followers number in the 10′s of millions. Like Him, they claim that God has “revealed” Himself to them. They experience fellowship with their Father-God. Other religions make claims as well, but of a very different sort. None claims that their God is the God who is Love. No other God has demonstrated that love by reaching out to human beings to bring them into his Household. For this reason, and many others, I’m a Christian spiritual formation Life Coach.

6. Concerns about Death. What happens when I die? Of course, the obvious answer is “You’re dead. It won’t matter to you.” Don’t we just die, go into the ground, and float around as a spirit looking to hang out in a place that was special to us? Most of the cultural views regarding death are based upon a misinformed Epistemology–Most people are clueless about immortality, death, the grave, and what happens after (including, and sometimes most especially, religious people). You can change that. You can know what happens when you die. That’s why beyond the grave books are such hot sellers. That’s why Life Coaches, who also deal with spiritual formation, can bring clarity to many of these issues.

7. Global War. Aren’t we headed toward destruction of the world? Why can’t we just all live together? Why can’t we live at peace? For the same reason that people struggle with so many of these life questions. Most people look only on the surface and refuse to see the invisible, underlying realities that shape our existence. I guess they feel that they can’t impact those unseen things. So now combine misplaced Epistomology with a misplaced Anthropology. War is the result of men who are unsatisfied with what they have (greed) OR of men who think that they have to institute their religious laws on everyone else (religious legalistic totalitarianism). By the way, Christians to not believe they must institute religious laws on everyone. Quite the opposite. They fulfill and satisfied the law in their relationship to Jesus Christ. What do Imean? Take a week and read, then reread The New Testament in the Bible. Then you’ll understand.

Think long and hard over these two causes (greed and religious law) before you’re tempted to move on. The lust of man, the pride of life, and the desires that he can’t control all drive him to take what is not his or want what is someone else’s. He wants to control, to enforce his will upon others. No god offered by other religions encourages freedom or liberty. They can’t. They want to control. The One True God–Yahweh–is the God of freedom and love. A person adopted as His child, is truly free and beloved.

8. Concerns about the Future. What should I do with my life? Where are things headed? Scores of questions abound regarding the future–what it holds, how people are to face it, perhaps leverage it. The future is big business too. So naturally people wonder if it’s OK to seek out fortune tellers, palm readers, psychics, and other practitioners of divination. As a Christian spiritual formation Life Coach, I share God’s view regarding those practices. They open people to demonization by seeking future information from supernatural sources–which God has expressly forbidden (not because He’s a Blue Meanie–but for our safety). I explain that two sources are available for believers to KNOW their intended future, including preparing for unforeseen events. But that’s another post.

The eight biggest problems people voice to me seem to cover most things human. The specifics change, but the concerns seem to group together under one of the eight–relational issues, fear of running out of money, health issues, anxiety over finding or losing loved ones, religious questions, concerns about death, global war, and concerns about the future.

QUESTION: Can you think of any BIG problems I’ve overlooked?

©2011, David C Alves

Follow @davidcalves

**MY RESEARCH: Just to give you some context to why I know something about this topic: I’m speaking from tens of thousands of conversations for over twenty-six years as a Life Coach. The questions and concerns people bring to me tend to be repetitive. I also speak as someone who has weathered bankruptcy and am now completely out of dept. I have been divorced and have been happily married now for 32 years in my second marriage. I was lost and have been found. I was rejected and am accepted. I have defeated panic attack disorder and quit smoking and drinking decades ago. All this just to say, I’m not someone who can’t empathize with the people I coach. Character and wisdom come from weathering life’s storms, caring for others, being teachable, and taking sound counsel.

Related articles

Life Coaching Tips (womanby1design.wordpress.com)
Why I Despise “Religion” (davidcalves.com)
One2One Life and Parenting Coaching, LLC offers Free Parent and Life Coaching Consultations for Palm Beach County Residents (prweb.com)
Lust, Love, or TRUE Love? (davidcalves.com)


Filed under: Bits and Pieces, Consider It, LIFE COACHING

Judge Jeanine on the Benghazi-gate Coverup “FACTS”

Judge Jeanine sat as a Judge for decades. She can tell a lie from the truth. She will not be fooled by the propaganda disseminated from the Obama Administration and State Department.

I posted this for those who want the TRUTH, not talking points.

Listen to a Judge REVIEW  THE FACTS:

Filed under: Consider It, In the News, Videos

God’s View on Benghazi Matters Most

Jeremiah 23:23–24 (NIV)

23 “Am I only a God nearby,” declares the Lord, “and not a God far away? 24 Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them?” declares the Lord. “Do not I fill heaven and earth?” declares the Lord.

I admit that for some–ON BOTH SIDES of the political isle–Benghazi is about politics. But not for God.

And not for many loyal, godly citizens–ON BOTH SIDES politically. Those of us who love truth and who love what is right, are not satisfied with the political posturing of either party. And we do not agree that Benghazi is “old news.” Nor will we stand by and allow it to be hidden or swept away. We stand with the Lord and with the families who demand the truth.

The past Secretary of State showed her insensitivity to truth by sweeping the lives of four Americans under her already lumpy carpet. According to God’s revealed will, the lies spun by the Administration and State Department over four human beings–sacrificed to political expediency–are unacceptable to God.

It’s time for everyone to get a clue, that God is not fooled by lies, whitewashes, and political deflection. To here there is no such thing as “cover-up.” He sees it all!

“What difference does it make” Madame Secretary? Here’s the difference . . . 

You may fool and deceive the people, but . . . what if one of these coffins had YOUR daughter in it? Would the lies and cover-up still be “old news?” Would it be unimportant to get to the bottom of the failures in order to correct the way we handle international security?

What if a Republican or Libertarian Administration were covering up and lying? Would it make a difference then? Do you think the Obama/Clinton Media would be covering it then? Or would they drop it as “old news”? Is there any genuine integrity left in Washington? Where are the real statesmen and women? Where are the real journalists . . . who will not allow themselves to be mesmerized by either the left or the right?

Ecclesiastes 12:14 (NIV)

14 For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.

Filed under: Bits and Pieces, Consider It, In the News, Signs of the Times

What’s Wrong with Lucy’s Worldview?

Linus really gets how Lucy emotes (as opposed to reasons). Unfortunately, Linus can’t have a real conversation. It’s practically impossible. There is no firm, reasonable starting place because Lucy will not admit the inconsistencies in her thinking. Her worldview, based on emotion, cannot allow for reasonable honesty. So rather than laugh at her inconsistency and be willing to reevaluate and alter her view, Lucy has to bully, name-call, and shame her friend.

BOTH extremes–Right and Left in our country–operate this way.

My hope is that God will heal our nation–that Lucy & Linus will get tired of the polarization that separates them and find ways to listen to one another. My fear is that it’s too late. Lucy likes bullying and controlling Linus. And Linus won’t give up his freedom to her control.

Peanuts dialog (c)2013, Dixon Diaz; except “Peanuts” characters are (c) United Features Syndicate

Filed under: Abortion, Bits and Pieces, Consider It, humor, In the News, Islamization, Signs of the Times

Word of Warning to Politicians and National Leaders

A Word of warning to the politicians–ON ALL SIDES–who whisper, lie, and cover up. Be warned you who think that you will never be held to account:

Psalm 2:10–12 (NIV)

10 Therefore, you kings, be wise; be warned, you rulers of the earth. 11 Serve the Lord with fear and celebrate his rule with trembling. 12 Kiss his son, or he will be angry and your way will lead to your destruction, for his wrath can flare up in a moment. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

Be certain:

Proverbs 17:13 (NIV)

13 Evil will never leave the house of one who pays back evil for good.

Proverbs 6:16–19 (NIV)

16 There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: 17 haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood [think here abortion & infanticide too], 18 a heart that devises wicked schemes [think cover-ups too], feet that are quick to rush into evil, 19 a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.

Proverbs 15:31 (NIV)

31 Whoever heeds life-giving correction will be at home among the wise.

Ecclesiastes 4:13 (NIV)

13 Better a poor but wise youth than an old but foolish king who no longer knows how to heed a warning.

Be warned, the mouth of the Lord has spoken!

Filed under: Abortion, Consider It, In the News, Signs of the Times

Dancing in the Light

Reblogged from Marcy's Walk:

A couple years ago a friend gifted me with a small plastic penguin with a solar panel on its stomach. When the penguin was placed in the light, it danced. A few weeks ago I noticed that even though the penguin had not been moved from its place in front of the south-facing window in my kitchen, it was no longer dancing.

Read more… 887 more words

I couldn't help but post Marcy's insight this week. It's really a valuable nugget for the journey. Hope you'll enjoy reading her posts as much as I do.

Place a Ban on Facebook?

Should Facebook members be regulated? Should a ban be placed upon Facebook itself?

Facebook is a tool when it is used as it was intended. Facebook is a weapon when used in ways there were never intended. But is this a reason to ban Facebook? Or should Facebook require background checks on all it members, past and future?

Recently, I have been quite ill. And my wife has posted requests for friends to pray for me. I have appreciated that many friends have responded positively to pray for me. This is an example of a positive use of Facebook (if you believe in prayer, as we do). It harms no one and invites community. I have been surrounded by a believing community to hold my needs up before our mutual Father. Whether one believes in prayer or not, he can see the value of such a rallying point for those who do.

One the other side–Facebook as weapon. I have read the articles and heard the TV news stories of those who have been libeled and bullied through negative community. Various evil people have used their words and photos to inflict damage by impuning the character or behavior or looks or whatever of others. This is an example of the negative use of Facebook.

So, to your mind, what’s the problem? Facebook? or People?

And how do you make application to the idea of good men and women with guns, verses bad men and women with guns? Are guns really the issue? Doesn’t evil always find a “way around?”

QUESTION: What do you think?

©2013, David C Alves

Follow @davidcalves

Filed under: Signs of the Times