An old, retired, worn out lawyer proposes a novel Amendment 14, Section 3 action against President Biden and former President Trump in federal court

 

    If a private citizen has no standing to file an Amendment 14, Section 3 action in a United States District Court, to disqualify Donald Trump from holding public office, then who has standing? The President? His Attorney General? A United States District Judge on his/her own motion?

  Some stuff happened recently, which caused me to revisit a lawsuit complaint I worked on for a couple of weeks, and finally I converted into a lawsuit in God's Court. Yet, something kept nagging me, and after receiving feedback about it in a legal forum, I removed everything but the bare essentials and took me out of it. It is not copyrighted, and anyone can use it. 

In the United States District Court 

John Doe, Plaintiff

vs.

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, Defendants

Complaint 

    Plaintiff, a citizen of the United States and a registered voter in city_______, state__________,  brings this action under: 

28 U.S. Code § 1361 - Action to compel an officer of the United States to perform his duty

The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any action in the nature of mandamus to compel an officer or employee of the United States or any agency thereof to perform a duty owed to the plaintiff.

Plaintiff's standing and Federal grounds for bringing this action:

1. Donald Trump and Joe Biden made an oath when they were sworn into office as President of the United States:

United States Constitution Article II, Section 1, Clause 8

Before he enters on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:–I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

That oath was made to the Constitution of the United States for the benefit of the United States and every citizen thereof.

2. On January 6, 2021, a huge mob incited by outgoing President Donald Trump tried to stop the Congress from counting the electoral votes and outgoing Vice-President Mike Pence from certifying the electoral votes, pursuant to Article 2, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, Amendment 12 of the U.S. Constitution, and 3 U.S. Code § 15 ~ Counting electoral votes in Congress 3. 

3. When President Trump violated his oath office by inciting the January 6 insurrection, he disqualified himself to run for public office again, under:

U.S. Constitution Amendment 14, Section 3

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

4. Amendment 14, Section 3 was passed after the Civil War to block people, such as Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, and Robert E. Lee, Commander of the Confederate Army, from holding public office. Donald Trump did not try to secede from the United States of America and its Constitution (the Union) - he incited insurrection to try to take them over. 

5. After former President Trump announced in 2021 that he would run for president again, President Biden, pursuant to his oath of office, to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, should have brought an Amendment 14, Section 3 action in the United States District Court, in Washington, D.C., to disqualify Trump from running for president again.  President Biden did not file that action.

6. Private citizens filed an Amendment 14, Section 3 Declaratory Judgment action in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida to disqualify Donald Trump from running for president. 

CASE NO. 23-CV-61628-ROSENBERG

LAWRENCE A. CAPLAN, BARRY BUTIN, and MICHAEL STRIANESE,

Plaintiffs, v.

DONALD J. TRUMP, Defendant.

After that action was dismissed for lack of standing by the plaintiff to bring the action, thus lack of jurisdiction of the court, President Biden still did not honor his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution by filing an Amendment 14, Section 3 action to disqualify Trump from running for president again.

7. Thus Plaintiff, an American citizen and registered voter, asks the Court to Order President Biden to uphold his oath of office by asking this Court to enforce Amendment 14, Section 3 and bar Donald Trump from holding public office, including President of the United States. Alternatively, Plaintiff asks the Court to rule President Biden breached his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and private U.S. citizen and registered voter Plaintiff can bring the action by default for President Biden - Cf shareholder derivative action in corporate law - to enforce Amendment 14, Section 3 against Donald Trump. 

8. Plaintiff asks the Court to hear and consider all the evidence, and enter an Order enforcing Amendment 14, Section 3 against Donald Trump, barring him from holding public office, including President of the United States.

9.  For service of process, Defendant President Joe Biden resides at the White House,1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500, and Defendant Donald Trump resides at Mar-a-Lago, 1100 S Ocean Blvd, Palm Beach, FL 33480.

Respectfully submitted,

_____________________

John Doe 

State of __________

__________ County

Before me personally appeared John Doe, who after being sworn in by me, stated that he is the Plaintiff in the Complaint, and the facts alleged therein are true.

   _________________________________

              Notary Public

Exactly what do you suppose Jesus in the Gospels meant by being born again?

    Response to the Jesus's baptism in fire and spirit is not very familiar to the various Christian sects post:

Elizabeth RoWrites Elizabeth’s Substack

Anyone here ever read the writings of St. Louis Marie de Montfort? He speaks of the second coming that will be experienced in the spirit-therefore Paul was part of the second coming. It is understood that this present day represents the second coming where some of humanity will have prepared themselves to be able to Experience the second coming of Christ. New worlds and all that. Religions can be preparatory as they feed the intellect but don't get too lost in knowledge and forget about the mystic heart.  

Sloan Bashinsky

I haven't read that. I don't think Christ ever left, and maybe there will be a second coming on this world. Jesus taught how anyone could move into the Christ energy. I never was attracted to the second coming prophesy. Each day pushes me plenty.  

Elizabeth Ro
So Jesus taught how to enter into the Christ experience?-DUDE! THAT IS THE SECOND COMING !! At which it is not a thought but an experience and cannot be argued but Self-Realized. The proof being in the pudding.

Sloan Bashinsky
In that sense, yes, although I would cast it more as being born again, in the becoming a very different person sense Mainstream Christendom views the 2nd Coming as Jesus coming back to take charge and run things on Earth for a while, and people being taken-up in the rapture, right out of their clothes, and other people being left behind or sent to hell, etc. The angels schooled me on many things, but they didn't say anything about Revelation in the New Testament, other than the fellow it came out of, John, didn't know what it meant, so how could anyone today know what it means? :-) The angels were and remian really focused on living each day as best as we can, that's the walk with God on this world. The future is irrelevant, in that sense? 

Elizabeth Ro
I would agree with you in using that "born again" term which is also a product of that mainstream group but it is not at all sense related.  

Sloan Bashinsky
In the Gospels, Jesus said a person must be born again to enter the Kingdom of God. Christendom acknowledges that, but mostly does not understand what actually is required. 

Elizabeth Ro
Actually "born from above" or spiritual birth-therefore representing an invisible non-earthly (descending) birth-Christ Awareness, which we agree Jesus leads the way.and Discipline (ascending) prepares us. The senses relate to mankind''s ascending efforts and the Christ Awareness represents the Descending handshake that is born within-when it happens there is no mistaking it for any of the six senses. 

Sloan Bashinsky

I have had countless experiences with what is beyond the human senses. I get up each day and deal with what the day brings, trying and hoping to be in sync with my training by angels and my dreams. I also try to have some fun each day, because there's plenty of no fun going around. That's the whole program. Because of the training, I feel like someone from another planet, who is stuck on this planet until the mother ship fetches me back, or something else causes me to adios.

 

    Posted in Reddit's r/spirituality group:

Jesus Christ
Is Jesus Christ real or is he a concept that was borrowed from somewhere to create a whole saving person? Is his whole story a myth from the Romans? I ask this because I have been hearing of how Christ and his behaviors are the very essence of how we were meant to live as humans. But that was picked up and was gone to form what we have as Jesus.

Puzzleheaded
Read the four Gospels and decide yourself? I know for a fact that Jesus existed and some of his story was told in the Gospels, and some of it there was not understood very well later in history, nor today. But I cannot prove that to you, nor to anyone, and I'd be nuts if I thought I could prove it. I'm not a Christian, but I was raised in that religion. I don't belong to any religion. I'm shanghaied, by God, and it's not imaginable to anyone who has not experienced it, but there are some stories in the Old and the New Testaments of people who were shanghaied. It happened to people not in those regions, too. 

 

    Posted in Reddit's r/spirituality group:

Opinion on Christianity?!

I was raised Christian and for the most part I agree with living a godly lifestyle. Honoring your temple(body), prayer, do good be good, selflessness, n etc. I just have a hard time understanding Jesus being God. I’ve also have had a very strong spiritual life as well. Just trying to decide what to do.

Puzzleheaded

Jesus in Gethsemane asks God to spare him what lies ahead, then he prays, not his will, but thy will, O Lord, be done. In the wilderness, Jesus declined to act as if he were God. In the Gospels, Jesus spoke of God as his father, and that’s in The Lord’s Prayer. To the extent you live as he taught in the Gospels, you are saved by him, even if you are an atheist.

BeastBossKittens

Love this, so tru amen 💕

    Posted in Reddit's r/spirituality group:

What makes earth beautiful? 

I just want to know your reasons for staying here?

Puzzleheaded

At 81, I wake up every morning, wondering why I'm still here? Then, I get out of bed and start dealing with what is in front of me. Some might call that chopping wood and carrying water. I think if religious people lived in my skin a while, they very well might wish there was no God. 

Looking back, I think I can count 12 entirely different lives I have lived in one lifetime, so far. I had very deep relationships with 8 women, one at a time, and when I was with them, something new opened up in me, of which I was not aware. They enriched my life, and it was not always easy for them to be with me.

It looks to me that humanity, in the main, is insane. because its femanine is fractured and it has lost it creativity and is cloning itself and devolving.

I think if what angels known in the Bible do to and for humanity, what they did to me and for me since early 1987, maybe 50, 000 people will survive it, and perhaps that will be enough for humanity to start over.

As for the planet, its is beautiful, even though humanity has made it less beautiful, and if left unchecked by the planet, ETs, God, humanity will destroy the planet, and thus itself.

I told a veterinarian friend the other day, since he declined to treat me like an old, ailing pet whose time had come to be put down, I went to an animal rescue shelter, which has vet. I told him I want donate my brain to one of his animals, if the animal wants it. He said he had several animal, who had expressed interest in having a human brain, and when did I want to come in and he would put me to sleep and take my brain and give it to one of them?

My veterinarian friend laughed. His girlfriend sort of laughed. He knows I would do it, if I could find a veterinarian who would go along with it.

Meanwhile, I've been telling the mother ship to come get me, and she doesn't seem inclined yet.

So, here I still am, wondering why I'm still here, and I see this Reddit post in my email account, and I take the bait, again.

    Posted yesterday on Substack by internationally-recognized war correspondent Chriss Hedges:

Children of Gaza - by Mr. Fish, October 8, 2023

Dear child. It is past midnight. I am flying at hundreds of miles an hour in the darkness, thousands of feet over the Atlantic Ocean. I am traveling to Egypt. I will go to the border of Gaza at Rafah. I go because of you.
You have never been in a plane. You have never left Gaza. You know only the densely packed streets and alleys. The concrete hovels.  You know only the security barriers and fences patrolled by soldiers that surround Gaza. Planes, for you, are terrifying. Fighter jets. Attack helicopters. Drones. They circle above you. They drop missiles and bombs. Deafening explosions. The ground shakes. Buildings fall. The dead. The screams. The muffled calls for help from beneath the rubble. It does not stop. Night and day. Trapped under the piles of smashed concrete. Your playmates. Your schoolmates. Your neighbors. Gone in seconds. You see the chalky faces and limp bodies when they are dug out. I am a reporter. It is my job to see this. You are a child. You should never see this.   
The stench of death. Rotting corpses under broken concrete. You hold your breath. You cover your mouth with cloth. You walk faster. Your neighborhood has become a graveyard. All that was familiar is gone. You stare in amazement. You wonder where you are.
You are afraid. Explosion after explosion. You cry. You cling to your mother or father. You cover your ears. You see the white light of the missile and wait for the blast. Why do they kill children? What did you do? Why can’t anyone protect you? Will you be wounded? Will you lose a leg or an arm? Will you go blind or be in a wheelchair? Why were you born?  Was it for something good? Or was it for this? Will you grow up?  Will you be happy? What will it be like without your friends? Who will die next? Your mother? Your father? Your brothers and sisters?  Someone you know will be injured. Soon. Someone you know will die. Soon.  
At night you lie in the dark on the cold cement floor. The phones are cut. The internet is off. You do not know what is happening. There are flashes of light. There are waves of blast concussions. There are screams. It does not stop.  
When your father or mother hunts for food or water you wait. That terrible feeling in your stomach. Will they come back? Will you see them again? Will your tiny home be next? Will the bombs find you? Are these your last moments on earth?  
You drink salty, dirty water. It makes you very sick. Your stomach hurts. You are hungry. The bakeries are destroyed. There is no bread. You eat one meal a day. Pasta. A cucumber. Soon this will seem like a feast. 
You do not play with your soccer ball made of rags. You do not fly your kite made from old newspapers.      
You have seen foreign reporters. We wear flak jackets with the word PRESS written on it. We have helmets. We have cameras. We drive jeeps. We appear after a bombing or a shooting. We sit over coffee for a long time and talk to the adults. Then we disappear. We do not usually interview children. But I have done interviews when groups of you crowded around us. Laughing. Pointing. Asking us to take your picture. 
I have been bombed by jets in Gaza. I have been bombed in other wars, wars that happened before you were born. I too was very, very scared. I still have dreams about it. When I see the pictures of Gaza these wars return to me with the force of thunder and lightning. I think of you. 
All of us who have been to war hate war most of all because of what it does to children.
I tried to tell your story. I tried to tell the world that when you are cruel to people, week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade, when you deny people freedom and dignity, when you humiliate and trap them in an open-air prison, when you kill them as if they were beasts, they become very angry. They do to others what was done to them. I told it over and over. I told it for seven years. Few listened. And now this. 
There are very brave Palestinian journalists. Thirty-nine of them have been killed since this bombing began. They are heroes. So are the doctors and nurses in your hospitals. So are the U.N. workers. Eighty-nine of whom have died. So are the ambulance drivers and the medics. So are the rescue parties that lift up the slabs of concrete with their hands. So are the mothers and fathers who shield you from the bombs. 
But we are not there. Not this time. We cannot get in. We are locked out. 
Reporters from all over the world are going to the border crossing at Rafah. We are going because we cannot watch this slaughter and do nothing. We are going because hundreds of people are dying a day, including 160 children. We are going because this genocide must stop. We are going because we have children. Like you. Precious. Innocent. Loved. We are going because we want you to live. 
I hope one day we will meet. You will be an adult. I will be an old man, although to you I am already very old. In my dream for you I will find you free and safe and happy.  No one will be trying to kill you. You will fly in airplanes filled with people, not bombs. You will not be trapped in a concentration camp. You will see the world. You will grow up and have children. You will become old. You will remember this suffering, but you will know it means you must help others who suffer. This is my hope. My prayer.
We have failed you. This is the awful guilt we carry. We tried. But we did not try hard enough. We will go to Rafah.  Many of us. Reporters. We will stand outside the border with Gaza in protest. We will write and film. This is what we do. It is not much. But it is something. We will tell your story again. 
Maybe it will be enough to earn the right to ask for your forgiveness. 

 

Sloan BashinskyWrites Sloan’s Newsletter

Horrific, Chris, what is going on in Gaza now. Alas, this round was started by Hamas, and I wager Hamas very much hoped Israel would respond in this way, meaning, Hamas doesn't care how many Gaza children and adults get killed by Israel, and it bothers me that you don't condemn Hamas, as well as Israel. and It bothers me that you don't address the cause of all of this, which is the Jewish Scriptures, the Christian Old Testament and New Testament, and the Koran. A friend of mine said that Hamas does not worry about how many Gaza people Israel kills, because they become martyrs and go to Paradise. Maybe if America had accepted the post-World War II Jewish refugees, there would be no Israel today, and the three Abrahamic religions would have nothing to fight over in Palestine. Maybe if Israel becomes so desperate that it unleashes its nukes, Palestine will be uninhabitable and in that way the three Abrahamic religions have nothing to fight over in Palestine. What if America offers today, what it did not offer after World War II - a home to every Jew living in Israel? Do you think the American Christians would go for that? Or would they say no, again. Would they want Israel to continue to defend where the Jew Jesus was crucified at the behest of Jewish leaders 2000 years ago? 

 

 sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

Jesus's baptism in fire and spirit is not very familiar to Christendom

    16-year-old Noel's and my intricate theological discussion in the two previous posts took a surprising turn when he revealed that he very much wants to be a Catholic priest.

Noel

Ok ok ok, my grades would not reflect your claiming I have a high IQ and am a prodigy, although I am a little good at drums. I just watch a lot of Catholic apologists argue, some of my ideas are not my own but learned. I conclude abortion is immoral not because I know the mind of God, but that through the many graces and mercies He’s given me, a sinner, along with his divine revelation and pedagogy, I can know moral truths. If not then do I know it’s wrong to kill or rape or steal? If you think my ideas are cool, maybe you should read some of saints and theologians I read.

I don’t agree with the idea of karma, the quote you mentioned earlier where Jesus says you will reap what you will sow can’t be reduced to a teaching of karma provided that just this alone can be interpreted in different ways. It’s important to read scripture in proper context referring to prophesies in the Old Testament related to the verse and in its historical context. 

Jesus is God, Jesus is omnipotent and omniscient, he knows every problem that has happened, and will happened. He has not addressed every single problem ever, because they are all contingent upon rejecting God. There are probably many other vices that Jesus did not address, or at least we’re not written down, across the world. The reason why is because Jesus did not come to make peace, but for the sword, to set a father against one son and a mother against one’s daughter. He came to die on the cross to pay for our sins, as sin and death came into the world through disobedience, and Our Lord was obedient unto death as the Son of Man for our sins. God has established multiple times what is right and wrong through his 10 commandments, and has addressed vices constantly. The devil, who used to be the second to God in power, knew quite well what was wrong and right. The contingence of a moral person is not based on whether someone knows certain truths or not, rather if a person is willing to carry his or her cross and follow our Lord. 

Maybe I can be wrong about what God wants, but when Gods gifts of rational will and intellect is used correctly, we can conclude what God wants. This is why the application of the rigor of logic is extremely important and this is why the Church stresses theology. But I know the right answer the same way I know mathematical truths or historical truths, because it’s reasonable to conclude so. If I can’t make logical conclusions on what God wants, then I can’t make logical conclusions about anything, because the same faculties I’m using to conclude in what God wants in using to conclude many other truths as well. I wouldn’t know anything, which is problematic considering I’m exercising my knowledge right know. Certainly one’s bad circumstance does not justify one’s vice. A robber doesn’t rob a store because it’s his favorite hobby to do on the weekends, he robs money likely because he’s impoverished and he sees crime to be the only way out of that poverty. Despite the unfortunate situation, it would still be immoral for him to steal the money of others. Likewise, despite the unfortunate situation some women may be in, it is immoral to kill innocent children. 

It’s certainly not my intention to destress you or anything, I deeply respect I’m your spiritual process through the dark night and deeply lament over the death of your son. My mother went through something similar. When she was young she contracted an STD, and so every time she wanted a child she would have to go to the doctor(she didn’t get into the details why). They didn’t find this out about her until her second pregnancy, and two of her children died. For her third pregnancy, she talked to the doctor and went through the proper procedure, but she fell off stairs, crushing and killing her third baby. By the grace of God my parents tried again, this time they went to a cathedral and asked for the intercession of Our Lady at a cathedral in the Dominican Republic for the pregnancy. This time the procedure went well and she didn’t fall off anything, and she gave birth to a boy. That boy was born on Jan. 21, the day when the Church celebrates the presentation of Our Lady, and that boy is me...

I’ve tried. I haven’t always been this serious about my faith, and even at times I’ve become an agnostic like you. I’ve even had a close relationship with a demonic person. But every time I would come back to the Holy Church, because my Our Lady has loved me so much. When asked why he chooses to spend 3 hours for a mass, Padre Pío responds with that God knows I want to stop, to lead a regular mass, but he won’t let me. Leading a Catholic life is not easy, especially not in this day in age, but I do it not because it’s convenient, but because I morally have no other option.   

 

Sloan Bashinsky

After all I have told you about me, I can't imagine how you say I'm an agnostic. I know for a fact that God, angels known in the Bible, Jesus, Lucifer and demons exist. I have run into some Deists lately, and they are very big on using logic, or reason, to define God. If they lived in my skin for a while, they very well might wish there was no God. Same, if they lived in the skin of a good friend of mine for a week.

You told me a while back that you aren't a religious fundamentalist, but you sure come across as one, based on my many dealings with religious fundamentalists. Based on your latest, you are deeply connected to the Roman Catholic Church. I do not doubt you have experienced some of the workings of God, but Jesus is not God, and he did not claim in the Gospels to be God. He did not tell the Devil in the wilderness that he was God. Jesus taught people to pray to their father in heaven. When he was in Gethsemane, sweating blood over what he knew lay ahead, Jesus  asked God to spare him from it; then he surrendered, and said, not my will, but your will be done, O Lord.

Jesus came to show by his own example and words how to walk with God on this world, and he won over a few people, and he really upset the Jewish leaders, and they had him crucified for it. To the extent Catholics, or any followers of Jesus, live as he lived and taught, they are saved by him. The rest is just church propaganda to cause people to want to belong to that religion and give it money so it can keep going. You told me you like Francis of Assisi, so I recommend the movie, Brother Sun Sister Moon, which portrays very well how pompous the Catholic Church had become in Italy during Francis's time, and how God used Francis to try to fix that. 

I am not ridiculing your church. I simply am saying God is so much larger than any religion, and there is no need for anyone to attend church to walk with God, but if church helps people do that, then that’s good. But if they get to doing what you are doing, telling women what you, as a man, really know nothing about and never will, because you are not a woman, you cross a line that many religious people have crossed in all branches of Christendom. 

The Eastern and the Western Church got a divorce over the Western Church requiring its priests to be celibate. The disciples knew Magdalene and Jesus were a couple. If Magdalene washed his feet with her hair and tears before the disciples, what did she wash him with when they were in private? It was the solemn duty of every Jewish man to marry and propagate the race of God’s chosen people. Paul was a Pharisee, yet his letters never mention he was married and had children. Every woman around Paul knew his thorn in the flesh was he was gay, and he was celibate to atone for it. He wrote that he wished his followers all were celibate, like him. He wrote that women could only know Christ through their husbands. I hear Christians quote Paul far more than they quote Jesus, whom Paul never met in the flesh.

I can' help it if you don't care for some of what Jesus in the Gospels said. Such as, what I told you about John the Baptist. What Jesus said about sowing what we reap, both the good and the bad, that is how it is. I have heard many Christians say the only way to be saved by Jesus is to accept the formula that he was the son of God who died for their sins. But in one of the letters of Jesus' brother James, James says don't ask him about his faith, but look to his works and there see his faith. Jesus was about living life raw, up close and personal, in sync with God's ways, not man's ways. Jesus was always in church, and so is everyone, even if they don't realize it. 

We all stand before God, every moment of our lives, even if we don't know it. And when we reach the afterlife, we have a life review, to the extent it did not happen before we crossed over. After that, the next phase of our existence begins. Either back on this planet, like Elijah. On some other planet. In some other dimension. The soul is eternal, as it emanates from God, as does everything emanate from God, even Lucifer.

I know that I am not persuading you, but you are very young, and hopefully, you have much to experience, and by the time you are my age, maybe you will look back like I do now, and see just how little you really knew when you were 16. If that doesn't happen, you have made no progress since you were sixteen.

Some people follow what I write, because it is so very different from what is put forth by any sect of Christendom, it is so very different form what is put forth by any religion. In the Letter to the Hebrews, which most theologians do not attribute to Paul, as it is not his writing style, the author tells the audience that they should be eating meat, they should be teachers, but they are still drinking milk. In my experience, that pretty well  sums up the state of the various sects in Christendom. 

Feel free to share your and my back and forth with your priest. Ask him what he thinks? Ask him, also, if he has actually been celibate the entire time he has been a priest, and ask him if he is straight, or gay? I have no problem with either sexual orientation, because (a) God does not make mistakes, and (b) I have known a lot of gay men and women, and some bis, and some who had sex change surgery, and they simply were wired to be where they were, and there was nothing they could do about it. My bisexual brother killed himself because someone was going to out him and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

You have much to experience in life. I recommend that you get on with it. 

 

Noel

I’m very sorry for the loss of your brother, I will certainly keep him in my rosaries

As for your claims, I was going to write another response but I would agree with you that we are  not persuading each other. Certainly I never thought I would be debating with an actual writer and intellectual and someone with spiritual experiences like you, so I have to thank you for your time. 

The reason I try my best to study and defend the faith is because I want to be a priest myself, especially in light of the clerical mess today. You might not be too happy to hear that, but I don’t see myself leaving the faith anytime soon.

As for our back and forth, I might send it to my spiritual director who has a PhD in theology and maintains all the Hispanic spiritual activity in my diocese. Or my dad who’s also a theologian. Or maybe God is a sufficient spectator. 

And maybe you are convinced now that I don’t have an extremely high IQ, saying that your an agnostic was a pretty bad mistake.  

 

Sloan Bashinsky

You have to be very smart to have amassed so much knowledge and be able to write the way you do, and you don't react. You remain level, which is a sign of maturity far beyond your years. What you have done is bump into a person who has ongoing experiences with the supernatural, but he belongs to no religion, and he attends no church, because what he is experiencing obviously is incompatible with the religion in which he was raised, first the Baptist sect, then the Episcopal. 

I always believed God existed, and Jesus was the son of God. The only thing that changed was I came to understand that we all are children of God, and Jesus was very accelerated and knew what he was, and he tried to bring other people to where he was, He told his disciples in the Gospels that a student cannot become greater than the teacher, but the student can become like the teacher, and even do even greater works than he had done. He also told them that he taught the masses in parables, but he taught them in secret the mysteries of the Kingdom of God, for which wise men and kings would give all they had to possess. When Jesus left the men disciples, after the near-death experience, they were still quarreling children. After the Holy Spirit grabbed them at Pentecost, SHE, the female side of God, grew them into men God could use. Jesus had planted the seeds, but the Holy Spirit ignited the seeds in the disciples. 

In the Jewish scriptures, the Spirit of God is called Shekinah, gender feminine. In the Old Testament, wisdom is assigned the feminine gender. Christianity's Trinity is all male. How does it reproduce, except by cloning itself. A clone of a clone of a clone, is what has become of mainstream Christendom.

So, what did Jesus teach the disciples in secret? We only have bare glimpses of that in the Gospels. I gave you one glimpse, which was their discussion about John the Baptist. In another setting, Jesus gave sight to a man who had been born blind. Later, one of his disciples asked, Who had sinned, the man or his parents, that he was born blind? Now how could the man have sinned before was born, unless he had lived before? The Old Testament had said the sins of the fathers were visited on the sons for generations. Jesus said it was for neither reason, but the man was born blind, so that the glory of God could be seen on that day, when the man received his sight. Jesus did not say the disciple's question was wrong, but that the answer was something else.

Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea risked their lives to persuade Pilate to let them take Jesus's body down from the cross on the afternoon of the morning he was crucified. They wrapped his body in linen cloth, which is sterile, a bandage. They salved his body with 100-weight of aloes and myrrh. Aloe is a powerful wound healer. Myrrh dramatically raises white cell count to fight infection. 

I hope you will share our discussion with your spiritual director and your father. I wish them no ill or harm. That would be horrible karma to create for myself. I am an anomaly. I do not make up what I tell you has happened to me. That would be horrible karma, too. I have enough problems already. Who doesn't have enough problems already? It's part of being in this world, but not of it, hopefully.

What I hope for you is that God takes you from where you now are to where you are in direct communion with the Almighty, like the Prophets in the Old Testament; like Jesus, and like his disciples after Pentecost; like Paul after his dark night of the soul; like later saints in Christendom; and like people in C/hristendom, and in other religions, such as Rumi, of the Sufi part of Islam, and his irascible teacher, Shams, to whom two American followers of Rumi likened me, and they called me Shams. Go to Wikipedia and enter Rumi and Shams in that search space, and read what comes up. Also google Rumi’s poem, Chickpea to Cook, and read that account of what it’s like to be boiled alive by God many times. 

John the Baptist said in the Gospels that he baptized in water, but one greater than he would come, who would baptize in fire and spirit. Jesus in the Gospels did not baptize in water. He said his baptism was in fire and he was anxious to get on with it. He lived his baptism and he administered it to other people. I think Jesus very much would have enjoyed meeting Rumi and Shams, but they lived later.

Shalom, Noel, from the Melchizedek Priesthood, which is somewhat explained in the Letter to the Hebrews.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com