Easter quiet, but for Tiffany's nice call.

How's it going? Thanks for stopping by. Been thinking about you and Nancy a few times in the past week.

Good to hear Stephen and Dominique are fine. What are their current career plans now, or is it too early to ask that question? Man, when I was 20, I hadn't a clue. I was listed as DUS at USF...that would be the 'Division of University Studies'...read...'No declared major'. Clueless.

Wandered around, took a few classes just to say I was a full-time student. Had 'CLEP'd my whole freshman year out. But had no idea what field I wanted to go into. Lived at home with my parents. That didn't work out for too long. By 1975, I said 'Adios' and lived in big apartment with four other fraternity brothers. $60.00 a month was not bad. But the environment and the 'fellowship' was hardly conducive to persuing academic excellence.

Owned a 1966 Buick Skylark (paid $500.00) that was a silver, two door coupe, with a black vinyl top, red leather-look interior. Lasted me three years...ran the tail off of it. But, heck, I had wheels, and I had 'freedom'. No spiritual life at all. That was for the emotionally weak, and the mentally dependent.

That story can go in all sorts of directions.

We had a good little jaunt up to Cashiers, NC in the heart of western NC. It is pretty remote. We were in the Sapphire Valley area and it' s not near any town recognizable. You are about 30 minutes drive from any major highway no matter what direction you go. Franklin, is to the west, northwest. 441 runs through that.

Lake Glenville is a couple of miles away. Northward is the town of Sylva, county seat for Jackson County. West Carolina University is up there near another little spit called Cowahee. Bryson City is just beyond Sylva to the west. Of course, these municipalities are all south-southeast of the Great Smoke Mountains National Park.

We had a couple of sunny days, but Tuesday was rainy and cold. We saw a black bear on Monday night. I had gone out to get something out of the Expedition, and suddenly heard a loud cracking of branches and crushing of lots of dry leaves in the brush of the slope right across the way from our parking lot. The mountainside rose steeply from there, but something was coming in my direction, I thought. And there he was, about 50 yards off, and up the side road leading to some other units up the slope. A big black bear was evidently looking for garbage cans to raid. I turned tail and ran inside the unit and yelled "Bear! Bear!" Michael was trying to start a fire in the efficiency fire place, and Melody was cooking something for us.

We rushed outside to watch the nonchalant creature lumber off in the opposite direction. We hopped in the car hoping to drive up close to him, but the furry thing had managed to beat it.

That was exciting. We proceeded to watch The Incredibles.

Yesterday, we spent time at my mom's. She had called a couple of days prior and invited us over for a traditional Easter spread. All was terrific. Nicely decorated dining room table that seats eight when filled up. Lace table cloth. Fine English china, silver candlesticks. A pink silk flower tied around each fanned-out napkin. Food fare included: ham, spinach arthichoke casserole, Easter bread (with the fruitcake fruits sprinkled sparingly throughout), deviled eggs with three different toppings, red bliss potato salad, etc. For dessert: dark chocolate fondue awaiting the dipping of marshmallows, or pineapple wedges, or strawberries; and homemade lemon meringue pie. There were also some huge yellow cake easter eggs covered in different holiday icings and festooned with sugary flower buds in pink, light green, brown, and white.

We were able to talk to Tiffany for about an hour. That was thrilling because it's been hard communicating with her. Her infernal cell phone won't accept our callings. She has to borrow her friend, Monica's, phone. Tiffany is fine. I think that there might be some twinges of homesickness, but who else wouldn't feel those?

Hopefully, Tiffany will come back in July and we will take a long road trip out west. However, Tiffany is thinking of completing a full year at the Bible Institute. So far, the classes she's been taking have been strictly Spanish classes. We are prepared sort of, if she decides to stay on. But we would hope she would have the permission to come back for about three weeks to travel with us.

We sent a big care package with a dad of one of her friends in Argentina. Melody and I put together all the things she requested in an e-mail and overnighted the ten pound box to Elkhart, Indiana to a Mr. Hoff. He was to have flown out on Sunday, bound for Buenos Aires. He was nice to agree to do us that favor. The snail mail in Argentina is horrible. We've sent both letters and packages to Tiffany, and they've never gotten to her. Yikes!

It's late. Thought I'd get you attention for a short minute or two. Idlewild will be opening the new sanctuary in September, we understand. That should be quite an event. I still remember ground-breaking day in the fall of 2002.

Love to all at the Stone homestead.

Mike Linquist, first mate.

Warning! Intruder detection....

Ahoy! Stan. Don't know if you noticed, but some guy who goes by the handle 'Over50' blogged in and left a comment yesterday regarding the existence of God, or not.

I reset the site so that only us crew members can communicate with one another. I left him a reply back, but he may not be able to read it now that he won't be allowed in. I'll have to reply back to him on his site, that he has left approachable.

Sorry about the infiltration. Defense shielding is up and running now.

Hope you and Nancy have a great day at sea.

Out. Mike

Roger That! Welcome Aboard, mate!

Hey Stan! Good to have you aboard the 'yacht'...watch your step, the boys just swabbed the shiny new teak deck!

You seemed to adjust quite well to the blogosphere. Nice lob. Good to hear about everyone in the fambly. Great job on that Tech degree. And thanks for the invite to the resort. I'll/We'll check it out for sure and we'll let you know as soon as possible what our plans will be.

The reincarnation/past lives question is intriguing. The notion of it never really caught hold in my mind in the least. It just never made sense even after I was exposed to the 'doctrine' of it when Siddhartha by Herman Hesse was required reading in my senior year in high school. The early adventures of Buddha just did not compel me in any way. I wasn't a devout Christian at the time. I'd only received a little confirmation card from a Presbyterian minister (a Reverend Nordvall) when I turned twelve years old. Period.

In high school, I fancied that I was well versed in the religions of the world and it just wasn't my 'cup of tea'. Religion was great for those people who needed it. Emotional crutches are good to have around. But religion wasn't something I required. No matter which religion it was. So, I harbored no 'burn' to find truth or belong to a group of like-minded believers. My parents were a-religious, so I guess I was, too. My mother only took us to Palma Ceia Methodist church so she could sing with her friends in the choir. But attend the worship service so you could glorify God, the Father, or exalt Jesus Christ? Gimme a break. Leave that for the 'fanatics'.

I tried to appreciate the organ music. Robert Keister was a brilliant young organist. Reverend Blancherd played a mean trombone. The Sunday school classes were dull, to me. I went to a retreat one summer up in Leesburg, but I didn't really get anything out of it. Palma Ceia was so far from the house. It still is located near Plant High School. Naturally, most of the kids there that were my age attended locally, while we were going to school way up in north Tampa.

Dad was never religious. Once in a while he'd wax on about there being a Supreme Being. But he didn't think he could ever know for sure. Agnostic comes to my mind. He had a dad who was into the Masons big time. Arthur Linquist was a doctor in Omaha. He was a thirty-third degree mason...I think that is equivalent to the 'grand poobah' of masons. Tragically, the good doctor (my grandfather) died in 1930, when my dad was only 15 years old. Imagine that.

In his will, the senior Linquist asked that no flowers be at the funeral and that the name 'God' not be uttered at the service. How's that for a legacy? Dad was probably never over the confusion that that must have brought on mind and heart. All his father managed to communicate to him was embodied in a letter that was written while his father served in Europe in WWI. He exhorted young Allyn to be the best that he could be and that becoming a man is a big step in life. It is a sort of formalized epistle all hand written. It evidently was a short few lessons on being responsible in life and it is an expression of fatherly love and leadership.

But losing your dad when you're in the throes of testosterone-riddled teenagehood has got to be unbelievably traumatic. My youngest brother, Marc, had to endure that same reality when he was 16. The only difference was that our grandfather died a few days after an automobile accident, while dad had a lingering blood disorder that finally triggered infections that couldn't be overcome. The short and long deaths of two patriarchs of the family.

Hebrews 9:27 says,

"Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment,..."

Maybe I heard this verse when I was younger and just accepted it matter-of-factly. When the idea of reincarnation was made known to me, I pretty much rejected it out of hand. It was never a concept that I ever mulled over and seriously contemplated. It had some romantic appeal in the sense of stimulating my imagination of who or what I may have been in a past era, but no extended considerations were ever entertained in my mind.

Ironically, though, in our evangelical Christian faith, we refer to salvation as being 'born again'! It challenges the pagan notion of reincarnation (a single rebirth vs. an unending string of rebirths). It contradicts the notion of progressive cleansing from one reincarnation to another, by stating that one's sins are forgiven once and for all, for all eternity. One life, one Savior.

One problem with reincarnation:

Problem #1 - Problem of Population Growth

If each human being is a reincarnation of some person who lived long ago, how is it possible for the human population to grow ?

Problem #2 -Rebirth as a Raindrop

Equally hilarious is the manner in which rebirth takes place. A person is first reborn as a raindrop and then falls down onto plants, being then reborn as rice and barley ! This process is explicitly elaborated in those meaningless texts and vapourings of nonsense, the Upanishads :

" Having dwelt there as long as there is residue (of good works) they return by that course by which they came to space, from space into air; and after having become the air they become the smoke; after having become smoke, they become mist.

After having become mist they become cloud, after having become cloud he rains down. They are born here as rice and barley, herbs and trees, as sesamum plants and beans. From thence the release becomes extremely difficult for whoever eats the food and sows the seed he becomes like unto him. -- { Chandogya Upanisad (Radhakrishnan), V.10.5-7 }

Then it is postulated that the soul is eaten by a man, digested, and enters into his semen, later to be sown into the womb of a woman. We know today that the woman plays an equal--indeed, a greater part in the genesis of new life, since the egg is much larger than the sperm and is the source of all the mitochondria inherited by the child.

Further, we know that semen contains not one life, but many, many spermatozoa. So reincarnation is not just racist, it is also male chauvinist and does not consider the role played by women ! This is merely a deeper aspect of a religion that originated Vedic Sati (widow-burning), dowry and female infanticide.

There are other problems I won't go into. The compelling reason for the 'invention' of reincarnation is spelled out below.

Karma and reincarnation were doctrines that were merely invented by fanatic Vedist and Vaishnava (and Smarta) Brahmins in order to find a high-flying justification for their heinous crimes, namely :

Apartheid - "Sudras are lowly and suffer because of their sins in a past life. Hence Vedic apartheid (caturvarna) is acceptable."

Female Infanticide - " By killing the female children, they are prevented from accruing immoral sin in this lifetime. Hence they are able to be quickly reborn in their next life as a higher being, preferably a Brahmin male. Thus, the killing of female children is a meritorious act, being good for the murdered females themselves. "

Sati - " By performing sati, the pious widow prevents herself from sinning and thereby falling into lower births. "

Suicide - " By cutting his own life short, the suicidal person cuts short his life, preventing the accumulation of sin and avoiding being reborn into a lower birth. " Hence, Hinduism sanctions all of the above aberrations. All done in the name of karma and reincarnation.

Upon further research:

Many of those into occult and new age practices would also believe in at least a form of reincarnation and so a comparison can be made of hope for future life.

Gobs of detail on reincarnation on an apologetics website yielded a substantial amount of information:

Check it out at: http://www.reachouttrust.org/articles/apologetics/apologetics12.htm

It's late, bro. Catch up with you later. Why don't you grab the mooring lines and push us off?

Later.

Mike

Launch blog for the new site. (crash of Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin champagne on the bow of the StoneLinq yacht!)

Hey! Stan.

We're heeeeeeere! Blog site....official...commencing this Friday, the 11th of March of 2005.

Hope you get "hooked" to it. It's a lot of fun. It will improve your typing skills immensely. Mavis won't have it over on us!

Enjoyed talking to you on the cell today. Danny sounded good on the phone earlier. Sounds like your brood is tracking along just fine. Mine too.

Work at Bern's tonight was moderately busy. No big wines or anything. I did have a table of six men, one of which is a player for the Pittsburgh Pirates. He was a black fellow who had to be back in the hotel by 11:00. Seems he has a curfew to abide by. All the guys bought humongous steaks! Porterhouses, T-bones, Chateaubriand, and all the fixings. A couple of guys had cocktails, like Bourbon and coke, and a Ketel One Martini. Two had huge bowls of garlic mashed potatoes. At the end, they didn't want to go up to the dessert room, so they ordered three slices of tall German Chocolate Cake with a warm Valrhona chocolate sauce and vanilla ice cream scoops.

Melody reminded me of our June travel opportunities. Seems we'll maybe travel up your neck of the woods, or at least up to the Myrtle Beach area. Did you talk about this already?

Keep up the good work at work. Hugs and kisses to everyone. May the Lord bless you and make His presence known.

In His service.

Mike Linquist