Hotel California - For My Other Family

May God bless and protect you always.
Remember that you will always find a safe place in faith with Him.
Even at the darkest moments.
There is always His Light!
Vaya Con Dios!
From,

Sir Richard
A Canadian Cousin from our Hotel...
Also a knight in thy service of the King of Kings!

Happy Halloween!

Commander K'itchard of the Imperial Klingon Defence Force Orders You To Have A Happy Halloween!

So Happy Halloween!
From,

Sir Richard of Abbenbroek
Muzikayifani...

P.S. Remember:
"Halloween is just a bunch of people in costumes,
it is people who follow evil that make the world's horrors real"
Sir Richard ...
****************************
Halloween

Why Christians should embrace the devilish holiday with gusto—and laughter.

A few years back, our local Christian radio station ran a poll asking whether Halloween is spiritually harmful. The response from a predominantly evangelical audience here in Ohio was two-to-one against Halloween. This did not surprise me. It is now popular in some Christian circles to repudiate any celebration of All Hallows Eve—Halloween.

"We all know what day is coming," said a young woman in the choir of the Rhode Island church my wife and I attended when I was working on my doctorate. "And I think we need to be in prayer that the evil powers and principalities be held in check over this next weekend." Halloween fell on a Sunday that year, making the event seem all the more sinister. On the calendar of events for the Christian college where I teach, October 31 sits in a dark square with no acknowledgment that there is anything special about the date.

"It's Satan's Holiday, Dr. Rearick," affirmed one of my students. "Didn't you know?"
Well, no, I didn't know. And I am reluctant to give up what was one of the highlights of my childhood calendar to the Great Impostor and Chief of Liars for no reason except that some of his servants claim it as his.

Give up nothing!

I have always considered Halloween a day to celebrate the imagination, to become for a short time something wonderful and strange, smelling of grease paint, to taste sweets that are permissible only once a year. How wonderful to be with other children dressed up as what they might grow up to be, what they wished they could be, or even what they secretly feared. All of us, dreams and nightmares, were brought together on equal footing, going from door to door to be given treats and admired for our creativity. How delightful to go to parties with doughnuts, apples, brown cider, and pumpkin cakes—and to hear spine-tingling ghost stories and feel our hearts skip a beat when the teller grabbed for us.

Now some are pressuring us to give this all up, and they use what is for some of us the most difficult argument to answer: it's the "Christian" thing to do.

Some Christians shun make-believe. Such believers feel that a young Christian's mind should never long to be in lands where little men have fuzzy feet, dragons breathe fire, and horses have wings. Instead, they maintain that a Christian should be caught up in the here and now of the "real" world. Defending the reality of fiction and the value of fantasy requires an entirely different essay.

Christians certainly may be leery of sharing anything with modern pagans and Satanists who claim Halloween as theirs. But who gave these individuals the right to claim the holiday? If they are Druids, they are celebrating Samhain, which is not Halloween but an even older holiday. As for Satanists, their calendar is a perversion of Christian seasons—there would be no Satanists if there were no Christians. Let them claim all they want.

I give them nothing!!

"But look at the roots of Halloween," some may say. "Don't you see how evil it once was?" I do, but the operative word in that sentence is was. Samhain was once a time of fear and dread, but at one time so was Yule or Midvinterblot, as it was called in Sweden. Toward the time of the winter solstice, the days became shorter and colder. The land was laid waste. In pagan times, to keep the fire of the life-giving sun alight, people often made sacrifices before a great oak tree. Boniface is supposed to have stopped one such sacrifice and instituted the indoor Christmas tree at the same time. The burning of such logs in the midst of sacrifice has come down to us as the traditions of burning Yule logs and enjoying Christmas trees.

I'm not suggesting fir trees and Yule logs be banned from Christmas; I'm only demonstrating what has happened time and again in history. For our pagan ancestors, the holidays that marked the great seasonal changes were often fearful, terrible, and dark. But with the coming of Christ came a great light that reclaimed not only individuals but also the holidays they celebrated. In the case of Midvinterblot and Yule, the holidays that once marked the terrible price required to provide light instead began to express the joyous arrival of God's true light.

Laughing away our fears and foes...

What would a reclaimed Halloween express? In our culture, Halloween traditionally has allowed us to look at what frightens us—to experience it, to laugh at it, and to come through it. So at the end of October, we are visited by cute Caspers, laughing pumpkin heads, and goofy ghouls.

Should the forces of evil be mocked? Should Satan be laughed at? He most certainly should be. At the beginning of The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis includes two telling quotations, the first from Martin Luther: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn."

The second comes from Thomas More: "The devil … the proud spirit cannot endure to be mocked."
The one thing Satan cannot bear is to be a source of laughter. His pride is undermined by his own knowledge that his infernal rebellion against God is in reality an absurd farce. Hating laughter, he demands to be taken seriously. Indeed, I would say that those Christians who spend the night of October 31 filled with concern over what evils might be (and sometimes are) taking place are doing the very thing Lucifer wants them to do. By giving him this respect, such believers are giving his authority credence.

Not all believers should celebrate Halloween. For those who have been redeemed from the occult, Halloween in its foolishness may contain what was for them deadly seriousness. While their souls were in deadly peril, however, what they experienced were lies and illusions.

It is understandable that they look with horror upon what once enslaved them. Such sensitivity may be appropriate for them, but it is not appropriate for the majority of Christians. Holding their opinions as appropriate for most believers is like having a former bulimic dictate how Christians should regard church hot-plate socials.

Christians should instead celebrate Halloween with gusto. If we follow the traditional formula of having a good time at his expense, Satan flees.

In any event, I doubt the anti-Halloween party will prevail. This tactic was tried before—with Christmas. In the 17th century, because of its pagan ancestry and because it was a Roman Catholic holiday (Christ-mass!), many Protestants decided that true believers should not recognize Christmas. In 1620 our pilgrim forefathers purposely started unloading the Mayflower on Christmas Day to make the point to the crew that they were not going to observe such an evil day.

I'm glad those believers—however well-intended—failed. How bleak and desolate would a winter's December be without Christmas! We could have lost our chance to celebrate Christ's first coming and a chance to witness to the world, as I fear those pilgrims lost a chance to witness to those sailors.

If we give up All Hallows Eve, we lose the delight of God's gift of imagination and we condemn the rest of society to a darker Halloween because our laughter will not be there to make the devil run.

By Anderson M. Rearick III

I draw closer and closer home

My heart is about to explode.
As thy humble knight draws closer to thine home.

Each day fully lived as only You would wish of thee.
I take in each second at a time, a minute, an hour,
a day, a month, a year,
of Your daily blessing to me.

My Love for all things, sunrise, sunset, a clear mountain stream,
my fellow man and woman.
A Love that only You can bestow on all of us.
A Love, that we can actually share,
as we rejoice in Your name Oh My Lord.

For in the future when thine moment draws near.
Thy humble knight in full but battered armour will repent, on bent knees.
So through You, I shall and have been,
made righteous, before His Holy Throne.

Thy humble knight's heart is about to explode.
As I draw closer and closer home.

Amen...

Written by,
Sir Richard
A knight in thy service of the King of Kings!

Heroes Trail Calgary

Heroes Trail in Calgary:

http://coffee4ourtroops.com/

This is a petition to the City of Calgary to rename a portion of Macleod trail SE to Heroes Trail. We have lost several soldiers from the Calgary region, including Cpl Nathan Hornburg, Cpl. Mike Starker, and most recently Pte Chad Horn.Cpl. Mike Starker was given a procession through downtown Calgary which passed by city hall on Macleod Trail just before he was laid to his final resting place.

What a tribute it would be for all our soldiers who have been killed in duty in various operations throughout the world to have a section of road named in their honour. By signing the below petition you are stating that you agree with the above and requesting to the city of Calgary that this change be made.

No disrespect to any of the following but if celebrities can get streets named after them, birds (blue jay way in Toronto), Mike Myers in Scarborough, why not name a street in honour of our heroes that make the ultimate sacrifice every day.

Again I am not requesting that the entire street Macleod Trail be renamed, just the downtown portion by city hall. Col James MacLeod was a founding father of the city, served in the military and the North West Mounted Police, served active duty int he defense of Canada, and was an all around great Canadian. To take away his namesake, I believe, would be to gloss over the efforts, contributions and history of some one who definitely deserves it. I'm sure he would approve of sharing the street name with his fellow brothers and current soldiers who are serving on operations around the world. I created this and mean this in no disrespect to the Col James MacLeod or the MacLeod family.

To sign the petition click the following link:

http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/HeroesTrail

Posted for you by,

Sir Richard...

Support Our Troops!

I Love all of you but my first Love is God.

Albertan Sunrise by Sir Richard...

I love watching a herd of horses grazing in an open pasture, or running free across the wide, grasslands of Alberta. I used to love hiking in the foothills when the wildflowers are blooming, the purple lupine and the Indian paintbrush when it’s turning magenta. I love thunder clouds, massive ones. My family loves to sit outside on summer nights and watch the lightning, hear the thunder as a storm rolls in across Alberta. I love water too the ocean, streams, lakes, rivers, waterfalls, rain.

I Love all of you but my first Love is God.

Everything you love is what makes a life worth living. Take a moment, set down the book, and make a list of all the things you love. Don’t edit yourself, don’t worry about prioritizing or anything of that sort. Simply think of all the things you love. Whether it’s the people in your life or the things that bring you joy or the places that are dear to you or God, you could not love them if you did not have a heart. Loving requires a heart alive and awake and free. A life filled with loving is a life most like the one that God lives, which is life as it was meant to be
(Eph. 5:1–2).

I Love all of you but my first Love is God.

Of all the things that are required of us in this life, which is the most important? What is the real point of our existence? Jesus was confronted with the question point-blank one day, and he boiled it all down to two things: loving God and loving others. Do this, he said, and you will find the purpose of your life. Everything else will fall into place. Somewhere down inside we know it’s true, we know love is the point. We know if we could truly love, be loved, and never lose love, we would finally be happy.

I Love all of you but my first Love is God.

Posted for you by Sir Richard...

Four Strong Winds

Picture by Sir Richard - an Albertan Marsh

Posted for you by,
Sir Richard...
A knight in thy service of the king of Kings!

Amazing Grace

Albertan Morning Dew by Sir Richard...

God bless all of you and if we somehow do not meet again soon.
I am certain that we will all meet in Heaven.
With Love from,

MuzikayiFani - Sir Richard
A knight in thy service of the King of Kings...

Walking your way.

Lord, I am walking your way.
Let me in, for my body tires and my feet are sore.
My clothes are torn and ragged.

Look into my eyes Lord, as my sins will play out on them,
as on a screen.
From You I hide nothing, read them all.
I repent everything; forgive as only you my Lord, can.

Then send me back on my path, as I will walk on.
Until you Lord, call me home and bid me rest.

Amen

Posted for you by,
Sir Richard...
A knight in thy service of the king of Kings!

Jesus, Take The Wheel

Posted for you by Sir Richard/Muzikayifani...
A knight in thy service of the King of Kings.