The look on this young woman's face....

I've seen it hundreds of times. 

You can see the need in her, to be respected, to be loved, 

and yet you can see in her eyes her mistrust.

 

Will you be one of a countless number 

that abandoned her? 

That betrayed her? 

That use her?

That promise, and lie.....

Christ calls us to minister His love without agenda, 

without expecting anything in return, 

pure, unadulterated concern and care; 

Will I be there?  

 

 

"Good Men Are Not Hard To Find - They Are Hard To Seduce"

There is a common misconception floating around that good men are scarce and elusive creatures that have vanished into thin air. But here's the truth - good men aren't hard to find. They simply aren’t easily captivated by the surface-level charms that many focus on displaying.

A man of substance does not base his choice on passing attractions. He seeks depth, character, someone who aligns with his values and vision. If you’ve been struggling to get the attention of a genuinely good man, it might be time to change your strategy.

What doesn't work:

Tight-fitting clothes and revealing clothes: Yes, these may catch the eye of many, but a good man seeks more than what is on the surface. He seeks a deeper connection than the appearances.

Social media drama: posting exaggerated rants or super select selfies may draw likes, but it won't inspire genuine respect or interest.

Materialism over meaning: flaunting love for luxury or designer labels doesn't impress someone grounded in values.

What works:

1. Character over cleavage: A good man pays attention to how you treat others, your humility and your kindness. A compassionate heart leaves a lasting impression

2. Brains Over Beauty: Intelligence is not about degrees or vocabulary; it's about curiosity, wisdom, and the ability to hold meaningful conversations. Stimulate his mind and you'll gain his admiration.

3. Values over vanity: A man of substance admires a woman with clear values and purpose. Show him your love for growth, your commitment to your faith, or your dedication to something greater than yourself.

4. Consistency over chaos: stability without drama is a magnet for good men. They're looking for someone who can handle life's challenges with grace, not someone who constantly invites unnecessary turbulence.

5. Confidence over Conformity: Be Unapologetically You. A good man respects a woman who knows her worth and isn't afraid to be alone when necessary.

The secret to getting a good man:

A good man doesn't need you to change who you are; he needs you to be who you are - authentically, unapologetically, and with integrity.

He’s not looking for perfection, but someone who complements his own journey, someone with shared values and goals. He realizes the silent strength behind your actions, the way you talk to others and how you carry yourself through the ups and downs of life.

So, if you're striving for a meaningful connection, focus less on fleeting external traits and more on cultivating the qualities that define your inner self. Let your actions, intellect and values speak louder than your clothes or social media.

Be more strategic than pretty. Because when a good man finally notices you, he'll cherish every aspect of who you are — inside and out.

 Sex talk

A brother on a Christian men’s site asked what to do about his wife that doesn’t seem to like sex as much as he.  

I did a little research and shared the following with him. 

 Hi Member, I had to smile when you asked if others have a similar problem. Yes, yes, they do!!!!!!! 

It is an age-old problem and even today with all the sex education available, many men simply don't get it.

 First, let me qualify this by saying there are many women with high sex drives, and in some cases this problem is reversed, the woman wants more than the man. 

I just Googled and read that about 25 to 29% of women have a higher sex drive. 

The question is why, and what to do about it! 

Regarding the "Why" 

here are some reasons for a low libido in women. ------

"What is loss of female libido?

Loss of libido (low libido or low sex drive) is a reduced desire to have sex. Your sex drive can vary during your life. Loss of libido is when your sex drive is less than what is normal for you. 

Low libido is the most common sexual health problem for females.

 What symptoms are related to low libido?

It’s not unusual for people to lose interest in sex at some stage during their life. 

Symptoms of low sex drive or loss of libido might be:

• having no interest in any type of sex including masturbation

• rarely or never having sexual fantasies or thinking of sex

• being unhappy with your low desire for sexual activity

Changes in levels of hormones in your body can lead to changes in your sex drive. These include:

• hormonal changes due to perimenopause or menopause

• some forms of contraception

• pregnancy, giving birth or breastfeeding

Some psychological causes of low libido include:

• stress

• anxiety or depression

• bereavement

• poor body image

• fatigue or exhaustion

• history of unwanted sexual contact

• trauma or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

Often, problems with low libido are related to your relationship. For many people, emotional closeness is vital to sexual intimacy. 

Some relationship issues that can be a factor in low sex drive are:

• lack of emotional connection with your partner

• unresolved fights

• being able to communicate about your sexual needs

• trust issues

• not having enough privacy

• illness of your partner

• a change in your partner’s sexual function

Some physical causes of low libido include:

• vaginal dryness

• painful sex

• difficulty reaching female orgasm

• some medicines — including medicines used to treat depression and antipsychotic medications

• underlying health problems like endometriosis, premenstrual syndrome (PMS), depression, cancer, arthritis, or heart problems

• alcohol smoking or illegal drugs

How is the cause of loss of libido diagnosed?

There is no ‘normal’ amount of sex drive, everyone is different. 

Some people may have no or low sex drive which is normal for them.

Some health conditions can cause a low libido. Relationship problems or personal issues are other common causes." 

So, as you can see women are complex and gaining and keeping a healthy sex life is not child's play! So we begin by educating ourselves, and then we move to communication. Sex is so often very difficult to harmonize, and even in the best marriage, sex is complicated and it hits our egos in ways few other things do. Sex, especially if there has been abuse in one of the spouse’s past, success requires real patience on both sides. 

If there has been past abuse, this is something you will have to learn to talk about without triggering or hurting each other. This is such a delicate issue; we must read about methods to help overcome the physical and psychological hindrances.

All marriages have their struggles with sex to some degree; with some it's overcome easily with good communication, and with others it can get so difficult neither is relaxed or enjoys it to the fullest, if at all.

If the relationship is struggling, it's so important to find those times when everything's going well and sit down, pray together, and talk heart to heart. 

The first challenge in marriage is building trust, openness and being able to be vulnerable with each other. 

I would get some counseling by a qualified counselor whenever there is an impasse. 

Left unresolved it rarely gets better. 

I'm no sex therapist, but hopefully somewhere in this you'll find something that hits the mark. God bless you brother.

 

I talked with a 28 year old woman named Isabella at the jail last night, and she's still haunting me this morning. She's a pretty, delicate young woman with  black silken hair, and she only began using drugs when covid started, but what was so unusual was, the first drug she tried was fentanyl. 

She kind of blushed when she said it, knowing most people begin with far less dangerous drugs and work themselves up the ladder, fentanyl being the last. I didn't have much time with her, but enough to learn that her childhood was a living nightmare. I understood.

Towards the end she began opening up more and at one point she told me she had overdosed on fentanyl 26 times!! She explained how her boyfriend and her made an agreement that if one of them OD's the other will rush them to the hospital, but if they revive before they get there, they will go back and continue getting high. She told me she overdosed twice in one night! 

Such a flagrant disregard for her life reveals the depths of depression abuse causes, where one is willing to risk it all just to be free of memories of the past. What of death? Come what may.....

I'm left with such a mixture of turbulent emotions at times like these. Knowing that without ongoing, serious, experienced help, there is little hope for her. What a helpless longing I feel, a mourning deep within me, and yet, such a flood of love and affection that God pours through me as we talk, and remains with me still. I know His shadow hovers and covers, and my heart take refuge in one thing, and one thing only: all of my Hope is in Jesus. 

But Jesus proclaimed  

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives!"

Yes! Jesus saves! I've seen it ore and ore, had I not, I couldn't venture into this murky world of darkness and enslavement. 

The picture is not her, but a random photo from the Internet. 

 

Priestesses in the Church? By C.S. Lewis. 

"I should like Balls infinitely better," said Caroline Bingley, "if they were carried on in a different manner ... It would surely be much more rational if conversation instead of dancing made the order of the day."

"Much more rational, I dare say," replied her brother, "but it would not be near so much like a Ball." We are told that the lady was silenced: yet it could be maintained that Jane Austen has not allowed Bingley to put forward the full strength of his position. He ought to have replied with a distinguo. In one, sense conversation is more rational for conversation may exercise the reason alone, dancing does not. But there is nothing irrational in exercising other powers than our reason. On certain occasions and for certain purposes the real irrationality is with those who will not do so. The man who would try to break a horse or write a poem or beget a child by pure syllogizing would be an irrational man; though at the same time syllogizing is in itself a more rational activity than the activities demanded by these achievements. It is rational not to reason, or not to limit oneself to reason, in the wrong place; and the more rational a man is the better he knows this.

These remarks are not intended as a contribution to the criticism of Pride and Prejudice. They came into my head when I heard that the Church of England was being advised to declare women capable of Priests' Orders. I am, indeed, informed that such a proposal is very unlikely to be seriously considered by the authorities. To take such a revolutionary step at the present moment, to cut ourselves off from the Christian past and to widen the divisions between ourselves and other Churches by establishing an order of priestesses in our midst, would be an almost wanton degree of imprudence. And the Church of England herself would be torn in shreds by the operation. My concern with the proposal is of a more theoretical kind. The question involves something even deeper than a revolution in order.

I have every respect for those who wish women to be priestesses. I think they are sincere and pious and sensible people. Indeed, in a way they are too sensible. That is where my dissent from them resembles Bingley's dissent from his sister. I am tempted to say that the proposed arrangement would make us much more rational "but not near so much like a Church".

For at first sight all the rationality (in Caroline Bingley's sense) is on the side of the innovators. We are short of priests. We have discovered in one profession after another that women can do very well all sorts of things which were once supposed to be in the power of men alone. No one among those who dislike the proposal is maintaining that women are less capable than men of piety, zeal, learning and whatever else seems necessary for the pastoral office. What, then, except prejudice begotten by tradition, forbids us to draw on the huge reserves which could pour into the priesthood if women were here, as in so many other professions, put on the same footing as men? And against this flood of common sense, the opposers (many of them women) can produce at first nothing but an inarticulate distaste, a sense of discomfort which they themselves find it hard to analyse.

That this reaction does not spring from any contempt for women is, I think, plain from history. The Middle Ages carried their reverence for one Woman to a point at which the charge could be plausibly made that the Blessed Virgin became in their eyes almost "a fourth Person of the Trinity". But never, so far as I know, in all those ages was anything remotely resembling a sacerdotal office attributed to her. All salvation depends on the decision which she made in the words Ecce ancilla; she is united in nine months" inconceivable intimacy with the eternal Word; she stands at the foot of the cross." But she is absent both from the Last Supper and from the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost. Such is the record of Scripture. Nor can you daff it aside by saying that local and temporary conditions condemned women to silence and private life. There were female preachers. One man had four daughters who all "prophesied", i.e. preached. There were prophetesses even in Old Testament times. Prophetesses, not priestesses.

At this point the common sensible reformer is apt to ask why, if women can preach, they cannot do all the rest of a priest's work. This question deepens the discomfort of my side. We begin to feel that what really divides us from our opponents is a difference between the meaning which they and we give to the word "priest". The more they speak (and speak truly) about the competence of women in administration, their tact and sympathy as advisers, their national talent for "visiting", the more we feel that the central thing is being forgotten. To us a priest is primarily a representative, a double representative, who represents us to God and God to us. Our very eyes teach us this in church. Sometimes the priest turns his back on us and faces the East - he speaks to God for us: sometimes he faces us and speaks to us for God. We have no objection to a woman doing the first: the whole difficulty is about the second. But why? Why should a woman not in this sense represent God? Certainly not because she is necessarily, or even probably, less holy or less charitable or stupider than a man. In that sense she may be as "God-like" as a man; and a given women much more so than a given man. The sense in which she cannot represent God will perhaps be plainer if we look at the thing the other way round.

Suppose the reformer stops saying that a good woman may be like God and begins saying that God is like a good woman. Suppose he says that we might just as well pray to "Our Mother which art in heaven" as to "Our Father". Suppose he suggests that the Incarnation might just as well have taken a female as a male form, and the Second Person of the Trinity be as well called the Daughter as the Son. Suppose, finally, that the mystical marriage were reversed, that the Church were the Bridegroom and Christ the Bride. All this, as it seems to me, is involved in the claim that a woman can represent God as a priest does.

Now it is surely the case that if all these supposals were ever carried into effect we should be embarked on a different religion. Goddesses have, of course, been worshipped: many religions have had priestesses. But they are religions quite different in character from Christianity. Common sense, disregarding the discomfort, or even the horror, which the idea of turning all our theological language into the feminine gender arouses in most Christians, will ask "Why not? Since God is in fact not a biological being and has no sex, what can it matter whether we say He or She, Father or Mother, Son or Daughter?"

But Christians think that God Himself has taught us how to speak of Him. To say that it does not matter is to say either that all the masculine imagery is not inspired, is merely human in origin, or else that, though inspired, it is quite arbitrary and unessential. And this is surely intolerable: or, if tolerable, it is an argument not in favour of Christian priestesses but against Christianity. It is also surely based on a shallow view of imagery. Without drawing upon religion, we know from our poetical experience that image and apprehension cleave closer together than common sense is here prepared to admit; that a child who has been taught to pray to a Mother in Heaven would have a religious life radically different from that of a Christian child. And as image and apprehension are in an organic unity, so, for a Christian, are human body and human soul.

The innovators are really implying that sex is something superficial, irrelevant to the spiritual life. To say that men and women are equally eligible for a certain profession is to say that for the purposes of that profession their sex is irrelevant. We are, within that context, treating both as neuters.

As the State grows more like a hive or an ant-hill it needs an increasing number of workers who can be treated as neuters. This may be inevitable for our secular life. But in our Christian life we must return to reality. There we are not homogeneous units, but different and complementary organs of a mystical body. Lady Nunburnholme has claimed that the equality of men and women is a Christian principle. I do not remember the text in scripture nor the Fathers, nor Hooker, nor the Prayer Book which asserts it; but that is not here my point. The point is that unless "equal" means "interchangeable", equality makes nothing for the priesthood of women. And the kind of equality which implies that the equals are interchangeable (like counters or identical machines) is, among humans, a legal fiction. It may be a useful legal fiction. But in church we turn our back on fictions. One of the ends for which sex was created was to symbolize to us the hidden things of God. One of the functions of human marriage is to express the nature of the union between Christ and the Church. We have no authority to take the living and semitive figures which God has painted on the canvas of our nature and shift them about as if they were mere geometrical figures.

This is what common sense will call "mystical". Exactly. The Church claims to be the bearer of a revelation. If that claim is false then we want not to make priestesses but to abolish priests. If it is true, then we should expect to find in the Church an element which unbelievers will call irrational and which believers will call supra-rational. There ought to be something in it opaque to our reason though not contrary to it - as the facts of sex and sense on the natural level are opaque. And that is the real issue. The Church of England can remain a church only if she retains this opaque element. If we abandon that, if we retain only what can be justified by standards of prudence and convenience at the bar of enlightened common sense, then we exchange revelation for that old wraith Natural Religion.

It is painful, being a man, to have to assert the privilege, or the burden, which Christianity lays upon my own sex. I am crushingly aware how inadequate most of us are, in our actual and historical individualities, to fill the place prepared for us. But it is an old saying in the army that you salute the uniform not the wearer. Only one wearing the masculine uniform can (provisionally, and till the Parousia) represent the Lord to the Church: for we are all, corporately and individually, feminine to Him. We men may often make very bad priests. That is because we are insufficiently masculine. It is no cure to call in those who are not masculine at all. A given man may make a very bad husband; you cannot mend matters by trying to reverse the roles. He may make a bad male partner in a dance. The cure for that is that men should more diligently attend dancing classes; not that the ballroom should henceforward ignore distinctions of sex and treat all dancers as neuter. That would, of course, be eminently sensible, civilized, and enlightened, but, once more, "not near so much like a Ball".

And this parallel between the Church and the Ball is not so fanciful as some would think. The Church ought to be more like a Ball than it is like a factory or a political party. Or, to speak more strictly, they are at the circumference and the Church at the Centre and the Ball comes in between. The factory and the political party are artificial creations - "a breath can make them as a breath has made". In them we are not dealing with human beings in their concrete entirety only with "hands" or voters. I am not of course using "artificial" in any derogatory sense. Such artifices are necessary: but because they are our artifices we are free to shuffle, scrap and experiment as we please. But the Ball exists to stylize something which is natural and which concerns human beings in their entirety-namely, courtship. We cannot shuffle or tamper so much. With the Church, we are farther in: for there we are dealing with male and female not merely as facts of nature but as the live and awful shadows of realities utterly beyond our control and largely beyond our direct knowledge. Or rather, we are not dealing with them but (as we shall soon learn if we meddle) they are dealing with us.

 Are you in recovery?

Do you find yourself struggling, sorely tempted to go back and pick up the blunt, baggie or pipe? 

For that one person out there, that may be on the verge of returning to what the Bible calls 

“The domain of darkness,” 

let me remind you what that domain of darkness holds for you.

"House stripped and bare; her wedding ring lying there

I wish I stayed; vows betrayed

Wives beaten; drugs eaten

Tempers flare, sirens blare, prison house stare

Liquor pours, jail house doors

Charge of possession, years of depression

Years unemployed; opportunities destroyed

Mothers sighing, years of lying, children crying, hopes dying!

Basement, couch or attic; home of the roaming addict

Lies spoken; friendships broken

Music blaring, hollow eyes staring, needle sharing

Nothing to share, cupboards bare, no one to care

Sin sick soul, blunt, bag and bowl; 

no hope, no help, no goal….

Let us never forget! May our eyes not be blinded to what lays at our door! Oh! But God rescued us from the domain of darkness

And transferred us to “the kingdom of His beloved Son.”

Let me also remind you of Christ’s kingdom….

A coal, a spark, a flame, 

new hope in Jesus’ name!

I have as much value and worth as any person on earth

Breaking the chains of anguish, despair and addiction; 

Ending the life of constriction, friction and contradiction,

 A do over, a brand-new page!

Freedom from depression and inner rage.

Leaving crime, passion and strife

Learning to walk in love, light and new life!