Previous William Thomas Sherman Info Page postings, quotes, observations, etc.
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["Buddy Guy in 1969 with Jack Bruce and Buddy Miles" and "Jimi Hendrix Watch[es] Buddy Guy At Georgia Club"]
Getting on 80 [years of age]...
["Buddy Guy - Jimi Hendrix & Cream Jam - Let The Door Knob Hit Ya - Live 2011"]
If you can't or not willing to fight authoritarian and criminal spirit people, you are bound sooner or later to give into them. And a clear sign one's so doing so is a penchant for dishonesty, dissembling, and equivocation. Since people who are not the vast most of the time honest, if they are not actually murderers themselves, inevitably become the accomplices of those who are.
If or when you are ever really lonely, down, and out, think of others enjoying themselves in love, luxury, and success -- and (i.e., as long as they aren't otherwise to be classified as serious criminals) be glad for them. For there are times when it is a wonder that anyone gets to be happy in this life (given the problems of crime and evil.)
Or differently, what about some innocent or some child, somewhere buried in a forgotten corner of time, with all its optimism and hope unexpectedly snatched from it, breathing their last breaths. What were they to think (i.e., being so situated?) Why not think on them too?
Oh, the advantages of privatizing the Post Office! You must love this. Some of monopolistic, neo-Hollywood's latest junky movies are now on par and have achieved equal status with the bald eagle, the U.S. Flag, and the Liberty Bell. Although credited to Disney-Pixar, we all know these obnoxious, pseudo-humorous, malady inducing movies emanate from and are tied in with the same crime syndicate that runs Dreamworks and Star Wars. To which then we rejoin -- Steven Spielberg Go Home!
Jr. Walker and the All Stars, and who were of course the ones who first introduced this song to the air waves, perform it here live. Check out the dancing on the floor -- far out and groovy or what? Is there anybody these days who dances so well? If so, we'd love to know about them.
["Jr Walker & Allstars - Shotgun" -- live tv performance on "Hullabaloo"]
To the world, a given individual is really nothing or else not all that much. After they've given you your award or visited your monument, they as much or more are concerned about what they will eat or what their plans are for tomorrow. For as much as they love or like you, they still have their own life to live. There are those who deny the existence of Hell. Yet Hell as much as anything is a place where no one can really be trusted. And without family, isn't that what after all the world is? By contrast, to true friends and family, a person may be greater than or as great as the world itself. But only if those friends and family are fundamentally trustworthy, loyal, devoted, and hopefully courageous as well. And yet from whom or whence springs and is the fount of such fealty and goodness? It can only be God; otherwise it would come only from the world which, when as we have said, really cares little about anyone for very much or for very long; except when and insofar it affects its own interest.
If we posit spirit people as literal personages and entities, the ancient roles and functions of a priest become more readily apparent. For since the vast majority of people do and would not want to be dealing with spirit people, it then became the social and professional function of a priest to do so. That some priests rather than benefactors became enemies of society by leaguing themselves with criminal spirit people, either intentionally or by their being deceived by the latter, would be no different than say a police chief being corrupted or hoodwinked to abet organized crime -- hence historically the often bad reputation of priests. The Jewish idea of a Holy of Holies to filter out bad spirit people makes sense because it holds a spirit person to the most difficult, yet sadly not always insurmountable, standard of posing as God Almighty (or an emissary of); such that if a false spirit person attempted to feign ultimate Deity he would be risking great harm and danger to himself by his presumption. Yet evidently this kind of filter or safeguard was not always fool or criminal proof. I don't mean to suggest by this that it was either needed or necessary for God to act or communicate through and by means of spirit people, yet certainly that some would adopt such at notion, however faulty and imperfect, certainly doesn't strike one as unexpected or surprising.
Now here's one you don't want to miss.
["The Bar-Kays - Soul Finger" -- tv appearance circa 1967-68]
A:..Yet if you treat dragons as friends rather than enemies, then you can make them allies to bring about world peace (i.e., ala Tony Stark) -- while reaping a billion dollars in the process making cartoons and non-stop action films.
B: But your dragons are torturing and murdering people, not to mention small, helpless animals.
A: Yes, that's true, but only those who oppose the collective will. And as for the animals. Well, what after all do a few animals matter?
Most people these days will probably recognize these songs sooner than they do the band itself.
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["The Yardbirds - For Your Love" -- from Shindig appearance and "The Yardbirds-Shapes of things" -- live]
The public used to have a say in what movies were made. But then, they also used to have more say in who was elected to office.
I said to the magician: Those are the people who listen to you. Now then, don't you feel ashamed of yourself?
No, eternal damnation and a lake fire do not nor would make any sense to you, as they did not to me, unless and until you knew about and found yourself knowing about and having to deal with these rotten type spirit people; for they are the only ones in the world who deserve such things.
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["The Seeds - Wishing Well" and "The Seeds - Many Years Ago"]
Excerpts from Augustine's epistles continued.
8. Question II. Concerning the epoch of the Christian religion, they have advanced, moreover, some other things, which they might call a selection of the more weighty arguments of Porphyry against the Christians: “If Christ,” they say, “declares Himself to be the Way of salvation, the Grace and the Truth, and affirms that in Him alone, and only to souls believing in Him, is the way of return to God, [John 14:6] what has become of men who lived in the many centuries before Christ came? To pass over the time,” he adds, “which preceded the founding of the kingdom of Latium, let us take the beginning of that power as if it were the beginning of the human race. In Latium itself gods were worshipped before Alba was built; in Alba, also, religious rites and forms of worship in the temples were maintained. Rome itself was for a period of not less duration, even for a long succession of centuries, unacquainted with Christian doctrine. What, then, has become of such an innumerable multitude of souls, who were in no wise blameworthy, seeing that He in whom alone saving faith can be exercised had not yet favoured men with His advent? The whole world, moreover, was not less zealous than Rome itself in the worship practised in the temples of the gods. "Why, then,” he asks, “did He who is called the Saviour withhold Himself for so many centuries of the world? And let it not be said,” he adds, “that provision had been made for the human race by the old Jewish law. It was only after a long time that the Jewish law appeared and flourished within the narrow limits of Syria, and after that, it gradually crept onwards to the coasts of Italy; but this was not earlier than the end of the reign of Caius, or, at the earliest, while he was on the throne. What, then, became of the souls of men in Rome and Latium who lived before the time of the Cæsars, and were destitute of the grace of Christ, because He had not then come?”
12. Therefore, from the beginning of the human race, whosoever believed in Him, and in any way knew Him, and lived in a pious and just manner according to His precepts, was undoubtedly saved by Him, in whatever time and place he may have lived. For as we believe in Him both as dwelling with the Father and as having come in the flesh, so the men of the former ages believed in Him both as dwelling with the Father and as destined to come in the flesh. And the nature of faith is not changed, nor is the salvation made different, in our age, by the fact that, in consequence of the difference between the two epochs, that which was then foretold as future is now proclaimed as past. Moreover, we are not under necessity to suppose different things and different kinds of salvation to be signified, when the self-same thing is by different sacred words and rites of worship announced in the one case as fulfilled, in the other as future. As to the manner and time, however, in which anything that pertains to the one salvation common to all believers and pious persons is brought to pass, let us ascribe wisdom to God, and for our part exercise submission to His will. Wherefore the true religion, although formerly set forth and practised under other names and with other symbolic rites than it now has, and formerly more obscurely revealed and known to fewer persons than now in the time of clearer light and wider diffusion, is one and the same in both periods.
18. With all our desire, however, to be brief, this one thing we must by no means omit to remark, that the false gods, that is to say, the demons, which are lying angels, would never have required a temple, priesthood, sacrifice, and the other things connected with these from their worshippers, whom they deceive, had they not known that these things were due to the one true God. When, therefore, these things are presented to God according to His inspiration and teaching, it is true religion; but when they are given to demons in compliance with their impious pride, it is baneful superstition. Accordingly, those who know the Christian Scriptures of both the Old and the New Testaments do not blame the profane rites of Pagans on the mere ground of their building temples, appointing priests, and offering sacrifices, but on the ground of their doing all this for idols and demons. As to idols, indeed, who entertains a doubt as to their being wholly devoid of perception? And yet, when they are placed in these temples and set on high upon thrones of honour, that they may be waited upon by suppliants and worshippers praying and offering sacrifices, even these idols, though devoid both of feeling and of life, do, by the mere image of the members and senses of beings endowed with life, so affect weak minds, that they appear to live and breathe, especially under the added influence of the profound veneration with which the multitude freely renders such costly service.
20. The heathen find a plea for their profane rites and their idols in the fact that they interpret with ingenuity what is signified by each of them, but the plea is of no avail. For all this interpretation relates to the creature, not to the Creator, to whom alone is due that religious service...Neither do we say that the earth, the seas, the heaven, the sun, the moon, the stars, and any other celestial influences which may be beyond our ken are demons; but since all created things are divided into material and immaterial, the latter of which we also call spiritual, it is manifest that what is done by us under the power of piety and religion proceeds from the faculty of our souls known as the will, which belongs to the spiritual creation, and is therefore to be preferred to all that is material. Whence it is inferred that sacrifice must not be offered to anything material. There remains, therefore, the spiritual part of creation, which is either pious or impious—the pious consisting of men and angels who are righteous, and who duly serve God; the impious consisting of wicked men and angels, whom we also call devils. Now, that sacrifice must not be offered to a spiritual creature, though righteous, is obvious from this consideration, that the more pious and submissive to God any creature is, the less does he presume to aspire to that honour which he knows to be due to God alone. How much worse, therefore, is it to sacrifice to devils, that is, to a wicked spiritual creature, which, dwelling in this comparatively dark heaven nearest to earth, as in the prison assigned to him in the air, is doomed to eternal punishment. Wherefore, even when men say that they are offering sacrifices to the higher celestial powers, which are not devils, and imagine that the only difference between us and them is in a name, because they call them gods and we call them angels, the only beings which really present themselves to these men, who are given over to be the sport of manifold deceptions, are the devils who find delight and, in a sense, nourishment in the errors of mankind. For the holy angels do not approve of any sacrifice except what is offered, agreeably to the teaching of true wisdom and true religion, unto the one true God, whom in holy fellowship they serve. Therefore, as impious presumption, whether in men or in angels, commands or covets the rendering to itself of those honours which belong to God, so, on the other hand, pious humility, whether in men or in holy angels, declines these honours when offered, and declares to whom alone they are due, of which most notable examples are conspicuously set forth in our sacred books.
26...For we measure actions, whether good or bad, by the quality of the volitions which produce them, not by the length of time which they occupy. Were it otherwise, it would be regarded a greater crime to fell a tree than to kill a man. For the former takes a long time and many strokes, the latter may be done with one blow in a moment of time; and yet, if a man were punished with no more than transportation for life for this great crime committed in a moment, it would be said that he had been treated with more clemency than he deserved, although, in regard to the duration of time, the protracted punishment is not in any way to be compared with the sudden act of murder. Where, then, is anything contradictory in the sentence objected to, if the punishments shall be equally protracted or even alike eternal, but differing in comparative gentleness and severity? The duration is the same; the pain inflicted is different in degree, because that which constitutes the measure of the sins themselves is found not in the length of time which they occupy, but in the will of those who commit them.
27. Certainly the will itself endures the punishment, whether pain be inflicted on the mind or on the body; so that the same thing which is gratified by the sin is smitten by the penalty, and so that he who judges without mercy is judged without mercy; for in this sentence also the standard of measure is the same only in this point, that what he did not give to others is denied to him, and therefore the judgment passed on him shall be eternal, although the judgment pronounced by him cannot be eternal. It is therefore in the sinner's own measure that punishments which are eternal are measured out to him, though the sins thus punished were not eternal; for as his wish was to have an eternal enjoyment of sin, so the award which he finds is an eternal endurance of suffering...
~ Letter 102
