Missing?

If God can dump what some call wisdom on this 70 year old, foul, ignorant, stubborn and deluded human, all of us are potentially gifted with spiritual ears. It would seem that this is the way God impacts our world (google Jacob Boehme), one set of ears at a time. Such a slow God plan has to have a slow impact in terms of actual numbers. So many of us, for one reason or another, missed or are now missing the bus. Does God not care for those of us without a ticket?

If one claims to believe in God, a caring God, a God of order, a God with a plan, one has to believe in the unlimited seating of eternity. To believe otherwise, is to be less than a God believer. That one is only a cold religion believer.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Adult Theology

The Christian philosophers are stuck. They shall remain stuck as long as their God motive is goodness, where is it, what is it? The good God is a misnomer. We were told the minute we jumped out of the cradle, now, be good little boys and girls. Goodness to some means obedience. We have shaped our God, our theology and our philosophy to fit our human reality. Is God humanlike? Shall we define God with trite human life patterns?

The Godless philosophers tell us there is no God and ours is a completely natural world governed only by mathematics. Maybe, maybe not. Following their advice means we live only for the moment. Suppose there is another alternative? Suppose our God definition is slightly off kilter. God’s motive for our created order has to be something other or something bigger than just goodness. Goodness is always crushed in our world.

Maybe, God has created a world that teaches us about what God most clearly respects, freedom. The time has come for an adult theology, a masculine theology that is rooted in the competitive world we came from and not the Platonic bedtime stories that seemed appropriate 2500 years ago. God is freedom, total freedom, freedom is good. We are here in our now to experience freedom or the lack of freedom.

We learn best about God freedom when we don’t have it. Therefore, evil is a necessary evil in our world. We are slow learners, stubborn idiots who think that life is about gathering up all the available goodies, even when there are none to be had. We religious humans of every flavor tie up our Gods in neat humanlike packages where there is no God freedom. Grow up all "ye" God thinkers.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

justice

The uglier this your world may be, the grander the intensity of your eternity.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Dated

Could suffering be the God appointed, redemptive thing?

William Dembski, Christian Theology, p. 48. Quoted by William Hasker, The Triumph of God over Evil, 2008, p. 108.

“I frankly doubt that a static, dull, monotonously perfect world is what God had in mind in creating our world. The world that God originally had in mind is the world we in fact inhabit, a messy world filled with tragedy, comedy, romance, and adventure. There never was any other world.”

There is no other choice nor has there ever been another choice. There was no Garden of Eden. Suffering is normal. Therefore our world is good “as is”, suffering is the plan. Religion will tell you otherwise, they say that, somehow, suffering is always your fault. Religion is always dated.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

  

Heaven

What is heaven you ask? Heaven is the land of no regrets and no surprises. Heaven is the bucket list of every experience of every human that has ever seen the face of this our earth. Heaven is that much multiplied a trillion times. Put that on the internet, “oh ye of little faith”! Amen!

So why wait?  God delays the inevitable reality of heaven for us because you and I, every one of us, has an ever so small contribution (testimony) to make in our short time in this our world. Every contribution is a possible door to heavenly things to be experienced by others in this world. There is a method to God's madness. The goal is to change us, all of us, in this world and not to bring heaven to earth. Ours earth shall remain an "as is" world that fits the purposes of God. Tarry on my brother.  

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca. 

Rabbit Hole

Things were looking bleak. Almost all of my days seemed wasted and wondering, in and out, bobbing and weaving through life without a clear focus. The future was of little concern, tomorrow would take care of tomorrow. Well, not exactly, maybe that summary is a bit skewed or a gross oversimplification. True confession, maybe I was just scared. No maybe’s about it, I was scared but didn’t want anybody to know it, least of all me. Maybe, that is how most of us live our lives.

Then one day in 2012, at age 67, I bought a house. Focus had arrived. No longer was the world and my place in it an overwhelming concern. No longer was the weight of the world seemingly on my shoulders. There was only one concern, all by myself, it was me and my house against the world, nothing else mattered. Why then or why now? Why a house? Who knows? My wife Karen used to say in times like these, no one knows the answer but “the stars and their courses”. There is a reason for everything but some things will ever be a mystery.

Therein lies our frustration. Life is so unpredictable and confusing, so much so that the life that you and I have been given is simply gory. We are told by some voices that the where or when of our being deposited into this world matters little but our experience tells us that most times it matters a whole lot. The contradiction is grotesque. In some worlds there are no good choices.

Sooner or later we have to engage the facts of life, life is about dying. Choosing about how we should live is about choosing how we shall die. That big picture is the search for meaning that has always been and ever will be a life and death issue. We shall discover meaning in this life when we stare down the rabbit hole of death, regardless of our history, and then look upward. All the other stuff about living is mere window dressing.  

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca. 

 

Hallelujah

God allows gross evil in our world because God wants us to experience freedom. Perfect freedom not perfect goodness, is who God is. Knowing or experiencing freedom means that we have to experience, first, the lack of freedom, better called evil. Thus we have to experience wars, the Holocaust or the killing of Charlie Kirk. Evil is an unavoidable consequence resulting from a world that is lacking a freedom priority. Is the search for freedom an adequate justification for evil? 

One would think not. However, all earthly evil, when properly understood and experienced, gives us, at best, only a shallow dive into true freedom. In this world the race is on requiring a shallow racing dive that just skims the surface of freedom. We have only a few undetermined years to run our race. 

The deep dive into freedom and what we understand to be God, that Perfect Freedom, one day we shall all experience as the deep dive. 

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

 

Hope

Hope is a bus ticket. Hope is God given permission to travel on. Hope is a window seat. Hope is protesting the pain. Hope is the trip home.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Losers

Believers of every flavor have at least one thing in common, "this world is not our home". We, all of us, the good, the bad and the ugly, including the sexually challenged, are born to be citizens of another better world.  

There are those Christian ideologues (useful idiots) who want to turn the assassination of Charlie Kirk into an evangelical revival meeting. All God believers do not look to such an atmosphere to be close to God. The crazed Godless are the displaced persons of this world, they are dangerous and the unprovoked enemy of all God believers, not just Christians. Christianity has historically and falsely claimed or assumed that the message of Jesus was the exclusive purview of their exclusive religion. Some of us believe that there is enough evil around in this world to engage all of us, regardless of one’s preferred religion or lack of religion.

As long as it is only a Christian fight, Christianity will always be on the defensive and probably the loser. And then we all lose.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Stand Up America

How should we, among the crowd of Charlie Kirk supporters, respond in the wake of his assassination? Our hearts and minds are full of anger and loathing for that crazy cowardly punk that did the deed. The dirt bag is subhuman. The radical left Democrat politicians are blaming the victim, Charlie, for his own death because he said some things that enraged the shooter. Charlie, you just wouldn’t shut up!

There is a righteous call from the governor of Utah for national unity. These are nice words in a perfect world but they are meaningless because they are divorced from our earthly reality. There has never been unity in America for we are a democracy, the majority rules. It will not happen in our world, now or any time in the future. Forget it, earthly unity is not the future God plan for our world. God must like a good scrap. God must be bigger than our scraps.

We were all put here in our world to live as if we were already home. That is the God plan, to share mercy with the unmerciful, to share forgiveness with the undeserving, to suffer the slings and arrows of the haughty, to run where the weak dare not go, to care for something or someone besides our own well-being. It is hard and against our nature but that is the God plan.

Most of us play the noncommittal waiting game, hiding in the bushes, avoiding having to declare one way or the other, nursing our fears and wants, not Charlie. Charlie stood up to say, our lives do not belong to us, life is a gift from God (Christ). The religious context in which we choose to express our faith is not the important decision. The important decision is to live fearlessly knowing we are destined for the better world, the better unified world. A world with an atmosphere of pure freedom for love is freedom.

Shall we also stand up? Yes or No, check the box?

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Community

If you had a twenty year old socially challenged son with a room full of guns and ammo and no interest in hunting animals, what would you think and do? Some of us don’t get it, these young monster assassins have waved the red flags for years, so how can the parents, family, relatives, friends and neighbors remained silent?

How can the passengers on a public transit train in North Carolina remain cowardly uninvolved when a killing happens in their midst and the victim is left alone bleeding and struggling for her life? One would think we are a nation of robots or demented scarred cats.

Maybe we have always been this way or maybe we, as a society, have lost our sense of interrelatedness or community. Maybe we should have cell phone burnings and start being human again.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

 

Offense

Some have taken offense to the term “useful idiot” in this blog. A useful idiot is not dumb. A useful idiot is one who has set beliefs and conclusions that are considered absolute. There is no need for discussion, in fact, discussion will likely push the useful idiot off the deep end. A useful idiot is desperate to see their truth to be your truth. A useful idiot is easily motivated or manipulated by applause.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Foul

So they say that the assassination attempt in Butler Pennsylvania was not a conspiracy of the many but one solo nut job. Really! The useful idiots are everywhere, in the pew and behind the pulpit. On orders from above, the security plan by the Secret Service on that day is deliberately sabotaged and a shooting perch is identified prior to the event. On the day of the event, all security at the perch is ordered elsewhere.

Months prior to the event, a useful idiot is identified, prepped and motivated to gain hero status among democrats by killing the president. The useful idiot is told of the perch and was assisted in planning the shoot by a solo shadowy perpetrator.

The Secret Service sniper team on the other warehouse roof had standing orders never to fire until a threat first fires. We all are allowed one murder. Prior to the assassin’s barrage of bullets, the sniper team had to have had the threat in sight for as soon as the threat fired, they took him out. You are a hero no more.

Why is this not an extreme likelihood? All the moving parts of a conspiracy are there, however, such a scenario would be very difficult to trace. We can be sure that the assassination of Charlie Kirk in Utah has a similar scenario. Or, the democrats just got tired of playing games and hired a professional assassin.

No wonder democrats are united and fearful of the radical communist left in their party, most are not useful idiots, they know that any perceived dissent will be extinguished. As a result of democratic cowardice, all democrats, the politicians and the regular voters, are as guilty of murder as the shooter. Democrats have earned a foul reputation that will be long remembered.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Emergency

It is time. The American people need our president to address the nation from the oval office. The Commies are coming from within and without. It is time to stop all imports from China. It is going to get messy no matter what actions we take or don’t take. This emergency requires America to pull out all the stops. 

We the people are behind our president, tell us, how are we to remain a free people? The cost is irrelevant, we all will be heroic Americans in our generation just as many heroic American generations have done for the last two hundred and fifty years.  God and Country forever.

G. Goslaw

Landers, CA.

 

Warning

Sean Hannity you are not that dumb. Me thinks you just want your guests to answer one question but every one of them avoids answering. Please explain that, can’t you find a guest who is willing to state the obvious? Why do Democrats insist on a crime ridden America? Why do they subject every large Democrat run city to rampant crime chaos regardless of the consequences?

Answer: chaos is right out of the Marxist playbook. Democrats are no longer American. The plan that they advance has worked around the world. First trash the legal system, have your partners in crime create total chaos, defend the criminal and thereby destroy the country. The helpless country, in this case America, can then be built back the communist way. Someone needs to speak up and state the obvious.

What do you say, Sean Hannity?

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

 

 

Ponder On

Luke 2: 19.  

KJV:  But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.

TNIV: But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.

One might ask, what things? The surrounding stories would suggest the appearance of the angel Gabriel, shepherds, a company of singing heavenly hosts and a message locating the birth of the long expected birth of the Messiah-Savior. This is not Christmas time so let’s get real. Some or all of these stories may be true or they may not, that is not the point of their telling. The possibly exaggerated stories were told only to convince the listener, nothing else. They were not deceitful stories, they were stories told to add an exclamation point.

Was Mary pondering the stories or something else? If you or I were an unmarried pregnant teenager, what would we be pondering? If you or I were an unmarried pregnant teenager who had heard from somewhere that God was up to something in and through your child, what would we be pondering? If you or I were a newly wedded pregnant bride, with a doubting virgin husband, what would we be pondering? If you or I were a homeless couple taking shelter with the animals, what would we be pondering?

Maybe Mary was pondering over the question, "Is God really in the midst of my circumstances?" How can it be?  

Yes, Mary, your child will be speaking my things to your world, some will listen but most will not. By trusting in the midst of your questions and doubts, you have done your part.     

For us, take heart, we too are not alone in our questions. The only answer that matters is yes, I shall trust today and fight the fight of faith again tomorrow. 

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

 

Tradition?

So, the television puppeteers are threatened. Could it be that this blog is making sense out of the Bible? They say, no Christian commentator has ever proposed such a conclusion based on Scripture. Therefore it is not Christian. Fair enough, some of us just say, “thank you for the compliment”.

In some quarters, love for the Bible is about the search for truth for living. The truth search is holy while all religions, including Christianity, block the search for the people. If there is disagreement be honest and make an argument. Religion hides behind tradition.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Freedom

“What we have here is a failure to communicate”.  Cool Hand Luke

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

sparrow

There are a few words in the Bible that we might consider to be Jesus words. You know, those Jesus words that some scholars tout to be historically authentic. The words that could have been spoken before all the interpreters of religion stacked the deck with additions. Jesus had a thing for sparrows, to him, the sparrow is the national bird of God’s world.  

Why did Jesus use the sparrow to teach us about God? Sparrows are everywhere, they are short lived, they are of little earthly value and they have no power. Every day, every hour could be their last, they are at risk of everything. They are totally fragile but as Jesus said, God cares for them! Despite all the evidence to the contrary, God cares for them. 

Jesus may also ask us, is it therefore lunacy to believe that God could also care for all of us, for you? Well, it is lunacy and it is not lunacy. Shall we ask the sparrow? .

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca. 

Freedom, Freedom

If there be a God, that God is to be experienced as freedom. Dictators are all about this world, even the dictators who use only the name God. They are ignorant of what it really means to live our days in the fresh air of freedom.

How do we know that God loves freedom? God loves freedom because all of us were dumped into this risky, dangerous world where the monsters are allowed to live among us. God wants us to learn of the other world by living in ours. Our world is a teaching tool, are you learning?

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Scandal

The scandal of particularity is a God scandal that looks human. It is a scandal for any human to say to this world of multiplied billions of humans that somehow, God has noticed me. Some would say such a claim is craziness and that may very well be. However, is such a claim only Tom foolery? Does or can God scandalously influence the particular individual?

Some say that God does so influence the individual, one on one, and that religion most times is at war with these same individuals. Religion and God are not always comingling because religion is about control and God is about freedom. Those who have been impacted by God do not talk about it, they just go on about their God directed business. They are not broadcasters, they are doers. They are not virtue signalers, they give virtue away.    

The ultimate scandalous question needs to be asked. Could God likeness be advanced among men through the life of an individual as seemingly undeserving as that of a bastard individual? You know, those of us who did not ask to be born at a particular time and place but born they were, born to live their lives in the midst of a very real social stigma and the resulting turmoil. Such a notion would even be a bigger scandal. Some of us believe that God did just that when he scandalously chose to influence Jesus.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

December

What are you 31/ATLAS? Are you an interstellar object on a parabolic orbit through multiplied solar systems to return again in thousands or millions of years? Better yet, are you an interstellar life probe from a distant solar system looking for others of us? We are about to find out in three months. Will our world be a stopping point or will the interstellar object merely wave to us from its orbit, 168 million miles from earth? Hold on to your hats.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Fun

The Bible as in every word is either, truth from the lips of God, or none of the words of the Bible are truth from the lips of God. We believers cannot have it both ways, picking, choosing and ignoring the words that are discomforting. The Bible has been passed to us as a hand me down from God but it is not true blue God. That supposed Bible is an idol, along with the other everyday idols of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

Every writer of every book is a unique interpreter of God with unavoidable blind spots and expressed God clarity. All the words of the Bible have value but only as they are put into the context of their historical time, made relevant to our time and the 5000 year God narrative. All Scripture has value but not equal value, that is where you and I come in. The complicated can be fun.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca. 

What if?

Good morning Mr. Westman, welcome aboard. You are dead before your time and so are the children, do you feel any better? Looking up, Robin responds, well, no. 

Could it be that believing a mother’s lie can have eternal consequences? What say you? Dejected, Robin looks down and is silent. The prosecutor says, “God don’t make mistakes!” The Judge says, "Please go to the back of the bus".

Court of no appeal.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.  

 

Hope

There is absolutely nothing we can do or confront in this life that would warrant the taking of another life or the life that God has given to us. God will always have our backs in the midst of all of our suffering because hope is so much more than wishful thinking, hope is God given permission to journey on.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Sick

America is sick. We are a nation of hypochondriacs, obsessed and disengaged from living by an overwhelming concern for how we look and feel. Big Pharma and the cosmetics crapola are racking in the dough treating our wrinkles, pains and aliments.

Look around among us, what do you see? Those of us who are taking street drugs are sick. Those of us who buy supposed healthy gimmicks are sick. You folk are the reason some of us have to tolerate the druggy, gimmicky commercials. Go on, get your needed exercise by peddling a machine while sitting in the easy chair. Sickness is craziness.

Maybe, it’s a death wish. Maybe, it’s a cry for interpersonal attention. In any case, stop talking about your sicknesses and start looking in the mirror, get a life. Stop talking about your inabilities and start doing for the betterment of yourself and those around you. Better yet, get a backbone and live regardless of your age or supposed pain. 

Sorry, there are more important things in life than how you feel. No sympathy here. Knock on wood.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.     

Freedom

Forget all the Trump hate pundits on Fox News and Newsmax. They are lily livered. Please tell the people what’s really going on. The radical leftists of America are not just obsessed with Trump, they are filled with America hate. They will hate with equal intensity anyone who gets in their way. For now it is Trump, tomorrow it will be whomever. The freedom loving people of America cannot relax with a few Trump wins, as miraculous as they are, the wins must be bigger than Trump.

The wins will be bigger if the radicals are exposed as the frauds they really are. They are not about the freebees for the people, the Democrat radicals want to be the new American power center, the people be damned. 

The America haters will never completely go away but we the people can make them practically powerless in the midterm elections of 26 and the presidential election of 28. When that happens, whoever is buying their hate will then go broke but as they say, never relax, freedom will never be free.

Maybe, nothing can be won without a real January 6!

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

War!

Forget the niceties, America is now at war! Politics as we have known it has been replaced by conquest at any price.  The two hundred and fifty year American tradition of respectful political dialogue has gone by-by. It has been replaced by a war like attitude from the Democrats who are no longer Democrats but useful idiots for a big government, top down control over “we the people”. This control has many names but they all mean no personal or national freedom.

The control of Socialism and Communism means that your life is no longer your own, your life and livelihood belongs to the government which has ownership of everything, including your children. Socialism is a thin minority of very small, incompetent yet powerful people dumping on the majority of us in order to inflate their own imaginary self-worth. They are takers. They know nothing but politics, protest and living off the system. They are the crazies who will only kill our national identity as a free people. They will kill you if you get in the way.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Blank

There is no heaven as popularly understood. Eternity, if there is one, is not a social paradise open to the few who are somehow qualified. That much is a lie. That truth is religion. Please don’t start quoting Scripture that may have some value but it is not truth from the lips of God. 

Some of us believe there is a boundless eternity for all when we die. Whatever that eternity may be, it will be a good fit because it is planned. Of course, we all could be wrong and there is only a blank space in our future. This possibility is worse than any picture of hell painted by men.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca. 

Missed

There is no Teddy Bear God that we can snuggle up to when the going gets tough. That Teddy Bear God is for sale by every television ministry and in a large majority of pulpits around the world. In a real sense, that God is a lie, some of the people know it but most devotees don’t know any better. God did not bring this world into being in order to get cozy. We humans value a family support system; God is an adult; God values freedom.

God is an earthly influencer not a dictator. God decides when and where God will pull a couple of strings in our world. God decides; we don’t. Prayer changes us not God. God acts to allows even the monsters freedom. God acts without partiality, he or she is not flipping the channels on Sunday morning. God picks on the nobodies, avoiding the well qualified. The prophet Samuel, led by the spirit of God, reluctantly chose the 12^th son, the tail end of the family, David, to be King for the people. God directed the assassin’s bullet to miss in Butler, Pennsylvania.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Peculiar

Some of us have a peculiar moral ethic. There are only two no, no’s. The evil of all evil’s is the lie, the telling of an intentional untruth. There are no excuses, to exaggerate is to lie, and there are no good or kind lies. Any lie is a moral failure. The second moral failure is to ask, seek or delude others to lie for you or to tag along with you in your lie. That’s it, our peculiar morality in a nutshell.

How do we know there is a God? We humans all have spiritual ears and we all lie. The Perfect awaits us.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Legacy

We all have a time and a place, this much is for certain. Maybe, this is the only certainty, only the now, our now, is for certain. For all of us, time and place are like the weather, ever changing from the norm of shared expectations. We desperately clutch these shared norms as a sailor clutches the mast of a sinking ship. These shared norms give us a fleeting feeling of longevity. Shared norms such as friends, family, religion, money, property, social status, politics or any other devised legacy. The idea of God can be another dead end legacy or God can be an adventure.

When our clock ticks down to practically nothing, some of us wonder about our place among the many.  What does it all mean?  We humans have been asking that question for millions of years. Our lives have to mean something, if so what?  Do you have any clues? 

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Maybe

Religion is making so much out of so little.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Caged

Some of us are generalists, experts at nothing. We dabble on, delving into the whatever, forming opinions which are always subject to the greater wisdom. Some may call generalists accursed because our culture rewards the experts. However, the typical one category expert is not likely to catch the attention of we regular folk. Experts that have walked the general broad road are the blessed thinkers and have earned our respect.  

Some of us pray not for fortune or fame but the gifting of just one thinker who can share expertly, competently and independently, the truths of God, religion, history, philosophy, anthropology, cosmology, psychology and science. These folk are rare birds, indeed. These birds are less apt to be trapped in a cage of someone else’s making. 

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.  

Immunity

Department of Justice Memo: Ex-President Obama is here to for under indictment for leading a treasonous conspiracy to dethrone the duly elected president, Donald J. Trump, during his entire term (20016-20). The opinion of this DOJ is that such a conspiracy is not a part of the presidential powers that bring to any past president the shield of immunity.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.    

WOW

WOW. The possibility of an amoral eternity woke some folks up. Just because few of us would make such a claim does not mean that such a claim makes no sense. Ours is an amoral world, an amoral existence. Morality is a social issue not a God issue. Jesus was not a moralist, in fact, the moralists persecuted him, slandered him, put him on trial for claiming a spiritual status apart from the moralists, dragged him through the streets, put him on a cross for a slow death and ultimate humiliation. Was that moral? Jesus appeared among us not to make us or enable us to live right, whatever that may mean. Jesus appeared among us to show us a door to walk through.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Universalism

There is no way a God believer can be anything other than a Universalist unless that believer is selling a book, serving a bureaucracy or living a lie. God is about accountability but not eternal damnation. How God will work that out post death, we can only guess? Christian theologians of every sort have been guessing throughout the ages. This writer believes that there is no consistent God thinking for hell despite the endorsement of the likes of Billy Graham, Jimmy Swaggart and N.T. Wright.

Almost all books are written to please an audience, a market, the very few significant writings are written "come what may". A.T. Robinson's "Honest to God", was such a book. However, few writings of this sort arrive from the religious establishment. However, should another, "come what may" book be written, it may read something like this: God is not a religious extremist who condemns 90% of we earthlings to a Dante Inferno. The hell scenario is in lock step not with God but with our devilish human nature that delights in the misfortune of others.

St. Anselm (1033 - 1109 A,D.) gave God equality with the devil with his satisfaction teaching. God must somehow satisfy his holiness by the mass eternal torture of all nonbelieving souls in the resurrected Christ. Does this sound like a God win? Is God that concerned with looking righteous?  

Universalism like hell is not a new spiritual fad or gimmick. Both understandings have been around since the get go. History has always chosen the winners and losers but do we believe in history or do we believe in our God awareness?

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca. 

  

 

Opiate

Our world is not a conflict or contest between good and evil. We have been sold a bill of goods. The Cartesian dualism of good verse evil is rooted in a bedtime story told to the kiddies by the dualist in Chief, Plato. His intent was to give the very young a handle to navigate the blessings and risks of life. Question, could there be another answer to explain our fragile lives?  Many of us have been thinking on that one for a long, long time. 

Recent Old Testament scholarship (Copenhagen International Seminar) has dated the Genesis story of the Tree of Good an Evil at 325 B.C., at Alexandria Egypt, by a large group of Hebrew and Hellenist scholars. Moses had been dead for some 1500 years, leaving no material of this sort that can be dated to his time. As a result and as Karl Marx rightly told us, these (bedtime) stories have become the opiate of the people. How so?

The bedtime stories place the ultimate victory of Good verses Evil beyond this life and our demise. Therefore, the one who believes is shielded against the ravages of today and tomorrow because they are not of ultimate consequence. The reality of this believed victory, may or may not be true, but certainly it will never be verified in this life.  Some say, when bad things happen to good people just believe, have faith in the ultimate victory of God over Satan. This is the “whatever comes my way” opiate.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca. 

      

 

 

FED

The United States Federal Reserve is supposed to be independent of politics but never has been and is now an unabashed Democrat influencer. Let's rename this body politic "the Jerome the Ripper Fed", in honor of another of us who preyed upon the people so many years ago. Those voices calling for more of the same, have a vested interest in the treachery and thievery of the Federal Reserve. 

Chase’s Jamie Diamond, the big bank guru, please take a long walk off a very short pier. 

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Killers

There exists among us a shadow government pulling the death strings that determine our future.  This shadow government that some of us call, “the deep state”, rains turmoil upon the people in order to hide their treason. The deep state hides within the bureaucracy of Washington. Being popular with the people, gaining political influence apart from the deep state, is a death sentence. The deep state will not tolerate winners. “Make America Great Again” could eventually expose and eliminate the power of the deep state.

The deep state has killed and will kill to preserve their power. Butler Pa. was not a multiple failure, Butler was intentional! The Florida assassination (killing) attempt on the life of presidential candidate Donald Trump was intestinal. The Viet Nam War was intentional. The assassination (killing) attempt and wounding of President Ronald Reagan was intentional. The assassination (killing) of President John F. Kennedy was intentional. The killing of presidential candidate Robert Kennedy was intentional. Martin Luther King was killed and a victim of deep state terrorism. The deep state killed its own in the jailhouse death of Jeffery Epstein. The deep state ordered national security to ignore the threats levels prior to 9/11 and these orders resulted in a death toll equal to that of Pearl Harbor. Igniting a war in the mid east was more important.

All were not failures, all were intentional. The deep state cares not about the holiness of human life. What’s next? President Trump, do not relax anywhere, hire your own personal security and carry a gun. The Secret Service is a paper tiger. The deep state is still scheming. We sense that you are working now under treat. The deep state includes those who take orders, those who know but stay silent, those who choose to remain ignorant and the few who refuse to bow down.

Please Mr. President, set everything else aside, hunker down, and go to war with the deep state. Death to the deep state is our only possible democratic future as a free nation.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Beginning

Probably the most recognized Bible verses, even in the secular world, are Genesis, Chapter 1, verses 1 and 2. The King James Version says it this way, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”

The more modern translations replace “void” with “empty”, the more immediate translation of the Hebrew. Both words describe our reality at its start as a blank space, a void, an emptiness or a nothing space. The traditional understanding among theologians is creation “ex nihilo”, creation out of nothing. Could it be possible that how you start is more important than how you finish? Is matter eternal or is God eternal?

Some say, there has always been God, then came matter. Some say, our world order cries out for God.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Think

We might ask and Texas is certainly is asking, why is life in our world so very fragile? How can a good God or any God be so seemingly sadistic? There are no safe spaces. The Guadalupe River swells 29 feet above normal levels in just 45 minutes, on a holiday and at midnight of July 4. If God had control of any of these circumstances, why did he or she allow the waters to rage? Can a seemingly apparent remote uncaring God be called good? Is not this God’s very existence called into question?  Maybe, as some have supposed, there is no God?

The television networks are interviewing religious leaders of every flavor and asking this question. The consensus from every quarter is that there is no answer, all we can do is nurse the fallout. Every time religion comes up short it becomes a so called “mystery”. There is a lot of mystery going around. If we remain as children stuck in the God is all powerful tree, there will be no sensible answers. God did not put this world into motion to display his powers or his authority.

Maybe God wants his people to think up to there potential. If we remain as children, accepting the “whatever” of others, we will remain as children. Thinking is not about education, it is about coming to understand the obvious and then making adjustments. Common sense thinking is available to all of us.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.          

 

Destiny

I am now doing what I was always meant to do. It only took me a lifetime to get there, hard headed as I am. Established religion was no help. I finally died to all earthly expectations and just listened. 

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Good

A false dichotomy is used by one philosopher to justify his assent to Christian doctrine. Who am I to call him out but here I am? This philosopher with mighty credentials and literary accomplishments, makes an elemental mistake. In defense of doctrine, he posits a false choice for the reader, a choice between the 300 year old Enlightenment understanding of human nature or a choice for the 1700 year old traditional Church doctrine. Enlightenment says that we humans are essentially good and Christian doctrine says that we are essentially evil (original sin).

After quite thoroughly tearing down the “man is good” extremism, this thinker seems to assume that we should choose Church doctrine for want of a better alternative. Could it be that the “man is evil” understanding is also an extremist view of human nature (forgive me dear St. Augustine)? Extremes are rarely consistent. Could there be a middle ground?

Who are we? We are the obvious, we are all obviously and hopelessly self-centered, no more, no less. Like the rest of creation, we are all momentary survivors. We can do “good” by mitigating our self-involvement or do “evil” by nurturing our selfishness. All of us do both, there are no good guys but we are freely choosing one or the other, that is good.  

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

  

 

 

authentic

We are all in the same boat. We seek an experience with the beyond and then turn to seeking validation in the experience of others. That is how religion gets started. As hard as we may look for a commonality, it is for naught.

Religion as a substitute avoids the simple fact of this our reality, there is no common experience on which to construct a perceived normal spirituality. We all are abnormal, abnormally solo seekers. My experience is not yours and yours is not mine. 

Why are spiritual chops ever so obscure?  Maybe, the authentic is not to be spoken of. 

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.   

 

 

Tragedy

History was so boring in my early years. Now that I am historical, I have become a bit of a history buff. Learning about the ancient Greek thinkers is a real trip. They seemed to be about finding how we and our world function. Their explanations came close to being a scientific mindset. Aristotle was for all intents and purposes a biologist. The pre Socratic thinkers were talking about atoms. Each was in an investigative mood.

Question: what would our world be like if it had not taken a deep dive into the top down empire of religion?  Circa: the Council of Nicaea, St. Augustine of Hippo and the politically and spiritually repressive Roman Catholic Church. Could the 1000 year period of “the dark ages” have been avoided?  Let’s hope so.

All of us should be thinkers because it matters. Just a little common sense prevents a lot of tragedy. Please, get the kids thinking.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca. 

Juice

God is a moving target. To Aristotle, if it moves, it is God, it is Soul. This made the reading of “On the Soul” by Aristotle a bit disappointing. Some of us were or are anxious to hear again all the spiritual mumbo jumbo, even from the ancients. Instead, what we get is a detailed description of all our moving parts. The word that comes to mind is sterol, “On the Soul” is a sterol description of our reality. Where is the juice of life? Why are we here? Why have we all been here for thousands and millions of years? To be moved?

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.   

 

Wisdom

Aristotle taught that, first we must know ourselves and our place in this world and then we can start all that God talk. Not popular religion, we believers first go God shopping. Is it a Teddy Bear God to nurse our emotions? Is it the Judge enforcer God to keep us and the other guy on the straight and narrow? Is it the Patriot God to wave the flag? Is it the Daddy God to give us a bit of supposed security? Is it the God of ancient Greek culture that made our human frailties acceptable? Where ever there is a man, there is a God, some say.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Personal

I have been trying to get into philosophy. Why? God only knows. I have gotten to know some philosophers by the highlights posited by those thinkers who are discussing a variety of life issues. Reading beyond the highlights in the thinkers own words, however, expecting to be convinced, is a tough road. Take Aristotle’s “On the Soul”; my brain matter is definitely inferior but I have one criticism. If you can’t just say what you mean and mean what you say, very few of we intellectually challenged persons, will sit through all the arguments.

Philosophy seems to be a game. Who can make the best argument? It is arguing with no answers. Arguing for the sake of arguing. Many books have a conclusion, I try to go there first. Tell me what you believe or all your thinking is for naught. All philosophy books seem to be written to impress the thinking community not those of us who want answers.

Shall I give up? Hell no!

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.    

 

Real

Socrates was a confirmed conversationalist. He could engage in a conversation with almost anyone because Socrates was an expert listener. Listening is more than language and simpler than 2 plus 2. Listening was a rare talent 2400 years ago but is even more so today in our world. Listening is more than sound waves bouncing against the ear drum, listening is focus, awareness and a hunger to know and understand one another. Socrates was a good listener.

Socrates did not go around preaching and advising as if he was an authority person or expert. He asked questions. Socrates listened and then asked questions about what was being said. He challenged the popular accepted understandings that may or may not be correct by asking questions. This method got him into a lot of trouble with the people who became offended. We prize our delusions.

How many of us spend our days just talking? How many of us spend our days reclining behind the walls of our own little world? How many of us spend our days seeking entertainment or the next adventure or the next high? 

Maybe, we should listen to Socrates and become a real person, a good listener and conversationalist.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.   

 

 

Simple

There is an intellect and then there is an intellect. The total human intellect is more than brain function bound to the body. Our companion human spiritual intellect is a message center that will live forever, “he who has ears, let him hear”, as the Bible often says.

Socrates was the real deal, he named his spiritual intellect “daimonion” or inner voice with whom he listened. His students, Plato and Aristotle preferred to listen to the brain function intellect. Likewise, as most philosophers followed their lead, our understanding of who we are got more and more complicated through the centuries.

We can know who we are if we would just listen.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.    

 

Pain

Forty eight hours have passed since “Ma Ma” left us. Barron spent yesterday running around barking at the fence, barking at nothing, barking a different bark. He was crying out for his “Ma Ma“, where are you? The bark was an expression of painful separation. For the last five years, Ma Ma and Barron have been constant companions and playmates in the front yard at 1990 Gibralter.

For now, the fun is gone. Please don’t tell me that dogs don’t have separation woes or depression. Dogs have feelings too. Will he adjust as we humans adjust? Probably, we shall see but death is so final and our post separation world will never be quite the same.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Apologies

The Iranian Ayatollah has been killing Americans for the last 45 years. Suddenly, when they are about to get their come up in’s, they are not our enemy? Just because we have had eight different presidents over these 45 years singing the same song, means that the Ayatollah has not changed his strips. He is who he is, a murderous religious fanatic who needs to go down with his ship.

As for the people of Iran, you got what you asked for and there are no apologies for the end being messy.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Peace?

Give it up! Expecting or hoping that the Iranian Ayatollah is anything other than an irrational religious fanatic hell bend on killing off western civilization is delusional. It is them or us. It is them or Israel to the death. Peace is a pipe dream.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Vision

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics should be mandatory reading at the High School level as their life long decisions are being made. There are no mulligans in life, no do overs. No matter where one starts, the striving for excellence in whatever we do, will bring to us the better way called happiness or fulfilment.

Most books in this book are rather short, easy to read but a bit wordy. Every page has fantastic discussion points. Get the kids talking about real life and the happiness possible with decisions for excellence.  

Where there is no vision, the people perish (authored by another wise man, Proverbs 29: 18).

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.  

  

 

Birthdays

Happy 250^th Birthday of Our United States of America Army Corp!

Our Flag is flying at `1990 Gibralter Rd. Landers, Ca.

(Democracy is messy but freedom is worth the fight.)

Happy Birthday President TRUMP our fighter in chief!

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Broken Dreams

Certain supposedly conservative news outlets defend Obama by pointing out his deportation record. This was never who Obama was or is to this day. As president he had to keep the lid on the radical left because he was much too busy getting rich. The mortgages had to be paid on all those mansions. Oppositional heat would spoil the stew.

When the presidential torch was passed to Biden, the controls were no more because he no longer had to take the heat. Obama could run his socialist, communist ferry land by proxy with his supposed reputation intact.  Biden tried to enrich himself like his boss but he wasn’t as cool about it.

Meanwhile the radical left, Obama’s radical left, was running the country visa the auto pen. The radical left governed with a Marxist game plan which is in short, “burn to the ground what has been in order to build back the socialist ideal”.

The supposed ideal is only government control of everything and everybody, control by the few. Democrat leadership is and has been clamoring to be among the privileged few. The socialist ideal is ignorance resulting in broken dreams for the rest of us. We live to dream.

May Obama’s daddy worship never again work its evil among us? As President Reagan warned, as a country, we are never more than one generation away from socialism. Democrats want the people dumb and unaware.   

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.  

 

Home

Book II, Chapter I, is where Aristotle and this newbie thinker part company. Who are we as humans? What is significant or unique about you and me, as humans? Aristotle is virtue signaling but some of us blew that out of the water a lifetime ago.

“The Virtues then come to be in us neither by nature, nor in spite of nature, but we are furnished by nature with a capacity for receiving them and are perfected in them through custom.” 

Virtues for the few is secondary but Aristotle puts them up on the front pew. No wonder the purveyors of Christian Church tradition and its easy doctrinal believism made the thinking of Aristotle their bread and butter. Spirituality and the pursuit of virtue is about being good little boys and girls, so they say. Aristotle called it “custom”.

O. K., if virtue is secondary, what is primary? Are you not asking that question? Instead of Virtue, what other desire could we plug into the above quote? What other desire is primary and universal among we humans? Maybe, the personal, one by one, search for God reality is primary. Some have called the search, the problem of God. A problem it is because the search desire “is in us neither by nature, nor in spite of nature, but we are furnished by nature with the capacity for receiving” messages from the spirit world.

The best and possibly only way of thinking about this is the natural reality of imprinting. Why does the salmon return to their natural spawning pools?  Does the Salmon have a “homing organ”? What about the homing pigeon? Can anyone, including the A.I. gurus, explain how the homing pigeon navigates? The homing capacity just is. We humans have a home in God land, who knows, wherever that may be. 

G. Goslaw

Landers, ca.  

Welcome Aboard

As individual people, when we choose the good our lives are better, happier, more productive and less complicated. This is a no brainer, we all know it because we are living with the consequences, positive and negative. Forming the habit of choosing the good is called moral character formation. This is an ongoing, life-long, simple lesson we began to learn in childhood but for some strange reason, we too often, young or old, insanely choose to be miserable.

This is my story and probably yours as well. This popular understanding seems to be what Aristotle in saying in the remainder of Book I but he makes it so damned complicated. “Happiness is a kind of working of the soul in a way of perfect Excellence”. Is perfect Excellence a goal or is it supposedly attainable?  We are then taken into a confusing description of the soul, rational and irrational, vegetative, etc. One thing is clear, Aristotle’s understanding of soul is not our 2400 years removed understanding. Before we pat ourselves on the back, 21^th century man is equally confused by soul talk, what it means to me is probably not what soul means to you.

Aristotle finishes well with a short paragraph on what he means by the Excellence of Man. Maybe, somewhere within this Aristotelian definition is an answer to the question, who are we? Some say, as does Aristotle, we are intellectual and moral beings who daily shape our own futures by our choices. Choices we make to think or not to think, choices for the Good or not. Welcome aboard! 

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.  

La La Land

Question, if happiness is our Chief Good, our moral center, what then would our world look like?  Let’s call it “La La Land”! In such a world, who in their right mind would storm the beaches of Normandy? All of us would avoid any cause that would threaten our well-being. Aristotle must have a broader definition of happiness in mind or is death happiness?  To this point this happiness thing seems very elitist, for the very few who can avoid the daily vicissitudes of living and dying. We shall read on.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Happiness

Aristotle’s book, “The Nicomachean Ethics”, comes highly recommended. When I finish this project, I shall report back to this blog but at first glance, the book seems to be a how to advice column on how to navigate this world. Happiness is the goal. Valuable indeed. However, a focus on happiness in this world may be a bit short sighted. For now I shall let Aristotle speak.

What is for certain and the starting point to navigate this world is action, we humans are to be men and women of action, doers. Aristotle seems to agree. Question, what are we chasing, a rule book that leads to happiness or are we chasing the Good as in Plato’s world?  Or, are we first chasing after an illusive understanding of God which as we progress, may or may not bring happiness. Who can be happy in bad times?  The only definition of happiness that works for me is a sense of fulfillment and meaning in this world of ours. God is happiness and God is the Good.

This present understanding is open to revision as I dig. Later.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.        

 

 

monster

Does anyone else wonder who is calling the shots for the Democrat opposition to this Trump Republican administration? Could the shot maker be the dude who repeatedly calls every liberal judge to do law fair? Does anyone else wonder who was directing the Biden Democrats from the bleachers? Does anyone else wonder who was calling the shots in opposition to the first Trump presidency?  

What kind of American political leader would advocate giving away our national sovereignty and taking in the world’s trash? Who would use the Marxist playbook of destruction in order to build it back in the way of communism? Who would consent to making America a satellite nation that takes orders from China? Who but one who is angling to be the destroyer of our country. Who but the one who promised us fundamental change.  Now we know what fundamental change was all about.

You got it, the black African monster Barack Hussein Obama, the 44th President of these United States and destroyer in chief.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.  

 

Embarrassed

Because the third century B. C. Jewish writers of their history mistakenly used the Platonic juvenile bedtime stories about a human beginning amongst the Gods, the Bible thumpers have been embarrassed. Some blindly cling to these beginning tales while others have come to consider all cosmology (our big picture) almost evil or to be avoided.

Neither of these reactions will survive. Neither will give today’s God believer the courage to walk uprightly into eternity. Where are the prophets of a new cosmology?  Where are the prophets with a cosmology that fits our human experience? Somebody out there can talk knowingly about science, psychology, philosophy and God without being embarrassed. Where are you?

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Death

I will never know myself as myself again, however,

myself will merge and submerge into the greater circle of knowing.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Guessing

Paradise is nowhere but life is everywhere. Life is before the beginning and after the ending. Life is beyond definition. Time and existence are somehow circular. Life fits our best description of God and life is a God gift. As it ends, separation from God ends and life begins anew. 

G. Goslaw 

Landers, Ca.

Trust

Faith is otherworldly trust. There are no boxes to check, we are not voting, for life comes and goes without rhyme or reason. Trust is permanent. Trust is knowing that no matter what we encounter in this life, good, bad or indifferent, God has our back.

One day soon, the curtain will be raised and we shall all understand. A grand party awaits and nothing can separate us from that joyful future.

Until then, are we listening for the party sounds? For now, are we following the party sounds? For now, do we trust the party sounds?

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Beware!

Are you aware?  Hasn't the post 2020 Democrat party fled from the cause of  compassion to violence? Maybe, violence became the acceptable political tool of the Biden Democrats? As a result of this shift, compassion has become the missing cause. Has the self-righteous concern for the alien wanderer and the homeless only been an act? Democrats can only answer that question.

Old school Democrats are now in danger as Republican leadership has been endangered. Are you scaredy cat Democrats being used by the purveyors of hate to spread their evil?  Borders are not evil; people are evil. All modern Democrats are either evangelical hatemongers or just willfully ignorant or just plain scared.

There is the possibility of evil everywhere and we are all hypocrites so look around, are you aware?

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

copyright

Some books, if not a few, have something to say to us. When we find such a book, it makes all the book browsing somehow meaningful. However, no author has it all together, every author is either a reaction in opposition to or a builder upon what has gone before. There is always dribble to be separated out of every good book. 

Complete originality has never happened nor will it.  Yah, but that’s the book we all want most to read.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.     

Stuff

Our world was abuzz with God talk. There was no media news sourcing, no newspapers, only the latest rumors. Rumors spread across the known world about a missing body, the dead body of the man Jesus, taken down from his death cross and buried. This body is now reported missing. What shall we make of the rumored empty grave?  What is the man on the street to think?

There were spiritual centers but no organized religion. Many opinions flourished and then were challenged. One’s God understanding had become a life and death opinion. Chaos reigned. There were two major combatants, those who believed that the resurrection of the man Jesus was a God event and those who believed that the man Jesus was God, having the same stuff as God and co-eternal with God.

Going into the fourth century after the Jesus event, the 19 years old Emperor Constantine became the supreme God of the disintegrating Holy Roman Empire. There was chaos in his empire and chaos on the streets. There was a cry for unity from all quarters.

Emperor Constantine threw a party for all the spiritual leaders of the day, at his home turf at Nicaea, present day Turkey. Constantine wined and dined the spiritual leaders of the known world for months and then turned to payoffs, bullying and threats. It became clear that no one was leaving until there was an agreement.

This agreement became the First Church Council at Nicaea, 325 A.D. The agreement declared that Jesus was also God and possessing the same stuff as God. The Christian Doctrine of the Trinity of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, was born. Seventeen hundred years later, this is the unquestioned understanding among Christian believers. To claim to be Christian is to accept the conclusion of the First Church Council, (325 A.D.).

Three spiritual leaders would not agree with this doctrinal conclusion. Emperor Constantine banished Arius, the most popular spiritual leader and dissenter. The other two dissenting spiritual leaders were murdered by the emperor.

Make of this what you will. Is it enough to say that God can use evil to accomplish good? 

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.       

All

God is not social, only universal. All means all. God embraces all of life, the good, the bad and the ugly. Make all the earthbound qualifiers that may please the folk in the short term, however, don't mess with eternity. The only damnable people are those self-righteous fools who place anyone, regardless of race, religion, kinship or supposed moral integrity, beyond inclusion in the forthcoming unity of the Godhead. If it works for thee, it works for me. Amen.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca. 

 

Vision

Human life is always a faith trip, there is no other life for us, no human independence, no faith free zone, we all believe each day in something or someone. To those of us who have come to believe that as humans we are also spiritual beings, a part of living is extending a hand to the spirit world as if to say, “here I am”. The Moses mural on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome memorializes this inherent and universal human desire. The desire to be noticed by God.

This desire to be noticed by God is at times denied, scoffed at, substituted for or ignored but the desire never quite goes away. We have all been there. The God desire may appear to go away at times like the puddle of water after a rain storm but it has only changed places, returning later from elsewhere. The God desire is as human as imagination is human. We are human spiritual beings because we look to the stars, we look to the beyond. We look beyond ourselves.

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

 

Ultimate Question

Why is there something rather than nothing?  Is there anywhere an answer?  A God or gods?  No God, then what?

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.

Trees in the Desert

15,000 sq ft: fenced yard, 1990 Gibralter Rd., Landers, Ca.

(1) Sycamore: front (origin)

(1) Fruited Mulberry: rear (planted)

(1) Fruitless Mulberry: front (origin)

(2) Joshua Trees: front (origin)

(1) Joshua Tree: rear (origin)

(1) Oak: rear (planted) 

(1) Italian Cypress: front (planted)

(2) Monterey Pine Trees: front (planted)

(2) Evergreen trees: front (planted)

(4) Evergreen trees: rear (planted) 

(1) Eucalyptus tree: rear (origin)

(2) Dollar Eucalyptus tree: front and rear (planted)

(1) California Pepper tree: rear (origin) 

(1) California Pepper tree: rear (planted) 

(3) California Pepper tree: front (planted) 

(1) Pickled Orchid tree: front (planted) 

(2) Juniper Evergreen shrub: rear (planted)

(1) Evergreen shrub: front (planted) 

(3) Oleander bushes: front (planted)        

         All planted trees (11 to 4 years old)

         All origin trees (50 to 70 years old)

G. Goslaw

Landers, Ca.