Stepping Into 2021 Quotes

The mission that God has given us is a highly relational mission. Jesus said, "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you" John 20:21. Jesus came into this world, lived in obscurity for 30 years and then spent three years relationally investing in twelve men, whose charge was to do the same thing by relationally investing in others. This strategy has worked for 2000 years each of us has been touched by someone reaching out to and investing in us relationally, thus advancing the gospel and the mission of God.

The Lingerer by Stewart Stafford Another lonely start, O shadow companion, My twin bereft of heart, On grief’s stormy galleon. Each step disbelief, Strangers pass in proximity, In motion an artist’s relief, Abstract as infinity. The quickening pulse of streets, Tears on cheeks reflective, This scarred heart missing beats, Damaged and defective. Home now just where memory sits, Perspective greatly shifted, This shapeless form no longer fits, The body it was gifted. And if, my love, you see me now, I beg you, look away, Love’s blush departed with a bow, Then withered and decayed. © Stewart Stafford, 2021. All rights reserved.

No surprise, pharmaceutical interests launched their multinational preemptive crusade to restrict and discredit HCQ starting way back in January 2020, months before the WHO declared a pandemic and even longer before President Trump’s controversial March 19 endorsement. On January 13, when rumors of Wuhan flu COVID-19 began to circulate, the French government took the bizarre, inexplicable, unprecedented, and highly suspicious step of reassigning HCQ from an over-the-counter to a prescription medicine. Without citing any studies, French health officials quietly changed the status of HCQ to “List II poisonous substance” and banned its over-the-counter sales. This absolutely remarkable coincidence repeated itself a few weeks later when Canadian health officials did the exact same thing, quietly removing the drug from pharmacy shelves. A physician from Zambia reported to Dr. Harvey Risch that in some villages and cities, organized groups of buyers emptied drugstores of HCQ and then burned the medication in bonfires outside the towns. South Africa destroyed two tons of life-saving hydroxychloroquine in late 2020, supposedly due to violation of an import regulation. The US government in 2021 ordered the destruction of more than a thousand pounds of HCQ, because it was improperly imported. “The Feds are insisting that all of it be destroyed, and not be used to save a single life anywhere in the world,” said a lawyer seeking to resist the senseless order.

A year on, in 2021, 43 international scientists would sign four letters calling for an investigation into a possible laboratory leak. The first group of 25 scientists went public with their letter on March 4, 2021 in response to the WHO’s flawed inquiry, which failed to investigate the Wuhan laboratories. The scientists published a series of letters outlining the steps the WHO needed to take for a rigorous scientific inquiry into the origins of the virus. One of the essential questions they identified that needs examining is this: “Did the WIV or any other laboratory ever attempt to recreate RaTG13 or any other coronaviruses by assembling them from synthetic gene sequences?” They want to obtain the records of laboratories involved in coronavirus research in Wuhan, such as laboratory notebooks, electronic records and details of gain-of-function research, including related sequences and isolates.

My mother didn’t answer. She gestured mutely toward her feet. Is it true that her long toes were burying themselves in the ground, so deeply that she could no longer take a step? Do I honestly remember seeing her two feet rooting themselves to the spot? Did her skin really become hard and rough all over, like a tree? Were there really spring-green leaves spilling forth from her fingertips? Or has my adult mind painted the memory of this night in such unlikely colors, as a way to assuage my guilt for leaving her? I could hear men shouting and dogs barking, coming closer. Ahead I could see the tangled thicket. The wind in the trees sounded like the voices of women singing in chorus, and their voices were filled with glottal embellishments, as if sung by throats made of wood. The music urged me forward. And so I left my mother, and went on without her. I wasn’t afraid, because the trees took care of me, and they brooded and bent over me, and sang to me their melancholy songs, and fed me, and gave me succor, until the Bird of the Wood found me and took me home with her and taught me to trust to the sound of my own voice." From Chouette by Claire Oshetsky Virago: November 4, 2021 Ecco: November 16, 2021

Titus Ray Thrillers: One Step Back, the prequel to One Night in Tehran One Night in Tehran, Book I Two Days in Caracas, Book II Three Weeks in Washington, Book III Four Months in Cuba, Book IV Five Years in Yemen, Book V Two Steps Forward, Book VI Three Steps Away, Book VII Four Steps Missed, Book VIII (Coming Fall 2021)

Monday, November 29 Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. —Psalm 119:105 (ESV) Here you go!” my twenty-two-year-old son, John, said cheerfully, handing me a stack of hundred-dollar bills. Since he began working he has also begun paying me rent. He prefers to pay in cash, I think because it is concrete evidence he is contributing to the family. We both enjoy the monthly ritual. This has been a long, long time coming. There were the years in which John’s anxiety triggered rages, then the years when he was depressed and didn’t leave the house except to walk the dog or go to therapy. There were long stretches of time when there seemed to be no path forward. Through those I learned that my inability to see how life could improve meant only one thing: that I couldn’t see the way through. Oddly, in retrospect, I can’t see the path we took, either. I think that’s because John’s progress was so incremental, each step forward so infinitely small as to be almost unnoticeable. It may also have something to do with the fact that the “lamp to my feet” that lit my path was much like the handheld oil lamps of biblical times, casting only enough light to illuminate my next stumbling step. Yet now my son is gainfully employed, a taxpaying citizen. He does not earn a lot, but he works hard and his boss likes him. Someday, I think, he will probably be able to afford his own apartment. I’m not worried about when that happens. There are those who might argue John “should” be doing X or Y or Z. For me, those “shoulds” don’t matter: I’ve learned we can’t move forward from where we wish we were. We can only move forward from where we are now. Lord, let Your word illuminate my next step. And then the one after. And the one after that. —Julia Attaway Digging Deeper: Psalm 44:18

They had never promised each other every lifetime, every universe, every possible arrangement of atoms. Those are in infinite supply, and they are two girls. But they are two girls whose blood runs with the heat of exploding stars, even as it drips down their knuckles. They are two girls whose souls reach for each other and ignore probability and infinity. They are two girls who crash together and touch each other gently. They have each other’s names carved into their bones and each other’s fingerprints tattooed on their ligaments and they breathe in time with the other’s heartbeat. They would count the steps to hell and freeze it over to save one another and they would burn if there were no other choice. When the sun goes supernova and solar flares lick across the sky, they will see one another, even if only for an instant, and think, This is almost heaven. And with every instant they have they can read each other like braille with ink-stained fingertips and they are a force of nature if you dare to touch them, learning what happens when a hurricane protects its own.

Overthinking is often linked to perfectionism, while obsessive thinking is associated more directly with a condition known as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) (Krstic, 2021).

Besides grabbing the opportunity to promote Trump as a racist, this side-step on the part of the media may have been a means by which to divert attention away from the legitimate issues that Trump raised, issues that were not helpful to the liberal narrative.

The Hibernal Realm by Stewart Stafford The compass knows not which way to go, And Life's submerged in winter's snow, The path before us fit for sleds, Dusted with a blizzard's web. Clear a path and the light the way, And get us through to break of day, Step through the ice-encrusted door, That shows the way to the dawn thaw. Stay too long in the hibernal realm, And the chill begins to overwhelm, Sit, rest, and take respite, And become at one with fading light. See The Winter King and then bow down, With frostbite smile and holly crown, Icicle sceptre makes the heartbeat slow, Lonely as the North wind blows. © Stewart Stafford, 2021. All rights reserved.

FAITH STEP: Next time you see a hateful post, contribute a loving response—a Scripture verse or an encouraging quote—and see what happens.

The Walker by Stewart Stafford The walker takes a step forward, Positive but possibly fatal to them, Brave but perhaps foolishly ambitious to onlookers. Concentration and breathing, the antidote to cynicism, The pole, like cat’s whiskers, In feline prance. Moment to moment, Heartbeat to heartbeat, The procession continues. With creeping inevitably, The destination is reached, And the walker falls to their death. Another adventurer steps out onto the wire, A descendant of the expired walker, Determined to complete life’s tightrope. © Stewart Stafford, 2021. All rights reserved.

YouTube: Psychiatrist facing backlash for saying she 'fantasizes about killing white people' by Fox News On April 6, 2021 Dr. Aruna Khilanani, addressing Yale School of Medicine Child Study Center via “Common Sense with Bari Weiss” said: “I had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way, burying their body and wiping my bloody hands as I walked away relatively guiltless with a bounce in my step. Like I did the world a f***ing favor. … White people are out of their minds and they have been for a long time. … We are asking a demented, violent predator who thinks that they are a saint or a superhero, to accept responsibility. It ain’t gonna happen. They have five holes in their brain.

Don’t ignore this step in your job search.

THE NIGHT PRINCESS Africa cry out for a part and she answers The light beneath Hope's The tears of the nights that wail for the freedom of her offsprings Let Africa awaits her turn and nature has been defeated once again Oh great daughter of the East, the moon through which the sons of men awaits grace. Onyii, the princess of the night. The night fears your radiance and the sun is envious of your glow. Let the wind roar for the earth is proud that a soul never envisaged will walk on its surface. Nwoji, let the soil know you stepped on it. Poem by Victor Vote for Onyii Nwoji ©️2021 by VVF

In Search of El Dorado by Stewart Stafford A meandering mountain path awaits, Build a bonfire of remembrance, With crunching staff on gravel, Certainty slowly becomes a stranger. The funereal pace of the brand-new, Is reborn in accelerating steps, In concert with liberation's adrenaline, And a cooling breeze through the brim. Startled young fox on a crag, A hawk circles overhead, Sage standing stones keep counsel, Their shadows pointing the way forward. Sheep stare and chew in nearby wet fields, Occasionally bleating confused directions, A pillar of black smoke stretches into the sky, A beacon on the horizon. A ridge around a corner, The crêpe shop comes into view, Relief exhaled upon reaching El Dorado's gates, Golden sustenance and home via the car park. © Stewart Stafford, 2021. All rights reserved.

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It was not possible for a vaccine maker, or a society, to adapt to an evolving virus without genomic information. And yet nearly a year into the pandemic, in February 2021, the number of genomes being sequenced in the United States was trivial—less than a third of 1 percent of the virus in people who tested positive. (The UK was by then sequencing 10 percent of its positives; Denmark had set a goal of sequencing all of them.) The United States was sequencing fewer of its genomes than any other industrialized country, and the only reason it was sequencing as many as it was is that a bunch of nonprofits had stepped in to do it, haphazardly, for free.

In Revelation, Jesus pictured Himself knocking on the door of our heart, waiting for us to invite Him in for fellowship. Each day we make the choice either to shut Him out of our personal life or to keep the door always open by praying, reading the Word, and keeping our mind fixed on Him. When we choose the latter, He infuses our life with joy, peace, and power. —DIANNE NEAL MATTHEWS FAITH STEP: Have you been welcoming Jesus into your daily life or avoiding Him?

I stepped down from office on December 8, 2021. After sixteen years I left it,