Your life is happening right now, don't miss it.

     Something I always tell people is, and those of you who know me have heard me say it many times, “Life is happening now”.  It’s not happening tomorrow or next week.  It’s not happening when you graduate, when you finally get married, when you get released from jail, when you retire, when you receive your inheritance, when you get that new job, when your children have grown up, when you lose weight and finally get in shape, Life is happening now.  Right now!  So enjoy the moment, saver it and make the very best out of right now.  Live as hard as you can, right now.  Be in the moment and take note of it.  Take pleasure in the now, the sites, the sounds, the smells that are all around you.  Be observant and focus on now.  Delight in the many blessing in your life.  Don’t worry about what you don’t have or be jealous of what your neighbor has.  Life is too short for that kind of thinking.   

     We’ve all heard the saying that tomorrow is not promised.  Tomorrow, huh, five minutes from now is not promised.  You could have a stroke or a heart attack before you even finish reading this blog.  There is no guarantee that you are going to wake up in the morning, in fact, many of you actually won’t.  Death has no required age.  There’s no time table.  Death comes when it comes.  The only thing that is for sure is that it will happen to all of us.  Your time and your life are equally precious so don’t waist them being lazy or being afraid.  So many people spend their lives being afraid of what others might say or might think.  You cannot live for other people and you cannot please everyone.   

     Something I like to remember in regards to loved ones is, every time you see them, every time you speak to them on the phone, may be the last time.  I remember the last time I saw my dear mother.  I had come home to visit her from the military and it was time for me to leave.  I hugged her, I kissed her on the cheek and said, “Mama I love you”.  Then I snapped a quick photo of her and got on my way.  A few months later I stayed up late at night talking to her on the phone, telling her my plans for the future.  The next morning I received a phone call telling me my beloved mother had passed.  My mother was my very best friend and her passing crushed my very soul.  Fortunately for me I had always kept in contact with my mother and always been open and honest about my feelings.  I was always good to my mother and tried not to give her reason to worry.  There was nothing left unsaid and nothing left undone.  I had been a good son and she had been a good mother.  Live for the now, and live in the now.

Dane Gilkey

Romance is not dead.

     Courtesy, kindness for kindness sake, generosity, valor, romance, all strange and now seemingly alien concepts; there was a time when these things were standards.  What happened?  Somehow we have gotten away from taking other people’s feelings into consideration.  A smile cost nothing.  Very little time and energy are expended when we hold the door open for a woman, or pull out her chair.  What does it hurt to simply say please and thank you?  Being polite is really not that difficult and romance is not dead. Now it may be difficult to find but it's definitely not dead. 

     There are still plenty of romantic people out there, people who believe in happy endings. The fairy tale can come true.  Nowadays so many people are in a rush to just get what they can get here and now. Still others are so focused on themselves they can't see past their own nose. So many people miss out on the good things in life because their minds are closed, their eyes are blind and no matter how loud you shout, they cannot hear. The beauty in the moments of life just seem to pass them by because they don't take stock in their many blessing. 

     A lot of guys are so worried what their buddies are going to think that they miss out on meeting and getting to know many beautiful women. They see a woman and they say, she's too tall, she's too short, she's too skinny, she's too fat, look at her hair, look at her car, look at her outfit. They find everything wrong that they can instead of getting to know the woman, they judge her harshly because they are afraid their friend might find fault in her. God never made anything so perfect as a woman.  Keep listening to your friends and you will miss out on a lot of truly amazing women. Gentlemen, she is your other half and you are incomplete without her.   



     Men have forgotten how to romance a woman and how to make love to her. You don't just make love to a woman's body. You make love to a woman's heart. Many men will brag about how hard or how long they can pump and grind. Fools, making love is an all day process. Making love to a woman is accepting her and not judging her, its supporting her and encouraging her. It is holding her when she needs it, it's considering her feelings, its asking her opinion and actually listening to what she has to say. It is making her feel like she is the most important person in your life. It is putting everything else on hold just for her.  It is putting her needs and her feelings before yours. Making love is not 20 minutes of grunting and sweating, it's making her feel that you can't live without her. It's holding her in an endless embrace, its long deep kisses and soothing touches. It’s touching and kissing every inch of her body so she knows she is completely perfect.  When you are making love to your special someone or even just spending time together, keep in mind that it may be the last time you ever see them, you may be spending your very last moments with them, so make them count.  One last thing for the men, remember that when women loves you she loves hard, from the very depths of her soul, and that is where you have to go to romance her.

Dane Gilkey

Black Jesus

      A Roman necropolis stood on Vatican Hill in pagan times. When a great fire leveled much of Rome in A.D. 64, Emperor Nero, seeking to shift blame from himself, accused the Christians of starting the blaze. Thus began a long period of persecution for the Christians.   Nero executed them by burning them at the stake, tearing them apart with wild beasts and crucifying them. Among those crucified was St. Peter—disciple of Jesus Christ, leader of the Apostles and the first bishop of Rome—who was supposedly buried in a shallow grave on Vatican Hill. 
    
     Constantine defeated Emperor Licinius in 323 AD; he ended the persecutions against the Christian church.  In 325 AD the now Roman Emperor Constantine commissioned the first Nicaea Council, a group of Christian Bishops convened in Nicaea in Bithynia, and whose job was to attain consensus on how they would teach the religion.  They decided issues like the settlement of the Trinitarian issue of the nature of The Son and his relationship to God the Father, the construction of the first part of the Creed of Nicaea, setting the calculation of the date of Easter and promulgation of early canon law. 

    The first church was built in Vatican City during 326 A.D. However, the Vatican palace was not constructed until 498 to 514 A.D. under the reign of Pope Symmachus.  Emperor Constantine began construction of the original basilica atop the ancient burial ground with what was believed to be the tomb of St. Peter at its center. The present basilica, built starting in the 1500s, sits over a maze of catacombs and St. Peter’s suspected grave.

     Next, the printing press was invented in the Holy Roman Empire by the German Johannes Gutenberg around 1440, based on existing screw presses.  This press would have a far reaching impact and revolutionize the civilized world.  Can you imagine it, now biblical manuscripts can be mass produced?  Up until this point in history most biblical writings where in the hands of and controlled by the church.  As to the masses of the poor people, if they needed spiritual guidance, or wanted to know what the bible said, they had to go to a church, were the priest, who was a direct representative of the church and thereby God himself, could interpret these manuscripts called bible for them.  Of course if you went against the priest or did not agree with his views then you were obviously a heretic and would be dealt with accordingly.

     At a Nicaea Council gathering in the late 1400s or early 1500s, I’m not sure of the exact date, it was decided that it was offensive to the Caucasian population of Europe, and their Hellenistic ideal, to bow down and worship an image of a black Jesus.  They therefore decided to make him over as an attractive, tall, blond haired, blue eyed Caucasian with a full beard.  This was all done by the Church of Rome in an effort to retain influence and control over the people of Europe.

     During that time the famed Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer, Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art, was commissioned by the church to do many paintings and sculptors of Jesus, Mary and David all as Caucasians.  He used family members and friends to pose for his works.  Since that time all images of Jesus, Mary and Joseph have been done depicting them as Caucasian, but both historians who knew Jesus and those who lived during his time, and the Bible, all confirm that he was a black man.  Hair like lamb’s wool and feet the color of brass that had been burned in an oven.

     Furthermore the Middle-East is nothing more than the northeast corner of the continent of Africa.  It was separated from the mainland by a man made ditch that was completed in 1869 and is referred to as the Suez Canal.  The continent of Africa used to extend all the way to the Euphrates encompassing a large portion of what we now call the Middle-East.  Feel free to check out everything I have written, it’s all historical fact.  You see if Jesus was not born in Africa then it’s a lot easier to believe that he was not black. 

     Jesus was a Hebrew of the tribe of Judah and born in the city of Bethlehem.  Now you have to keep in mind that the people who currently inhabit that region today don’t look anything like the people who would have lived there during the time when Jesus walked the earth.  Since the time of Jesus, that city has changed hands many times.  Bethlehem is a Palestinian city located in the central West Bank, and approximately 8 kilometers south of Jerusalem.

     The city was sacked by the Samaritans in 529, but rebuilt by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I. Justinian even commissioned a coin with his likeness on one side and a likeness of Jesus on the other, but that’s another discussion, back to the point.  Bethlehem was conquered by the Arab Caliphate of 'Umar ibn al-Khattāb in 637, who guaranteed safety for the city's religious shrines. In 1099, Crusaders captured and fortified Bethlehem and replaced its Greek Orthodox clergy with a Latin one. The Latin clergy were expelled after the city was captured by Saladin, the sultan of Egypt and Syria. With the coming of the Mamluks in 1250, the city's walls were demolished, and were subsequently rebuilt during the rule of the Ottoman Empire.

     The British wrested control of the city from the Ottomans during World War I and it was to be included in an international zone under the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. Jordan annexed the city in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It was occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. Since 1995, Bethlehem has been governed by the Palestinian National Authority.

     So, what’s the point of the history lesson on Bethlehem?  Since the time of Jesus that land has been concurred again and again and many races have mixed and co-mingled there to produce the light browned skinned people who now inhabit the area.  Look at the United States for instance.  The people who lived here 700 and 800 years ago were all North American Indians, dark skinned people with fine black hair.  Now let us move to present day North America, you can find members of every race and ethnicity on the planet here.  Even the North American Indians of today don’t look like the Indians who would have lived here 800 years ago. 

     While many people have a fixed mental image of Jesus, drawn from his artistic depictions, of the middle ages and modern time, these images often conform to stereotypes which are not grounded in any serious research on the historical Jesus, but are based on second or third hand interpretations of spurious sources.  He probably would have looked more like the man depicted in the picture below if his skin was a little darker.  He’s known as the beach stabber, a label he picked up after stabbing a couple women in Florida.

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     People will say that we don’t know what color he was or what does it matter.  If we don’t know what color he was, and if it does not matter, then why it is, that Jesus must always be represented as a person of Arian origin, when we know for certain that he was not.  History does not substantiate it and the bible does not substantiate it.  You cannot find one serious reputable historian of any era who will or has ever indicated that Jesus was a man of Arian origin. 

     This image above has nothing to do with Jesus and nothing to do with God.  This is an image created by men to mislead and deceive the masses.  As a young man my mind was closed to the image of Jesus as a black man because I had never seen him depicted as a black man.  Believe it or not, my eyes were opened when I made my first trip to the Citta Del Vaticano in Rome.  While I was there I saw images of Jesus as a black man.  Being somewhat perplexed by this I asked a priest why there were images of Jesus as a black man in the Vatican.  The priest replied, “Because he was a black man.  What did you expect an African to look like?”

Dane E Gilkey

Take control of your life.

     The only thing in this life that we have control over is how we react to the world around us.  For instance, when someone cuts you off in traffic, you can get angry and try to retaliate or you can just let it go.  It is your choice how you react to the situation.  When someone is rude to you, picks on you, or tries to start an argument with you, you have a lot of control over the situation.  You decide how you are going to react.  Don’t let others control you.  Don’t let them trick you or lead you astray.  Step back from the situation and think about what is best for you, not only in the here and now but in the long run.  We control who we associate with, what choices we make, what words come out of our mouths, and how we treat others.  In the grand scope of things, this actually gives us a lot of control over the path our lives take.  So deal with the here and now.  Whatever bad choices you made in the past, are just that, in the past.  You cannot change the past, what is done is done, but it is imperative that we learn from our mistakes and do not repeat them.   

     Your actions matter.  Life is what you make of it. NO ONE OWES YOU ANYTHING! Whatever your condition is, you are responsible for it and only you can change it. Take control of your life. Take control of your destiny. You will be surprised what you can achieve if you just get up and try. Nothing happens by magic. Change can only be achieved through hard work. So find out what you want to be or were you want to go. Then figure out what you need to do to get there. Formulate a plan and then make it happen. Only the strong prevail. Be unstoppable. Be fearless. Be relentless in the pursuit of your goals and you will achieve them. I look forward to hearing from you. Take care and have a blessed day.

Dane E. Gilkey

THE POWER OF LOVE

     We get but a few true loves throughout the course of our lives. Love is a thing to be cherished. Relish in every moment of it. Nothing in this world can so stir a man's soul to purpose as the love of a good woman. A man must overcome seemingly insurmountable challenges to survive and succeed in this new world. It is the love of a strong woman that will be the steel in his spine and the resolve in his gaze. When his will is all but broken and he is overcome with despair, the inspiration of a woman’s love will keep him on his feet. The promise of her kiss and the want of her embrace will keep him ever pressing forward fearlessly against any foe. The true love of a man and a woman working in unison and filled with the light of the eternal spirit can shake the very earth itself from its foundation.

Dane E. Gilkey

Image found at:  http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&biw=1257&bih=710&gbv=2&tbm=isch&tbnid=JvPD8FgrebnFkM:&imgrefurl=http://breath-expression.blogspot.com/2012/03/2012-is-love-something-you-can-touch.html&docid=hL0RpglaLf-wvM&imgurl=https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6K5k-7-Wd3KGAM3j8S0wv0_xo1_sD4NoY0hWcs-Bx8xlLRBehTXQkiihRwi3ggO3Dl6D91H5X6SHu56XnQ0HhUJzc2-bOJTCIr6bB2f14g0VOrMcsZdeUye7wV1T8jb1AqQwXEaIOhng/s1600/love.jpg&w=900&h=675&ei=hhmXT5CrK-KW2QXuv8CBDg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=815&vpy=167&dur=2195&hovh=194&hovw=259&tx=155&ty=105&sig=113047967266275079757&page=2&tbnh=153&tbnw=204&start=15&ndsp=20&ved=1t:429,r:3,s:15,i:183