"Autobiographies of great nations are written in three manuscripts – a book of deeds, a book of words, and a book of art. Of the three, I would choose the latter as truest testimony." - Sir Kenneth Smith, Great Civilisations

"I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine." - Leo Tolstoy

I have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again. - John Updike

"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it." - J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations." - Lawrence Ferlinghetti


[Note - If any article requires updating or correction please notate this in the comment section. Thank you. - res]


Showing posts with label R.E. Slater - Musings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label R.E. Slater - Musings. Show all posts

Friday, February 17, 2023

Four Processual Shorts on the Subject of ESG

 

[February 17, 2011] "Hanging out with the boys at the Bob." All were pro-amateur skateboarders. Over the past twelve years since this photo was taken, one became a loving and endearing missionary to the Thai people; one an accomplished artist in tiling, mosaics, painting, and leather work; and the last, my most special relationship, became my son-in-law and husband to my daughter, and father to my grandson. He took his passion for music and skateboarding and turned it into an industry for the Gen-YZ's of the world and then to everyone everywhere when building accessible, three-wheel recombinant trikes for recreational fun, the infirmed, the aged, and health. - res

Eco-Civ Short #1/4

Building ecological societies one ESG element at a time. Integrating nature, people, and ethical policies of sustainability, green and blue infrastructures, technologies, and global interaction together in improving streams of biotic value, functional generation and societal equality.

R.E Slater
February 17, 2023




Eco-Civ Short #2/4

I speak to building processual "ecological societies" all the time. ESG is an approximation of this idea at this time... it brings a mixture of community-first eco-business with a high degree of competition utilizing biotic sustainability modeling in its business ethics. Which is why I include the Forbes, Fortune, and WSJ articles to FB every now and then re ESG along with my own articles on building process-relational societies (as versus "biblical" kingdom communities of oppression and domination).

Businesses will not be moving backwards into past non-ESG paradigms because ESG is much more than sustainability models now including green and blue community-based infrastructures, tech business integration, and community standards of equality.

Those businesses which cannot change their commercial and industrial modelling plans re environmental, societal and local policy impact, make for poorer investment models for investors wishing improvement across a wide scale of relief.
Hence, when businesses are being overlooked in outside funding it is because their older business models are not implementing themselves as environmental caretakers, employer-employee caretakers, or local societal policies of community caretake.

Such business models are no longer competitive and will show a poorer return on funds compared to those business competitors which have worked ESG into their programs for the good of the environment, society, and dealings with one another.

R.E Slater
February 17, 2023





Eco-Civ Short #3/4

Purposely misunderstanding ESG is no defense for taking right actions towards the environment, people, and ethics in government.

  • EEEE - Refusing to stop polluting and toxifying biotic and human communities shows willful disregard to the welfare of a highly integrated community.
  • SSSS - Refusing to consider employment conditions and welfare of your workers again promotes money over value.
  • GGGG - And allowing corruption, lies, and false dealing between elected representatives and the public means removal from office (hopefully immediately re criminal prosecutiins). 

In sum, THIS IS WHAT ESG MEANS... my word for ESG remains the same, socially responsible "ecological societies, communities, and global civilizations".  We live in processual worlds where processual caretake must be a part of our investment into one another and the world at large.


EXCERPT from Wikipedia
  1. EEEEnvironmental aspect: Data is reported on climate change, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, deforestation, pollution, energy efficiency and water management.
  2. SSSSocial aspect: Data is reported on employee safety and health, working conditions, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and conflicts and humanitarian crises, and is relevant in risk and return assessments directly through results in enhancing (or destroying) customer satisfaction and employee engagement.
  3. GGGGovernance aspect: Data is reported on corporate governance such as preventing bribery, corruption, Diversity of Board of Directors, executive compensation, cybersecurity and privacy practices, and management structure.
R.E Slater
February 17, 2023

Environmental, social, and corporate governance

Environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) is a framework designed to be embedded into an organization's strategy that considers the needs and ways in which to generate value for all of organizational stakeholders (such as employees, customers and suppliers and financiers).

ESG corporate reporting can be used by stakeholders to assess the material sustainability-related risks and opportunities relevant to an organization. Investors may also use ESG data beyond assessing material risks to the organization in their evaluation of enterprise value, specifically by designing models based on assumptions that the identification, assessment and management of sustainability-related risks and opportunities in respect to all organizational stakeholders leads to higher long-term risk-adjusted return.[1] Organizational stakeholders include but not limited to customers, suppliers, employees, leadership, and the environment.[2]

Since 2020, there has been accelerating pressure from the United Nations to overlay ESG data with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), based on their work, which began in the 1980s.[3]

The term ESG was popularly used first in a 2004 report titled "Who Cares Wins", which was a joint initiative of financial institutions at the invitation of UN.[4] In less than 20 years, the ESG movement has grown from a corporate social responsibility initiative launched by the United Nations into a global phenomenon representing more than US$30 trillion in assets under management.[5] In the year 2019 alone, capital totaling US$17.67 billion flowed into ESG-linked products, an almost 525 percent increase from 2015, according to Morningstar, Inc.[6] Critics claim ESG linked-products have not had and are unlikely to have the intended impact of raising the cost of capital for polluting firms,[7] and have accused the movement of greenwashing.[8]

Dimensions

  1. Environmental aspect: Data is reported on climate changegreenhouse gas emissionsbiodiversity lossdeforestation, pollution, energy efficiency and water management.
  2. Social aspect: Data is reported on employee safety and health, working conditionsdiversity, equity, and inclusion, and conflicts and humanitarian crises,[9] and is relevant in risk and return assessments directly through results in enhancing (or destroying) customer satisfaction and employee engagement.
  3. Governance aspect: Data is reported on corporate governance such as preventing briberycorruption, Diversity of Board of Directors, executive compensationcybersecurity and privacy practices, and management structure.


* * * * * *



Eco-Civ Short #4/4

Ideological politics aside American business is committed to ESG as is global business. The wording, like CRT, is purposely misunderstood by MAGA-heads... but then again ideology serves no man or woman except those looking to gain power rather than doing right.

R.E Slater
February 17, 2023

EXCERPT

"Taking care of the communities you operate in helps ensure those communities will allow you to operate in the future. Recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce is essential to acquiring the best talent in a labor-constrained world. And focusing on how your company can meaningfully contribute to the climate transition is a way to create value in a business world that is clearly committed to that transition. In short, companies need to do a better job making it clear this is not about politics; it’s about good, long-term business."



Alan Murray, Editor of Fortune Magazine
Good morning.

Do deficits matter?

I have spent much of my career in the vicinity of that question, having covered U.S. fiscal policy as a cub reporter in the 1980s. That’s when supply-side Republicans dropped their concerns about deficits to push tax cuts as a counter to Democrats who had already abandoned deficit concerns to push spending increases. A stalwart but steadily shrinking group of people continued to beat the deficit drum, arguing deficit spending would “crowd out” private investment. But the new millennium obliterated that argument, too, by making capital plentiful and free. “Crowding out” went the way of the Walkman. 

Well, suddenly, they’re back. Deficits, that is. I’m not sure the last time a deficit story led the New York Times, but yesterday morning, it did. The story quoted new Congressional Budget Office projections showing a combination of pandemic-era spending, aging boomers and rising interest rates would add $19 trillion to the U.S. national debt over the next decade—$3 trillion more than previously forecast. Total debt outstanding will equal the total economic output of the U.S. economy next year and reach 118% of GDP in 2033.

Meanwhile, “crowding out” has taken on new meaning. It’s not that deficits might crowd out private investment—the case for that remains weak, given inflation-adjusted interest rates that are still close to zero. Rather, the new numbers show that as nominal rates rise, servicing the debt will rise faster than tax income, eating up more and more of the federal budget, and leaving less money to address real needs.  

So what’s to be done? With a vibrant economy and a functioning federal government, the problem is solvable. The Committee for Economic Development, which is part of The Conference Board, laid out a reasonable road map earlier this week, which you can explore here. (Full disclosure: My wife is president of CED.) But while the U.S. has a vibrant economy, it still lacks a functioning government. Deficit reduction involves shared sacrifice, and that has to be done on a bipartisan basis. Don’t hold your breath.

More news below. And don’t get too excited about the uptick in home prices at the start of this year. Fortune’s Lance Lambert says they are headed south again.

Alan Murray
alan.murray@fortune.com

Friday, August 20, 2021

With Malice Towards None... A World in Search of Peace





An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
- Mahatma Ghandi


One doesn't have to operate with great malice to do great harm.
The absence of empathy and understanding are sufficient.

- Charles M. Blow, journalist


Twenty years of American foreign policy incompetence has led to an expected ending of disaster in Afghanistan which only U.S. State officials and the military chose not to see in their contingency planning, all the while the American public and a world of outsiders saw all too clearly. America should never have been on foreign soil, and in leaving, left only more death and suffering as violent ideologies took over as living legacies to America's unwanted presence. As a "Christian" nation we are takers, not builders. Our mirror is pitiful and must be broken in order to see again. May we finally learn the ways of peace and love, the ways of grace and forgiveness, towards a world as hardened as we are towards the other.

R.E. Slater
August 20, 2021









Addendum

Yesterday and the day before yesterday I participated in a forum speaking out against White Christian Nationalism having sensed little difference between it and Islamic Jihadism. Both speak death. Both force upon people unwanted laws and restrictions. Both take away personal freedoms and rights (which I find ironic with the anti-vax crowd and facts deniers). Both harm the other, belittle the other, despise the other, and do not see the other. And both speak a religion ugly and deadly to the soul.

I'll say again, the human heart is deeply corrupt. It speaks death before it speaks life. The God of all religions and nations says to us to learn to hold in our heart the attitude of "Malice Towards None." This is our task as humans struggling to become fully human as God intended (or as our spirit-souls long for deep within our minds and bodies, hearts and spirits). We share together a deep, deep  sense of existential struggle of contrition before others, repentance from evil, humility and respect towards all.

We feel it deeply in our bones the necessity to learn to speak peace, goodwill, honor, and love to one another. This the truest core of the Christian faith. Not its legalism, perversions, and enforced religious structures. When Christians speak war, vengeance and harm we do not speak the life-giving word(s) of God. Just our own selfish, prideful, words. Words which make us blind, deaf, and dumb to one another. Those we no longer can see, hear, or speak to....

Mahatma Ghandi once said, "An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind." Let us then cast off the weight of hatred and malice towards one another and make this next millennium of human civilization about peace and goodwill. Let all nations learn the language of love by beating their metaphorical "swords into ploughshares" by seeking faith and trust with one another. Honor and respect.
The ways of the world can be the ways of beauty and joy if we allow it to be - which is the essence of John Lennon's songs. Chose then this day a new God, a radical God, One who has invested Himself in a radically new religion reviving the souls of the other. And a new social politick which heals, makes beautiful all around it, and nurtures every human benumbed by sin and evil.

And finally, to move forward we must repent of our wicked ways, learn to forgive one another, be merciful to the ones we no longer see, and learn to reach out to the ones we have dismissed and despised.
Importantly, America's newest foreign policy and diplomacy must deploy a radically new motto: "To care for the other and this good earth." Let us learn then the language of grace and forgiveness as Jesus had taught us centuries ago. Which we have witnessed again-and-again in the lives of remarkable human beings filled with God's light and love given to us to guide us in renewing ways of caretake, wellbeing, and nurture for one another.

Peace,

R.E. Slater
August 20, 2021


John Lennon & Yoko Ono: WAR IS OVER! (If You Want It)




HAPPY XMAS (WAR IS OVER). 
(Ultimate Mix, 2020) John & Yoko Plastic Ono Band
+ Harlem Community Choir




John Lennon & Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Mashup at MLK Day in Greenville, NC




Martin Luther King Jr. Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech




Martin Luther King Jr. –

Acceptance Speech

 https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1964/king/26142-martin-luther-king-jr-acceptance-speech-1964/


on the occasion of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize
in Oslo, Norway, December 10, 1964



Your Majesty, Your Royal Highness, Mr. President, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen:

I accept the Nobel Prize for Peace at a moment when 22 million Negroes of the United States of America are engaged in a creative battle to end the long night of racial injustice. I accept this award on behalf of a civil rights movement which is moving with determination and a majestic scorn for risk and danger to establish a reign of freedom and a rule of justice. I am mindful that only yesterday in Birmingham, Alabama, our children, crying out for brotherhood, were answered with fire hoses, snarling dogs and even death. I am mindful that only yesterday in Philadelphia, Mississippi, young people seeking to secure the right to vote were brutalized and murdered. And only yesterday more than 40 houses of worship in the State of Mississippi alone were bombed or burned because they offered a sanctuary to those who would not accept segregation. I am mindful that debilitating and grinding poverty afflicts my people and chains them to the lowest rung of the economic ladder.

Therefore, I must ask why this prize is awarded to a movement which is beleaguered and committed to unrelenting struggle; to a movement which has not won the very peace and brotherhood which is the essence of the Nobel Prize.

Sooner or later all the people of the world will have
to discover a way to live together in peace …

After contemplation, I conclude that this award which I receive on behalf of that movement is a profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time – the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression. Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts. Negroes of the United States, following the people of India, have demonstrated that nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation. Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

The tortuous road which has led from Montgomery, Alabama to Oslo bears witness to this truth. This is a road over which millions of Negroes are travelling to find a new sense of dignity. This same road has opened for all Americans a new era of progress and hope. It has led to a new Civil Rights Bill, and it will, I am convinced, be widened and lengthened into a super highway of justice as Negro and white men in increasing numbers create alliances to overcome their common problems.

I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the “isness” of man’s present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal “oughtness” that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsom and jetsom in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. I believe that even amid today’s mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men. I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive good will proclaim the rule of the land. “And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid.” I still believe that We Shall overcome!

This faith can give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom. When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, we will know that we are living in the creative turmoil of a genuine civilization struggling to be born.

Today I come to Oslo as a trustee, inspired and with renewed dedication to humanity. I accept this prize on behalf of all men who love peace and brotherhood. I say I come as a trustee, for in the depths of my heart I am aware that this prize is much more than an honor to me personally.

Every time I take a flight, I am always mindful of the many people who make a successful journey possible – the known pilots and the unknown ground crew.

So you honor the dedicated pilots of our struggle who have sat at the controls as the freedom movement soared into orbit. You honor, once again, Chief Lutuli of South Africa, whose struggles with and for his people, are still met with the most brutal expression of man’s inhumanity to man. You honor the ground crew without whose labor and sacrifices the jet flights to freedom could never have left the earth. Most of these people will never make the headline and their names will not appear in Who’s Who. Yet when years have rolled past and when the blazing light of truth is focused on this marvellous age in which we live – men and women will know and children will be taught that we have a finer land, a better people, a more noble civilization – because these humble children of God were willing to suffer for righteousness’ sake.

… peace is more precious than diamonds or silver or gold.

I think Alfred Nobel would know what I mean when I say that I accept this award in the spirit of a curator of some precious heirloom which he holds in trust for its true owners – all those to whom beauty is truth and truth beauty – and in whose eyes the beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace is more precious than diamonds or silver or gold.
---
*From Les Prix Nobel en 1964, Editor Göran Liljestrand, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 1965. Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1964


* * * * * * * * * *


"An Indictment against American Foreign Policy"

"We came in as a wrecking ball
then realized others had come in before us
taking what they wanted
leaving their own death and destruction
as we would too."

- R.E. Slater
August 20, 2021







From Selma to Moscow: How Human Rights Activists
Transformed U.S. Foreign Policy

Illustrated, April 24, 2018
by Sarah B. Snyder (Author)

The 1960s marked a transformation of human rights activism in the United States. At a time of increased concern for the rights of their fellow citizens―civil and political rights, as well as the social and economic rights that Great Society programs sought to secure―many Americans saw inconsistencies between domestic and foreign policy and advocated for a new approach. The activism that arose from the upheavals of the 1960s fundamentally altered U.S. foreign policy―yet previous accounts have often overlooked its crucial role.
In From Selma to Moscow, Sarah B. Snyder traces the influence of human rights activists and advances a new interpretation of U.S. foreign policy in the “long 1960s.” She shows how transnational connections and social movements spurred American activism that achieved legislation that curbed military and economic assistance to repressive governments, created institutions to monitor human rights around the world, and enshrined human rights in U.S. foreign policy making for years to come. Snyder analyzes how Americans responded to repression in the Soviet Union, racial discrimination in Southern Rhodesia, authoritarianism in South Korea, and coups in Greece and Chile. By highlighting the importance of nonstate and lower-level actors, Snyder shows how this activism established the networks and tactics critical to the institutionalization of human rights. A major work of international and transnational history, From Selma to Moscow reshapes our understanding of the role of human rights activism in transforming U.S. foreign policy in the 1960s and 1970s and highlights timely lessons for those seeking to promote a policy agenda resisted by the White House.

* * * * * * * * * *


PHOTOS OF THE TALIBAN IN KABUL, AFGHANISTAN,
AND FLEEING AFGHANIS

Mid-August, 2021









The way of peace is hard
but its joys last forever.

- R.E. Slater
August 10, 2021


Matthew 5:9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

Romans 14:19 So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding.

James 3:18 And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

John 14:27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.

Ephesians 6:23 Peace be to the brothers, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Philippians 4:7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

John 16:33 I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulations. But take heart; I have overcome the world.

Luke 1:79 To give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.

Mark 9:50 Salt is good, but if the salt looses its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.

James 3:18 And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.


Théodore Géricault, The Raft of the Medusa (1818-1819)


Pablo Picasso, Massacre in Korea (1951)


Banksy, The Flower Thrower (2003)


Jaune Smith, I See Red: Migration (1995)


Activists in Exile


Samuel Bak, Open Book


Monday, December 28, 2020

Miley Cyrus - The War Is Over


✩🎄★Happy Xmas (War Is Over)★🎄✩
Miley Cyrus & Mark Ronson feat. Sean Ono Lennon
Dec 12, 2019


Miley Cyrus & Mark Ronson feat. Sean Ono Lennon
- Happy Xmas (War Is Over)



Lyrics ★🎄★

So this is Christmas
And what have you done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young


A very merry Christmas
and a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

And so this is Christmas (war is over)
For weak and for strong (if you want it)
For rich and for poor ones (war is over)
The world is so wrong (now...)

And so happy Christmas (war is over)
For black and for white (if you want it)
For left and for right ones (war is over)
Let's stop all the fight (now...)


A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Oh, let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

And so this is Christmas (war is over)
And what have we done (if you want it)
Another year over (war is over)
And a new one just begun (now...)

And so happy Christmas (war is over)
We hope you have fun (if you want it)
The near and the dear one (war is over)
The old and the young (now...)


A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

War is over, if you want it
War is over now!

Happy Christmas everybody!
★🎄★




New Years Require Better Resolutions

by R.E. Slater
December 29, 2020

I have been enjoying Miley Cyrus a lot lately. I love her voice, how she thinks and envision's life, her need to speak out against civil and human injustice, and for the beauty she sees all around her. Miley is sounding better to me the older she gets and the more she discovers who she is and what she wants to speak to. And though she's very good at capturing cover songs like the one here, I am more interested in her edginess and how she sees humanity in all its vices and colours.

With the onset of a new year coming in three days I'm asking that we commit ourselves to healing. To the healing of our hearts, our friendships, our community, our country, and our world.

To redirecting all our nervous, sometimes exasperating, sometimes agitating, energy, into goodness and wellbeing for all things human and earthly. Mere wishing for, or singing of, "Peace on Earth, goodwill towards men" are but empty words if we don't actually practice these qualities at all times through all our seasons of life.

Over the last several years we've seen the ugliness of hatred and division and what it does to leaderless people who follow those dark souls who are destroyers of present goodness. They have vexed our hearts and our relationships with one another. They are a scourge to be remonstrated against and removed.

Let us today, this coming year, take up the challenge of our destroyers to rebuild a truer equality and justice for all around us. For each other as well as for nature. So often rebuilding cannot come without deconstructing our past and present. Black Lives Matter has challenged us to do just that. And we will. These are the fundamental challenges we must step up to. Let me share an all too frequent example of expectations versus reality.

The Challenges of Loss

Several years ago I naively bought a house thinking it needed remodeling. I had met the builder and the owner, sent an inspection company out to confirm the site, and read what was written in the contracts. But I couldn't have been more wrong. The house was fundamentally built wrong, found akilter with itself upon it's several elevations, and with a craftsmanship absently confounding. It all was hidden from view innocently enough but the structure was fundamently flawed behind its rustic beauty. The words on the contract which I needed for clarification weren't written down but kept off and hidden (as keeping to the letter of the law of the county but not its spirit of full disclosure). And the inspecting agency counted the nails on the roof, the missing electrical safety features but missed the foundations which were rotting and sagging. These were drywalled over from the inside and packed with gravel around the perimeter making it seem aesthetic when it was actually functional fifteen feet all the way down. A simple tapping of an iron rod through the gravel would've confirmed further discovery. Or a screwdriver through the furnace walls would've told of a wooden foundation. But none of this was disclosed or confirmed. The result? It was all on me. Everything. It was not a good place to be.

An older man, my neighbor, whom I came to know, spoke wisdom confirming what my own heart was saying, against all the others who spoke contrary. I took it as a word from God and proceeded to destroy-and-rebuild and never looked back. It would be another loss in life. Unexpected. Injurious. But something to be overcome. I told my neighbor the house needed a deep renovation - including a completely new, and much stronger foundation, and not the rotting foundation it was lying upon which I had perchance discovered midway through remodeling the lower floor as a front end loader removed the dirt from the buried walls so we could add an extra bedroom and bath to the end of the house. I remember that weekend as being grievous. We were facing a total loss.

Bottom line... I would have to deconstruct the house before reconstructing it properly. It would cost a good deal of money, personal time I didn't have, and the labor of many talented trade workers to overcome the obstacles and oppositions I was facing. And I would have to live with my decisions good or bad. However, the Lord has gifted me with the ability to create investments out of loss. It has been true with lay ministries as it has been true in my life. My gifts it seems is to take challenges and create beauty. Which also means I've had a lot of experience with losses. Or with shoddy envisioning of what beauty means. Or with people or institutions content with the trauma they are living out.

My website, Relevancy22, is a postmodern Christian testament to recreating, or reimagining, a Christianity I was deeply blessed and trained in to maintain its traditional structures. It's classic forms. It's unmitigating foundations. But those structures and foundations needed demolishing - keeping the good as I could while trashing all that withheld seeing God's love truly through the biblical passages and churchly histories and otherwise actions of its people. I had to go through dark days to get there. But the Lord sent me His Holy Spirit to guide through a challenging wilderness to find a way to His light and beauty. It was done by learning to unlearn so that I might re-learn.

So too it is with our lives. We need the Lord's guidance and the discerning grit of hard decisions to be made when we do not know which way to go amid the cacophony of voices telling us what we should do. And for that God had brought to me the help of gifted craftsmen and trades people, a blessed general contractor of generosity and talent, and a small window of purchasing opportunity to buy discounted materials during America's worst times of hurricanes and wildfires. As I labored with the labourers I blessed God many times over during those long 14 months. From beginning to end it was fraught with difficulty personally, financially, health-wise, and emotionally. It was a hard time.

As another example of rebuilding out of neglect let's look at societal structures in their many ways of casual callousness to the suffering and neglect of people living with rot and difficulty on a daily basis. The dispensing of Covid-19 vaccines readily shows to us the struggles we are challenged with in a society when naively promoting our ideals over aiding those truly in need of the miracle vaccine. Rather than serving the homeless, ghettos, the essential, and enfeebled, our dispensatory systems have been prejudiced towards those who have the resources, class, wealth, standing, or perception to receive them. Yet, any nurse, social worker, school administrator, city mayor, priest, pastor, or even private industry boss will learn on their first day whether to choose for equality and fairness or to overlook it in their occupations. Let us chose the path less travelled. The one promising fuller resolve than capitulate to the norm such as profit over care, income over restitution, greed over generosity.

To Serve rather than be Served

Let us at all times be mindful in all things to serve those around us rather than be served ourselves. This is the mindset of Jesus. The challenges in Jesus' day were no different from ours today. So much of our best intentions get usurped by the politician, the greedy, the proud, the corrupt of heart. Their kind of world is dark and odious. But let us be of the light and not of their mindset of self-serving oblivion.

Even those words, or worlds, which might sound "Christian" or "righteous" to our ears can be anything be loving or divine. More like broadbills for waylaid sheep lost and looking for a shepherd but finding crooks and thieves of their souls. And yet, the Lord God has shown His real Self through His Incarnation in the Trinitarian personage of Jesus who opposed the wicked, granted release from bondage to the suffering, and ministered God's love until His death and resurrection into glory while renewing His Covenant of Love double-stamped by His Spirit that He abides with us moment-by-moment in this life and the next.

Those leaderless churches of another gospel are not God's churches of love and welcoming embrace. They are the churches of men who worship the idols of their cultural inheritance and the lies of their future. They protect their past to live as dead people to God in their present. They fear the challenge of change and run from its necessity to moderate, or minister, to the unfortunates in life. Such words, creeds, structures, societies of darkness we would remove, demolish, overcome and replace with love, truth, goodness, and light by leaning into God's continually evolving process of death for renewal, wreckage for reclamation, atonement for redemption, denial of self for resurrection, fear for transformation, and beauty for revival by His Spirit at all times.

Jesus is the benchmark for all humanity. He is the goal and perfector of one's faith. Not the church, not the unenlightened mobs which come and go to the distress of the world of God and man. But Jesus. He is the One we look to for example, truth, and love. Upon Jesus' uplifted Cross we can see the God of Love in full display.

Now this Christmas has come and gone. It's short season is over. Yet Christ has come to us in wintry celebration of His Incarnational Advental Coming. Let us then ask the Lord that Christ's "panpsychic being and becomingness" enters all the way into the deepest parts of our hearts, minds, and souls, as we approach new challenges in this coming new year. Let it be a year of healing. Of atonement. Of redemption. Perhaps, even, a year of hope becoming realized in the work of our hands and feet and lips. Amen and Amen.

And as Ms. Cyrus has well said, "The War is Over." But stop and think... it really is - if... we really want it to be. Thank you Miley.

R.E. Slater
December 28, 2020










Christmas Bells
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)


I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."








Peace and Goodwill

Since Adam ate from off that tree,
Earth spins without tranquility.
No golden age of ancient Greece
Nor Pax Romana gave us peace.
The Son of God and Mary brought
The hope that midnight angels taught.

If you’d find peace from Heaven’s King,
Then join the song the angels sing:
“To God the highest glory be!”
That’s goodwill’s faithful melody.
All sinners, willing to believe,
Alone that Prince of Peace receive.

-- David L. Hatton, 12/7/2018




Peter Drucker quote from President Abraham Lincoln




Peace and Goodwill

True peace on earth will never be, without The Lord of Eternity,
And goodwill towards all men, truly begins as we’re Born-Again.
Men sing that Christ has come, but they must embrace the Son,
God’s Son who came to earth, so all man could have New Birth.

That little baby born in a stall, isn’t a babe, but He’s King over all,
As songs about a baby man sings, Christ reigns as King of kings,
The Only True Prince of Peace, with a reign that shall not cease,
And while a babe, nations adore, The Savior, men simply ignore.

Christ came to grant all salvation, but they ignore His Revelation,
Being born of God from above, brings the peace songs speak of,
Born Again by the Spirit of God, while living upon this earthly sod,
Becoming part of God’s Family, with a Peace that lasts Eternally.

Christ did not come for Christmas, but, to redeem sinners like us,
Starting with lost sheep in Israel, then the Gentiles, per God’s will,
To bring the message of Salvation, not to some, but every nation,
A message lost in festive fray, as men sing about Christmas Day.

Jesus is why Christmas came, but songs seldom utter His Name,
In many songs what’s not heard, are those Truths in God’s Word,
Sadly many, enjoying the song, even observe this holiday wrong,
And without embracing the Truth, instead of joy shall see reproof.

Bob Gotti
(Copyright ©01/2011)