A new day! What a glorious or ominous occurrence. For me, this day is also a new chapter in my life. Today, and tomorrow, James and I do the last 2 pickup truck move out's, and Friday, the empty home of my ex sister goes up for sale,.to finish 12 months of estate activities and responsibilities. Most who follow these early day's of my blog's know that I encountered one of the most filthy, neglected, dysfunctional properties of all time. I put in over 3,000 hours of cleaning, repair, electrical, landscaping and unearthing mounds of un-dealt with paper-work covered with greasy, tobacco filled dust. for 11 of my 12 month's living here, I went through about 2/3rds of a role of TP, daily, with no-stop blowing of my nose. Everything required multiple cleaning's with degreasing products,.and at first, every section you touched spread a new cloud of dust everywhere. I didn't finish my trusteeship responsibilities any too soon, but I think I hit the mark. No notarized will, and never having managed an estate, the estate lawyer's and realtor's have added quite a bit to the process.
So for all, today is a new day. I almost always start my waking hour's with the same Stoic-Christian practice's. I usually get my first walk in around sunrise, having incorporated many of the Stoic principles that I have been sharing. So, the walk is never filled with worry and anxiety, but my daily needs and intention's have usually been reviewed and typically follow, so the walk, urban though it is, has it's communion with nature, and alway's my local crow's.
Benjamin Franklin, a deist, is said to have begun each day, with a pre sunrise prayer and meditation, asking how he could serve his fellow man, and ending the day reflecting on whether he had been a positive influence that day. Unlike the untruth "Christian Founding Father's" rhetoric of the right, a deist* is not a Christian. *Deism: Belief in a higher power/supreme being. - Belief in an afterlife. - Rejects revelations as a source of religious evidence. - Oriented toward scientific fact and natural observation, rather than scripture. Most of the significant founding father's were Congregationalist's, Unitarian's, Methodist's and Quaker's. So our Supreme Court Justice's who "interpret from first source are ignorant or evil, in how the rule. Our Governor's, Senator's and Congresspeople are equally disingenuous, and reflect a bias based upon Queen's rule and slave ownership. Not everyone, mind you, but more than enough to constantly lead in the wrong direction.
And, as a multiply relevant scripture, one of the few that I love in the first half,
Ecclesiastes 3
New International Version
A Time for Everything
3 There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:
2 a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot,3 a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build,4 a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,6 a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away,7 a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak,8 a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.
9 What do workers gain from their toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet[a] no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. 13 That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. 14 I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.
15 Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before; and God will call the past to account.[b]
16 And I saw something else under the sun:
In the place of judgment—wickedness was there, in the place of justice—wickedness was there.
17 I said to myself,
“God will bring into judgment both the righteous and the wicked,for there will be a time for every activity, a time to judge every deed.”
18 I also said to myself, “As for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. 19 Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath[c]; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. 20 All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. 21 Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?”
22 So I saw that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work, because that is their lot. For who can bring them to see what will happen after them?
Footnotes
Ecclesiastes 3:11 Or also placed ignorance in the human heart, so that
Ecclesiastes 3:15 Or God calls back the past
Ecclesiastes 3:19 Or spirit
New International Version (NIV)
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
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