Mar 30, 2011 -- 8:12PM, jane2 wrote:

One of my favorite pictures is of the Dalai Lama visiting the grave of Thomas Merton. I read Merton's SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN as a junior in an elite Catholic School. He is one of my favorite writers on faith thinking. Somehow he electrocuted himself on 220 watt circuitry while conferring with Thai monks near Bangkok--he was a Trappist monk himself then.

I've read that and several other of Merton's books, Jane. His writing is not only more lucid and really worth a reading than this swill of Summers', but the man himself was a model human in many ways. For one thing, it takes real dedication to be a Trappist and not just a monk in one of the most challenging orders but one granted permission to set up and live in a hermitage as Merton did for some time. A year or more as I recall. 

Notably, Merton never claimed to be transmitting messages from God either. That alone makes his wisdom human and more valuable to me for its humility.

Edited to add this link to a description of the circumstances of Merton's death by his close friend, John Howard Griffin, better known as the author of Black Like Me. WARNING: It is a graphic description, anyone tending to queasiness.

www.ralphmag.org/FB/mertons-death.html

Mar 31, 2011 -- 6:53PM, Christianlib wrote:

Dot,

Griffin himself later died kind of horribly, if more slowly, from cancers and other problems induced by the chemicals, internal and external, he had used to make himself appear black for his famous book.

Yes, I recall reading that, but thanks for adding it for those who may not know.

Anyone who's never read Black Like Me really should. It's still a revolutionary work despite the enormous social changes since those highly segregated times.

I'm fossilized enough to recall being shocked by "Whites Only" signs on restrooms and drinking fountains, not to mention prominently posted in restaurant windows oftentimes, when my family traveled through Kentucky to Virginia in 1960. Segregation was far more invisible where I grew up in a lily white little town in Northwest Kansas, so much so that I naively thought we didn't do awful things like that. Little did I know...

Mar 31, 2011 -- 2:16PM, Paravani wrote:

Hi, All!  Hi, Dave!

Wow, Dave, living out in the wilderness as you do, I'd have thought you'd have seen a UFO by now!

Geez, about half of everybody I know has seen a UFO...  even my mother, and that woman has NO imagination whatsoever.

Mar 31, 2011 -- 1:40PM, mountain_man wrote:

You do know that all crop circles are man made, don't you? They're all hoaxes, teen pranks, bored college students, etc. Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, from England, came up with the idea in the early 1980's.

When my husband and I met over 25 years ago, we were friends with Peter Davenport, who now runs NUFORC, the National UFO Reporting Center.  Peter is about as conventional and conservative as they come.  Although the place where we all met was a hippie hangout, I've never seen Peter in anything more casual than a business suit.  He spent a couple of years working in military intelligence when he was young, and my theory is that something he learned during that time (of which he never speaks) convinced him that we are not alone in the universe.  UFOs have been his passionate hobby ever since. 

Way back when in the '80s, he'd tell my hubbie and I about various things he'd seen during his weekend pursuits.  For instance, he told us of a 3-foot-wide plug of earth that had been pulled out of a farmer's field overnight -- it was 300 feet long, and unbroken!

He also showed us "crop circle" grass from a circle in Washington state, and it definitely wasn't bent with boards and string.  It isn't broken -- it's crooked because the growth on one side of the grass has been influenced somehow to be greater than on the other.

My daughter and her boyfriend saw a UFO hovering over last 4th of July's fireworks show...  and last Fall, my friend Mark (another person with no imagination) saw a UFO emerging from the ocean at night on the Oregon coast.  It was so close to him that he felt the warm backdraft when it took off!

Then there's the saucer my friend Brian and his girlfriend saw at close range while necking at the local "Lover's Leap", and the needleship I saw in the sky over Austin, TX. 

Ask around, Dave.  Or better yet, read some of the reports at the NUFORC website!

Love,

-- Claudia

You may want to listen to this teaching from the New Message entitled "Contact with Intelligent Life in the Universe" 

video/audio: www.newmessage.org/speaks/contact.php or 

Text/audio: newmessage.org/ee/index.php/special-teac...

One of the main reasons why the New Message from God is here is because humanity is being visited by ETs. We do not know what is happening, what life is like beyond our world, and how to prepare. The New Message provides this for us. 

This really resonates with me because I have seen UFOs and met people who have been abducted. I have seen the "new age" garbage coming from ET sources and their advocates. Now I understand what is happening and I know that ET intervention should be opposed by a united humanity.

From the supposed "New Message": Some people think that with advanced technology, you can overcome such obstacles. But biological contamination is a very serious problem within the context of visiting other worlds, particularly worlds where there is biological diversity that is foreign from your own native world. It is a problem of great significance in the universe amongst races that travel and engage in the complex array of involvements with other worlds.

How gratifying that God has gotten much smarter than He was back when the Spanish conquistadores and British missionaries inflicted measles and other diseases upon the natives of the Americas and Hawaii respectively.

Since humans cannot catch most diseases of other species, I can certainly understand why extraterrestrials would need to be wary of succumbing to human diseases. [sarcasm alert!]Oh, but I forget that we're descended from extraterrestrials who came from the Pleiades. Silly me! So, obviously, ET's currently visiting our planet must be really cautious. Which, I'm sure, is why we keep hearing about their abducting humans...real cautious.

Sheesh! I cannot comprehend how anyone can think this stuff is from God unless as Dave points out the person is as delusional as Summers appears to be.

Apr 5, 2011 -- 3:05PM, Tpaine wrote:

Perhaps if Summers hasn't run out of funny cigarettes he could get God to inform him how the extra-terrestrials manage to exceed the speed of light which would be necessary to travel across the vast inter-stellar distances.

They've perfected a deviceless transporter. "Beam me up, Akablark!"

Silly you, Tpaine, not to have realized that must be how they get here and back home again.