I nev­er real­ly and tru­ly gave the after-life much thought before the pass­ing of my beloved son Kodi 3 months ago. I guess even though I am a Christian by faith I was not ful­ly tuned into what it means to live life eter­nal with Christ Jesus.

The loss of my son has left me with deep burn­ing desire to be con­vinced that my son has passed from mor­tal­i­ty to immor­tal­i­ty. I want to know that some­day through the dis­tinct promise , and on the author­i­ty of God Almighty I would be reunit­ed with my son. The though of nev­er ever see­ing him ever again is more than this father can take.

I need to be con­soled by God him­self, not just mere promises.

♦I need some­thing that speaks of cer­tain­ties, not just hopes.

• I need some­thing that speaks with authority.
• I need some­thing that pro­vides true com­fort and gives some­thing and some­one to believe in/​to trust as we go on from here.
• I need more than sin­cere expres­sions of sym­pa­thy and con­cern (as won­der­ful as they are) in a time of sor­row and death
• I need the author­i­ta­tive, com­fort­ing “Thus saith the Lord!” the rev­e­la­tion of Scripture.

I pon­dered the exis­tence of God, please do not Judge me, I am human. Despite by hard belief in him this tragedy has left my faith shak­en. I know I would nev­er accept that there is no God , so I am back to look­ing at what his word said to us in times like these. Would God leave us with­out com­fort ? Would the God of Moses, the God of Daniel, The God of David leave his son Mike with­out comfort?

So I turned to the place where I know he will speak to me , his holy word.

• II Corinthians 5:6 – 8 tells us that when we Christians die, we go imme­di­ate­ly to be with God. To be “absent from the body-present with the Lord.”
• Philippians l:23 Paul tells us when we depart from this life, we are with Christ.

Oh blessed hope, with­out this affir­ma­tion I can hon­est­ly tell you that I don’t know

what I would have done.Without this defin­i­tive state­ment from my God who can­not lie I would have suc­cumbed to the decep­tive guile of the enemy.

Oh there is noth­ing for you to live for! Would a lov­ing God take your son know­ing just how much you love him? 

• God promis­es Christians that they will be reunit­ed whether through death — (Review) The Christian who dies has the promise:
  of an imme­di­ate recep­tion into the Lord’s presence
  of a res­ur­rect­ed body
  of reunion with loved ones (fel­low believers).
• But we should not for­get that these promis­es are con­di­tioned on faith in Christ as Savior who died as our sub­sti­tute on Calvary and rose again (vs. 14).
• • The Lord may come back today, if He does the believ­ers who are alive will be reunit­ed with our Christian loved ones in God’s pres­ence. Our sep­a­ra­tion is not per­ma­nent! (and then sec­ond­ly there will be a reunion with Christ). One day the Lord will come back and Christians who are alive will be caught up to join the res­ur­rect­ed bod­ies of those who have died. “And so shall we ever be with the Lord.”

God in his infi­nite wis­dom knew we would ache, he knew we would be pained . What he wants from us is an under­stand­ing that the mal­adies we endure today are not per­ma­nent. He wants us to under­stand that we have to get through this. This pain , this hurt, this heartache. Before we get to life Eternal.

Glory to God .

Events occur in our lives as direct and indi­rect con­se­quence of our actions.

If this is true, how do we square that fact with the doc­trine of Pre-Ordination?

Pre-ordi­na­tion (the­ol­o­gy) being deter­mined in advance; espe­cial­ly the doc­trine (usu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Calvin) that God has fore­or­dained every event through­out eter­ni­ty (includ­ing the final sal­va­tion of mankind).

John Calvin (French: Jean Calvin French pro­nun­ci­a­tion: [ʒɑ̃ kalvɛ̃], born Jehan Cauvin: 10 July 1509 – 27 May 1564) was an influ­en­tial French the­olo­gian and pas­tor dur­ing the Protestant Reformation. Calvin was influ­enced by the Augustinian tra­di­tion, which led him to expound the doc­trine of pre­des­ti­na­tion and the absolute sov­er­eign­ty of God in sal­va­tion of the human soul from death and eter­nal damna­tion. http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​J​o​h​n​_​c​a​l​vin 

If how­ev­er we accept the Doctrine of Pre-ordi­na­tion, we can­not then believe that as humans we are free-will beings. Both con­cepts are anti­thet­i­cal to each oth­er, both con­cepts can­not be cor­rect. If our every actions are pre-deter­mined by God, then we are mere robot­ic crea­tures ful­fill­ing a mas­ter plan over which we have no control.

Arguably the two com­pet­ing prin­ci­ples are easy to con­tem­plate. We are free to change our course of action at any moment. If the prin­ci­ple of pre-ordi­na­tion is to be believed we would have to pre­sume that what­ev­er we chose, to do ‚when­ev­er we chose to do them, are not our actions but that of a God who micro-man­ages us. This prin­ci­ple is syn­ony­mous to a paper-boat on a riv­er tossed around by the cur­rents, it’s final des­ti­na­tion pre­de­ter­mined by the des­ti­na­tion of that River, or some thick­et in which it is caught.

The fact is , God made us intel­li­gent beings , he gave us free will. We have the option to serve our­selves and by exten­sion the Devil. We also have the option of giv­ing him con­trol over our lives guar­an­tee­ing our Salvation . The choice is mine, the choice is yours , chose wise­ly this day whom ye will serve. Joshau 24: 15.

People tell me “Mike you are so strong, I don’t know what I would do if I lost one of my kids”.

To begin with they don’t know just far off-base they are regard­ing what they per­ceive to be strength. On the ques­tion of not know­ing what to do, they hit a home-run. Neither do I !

My fam­i­ly and I are immense­ly blessed and indeed hon­ored at the tremen­dous out­pour­ing of love and prayers we received from friends near and far, dur­ing this most trau­mat­ic peri­od in our lives. For that we are eter­nal­ly grate­ful and for­ev­er in your debt. Never in my wildest dreams did I con­tem­plate the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an event of this magnitude.

Naïveté? .….…Maybe.

Feeling enti­tled or exempt? .….….. No!

The hard­est thing for me is try­ing to come to terms that my son is no longer here, isn’t com­ing home any­more, is dead.That word dead is the most dif­fi­cult for me to process, the final­i­ty of that word forces me into men­tal retreat.

I am unsure how oth­ers expe­ri­enc­ing this type of trau­ma deal with get­ting around that obsta­cle. Coming to terms with the final­i­ty of the word “dead”. Accepting that a loved-one has died is ter­ri­bly dif­fi­cult. Accepting that your child is nev­er com­ing home, is unimag­in­ably and inde­scrib­ably hor­rif­ic. How could this hap­pen ? “Why my child” ? I ask myself a thou­sand times , still I am no near­er an answer than when I asked the first time. This Summer, College kids all across America are return­ing home to spend time with their fam­i­lies. Not so for our family.

Try as I may , I can­not shake the feel­ing of vic­tim-hood which has plagued me since April 7^th 2014. I feel sin­gled out, I have cer­tain­ly had more than my share of tragedies. I won­der what the pawns on a chess-boards feel if they had feel­ings? I feel caught between two pow­er­ful com­pet­ing pow­ers, in a bat­tle which has pre­cious lit­tle to do with me. I feel I am mere col­lat­er­al dam­age. I know I will draw fire from some Religious quar­ters for dar­ing to speak this way. I humbly dis­agree with my friends who would chas­tise me for feel­ing or see­ing , I believe those are two of our sens­es. We are sup­posed to use them, aren’t we  ?

Am I self­ish to pine over the loss of my son, despite hav­ing more sons? Am I being dis­loy­al to my fam­i­ly for the deep,dark grief I feel for this, my child? If so how does :Luke 15:4 apply ? 

Jesus asked ‚“What man of you, hav­ing a hun­dred sheep, if he los­es one of them, does not leave the nine­ty and nine in the wilder­ness, and go after that which is lost, until he finds it” ?

In the para­ble Jesus told of the prodi­gal son, did the father not still have a son at home ? : Luke 15 :20. “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with com­pas­sion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

Luke 15: ²² “But the father said to his ser­vants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his fin­ger and san­dals on his feet. ²³ Bring the fat­tened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and cel­e­brate. ²⁴ For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.

Do these Scriptures apply?  The prodi­gal son did return. The miss­ing Sheep is like­ly to be found. My son is nev­er com­ing home. I cry every sin­gle day , so too does my wife. In the begin­ning I felt sor­ry for my son. I won­dered , did he hurt in the process lead­ing to his pass­ing ? Did he lay there think­ing “my dad will come get me”, through­out his short life he thought his dad could always make things right.

As much as I cry won­der­ing about that, I feel sor­ry for my wife and his mom. I feel sor­ry for his broth­er we all lost a great Guy. I grieve for the rest of my fam­i­ly and his friends. But most of all I feel sor­ry for me. I lost a part of me that can nev­er be replaced, the void left can nev­er be filled. Nothing can ever be the way they were. Everything takes on new mean­ing. I strug­gle to find a way for­ward, a way to claw my way out of the dark­ness. Sugar will nev­er be as sweet, water will nev­er taste the same, a cup of morn­ing cof­fee will nev­er make me feel the way it used to. My world is for­ev­er changed , how I move for­ward is all up in the air. There are times when I won­der if I ever will, or whether I even want to.

Wednesday May 14^th my wife Cheryl and I would have dri­ven up to SUNY Plattsburg to bring our son Kodi home for his sum­mer break. It’s a trip either one of us could have tak­en solo, notwith­stand­ing, we are not that type of cou­ple , no mat­ter what, we would have done so togeth­er. Poughkeepsie to Plattsburg is rough­ly four and a half hours dri­ve. Parents with kid/​s in College under­stand they have to bring all their stuff home, then haul every­thing back at the end of the break.

This Summer would have been extra-spe­cial. our penul­ti­mate son AJ, is get­ting ready to start attend­ing Wesleyan College in Connecticut.

We had made plans with our friend Randy a mechan­ic, to do some prep­ping on Kodi’s car. This was sup­posed to be a sur­prise for him when he got home.

The big plan for the Summer was to get our old­est, Mike Jnr, to come over from Illinois, take some time off and all 6 maybe 7 of us count­ing my nephew Martin, take a road trip to Orlando .

The plan was to rent a big SUV and take turns dri­ving down to Florida. Some mem­bers of our fam­i­ly have nev­er been to Disneyland.

Alas there was no four and a half hour dri­ve to upstate New York for Cheryl and me. There was no need to prep my son’s car, there will be no road trip to Orlando no time soon.

Kodi’s things arrived in box­es shipped to us via UPS, they sit in a cor­ner of the garage, the way they arrived, untouched.

Kodi’s car sits by the side of our house off the pave­ment now, on the grass. No prep­ping has been done. There will be no fam­i­ly trip to Disney world„ not this sum­mer. We have no plans, we don’t know when, if ever.

Today Cheryl and the boys went to Church , I did not. I drove over to the flea mar­ket, walked around dazed, con­fused, in shock , angry, unsure of who I am. This was sup­posed to be a great Summer , our Summer.

AJ would have had his grad­u­a­tion par­ty, Kodi had one. This fall it would be just Cheryl, our youngest Johnathan and me at home. Kodi and AJ would be in col­lege. It may yet be just us three, how­ev­er it won’t be the same, the glue is missing.

Kodi always bragged, he was the glue which kept our fam­i­ly togeth­er, he always asked my wife “what you gonna do when I’m gone ma”? We had no idea what he meant !!!.…can’t see through the tears.…

In the pre­vi­ous Article I wrote about our son’s death I can­did­ly point­ed to my short­com­ings as a Christian. I attempt­ed to bring atten­tion to the fact that though I espouse the faith, I am still a neo­phyte regard­ing the after-life.

Okay so I under­stand why you would ques­tion my inter­est in this par­tic­u­lar aspect of the Christian doctrine!

As I said in a pre­vi­ous Article, los­ing a child is syn­ony­mous to noth­ing I have ever expe­ri­enced. I was extreme­ly close to my son. The sud­den and dras­tic sep­a­ra­tion is fol­lowed by numb­ing shock, which is like noth­ing pre­vi­ous­ly expe­ri­enced. Utter dis­be­lief . A large part of my prob­lem is my inabil­i­ty to accept the final­i­ty of this psy­chi­cal death. So nat­u­ral­ly I des­per­ate­ly seek out a greater assur­ance from the Biblical promise of “Life Everlasting” .

Well inten­tioned friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers remind me that Job lost all his chil­dren and prop­er­ty. Of course the Bible also said God removed the hedge of pro­tec­tion he had placed around Job his servant.

THE DEVIL Job 1 – 10

9Then Satan answered the LORD, “Does Job fear God for noth­ing? 10“Have You not made a hedge about him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his pos­ses­sions have increased in the land. 11“But put forth Your hand now and touch all that he has; he will sure­ly curse You to Your face.”…

GOD’S RESPONSE Job 1 vs 12

Vs. 12 – God gives Satan per­mis­sion to go ahead and test Job in the way that Satan desires with one restric­tion: Satan was not allowed to touch Job’s per­son in any way. However, every­thing else that Job had, God placed in Satan’s hand to do as Satan desired. http://gewatkins.net/job-and-satan-job‑1 – 6‑12/​

The Author went on to state quote..Here is where God remains blame­less from send­ing these evils upon Job. God put Job’s things in Satan’s hand, but Satan still had a choice as to what to do with Job’s things. Satan could have cho­sen to leave Job alone. Of course, he does not, because Satan thinks he has some­thing to prove?Satan thinks he knows more than God. I will leave that assess­ment for you to judge.

Job 42:10

The LORD restored the for­tunes of Job when he prayed for his friends, and the LORD increased all that Job had twofold. 11Then all his broth­ers and all his sis­ters and all who had known him before came to him, and they ate bread with him in his house; and they con­soled him and com­fort­ed him for all the adver­si­ties that the LORD had brought on him. And each one gave him one piece of mon­ey, and each a ring of gold.…

Let’s read vs. 18&19: “18, While he was still speak­ing, anoth­er also came and said, “Your sons and daugh­ters were eat­ing and drink­ing wine in their old­est brother’s house, 19 and sud­den­ly a great wind came from the wilder­ness and struck the four cor­ners of the house, and it fell on the young peo­ple, and they are dead; and I alone have escaped to tell you!” 

Job lost all his chil­dren in one dis­as­trous instance, all 10 of them. This sure­ly must have cre­at­ed grave con­cerns for Job. “His chil­dren were eat­ing and drink­ing wine“when they died, they weren’t pray­ing and singing. Did they go straight to Heaven> Job had no way of know­ing. It appears that Job’s chil­dren were just pawns in this chess game.

Ultimately the sto­ry of Job despite the restora­tion of wealth was not a win for him, not only did he lose his chil­dren, the Bible is silent on whether his chil­dren who were basi­cal­ly hand­ed over to the wicked­ness of the Devil were assured the afterlife.

I spent a good part of my life fight­ing to pre­serve and pro­tect the lives of oth­ers . I was par­tic­u­lar­ly pas­sion­ate about the rights of the most vul­ner­a­ble, those least able to pro­tect them­selves. Irrespective of the inter­pre­ta­tions of cyn­ics many con­tin­ue to do the same every day. It requires self­less­ness on the part of those who risk life and limb in defense of oth­ers, whether it be ser­vice in the mil­i­tary, police depart­ment or the man who jumps on the tracks to pull anoth­er from cer­tain death from an oncom­ing Train.

Quote “No greater task can be giv­en any man, than that which ask that he brings to Justice the killer of the innocent”.

For years I held fast to those prin­ci­ples, I still do today. Yet even as I did all I could to bring clo­sure to oth­ers, even as I empathized with those who lost their loved ones, I nev­er tru­ly under­stood what it felt like to lose a child.

Nothing com­pares, it is sur­re­al. There are no words to describe the pain, the empti­ness, the shock. You lose your sense of focus. You lose your sense of moti­va­tion. You ques­tion every­thing you ever believed. Yes I ques­tion my faith !!

You become dri­ven by a sin­gle desire, that which is to turn back the hands of time. You become obsessed with guilt, obsessed with the desire to find some­one to blame , includ­ing your­self. You think thoughts you would nev­er pre­vi­ous­ly entertain.

After all you start believ­ing there is no hope, no rea­son to go on. Even as you are torn between the real­i­ty of the present and your life­long beliefs, you have no ratio­nal recourse but to revert to the very promise of the very faith you question.

I am not a per­fect Christian.

The loss of my son made me ques­tion the after-life.

I ques­tion the sin­cer­i­ty and com­mit­ment of a God who seem to inflict pain on those most ded­i­cat­ed to his word.

I ques­tion his ways.

I ques­tion his methods.

I ques­tion his pow­er vs the pow­ers of evil.

I ques­tion whether I will ever see my son again ?

So although I ques­tion every­thing I ever believed I am hum­bled into accept­ing the real­i­ty that if I am wrong about God then noth­ing else matters.

If I dis­card my faith where is the hope?

(I love you Kodi Kadeem Beckles, tears, tears and more tears.)

Numb, Angry, feel­ing cheat­ed sums up my feel­ings right now. I Can’t seem to get past them. In the mean­time every­thing goes on as usu­al. Time seem to stop for me only.  Friends and well-wish­ers tell me to think about the hap­py moments we shared, those make things much worse, they bring more tears. I present­ly live some­where between denial and com­plete paral­y­sis. If I allow myself to think the unthink­able I believe I will nev­er come back. Somehow I can­not take that chance. I can­not guar­an­tee myself that hav­ing accept­ed what every­one knows, I won’t lose my mind. That train may have already left the sta­tion how­ev­er, how could this hap­pen to me, to you my son?

So sud­den..

You weren’t sick.

So full of life…

What went wrong?

How is this pos­si­ble? One moment you were here, the next you aren’t? This was not the plan, we nev­er dis­cussed this, we talked about every­thing but nev­er this !

Who am I angry at, God? I don’t know . Whose deci­sion was it to take my son away? Saying that sounds dis­tant, it’s all a dream, a bad dream, I ‘ll wake up soon.

Someone advised me to go see the movie “Heaven is for real”. She felt the char­ac­ters are a lot like you and me. We all went, the whole fam­i­ly Kodes but you weren’t there. It does­n’t feel the same when you are not there. No one under­stands what you meant to me except you. Maybe I’m angry at you! No , I’m not. No words , no tears, noth­ing gauges my pain. Disbelief , in shock, mad­den­ing shock, numb, dark­ness, noth­ing compares.…

The boy in the movie did not die, just so you know, there’s still time to come home. I don’t like the way I feel about this Kadeem, you love that name ..

I gave you that name,.

I dial your num­ber, I hear you say your name. You love that name. It’s all a dream, I will wake up soon.

You were pre­cious to me . God’s spe­cial gift, I love you like no one else could. And you loved me too. We were always there for each oth­er. Did I let you down?

How could I not know that you need­ed me? You always knew I would take care of “it” , what­ev­er “it” is.

Were you there think­ing Dad would show up to get you Kodes? Oh God , did you ? I can’t see through these tears .….….…

Life lessons through the eyes of Children.

Aaaw !!! These four lit­tle kit­tens were found across the street yes­ter­day. My nieces and nephew fell in love with them imme­di­ate­ly. Look at them. Who would­n’t fall in love, or at least in like with them? And I’m not even a cat per­son. Well before you knew it, EVERYTHING was about the kit­tens. They were giv­ing all their atten­tion to them. Nothing else seemed to exist or matter…Even when they dis­cov­ered that they were dirty and had fleas! Say what? They still want­ed to play with them and hug them and they start­ed get­ting attached to them. One of the kit­tens seemed mangy, but no wor­ries. They gave them all a bath. The next day we had to break it to them; the kit­tens could­n’t stay. They could be sick and we had to take them to the vet or ASPCA. You would have thought the world was end­ing. Why? They had so many rea­sons for keep­ing them. We can’t leave them out­side. They’ll be cold. We can clean them up. They need food. But I like them. They had already claimed the kit­tens and start­ed nam­ing them. One was called “Sugar”. How sweet. But, that’s just kids. I told them sev­er­al times to leave the box and kit­tens alone. And they sulked. One niece even laid down on the front lawn in despair. I asked them what did they do before the kit­tens came along. They played with their friends, with each oth­er, rode their bikes, ran around freely. And now because the kit­tens came into their lives for one day, every­thing had changed. But, that’s just kids for you. Or is it? How many times have we as adults have had a per­son or a job or things come into or lives and allowed them to take over? We quick­ly for­get that we were quite hap­py before but now can’t seem to live with­out the job or the mon­ey or the rela­tion­ship, or even the “kit­ty kat”. We lay down in despair when we’re told of a lay­off or that things aren’t work­ing out. We try to hang on, to our own detri­ment at times, get­ting more infest­ed with “fleas” and crit­ters. We for­get how great life can be and obsess on the things that may not seem even “bad” for us, but just not expe­di­ent at this time. We lay down and for­get how much we were enjoy­ing life. But you might be think­ing, Well, I was­n’t enjoy­ing life that much before. Then, it’s time! Find pas­sion and ful­fill­ment. Get your life! Experience your freedom! My nieces and nephews? They went back to rid­ing their bikes, watch­ing TV and being their adven­tur­ous and fun-lov­ing selves. I’m not 100% cer­tain that they’re not think­ing about those kit­tens. But at least they’re back to hav­ing fun. That’s just kids for you. Ingrid Jacqueline Experiencing and Expressing Freedom

THE AUTHENTIC CHURCH

Reverend Jess Voyd Bottoms , Beulah Baptist Church. Pok. Ny

Sunday March 30^th. con­tin­u­ing series…

1) The authen­tic Church will Publish his presence.

2) The authen­tic Church gath­ers around his word.

3) The authen­tic Church is a Church where Preaching is central.

4) The authen­tic Church has Authentic Christians in attendance.

This series con­tin­ues as the Reverend Jesse Voyd Bottoms con­tin­ue to teach on this subject.

“Politics makes strange bed-fel­lows”. How many times have we heard this state­ment? This say­ing though used a lot, is prob­a­bly a mis­nomer, I believe politi­cians are rather devoid of char­ac­ter, which would rather bet­ter explain why the lat­ter seem to be true.

Portia Simpson Miller Bruce Golding

I will come back to the bed-fel­lows soon but I must lay some foun­da­tion, bear with me please.

Portia Simpson Miller’s pre­de­ces­sor Bruce Golding in an inter­view with the BBC was asked whether he would have Gays in his Cabinet? Golding replied, quote: Not in my cab­i­net> Golding com­mit­ted polit­i­cal sui­cide in that inter­view, only he did­n’t know it then. 

The wheels that would ulti­mate­ly be the undo­ing of Bruce Golding had start­ed turn­ing, Never mind that the Christopher (Dudus) Coke mat­ter would be the prover­bial straw which broke the camel’s back, Golding’s demise start­ed with that BBC interview.

Homosexuals are pow­er­ful , they have pow­er­ful lob­by and they have pow­er­ful friends in high places,some of whom are them­selves Homosexuals. homo­sex­u­als and their friends preach tol­er­ance, how­ev­er they do not sub­scribe to their own doc­trine of tol­er­ance and accep­tance. Those opposed to them are vil­i­fied as out­dat­ed igno­rant Jesus wor­ship­ing relics of the past, who have no place in mod­ern society. 

So much for tol­er­ance and accep­tance.

The die had been cast, Golding had to be defeated.

British Prime Minister David Cameron at the com­mon­wealth heads of gov­ern­ment con­fer­ence in Perth Australia declared that Jamaica and sev­er­al oth­er Commonwealth nations that main­tain anti-gay leg­is­la­tion could be affect­ed by reduced finan­cial sup­port from Britain. Cameron has threat­ened to with­hold British aid from gov­ern­ments that do not reform leg­is­la­tion ban­ning homosexuality.

Cameron

Golding made the same mis­take Michael Manley had made years before him. They both failed to grasp or under­stand the nuanced and intri­cate com­plex­i­ties of geo-politics. 

Golding cacooned in his lit­tle world 4,411 square miles of pow­er-base, epic cen­ter West Kingston, gross­ly mis­cal­cu­lat­ed the extent to which homo­sex­u­al­i­ty has been pro­mul­gat­ed, pack­aged and shoved down the throats of the world’s peo­ple’s, so much so that it had become almost trea­so­nous to be anti gay. 

Neither the peo­ple in Washington DC nor those in London believe that Portia Simpson Miller is a capa­ble leader. It did not mat­ter, Golding would be replaced and so Portia quite unwit­ting­ly sold her soul to the devil.

Portia Simpson Miller is a pop­ulist , and noth­ing much beyond that, the pow­er bro­kers did not need any­thing else ‚she fit­ted the role per­fect­ly. Jamaicans need­ed to be per­suad­ed, they need­ed to be sold on homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, who bet­ter to do so than the matron­ly pop­ulist affec­tion­ate­ly called “Sista P”? It came as no sur­prise then that when asked dur­ing the debates whether she would revis­it Jamaica’s bug­ger laws Miller respond­ed in the affirmative.

Jamaica will nev­er be the same again.

Of course “TIME” mag­a­zine would have the clue­less new Prime Minister as one of the world’s 100 most influ­en­tial per­sons, why not? I have an unso­licit­ed word of cau­tion for Sista P, as you bask in the glow of TIME’S dubi­ous recog­ni­tion, do remem­ber the homo­sex­u­al com­mu­ni­ty is not like the peo­ple of Saint Andrew South West, or the oth­er occultists who wor­ship at the Orange altar of ignorance.

Homosexuals will not be used , you will deliv­er what you promised, fail­ing which your fate will be worse than that suf­fered by Bruce Golding. The Gay, les­bian and trans gen­der com­mu­ni­ty will not be used and cast aside, mark my words.

You made a deal with the dev­il, I sug­gest you find a way to make good on your promise. As my dear grand-aunt used to say ” a nuh ever ting weh glis­ten a gold”

Good luck with the yel­low ser­pent you picked up Portia.

Remember at the out­set I allud­ed to the char­ac­ter of politi­cians? Well this is where the rub­ber meets the road, Portia Simpson Miller is now tied to this homo­sex­u­al issue, whether she wants to or not. Let’s see how this self-pro­claimed God-fear­ing woman from rur­al Saint Catherine extri­cate her­self from this tan­gled web she wove. 

Catholic Bishops have whole­sale reject­ed the com­pro­mise made by President Obama. 

Catholic Bishops in the United States have shown that their objec­tions to Administration pol­i­cy is pure­ly polit­i­cal . The pol­i­cy would have catholic busi­ness­es like Hospitals and Universities the church oper­ate pay for con­tra­cep­tive cov­er­age in their health plans. Catholic bish­ops argue the new pol­i­cy would force them do pro­vide fund­ing for some­thing they are moral­ly opposed to. The pres­i­dent has since stepped into the fray offer­ing a com­pro­mise which would have the Insurance com­pa­nies pick­ing up the tab for the con­tra­cep­tion to women employed by these catholic institutions.

As I indi­cat­ed yes­ter­day Timothy Dolan the des­ig­nat­ed leader of the catholic bish­ops, issued a rather pompous state­ment in response to the olive branch extend­ed by pres­i­dent Obama. Dolan issued a rather dis­re­spect­ful and scathing broad­side in which he cas­ti­gat­ed the admin­is­tra­tion, accus­ing it of inter­fer­ing with the oper­a­tions of the church.

It did not mat­ter to Dolan that the issue has noth­ing to do with Government inter­fer­ence in the church , but actu­al­ly is about wom­en’s repro­duc­tive rights and health. Dolan seemed not to want the truth to get in the way of the repub­li­can nar­ra­tive he want­ed to prolong.

The bish­ops said the plan offered insuf­fi­cient pro­tec­tion for their insti­tu­tions: “In the case where the employ­ee and insur­er agree to add the objec­tion­able cov­er­age, that cov­er­age is still pro­vid­ed as a part of the object­ing employer’s plan, financed in the same way as the rest of the cov­er­age offered by the object­ing employ­er. This, too, rais­es seri­ous moral con­cerns.” The Obama admin­is­tra­tion plans to hold a series of meet­ings in the com­ing days and will invite the bish­ops and oth­er reli­gious lead­ers to col­lab­o­rate on devel­op­ing the new pol­i­cy, said an admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial who was not autho­rized to speak on the record. 

James Salt, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Catholics United, a lib­er­al advo­ca­cy group that is orga­niz­ing sup­port for the Obama admin­is­tra­tion, said, “The bish­ops’ blan­ket oppo­si­tion appears to serve the inter­ests of a polit­i­cal agen­da, not the needs of the American peo­ple.” nework​times​.com 

Timothy Dolan

For the Catholic Church, which con­sid­ers the use of arti­fi­cial birth con­trol a sin, the man­date is “a rad­i­cal­ly new and unprece­dent­ed attack on reli­gious free­dom,” said Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Baltimore Archbishop Edwin O’Brien and Wilmington Bishop W. Francis Malooly.(usato​day​.com)

The lan­guage of the bish­ops in the last para­graph is replete with the talk­ing points of repub­li­cans in con­gress, those on the cam­paign trail and the talk­ing heads on FOX mis-information.

This is not about any gov­ern­men­tal intru­sion into the affairs of the church, it is not about the exec­u­tive branch over-reach­ing into reli­gion, it is open assault on the duly elect­ed pres­i­dent of the United States of America by repub­li­can oper­a­tives with­in the catholic church on behalf of their friends on the far right of the repub­li­can party.

Let us be clear even some of those who first object­ed like for­mer Governor Tim Kaine has said that the com­pro­mise offered by the pres­i­dent sat­is­fied all con­cerns he had . Clearly the catholic church has aligned itself with repub­li­can right wingers in this coun­try against work­ing women. Women who make up large parts of the con­gre­ga­tion that makes the catholic church the pow­er­ful and filthy rich tax exempt insti­tu­tion it is .