NO FREE PRESS - CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS

As of today, 02/24/2017, REPUBLICAN 45 POTUS now blocking CNN and other progressive news outlets from attending White House press briefings. 45 doubling down on calling CNN an enemy of the people. And so the battle lines for a Constitutional Crisis as regards a Free Press are being drawn. 45 wants to go out of office in a blaze of glory or establish a Putinesque dictatorship -- either way needs to sow as much division as possible, create enough chaos to bring about a national state of emergency so 45 can invoke martial law, suspend the Judiciary Branch, hopefully before Articles of Impeachment occur and Impeachment by the House of Representatives takes place along with 45's removal from office by the Senate. As Steve Bannon recently put it, the mission is to "Deconstruct". If people want this, then sit back and do nothing. If people don't want this, then get on the phone to your Congressional representatives in the House and Senate and don't stop calling until Congress starts doing its job! The final tale in this sad chapter, if Congress does not respond or is somehow suspended through declaration of martial law, will be what the Armed Forces dec."ide to do. Hopefully no nukes get launched, for as everyone knows 45 likes war, even war with nukes. Lurking in all this is 45's death wish.

Be a Bringer of Hope.  You can do so by reading Michael Moore’s article with the Huffington Post.  Click on the following link (title for the article) and you’ll have everything you need to get started.  The article title is, "Do These 10 Things....." and POTUS 45 ".....Will Be Toast!"

Brad Shumate
Free of Encumbrance
©Copyright 2017 Brad Shumate

LISTEN TO THE ONE - BE A BRINGER OF HOPE!

Matthew 17:1-9  NRSV

1 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. 2 And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. 3 Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. 4 Then Peter said to Jesus, "Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." 5 While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, "This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!" 6 When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. 7 But Jesus came and touched them, saying, "Get up and do not be afraid." 8 And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone. 9 As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, "Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead."

MOUNTAINTOP EXPERIENCES – The Bringer of Hope

In the above scripture, the disciples experience their friend, teacher, brother and leader in a new, yet strange and disconcerting way.  They don’t know what to make of him.  Clearly however, Jesus as mystic and prophet and treasured child of God is now indisputable – and he has a message for everyone.  God’s affirmation of this is overwhelming, even frightening to the disciples.  Yet they are God’s children as well and they have a role to play in spreading Jesus’ message.  So, with a reassuring love, God counsels the disciples to neither fear nor despair.

The mountaintop experiences in life often come during difficult times in our lives.  For me, one such experience took place May 26^th, 2011 in my hotel room in Austin, Texas.  Struggling profoundly in my soul over two deeply personal matters, God paid a visit.  At first, I felt a deep sense of foreboding as God’s presence filled the hotel room.  Fearful and unsettled, I cried out, “You can’t do this to me.  Please don’t do this.  Please don’t do this.”  But as C.S. Lewis once described, I could no longer resist  “the unrelenting approach” of The One who cannot be denied.  In the hours that followed, God brought clarity, hope and renewal to my life and calling.  The ecstatic experience, occurring over the course of nearly ten hours that followed, brought this message, “You are called to establish a church free of the encumbrances of the world.  You are to do this so that my apostles can return and prepare the world for my coming.  When this is done, then you can rest and she will be at your side.  Why you?  Because your heart is pure.”

As one might imagine, there has been a great deal of soul searching in the years since this mountaintop experience.  Additionally, I learned long ago from other mystical experiences and from my master’s degree work in religion that ecstatic experiences usually call for much deeper examination of the symbols and words conveyed.  To keep things brief, in the years since my “God Encounter”, I came to understand this experience of calling as follows:  “You are to establish gatherings and opportunities for building up the messengers who I have called-out.  They are my stewards of healthy community.  You are to do this so these bringers of hope can prepare humanity for when I will be fully present among you.  Together we will make everything new again.  For I shall wipe away every tear from my children’s eyes and death, mourning, crying, and pain will be no more -- for the old order will fall.  Write this, for I am Alpha and Omega and what I say is trustworthy and true.  When the task I have given you is done, then you and she who I have sent to be at your side can rest.  Why have I called you?  Because your heart is pure.”        

Responding to this renewed and expanded sense of calling came at a price however.  The price involved ending a marriage of nearly thirty years between two good people whose life paths had arrived to a fork in the road and whose paths had diverged in different directions.  The time had therefore come to set one another free in order that each of us could follow the road we felt it necessary to travel.

From that thirty year union however, I am blessed with two amazing beautiful gifted and talented daughters that I love to pieces and for whom I will always thank God and the Universe that they are much of my life’s bedrock.  As their lives have grown and developed, my life now includes a terrific son-in-law and a toddler grandson who is clearly a reflection of his profoundly loving parents – but also at times a startling sense of connection to my toddler self of long long ago.  In that regard, I find a grandparent’s joy at seeing how much healthier my grandson’s development and upbringing have been.  His vibrant potent sense of self is free of encumbrance to the trauma-exposure which I suffered from and lived through as a child and youth.  My grandson’s parents are truly messengers/bringers of hope for healthy community.  With every passing day, they inch us closer to a time when tears, pain, suffering and mourning will be no more.  Lastly, I have been blessed with one who has come into my life who loves me unconditionally.  My fiance brings a joy I thought I would never know again.

The “Old Order” will fall.  Those who study humanity’s march toward a time of a just and lasting peace in our world, estimate we will arrive to such a condition sometime within the next three hundred years.  In the past few centuries, we have made much progress toward the time of God’s just and peaceable reign.  Our progress has been phenomenal in comparison to the millennia of brutality, crushing injustice, and fevered oppression by those who have appointed themselves humanity’s overlords and overseers.  Their time, their order – the “Old Order” – is about to fall.  As former US President Obama recently shared regarding the USA itself, untold numbers of brown skinned children are growing up and coming into their own and their sense of social justice will remake the USA into a far more egalitarian society and culture.

Until the time that an egalitarian society and culture arrive, we will have to cope with and confront the “supernovas” of bigotry, oppression, social injustice, prejudice, misogyny, and obscenities of the present moment’s “Old Order”.  Today, the swirl and swill of these dying stars are perfectly personified in REPUBLICAN POTUS 45.  Make whatever promises he does, this individual will not remotely abolish poverty or end suffering.  Instead REPUBLICAN POTUS 45 crushes life, crushes hope, makes everything about him.  His days are spent humiliating, demeaning, and if possible --- destroying the lives of those who do not worship him or fail to provide the constant adulation upon which his fragile ego must feed.  What he does promise is this – that he will “harness” you and me to the task of being made over into whatever image he wants you or me to be.  It’s an “Old Order” promise which is that we are to mirror to our masters the reflection they want and demand.  When we don’t, such as the reflection a free and independent press mirrors, we then become the opposition.  We then are labeled and demonized – “fakes” and “sad” as REPUBLICAN 45 POTUS likes to put it.

This past week I spent some focused time reading many of the stories of people who voted for REPUBLICAN 45 POTUS.  I came away from such stories shaking my head.  No matter how much such persons attempted to nuance their rationale for voting REPUBLICAN 45 POTUS into power, it stills mean that you gave license to lying, breaking our laws, bigotry, social injustice, misogyny, and a wide variety of other extremely frightening obscenities.  You are essentially a driver’s test examiner and no matter how many things REPUBLICAN 45 POTUS crashed into, no matter how many times the person drove recklessly, no matter how many times the person left the road you, no matter how many times the person exhibited road rage, no matter how many lives were run over – at the end of the driver’s test you handed a license to a very dangerous individual.  If you want his chains, his falsehoods, his version of reality including his heedless, careless, reckless ways of trying to drive all our lives in the ground, then you are welcome to his decimation and devastation of humanity.

If instead you are a Bringer of Hope and want healthy community, wish to see the Old Order end, then join “The Resistance”.  Make your voice heard.  Stop REPUBLICAN 45 POTUS from breaking of our laws, violating ethics, and ignoring our Constitution.  The current REPUBLICAN GOP CONGRESS would never tolerate for a single moment a DEMOCRAT POTUS like REPUBLICAN 45 POTUS.  Hearings, impeachment, removal from office would constantly headline their day.

Listen to The One -- Be a Bringer of Hope.  You can do so by reading Michael Moore’s article with the Huffington Post.  Click on the following link (title for the article) and you’ll have everything you need to get started.  The article title is “Do These 10 Things, AndTrump Will Be Toast”.

If you’re really daring, feel free to share this post with others desiring the Just and Peaceable Reign of God.

Brad Shumate

Free of Encumbrance

©Copyright 2017 Brad Shumate  

A request to Senators John McCain & Lindsey Graham

Senators John McCain & Lindsey Graham:

All are called according to the gifts of God unto them, for the purpose of accomplishing the work entrusted to all.  The work entrusted to us all, throughout the world, including you is this: “The Just and Peaceable Reign of God”.  Whether one is culturally right or one is culturally left or one is somewhere in between, we all strive in time to come together around an understanding regarding the following: “Then I saw new heavens and a new earth.  The former heavens and the former earth had passed away, and the sea existed no longer.  I also saw a new Jerusalem, the holy city, coming down out of heaven from God, beautiful as a bride and groom on their wedding day.  And I heard a loud voice calling from the throne, “Look!  God’s Tabernacle is among humanity!  God will live with them; they will be God’s people, and God will be fully present among them.  The Most High will wipe away every tear from their eyes.  And death, mourning, crying, and pain will be no more, for the old order has fallen.”  The One who sat on the throne said, “Look!  I’m making everything new!” and added, “Write this, for what I am saying is trustworthy and true.”  And the One continued, “It is finished.  I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.  To those who are thirsty I will give drink freely from the spring of the water of life.  This is the rightful inheritance of the overcomers.  I will be their God and they will be my daughters and sons.”  ---- Revelations 12:1-7, (The Inclusive New Testament).  Senators, please have courage to do your part for removing REPUBLICAN 45 POTUS from power and his position.  Please ask the House of Representatives to its part as well -- for what REPUBLICAN 45 POTUS wants is to perpetuate the old order, ultimately to take power from you and from me and from the world.  He wants all power to himself.  He personifies a way of being that can only be understood as anti-christ.

JOIN THE SPIRITUAL RESISTANCE AGAINST REPUBLICAN 45 POTUS

REPUBLICAN 45 POTUS Agenda: (in my humble opinion, and with a little satire mixed in, regarding an individual who appears unstable, unfit, and overreaching), so one agenda possibility might be.....

REPUBLICAN 45 POTUS makes sure everyone’s focus stays squarely on him 24/7. Goal: Wear everyone down to as frazzled exhaustion as possible while....

REPUBLICAN 45 POTUS sows as much fear, divisiveness, anger, hate, violent discord as possible to keep base fired up, especially base that’s likely to do really nonsensical stuff, maybe even really scary stuff.

REPUBLICAN 45 POTUS feels deeply satisfied at achieving state of social chaos and civil unrest throughout USA.

REPUBLICAN 45 POTUS tweets SAVIOR needed, delightfully declares “National State of Emergency”.

REPUBLICAN 45 POTUS salivates, sinisterly licks chops, maniacally laughs while sits down at desk in Oval Office with Grim Reaper Steve Bannon beside him.  With GOP nod of approval and stroke of pen….

REPUBLICAN 45 POTUS issues executive order/action establishing martial law and makes dream of personally choreographed dictatorship over USA come to pass.

REPUBLICAN 45 POTUS then checks item off to-do list item from November 2016 election acceptance speech that he would “harness” USA creative talent, marks accomplished in Putinesque manner. USA becomes banana republic, plutocracy, oligarchy.  

REPUBLICAN 45 POTUS with GOP in his pocket begins abridgment of US Constitution and Bill of Rights. Updates to do list to include makeover of you, me, and nation into REPUBLICAN 45 POTUS own image.  Next up……

REPUBLICAN 45 POTUS has coffee in Russia with Putin and Grim Reaper Steve Bannon and with assistance of General Michael Flynn, they craft plan to combine nuclear arsenals and conventional warfare resources and hatch plot for taking over the world. For as…..

REPUBLICAN 45 POTUS has said, “I love war -- even war with Nukes…”

Time to join THE RESISTANCE, make that the SPIRITUAL RESISTANCE, against REPUBLICAN 45 POTUS because he does exactly what he says he’s going to do…….

Brad Shumate
Free of Encumbrance

© Copyright 2017 Brad Shumate