“Dialogue hasn’t saved a single Christian” Robert Spencer
Praise like cascading waters, like rushing rivers,
Praise like flying birds, and flight of eagles.
Praise like thundering herds cross vast expanse.
Praise written cross skies in clouds and drifting mists.
Praise with the quaking aspen. Praise golden and blissful.
Praise to the heavens, to the highest heavens.
Heartfelt and hallowed, on angels’ wings and from the mouths of babes.
Hush; listen in silence.
Creation, on tip toe, peering beyond Time to Eternity.
Time poised on the brink of the Eternal, awaiting Your Word.
Praise from the heart, one poor and yearning heart.
Come, O Immortal. Come!
©2010 Joann Nelander
Your people praise you, O Lord.
As points of light,
Scattered about
The surface of the Earth.
Together with angelic choirs,
That dot the firmament,
Your children sing.
With fish, and bird,
With rivers and seas,
With mountains,
And heavenly heights,
Creation sings in chorus,
Affirmation,
Acclamation,
And affection,
In sanctifying hosannas,
That fall as bountiful rain,
To water man and beast
With fruitful exaltation,
Multipling our delight,
As we magnify our God.
We are your mothers,
Fathers, sisters,
Brothers,
Friends of Your fold,
Returning praise,
And worship due
The Most High Lord
Of all creation.
In Your Light we
Become Your Light.
© 2012 Joann Nelander
I’m reading “Theology for Beginners” by F. J. Sheed. In speaking of Hell, Sheed writes:
” being deprived of God is the essential pain, and this deprivation is willed by the self. It has nothing of God but His will to maintain it in existence. The God Who alone could nourish it, it will not have. When a man dies loving self to the hatred of God, what can God do with him? What He does do we know on His own word—He lets him go to his own place. It is hard to see what else He could do. He can hardly take him into heaven, for that would mean an inconceivably close union with the God he hates, a ceaseless torment to the self he loves. Those who deny the existence of hell so confidently never seem to have considered this problem of the people who have made the choice of self against God (though there is nothing in our experience of life to make us feel it impossible). When their attention is drawn to it, they still do not consider it: they merely rap out the suggestion that God should simply annihilate such people—before birth perhaps, by withholding existence from those He knew would make the choice of hatred. A study of the reasons God may have for not annihilating those who hate Him would take us theologically very deep. But quite apart from these, we have no reason of our own to conclude that condemned souls would want annihilation. To me it seems at least probable that love of self carried to that intensity would involve a clinging to self at all costs.”
Start reading it for free: <a href=”http://amzn.to/1SAHoE8″>http://amzn.to/1SAHoE8</a>
Your people praise you, O Lord.
As points of light,
Scattered about
The surface of the Earth.
Together with angelic choirs,
That dot the firmament,
Your children sing.
With fish, and bird,
With rivers and seas,
With mountains,
And heavenly heights,
Creation sings in chorus,
Affirmation,
Acclamation,
And affection,
In sanctifying hosannas,
That fall as bountiful rain,
To water man and beast
With fruitful exaltation,
Multipling our delight,
As we magnify our God.
We are your mothers,
Fathers, sisters,
Brothers, friends
Of Your fold,
Returning praise,
And worship due
The Most High Lord
Of all creation.
In Your Light we
Become Your Light.
© 2012 Joann Nelander
Hillary Clinton’s Nightmare
By Judge Andrew P. Napolitano
Published Jan. 28, 2016
Hillary Clinton’s nightmare is not the sudden resurgence of Bernie Sanders. It is the fidelity to the rule of law of the FBI.
The recent revelations of the receipt by Clinton of a Special Access Program email, as well as cut and pasted summaries of state secrets on her server and on her BlackBerry nearly guarantee that the FBI will recommend that the Department of Justice convene a grand jury and seek her indictment for espionage. Here is the backstory.
It seems that every week, more information comes to light about Clinton’s grave legal woes. Her worries are in two broad categories: One is her well-documented failure to safeguard state secrets and the other is her probable use of her position as secretary of state to advance financially her husband’s charitable foundation. The FBI is currently and aggressively investigating both. What I will describe below is in the state secrets category. It is apparently not new to the FBI, but it is new to the public.
Among the data that the FBI either found on the Clinton server or acquired from the State Department via its responses to Freedom of Information Act requests is a top-secret email that has been denominated Special Access Program. Top secret is the highest category of state secrets (the other categories are confidential and secret), and of the sub-parts of top secret, SAP is the most sensitive.
SAP is clothed in such secrecy that it cannot be received or opened accidentally. Clinton — who ensured all of her governmental emails came to her through her husband’s server, a nonsecure nongovernmental venue — could only have received or viewed it from that server after inputting certain codes. Those codes change at unscheduled times, such that she would need to inquire of them before inputting them.
The presence of the SAP-denominated email on her husband’s server, whether opened or not, shows a criminal indifference to her lawful obligation to maintain safely all state secrets entrusted to her care. Yet, Clinton has suggested that she is hopelessly digitally inept and may not have known what she was doing. This constitutes an attempted plausible deniability to the charge of failing to safeguard state secrets.
But in this sensitive area of the law, plausible deniability is not an available defense; no judge would permit the assertion of it in legal filings or in a courtroom, and no lawyer would permit a client to make the assertion.
This is so for two reasons. First, failure to safeguard state secrets is a crime for which the government need not prove intent. The failure can be done negligently. Thus, plausible deniability is actually an admission of negligence and, hence in this case, an admission of guilt, not a denial.
Second, Clinton signed an oath under penalty of perjury on Jan. 22, 2009, her first full day as secretary of state. In that oath, she acknowledged that she had received a full FBI briefing on the lawfully required care and keeping of state secrets. Her briefing and her oath specified that the obligation to safeguard state secrets is absolute — it cannot be avoided or evaded by forgetfulness or any other form of negligence, and that negligence can bring prosecution.
What type of data is typically protected by the SAP denomination? The most sensitive under the sun — such as the names of moles (spies working for more than one government) and their American handlers, the existence of black ops (illegal programs that the U.S. government carries out, of which it will deny knowledge if exposed), codes needed to access state secrets and ongoing intelligence gathering projects.
The crime here occurs when SAPs are exposed by residing in a nonsecure venue; it does not matter for prosecution purposes whether they fell into the wrong hands.
Clinton’s persistent mocking of the seriousness of all this is the moral equivalent of taunting alligators before crossing a stream. SAPs are so sensitive that most of the FBI agents who are investigating Clinton lack the security clearances needed to view the SAP found among her emails. Most FBI agents have never seen a SAP.
Shortly after the presence of the SAP-denominated email was made known, the State Department released another email Clinton failed to erase wherein she instructed her subordinates to take state secrets from a secure venue, to cut and paste and summarize them, and send them to her on her nonsecure venue. Such an endeavor, if carried out, is a felony — masking and then not safeguarding state secrets. Such a command to subordinates can only come from a criminal mind.
Equally as telling is a little-known 2013 speech that recently surfaced given by one of Clinton’s former subordinates. The aide revealed that Clinton and her staff regularly engaged in digital conversations about state secrets on their BlackBerries. This is not criminal if the BlackBerries were government-issued and secured. Clinton’s was neither. It was purchased at her instructions off the shelf by one of her staff.
Can anyone doubt that Clinton has failed to safeguard state secrets? If her name were Hillary Rodham instead of Hillary Rodham Clinton, she’d have been indicted months ago.
What remains of the rule of law in America? The FBI will soon tell us.
Ceaseless the prayer You desire of me.
Your Eyes behold me.
You wait for me to lift my eyes
From the world
To gaze heavenward,
To behold You smiling upon me.
You long for our eyes to meet
In an exchange of love
And longing.
Ceaseless prayer is no less
Than a return of Love’s attention,
Glances passed one to the Other,
Constancy of care,
Attentive watchfulness.
Hearts speak in wordless knowing
All the while willing to know and be known.
The Greater gifting the lesser
With nothing less than His own Life.
The world becomes a room
Filled with the Light You shed
As I become a candle
Held in the Hand of God,
Melting in a pool,
Readied for a new mold,
True to the goodness
God gives me,
As He beholds
His creation from eternity
And says throughout Time
“It is good. “
©2012 Joann Nelander
All rights reserved
I
David, Thy Servant, desired to build You a house.
I, too, desire to build You a holy dwelling.
I desire to build it here,
In this space in which I live.
Here on this ground of my being,
More than brick and mortar,
More than outward beauty,
I raise its rafters of prayer.
I desire this house to be a home,
Where angels and saints are welcome,
And drawn by the Heart of this dwelling,
For the home I will build is totally Yours.
With Davis, Your servant, I desire.
I desire to please and serve my God.
Make of me a home, an abode,
In which we may sup,
Now, and eternally.
(C)2016 Joann Nelander
I believe that if we realized the person in-utero is not hanging in some ethereal place while we decide whether or not we can accommodate our lives to their presence in the here and now, realizing that they are a reality and not a choice, and that their one life is all they have on earth and they want it just as much as we want, defend and protect our own, for they precious to us, then the abortion debate would be over.
Here I Am
Here I am, beneath your heart,
My heart beating in happy harmony,
As my frame perceives
The gentle throbbing within your breast,
Serene.
I began in secret and in darkness,
A mystery, even to myself.
Day by day, nature shapes my clay,
As you await the blessed dawn of my birth day.
What I know, I know by existence.
I am now all trust,
Simply growing,
Simply becoming who I am.
Comfort, you give comfort.
Love, you are all I know of love.
As you wait for me, my mother,
The eyes of my soul are wide open.
I behold you, smiling upon me.
Expectant, vigilant and gleeful,
Mother of my moments,
You cradle me.
You are my home of sweet delight.
© 2011 Joann Nelander
Immaculata-Patroness
Joann Nelander Studio 