I just came up with a new proverb: Think before you talk. Someone had just made a comment from "The [Godfather's] scene in which Michael is giving brother Freddo a warning rebuke never again to side with anyone against his family. Freddo's failure to heed this advice cost him his life in Godfather II. Freddo kept making a fool out of himself. He failed to think before he opened up his mouth. I can look back and see that I've spoken foolishly in some occasions by not editing my speech before I opened up my mouth. Hence my new proverb: Think before you talk.

Hi folks. This is Robert Fiad hailin from Ping.fm. Salutes to you all.

Pop Art & Movie Posters

Pop Art & Movie Posters, a group on Flickr.

I have always enjoyed looking at old movie posters.

Illustration and Graphic Addicts

Illustration and Graphic Addicts, a group on Flickr.

One of the things that fills my life is art and I enjoy sharing it.

How to Overcome a Lifetime of Discouragement after a Thirty Minute Christian Sermon

      This morning of Sunday, July 3, 2011, I did not want to get out of bed to go to Sunday morning service. When I got to church it was about 9:30 a.m.. The service message was about getting back on track with God's calling for your life and mine according to his purpose.

      I am glad I went.  I came out of there refreshed, reinvogorated, reinspired, and recharged more than I'd ever felt before.

      On some occasions, I have been told to get my act together when I had trouble getting starting on something.  However, many times in life, I've found myself overwhelmed when I've been held accountable for circumstances that I could not control.  It seems so unfair.  You feel that you're at the mercy of some situation that you absolutely know you have no control over.

      Feels rotten, doesn't it?  It does to me, big time.  Yet it happens.  Why?

     We live in an individualistic culture.  The American Dream is about subduing your circumstances, subduing the earth on your own strength, and in the natural. Yet, as we live our lives out, we realize that we are woefully inadequate to subdue the circumstances in our lives.  And too often, it involves money scarcity.  We lack the very capital resources required to get our acts together or perish at the hands of this desperately demanding world.

On many occasions, I've been very tempted to just forsake all my dreams, all my aspirations, and decide to sit out the rest of my life.  Forget success.  Had I asked to be put in the world?  Did I ask if I wanted to be born?  Hell, no!  None of us did. And yet we're all here and demands are being put on us 24/7.  So it feels like a raw deal.  I'd even considered writing a book for unhappy people to focus on reducing the misery in their lives and never mind the search for happiness or fulfillment because only 20% of people get to actualize their dreams anyway.

After this morning's sermon I realized how wrong I was.

The pastor stated that God puts calls on us even before we're born.  And we're faced with a choice, "Heed the call, obey the voice of God for your life according to the plan He has for us and wind up and be blessed.  Otherwise, we can turn away, abandon God's plan, and be cursed.  If we make the wrong decision, turn away, the devil will be waiting for us with curses. And God will allow the devil to curse us.

If we decide to do the right thing, if we heed the call and march back to Him, with the intent to obey God and live up to His plan, we will straighten our lives out, will make the crooked places straight.  Yes, there will be trials.  Let each us be perplexed but not distressed.  When the going gets tough, let us state as my Pastor, David Stocker, Sr. said: "My Life is in the Hand of the Lord."  It is not up to us to make our lives work for Jesus himself said that "Apart from Him you can do nothing."  We must disregard the idea that it is up to each of us to "get our act together" on our own strength. 

No !   No !  And again, No !

Instead, "My Life is in the Hand of the Lord." 

Need hope? 

The pastor ended the service with the right set of words to frame our thoughts on.

"God will work for me if I obey His Voice."

So, whenever the going gets tough, whenever you feel like throwing off your belief that life is for you, think:  "My Life is in the Hand of the Lord.  God will work for me if I obey His voice."  Every day, frame your thoughts on those statements. Let your mind be frame on that mentality.  Your crooked ways will be made straight. 

God will indeed heal your broken, injured life. After all, He is God Almighty.

Aung San Suu Kyi, Let her go free !

“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality” - Alighieri Dante

http://thinkexist.com/quotation/the_hottest_places_in_hell_are_reserved_for_those/169930.html

I hate oppression; I hate bullying. And I totally distrust governments which rulers push their people around and trample them underfoot.  See what's happening over there in Burma. 

This courageous woman named Aung San Suu Kyi is a well known human rights activist and because she has stepped on the toes of the heavy-handed goons who run the Burmese so-called government, she's imprisoned.  We who live in free countries must intervene for those who cannot successfully enforce their right to enjoy freedom.

We are not to remain neutral.  Let us all join this noble effort for freedom sake. I strongly urge all of us to visit this very worthy website, http://www.64forsuu.org/aboutassk.php, and seek in what way you can partake of this human rights mission not just for her but for all humankind.

The Appointment, a song by Leonardo Favio

Lesson experiences are often narrated in songs, especially in songs about romantic love turned sour as the result of cheating.  This one, a beautifully sung reproach-song, is one of them. However, it isn't just about the offended cheat spouse or lover who got burned.  It talks about a cheating wife or girlfriend who's on a rendevous with some mysterious lover but she's just walked into a major surprise. There's no violence but there is shock.  The lyrics below narrate the story of this encounter.

Come on in and sit down quietly

Finally you're here

Now imagine that I am not me but

another man, the one you expected to see

A stranger who has written you a verse

and drew for you, on a piece of paper, the Moon

An improvised lover,. a mysterious passionate one

He set up for you an appointment at this hotel

Undress yourself now and turn off light

and make me love as you do with these lovers

I swear that today is the last time

that you make fun of me,  that you deceive me

my hands wrote you the letter

and were my fingers that put up the trap

My heart cries on the inside out of  sorrow, and out in pity

but I leave you and I go forever... forever

It was my hands that wrote you the letter

It was my fingers that put up the trap

Come in, sit quietly

Finally you're here and you you can't imagine

that I am not another man that you expect to see

 A stranger to you to written a verse

and draw for you the  moon on a piece of paper

an improvised  lover improvised, a mysterious passionate one

I set up the appointment in this hotel

Now undress,turn off the light instantly

and make me love as you do with these lovers

I swear that today is the last time

that you make fun of me, that you deceive me

It was my hands that wrote you the letter

and it was my  fingers that  set you the trap

and it's now my heart which cries out of pity and sorrow                                     

on the inside; but I leave you and I go forever... forever

My hands that you wrote you the letter

And my fingers that set up the trap...

_{La Cita por Leonardo Favio}

_{http://ar.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080812212956AAHVCeL}

Great Reasons for www.lessons-uncensored.blogspot.com

I felt reluctance when I was considering creating http://www.lessons-uncensored.blogspot.com/ since it would be a no-holds-barred blog. Why would a born-again Christian blogger like me create an uncensored blog like that and attach my name to it?

There are darknesses that show truth. There are things that must be learnt that must include dark, embarrassing nudity and violence and sometimes sex.  The human heart attempts to hide much but what is hidden must be exposed if hearts are to be saved from breaking and lives kept from being lost.

The truth is raw, uncensored, and no respecter of people.  Each of us will eventually die or be raptured and then be judged before Jesus Christ.  A tape of our lives will be played in front of everybody.  All the good, bad, ugly, raunchy, clean, filthy will be aired.  Stuff you hoped that no one would ever see you in will be exposed.  No matter how much you protest, the tape will continue to run until it's done.  It may be embarrassing to you to be seen in such a stark situation or scene. 

Aside from that, the judgement, the truth often comes out in unprepared for situations.  And it's naked.  And some lessons will not be taught to you in squeaky clean classrooms but in utter darkness or semi darkness.  You often learn lessons and life experiences in the most compromising scenes and in places you'd be the last to call a school. 

There's darkness in evil. However, there's darkness in truth when the truth illuminates it.

And lessons taught in darkness and learnt in darkness expose the depths leaving no excuse of ignorance.  Therefore, lessons uncensored are lessons taught in scenes that are not nice to be seen in: scenes of darkness when the innermost spiritual and hidden stuff comes out and exposes itself. 

Thus Lessons Uncensored which contains some nudity and darkness is a necessity as a lesson.

The Horribly High Cost of Arrogant Pride

"I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul."
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/invictus/

These last two lines of the poem Invictus written by William Ernest Henley (1849–1903), are an expression of total arrogance, a contradiction of recorded history that records just how ineffective such a prideful arrogance on the part of so many men and women can have abased their souls. 

Still people don't learn. 

Let us share some examples shown below:

"12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
13  For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:

14  I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High
15  Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.
16  They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this  the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms;

17  That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners?

18  All the kings of the nations, even all of them, lie in glory, everyone in his own house.

19  But thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch, and as the raiment of those that are slain, thrust through with a sword, that go down to the stones of the pit; as a carcase trodden under feet. "

http://kingjbible.com/isaiah/14:12-19htm

These biblical verses demonstrate how the archangel Lucifer self destructed down from an almost hallowed position in the Kingdom of God down to being God's enemy and ours, and all the way down to total destruction, which remains pending now.

Unfortunately, today, many human beings and equally important, many societies have the attitude of  missing biblical alerts and examples.  You may even be one of them.  Therefore, let me then share a warning from an unexpected source, the Prince of Machiavelli.  He was certainly no biblical author and in anything, his writings give the feeling of amorality.   However, in all this, he expressed a humility and an honesty that should be heeded when he gave the right sort of advice.

"It is not unknown to me how many men have had - and still have, the opinion that the affairs of the world are in such wise governed by fortune and by God - that men with their wisdom cannot direct them and that no one can even help them; and because of this they would have us believe it is not necessary to labour much in affairs, but to let chance govern them. This opinion has been more credited in our times because of the great changes in affairs, which have been seen, and may still be seen, every day, beyond all human conjecture. Sometimes pondering over this, I am in some degree inclined to their opinion. Nevertheless, not to extinguish our free will, I hold it to be true that Fortune is the arbiter of one-half of our actions, but that she still leaves us to direct the other half, or perhaps a little less."

http://www.constitution.org/mac/prince25.htm

No one gets to be a master of their fate, nor captain of their soul.  Weare just not created to go that far up.  We never arrive to be powerful enough to be our own gods; we never come to worship ourselves.  We are not equipped for that.  Moreover, when we achieve great feats, we are to give God the credit. 

I believe that pride is an infectious disease of the soul that sets in when we suffer some trauma that afflicts our self esteem as humans.  We were not created to suffer humiliations or to have our self esteems trampled under foot.  Such offenses are horrible injuries to our person hoods.  So if we need some ego trip to boost our sagging self esteem, we need to turn to God, through Jesus, and talk that over with Him. He understands our feelings, our pains. He doesn't want us to go through life like that.  Getting humiliated is a way of getting our hearts broken.  Here's what Jesus Christ said about people' broken hearts.

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,"

Luke 4:18  (King James Version)

Thus we know that going off on an ego trip is not the way to solve an inner humiliation wound. We are to go to Jesus Christ with it and hand to him our humiliated souls and broken hearts. He will give us the appropriate relief if we turn to him with our pains.
Therefore, your free will you may use it as you choose.  If you choose to go off on an arrogant ego trip, trampling under foot all who would stand before you, please at least consider this warning:

"11  But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.

 12  And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted."

http://kingjbible.com/matthew/23.htm


Should you not want to accept a Biblical warning, then let's refresh your memory with Machiavelli:

"It is not unknown to me how many men have had, and still have, the opinion that the affairs of the world are in such wise governed by fortune and by God that men with their wisdom cannot direct them and that no one can even help them; and because of this they would have us believe that it is not necessary to labour much in affairs, but to let chance govern them. This opinion has been more credited in our times because of the great changes in affairs, which have been seen, and may still be seen, every day, beyond all human conjecture. Sometimes pondering over this, I am in some degree inclined to their opinion. Nevertheless, not to extinguish our free will, I hold it to be true that Fortune is the arbiter of one-half of our actions, but that she still leaves us to direct the other half, or perhaps a little less."

http://www.constitution.org/mac/prince25.htm

In the final analysis, the decision is yours.   Choose wisely then.

How to Handle Feeling Disgusted with Yourself

There will be times when you will make horrible mistakes with yourself, in your life, in which you will be judged foolish, evil, or bad intentioned by others.  Some may even say that you were a mistake of God's creation.

You could be pointed out as inferior, evil, valueless, a mistake of life by people who disapprove of you, for some reason, or other. 

It could have been done to you already, only once, many times, maybe even too many to count.  You could be pointed out as a mongrel, a bastard, worthless, human excrement, a mistake of humanity, a disgrace to society, a black sheep of your family, any bad title that anyone else could imagine saying to you for any reason at all.

Let's say you've faced disapproval throughout your whole life from the time that you were an infant.  Let's say that's all you know.  Let's say you were kicked out of your home and face an unknowable, hostile world. 

With those horrible, unfair labels, you've been raised being exposed to throughout your life, how do you judge yourself, how do you measure and weigh your own worth fairly, when all you know is all this bad stuff you've been told about yourself?

The truth about your worth as a human being is very simple and blunt.  You are in no condition at all to judge your own worth at any stage of your life, no matter whether all of humanity judges you as almost a god — or whether the rock bottom of all of the human societies are above you.

Guess what!  No one at all — except Jesus Christ —is qualified to judge you or set your level of human worth in life.

On what information is based the truthfulness of this last statement, this last paragraph so far?

"The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity;"

The passage from the Bible's New Testament Book of Matthew, chapter 13: verse 41 explains what this has to do with you and your worth as a human being.

Where in the Bible does it then say that Jesus Christ will send out human society's standards value enforcers or regular human people, no more or less than you yourself to gather out of God's Kingdom all things that offend and them which do iniquity?

Nowhere — He's sending out his angels and not people, not parents, cousins, aunts and uncles, guardians, groups, committees, police officers, lawyers, bureaucrats, inspectors, judges, bailiffs, correctional officers, clerks, etc. to that task.

There are rightful places and tasks that must be done by all of these people. Each of these has their rightful purpose and their own values to enforce.  However, passing judgments on the worth of other people and condemning them is not among those.

.

Chinese Christians Arrested - The Daily Beast

Chinese Christians Arrested - The Daily Beast

Human Interest Revival

Articles on human interest stories were popular in early twentieth century. There were cases when people was emotionally connected to other people. Today, it is no longer seen except when a major disaster happens, a horrible crime, or something very ugly in that one is necessarily closer to a neighbor or stranger.

And what I have to wonder is how we human beings have become so separated by the difficulties and challenges of everyday life that something catastrophic has to happen so that we're then compelled to approach other beings, to have rekindled our interest in others?

My heart, my soul insist that this  not be the case. There should be a renewed interest in human interest stories. Therefore, I created this, my blog, a space to address issues, with stories, stories, anecdotes that promotes interest in others, in human interest stories.

Until next time, I send a big hug.

Good Friday is a day of, ...

Good Friday, it is a good day indeed. It commemorates mores than the death of our Lord and Savior. 

What does that more signify to me than just the day in which our Lord Jesus Christ was put to death and took our sins unto himself?

How about this day being a day of new beginnings? The kickoff of a fresh start.

It means that when we screwed up in our own eyes and in the eyes of other people, it doesn't have to condemn us to being mediocre. It means that we don't have to define ourselves by the disapproval of other people. It means that other people are nobody to hold us down, to be the ones who count where our character, our worth as human beings is concerned.  It means that all that is behind us, that Jesus Christ pours his own righteousness upon us who would receive him and that all the filth we had inside no longer exists.

And to top it all off, he rose again from the dead and none of our sins could keep him from rising. 

And that is a very good Friday.

How best to describe my purpose in filling this blog.

To be able to describe in words my action of writing, my motivational drive for writing something, anything, I had to research Niccolo Machiavelli from his introduction,  and quote it:  "I pour myself out as fully as I can in meditation on the subject" of learning from life experience.

So then, this blog and the posts I populate it with -- is my pouring myself out as fully as I can in meditating on the subject of lessons learned from life experience.  I draw from history lessons that people born before us had to learn the hard way more often than the easy way.  I will also draw upon past biographies of those who were smart enough to listen to others before acting and saved themselves much grief.