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description=7 posts published by Bill Borst during January 2013;

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the, in, gospel, truth, god, locker, room, hell, bells, gaby, people, big, have, happy, pencil, 2012, review, hollywood, history, lesson,

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the (489), and (198), that (156), you (102), was (101), his (91), harry (81), for (80), gaby (76), with (66), have (61), had (57), this (55), but (48), not (41), one (39), what (39), just (37), your (33), about (32), she (32), are (31), all (29), don (29), who (28), they (27), more (26), hell (26), stan (26), can (25), years (24), has (24), like (23), would (23), #people (23), her (23), most (23), from (22), when (22), know (21), him (21), how (21), will (21), 2013 (20), out (20), think (20), get (19), first (19), were (19), man (19), their (19), 2012 (18), after (18), lincoln (18), see (18), some (18), january (17), many (17), old (17), which (17), movie (17), never (17), did (17), them (17), good (17), right (16), there (16), only (16), than (16), now (15), day (15), its (15), really (15), god (15), life (15), starts (15), two (14), way (14), take (14), great (14), time (14), much (14), over (14), said (14), 2011 (13), new (13), also (13), even (13), been (13), body (13), off (13), 2010 (12), 2014 (12), while (12), because (12), should (12), film (12), could (12), hear (12), look (12), 2015 (11), history (11), louis (11), happy (11), well (11), other (11), told (11), big (11), bob (11), baseball (10), led (10), state (10), left (10), our (10), thought (10), every (10), here (10), where (10), book (10), didn (10), another (9), very (9), before (9), year (9), part (9), since (9), something (9), better (9), love (9), pencil (9), friend (9), got (9), say (9), any (9), church (9), why (9), massage (9), room (9), touch (9), stika (9), truth (8), comments (8), february (8), september (8), uncategorized (8), last (8), high (8), family (8), radical (8), always (8), made (8), little (8), call (8), ever (8), night (8), problem (8), nice (8), game (8), ago (8), mean (8), women (8), came (8), trust (8), heaven (8), com (7), october (7), december (7), may (7), july (7), home (7), course (7), posted (7), lewis (7), almost (7), things (7), rules (7), same (7), kind (7), end (7), these (7), into (7), believe (7), then (7), wife (7), abortion (7), turning (7), few (7), heard (7), place (7), musburger (7), looks (7), want (7), human (7), purgatory (7), glutes (7), back (7), sin (7), fire (7), musial (7), mickey (7), wordpress (6), november (6), march (6), april (6), june (6), august (6), john (6), social (6), nearly (6), run (6), tags (6), such (6), hollywood (6), post (6), south (6), wanted (6), bit (6), away (6), long (6), probably (6), being (6), both (6), read (6), sounds (6), make (6), those (6), hearing (6), again (6), personal (6), tell (6), webb (6), during (6), comfortable (6), lot (6), let (6), gospel (5), blog (5), bill (5), former (5), show (5), world (5), several (5), historical (5), play (5), grace (5), stevens (5), reconstruction (5), become (5), death (5), fact (5), three (5), sense (5), republicans (5), white (5), group (5), america (5), far (5), pencils (5), words (5), beautiful (5), still (5), aid (5), went (5), must (5), name (5), guy (5), everyone (5), woman (5), rest (5), dinner (5), wrong (5), dead (5), moral (5), young (5), pro (5), soul (5), days (5), going (5), need (5), rub (5), leg (5), work (5), down (5), mike (5), comfort (5), therapist (5), touched (5), pain (5), hands (5), self (5), blake (5), emmett (5), view (4), report (4), 2009 (4), catholic (4), author (4), wrote (4), choice (4), theater (4), comedy (4), spielberg (4), filled (4), political (4), often (4), having (4), faithful (4), happened (4), movies (4), everything (4), quickly (4), wade (4), law (4), anyone (4), states (4), congress (4), ability (4), married (4), took (4), himself (4), past (4), through (4), current (4), rights (4), second (4), keep (4), feeling (4), watching (4), give (4), each (4), saturday (4), anxiety (4), thing (4), lives (4), compared (4), best (4), later (4), telling (4), title (4), cardinal (4), father (4), real (4), roe (4), million (4), saw (4), 1000 (4), themselves (4), maybe (4), alabama (4), between (4), level (4), 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one who folded it i was the one who lifted and slid it back in the car but he gave everyone the same sounds like one of jesus parables i never particularly liked that parable when stan handed me my ball i held it up to read his autograph and looked quizzically at it and said to stan what s this this says red schoendienst wrong ball just for a brief second i could see his thinking did i bring the wrong then he smiled at me i had tweaked the greatest baseball player in the history of my adoptive home and in the parking lot of a church i shared with him for 40 years no wonder i only have one ball and stika has three stika finished with the pronouncement of the words every human being should beg to hear on judgment day welcome my good and faithful servant a shared faith after the irish wake on the trip home i was able to listen to old friend bob costas give his version of musial bob was also the personal eulogist for his boyhood idol mickey mantle who passed away several years ago after hearing what bob said about stan virtually every former or current player in the church wanted him to do them when their times came bob s finest moment in a long litany of perceptive insights and dramatic stories about stan came when he compared his idol to the one that 90 of the attendees in the basilica had as children he told of a small dinner gathering at his home many years ago the mick was near the end of his road baseball s eulogist his drinking had captivated his waking moments to make him more comfortable bob invited the musials to dinner mickey vowed not to have even one drink that entire day or night because he didn t want to embarrass himself in front of the man he respected so much after the musials had left he and bob were left alone to talk into the wee hours of the morning mickey confessed that while he had more natural talent than musial stan had gotten more out of his gifts than mickey had because he was a better man than i was what a marvelous insight to another great but self tortured athlete mickey concluded that he envied stan because stan could always rest in the fact that he had gotten the most out of his talent mickey on the other hand had a life of regret because he had never lived up to his super human potential that was a sad commentary on a storied life that was filled with the mick s own personal demons stan was an inspiration to mick what made stan better than mickey many things i presume but i would suggest that stan s catholic faith had a lot to do with his dual ability to hit a curve and walk a straight line with humility and dignity in just short time after that dinner mantle succumbed to liver cancer bob mcauliffe just had just one eulogy a seven page essay that did a comparable job in capturing a departed loved one the beginning was part roast and another part adolescent humor at the eccentricities of the man in the family from his loud sneezing to his inability to sing or even hum emmett s words clearly rang out with the profound admiration of a faithful son the rest detailed his corny sense of humor that most children would never trade for having johnny carson as a father his athletic abilities the family vacations that rivaled those of the griswolds and all the wonderful things that make families what they were incubators for love faith and salvation underscored the man s pure humanity a lot alike in the end that s what life should all be about since this was their mutual day of salvation i poised a question to emmett at the wake if they came in to see god together did he wonder which one god spoke to first posted in uncategorized tags cardinal dolan costas and musial good and faithful servant stan the musician stika and musial the man hell s bells january 23 2013 5 comments hell s bells was a phrase that a good friend of my mother in law in charleston missouri use to exclaim when she got irritated or excited i am not really sure what it means but i always loved the way she said it with her southeast missourian twang it does raise the question as to whether or not hell has any bells when john donne wrote his poem no man is an island in 1621 one of his most quoted lines was for whom the bell tolls a universal call of course he was not writing of hell but was referring to the universal call of death for the past half century most intellectual currents of thought in the west have mitigated against the idea of sin if there was no sin then how could an all loving god condemn his creatures to the flames for eternity the christmas issue of the british publication the economist focused on hell as its cover story for hundreds of years hell has been the most fearful place in the human imagination it is also the most absurd they said to the economist hell is just a medieval relic vivid images it went out with ducking stools and witchcraft philosophically jean paul sartre encouraged the idea that hell is other people there may be some truth to that in that some people can often make life a hell on earth for you theologically even the vatican now defines hell as a state of exile from the love of god the devils and pitchforks the brimstone clouds and wailing souls have been retired to dusty vaults of irrelevance for some hell still fits the description given in the fifth spiritual exercise of st ignatius loyola in which the jesuit novice now as in the past prays for an intimate sense of the pain that the damned suffer to feel the fire hear the lame ntations smell the brimstone taste the tears a purging fire most cultures have their underworld s egyptian amenti jewish sheol purgatory in which the spirits of the dead gather are judged and purify themselves for other lives or life in heaven for fundamentalists new and old hell is a torture place for the damned in which they are flayed or eaten alive disembowelled or impaled on stakes either for incalculable ages or actually for ever yet the fire of hell was is no ordinary fire first it needed no fuel and second it did not consume what it burned hell fire though it could melt both stars and mountains did not eat away the damned for that would have ended their torments it simply raged and hurt the great divorce i s a work of theological fantasy by c s lewis in which he reflects on the christian conception of heaven and hell a theory on purgatory lewis title refers to the the marriage of heaven and hell which was a book by the english poet william blake written between 1790 and 1793 in the period of radical foment and political conflict immediately after the french revolution blake s title is an ironic reference to emanuel swedenborg s theological work heaven and hell published in latin 33 years earlier swedenborg s conventional moral structures and his manichean view of good and evil led blake to express a deliberately depolarized and unified vision of the cosmos in which the material world and physical desire are equally part of the divine order hence a marriage of heaven and hell a marriage made in hell unlike that of milton or dante blake s conception of hell begins not as a place of punishment but as a source of unrepressed somewhat dionysian energy opposed to the authoritarian and regulated perception of heaven in the most famous part of the book blake reveals the proverbs of hell these display a very different kind of wisdom from the biblical book of proverbs their purpose is to energize thought the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom the tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction when we first moved to st louis in 1969 an old friend from new york was visiting his transplanted folks in kirkwood his name was charlie burns that s with an s j he had just been ordained a priest and i had known him since my old sodality days at holy cross that few days we visited was one of the most remarkable in my early memories of st louis he was so vibrant alive with the grace of god s love he told me all the standard jesuit stories that in his first two weeks he had heard every sin in the book except suicide in the confessional he also told me that as catholics we have to believe there is a hell but we do not have to believe that anyone is in it except lucifer and his band of rogue angels i lose track o f him for years only to see and read about his serious travails with the church in the early 80s he had gotten into an unwinnable argument with some of the most powerful figures i n the roman hierarchy including a certain german archbishop charlie s target charlie had publicly challenged the archbishop in a my turn column for newsweek magazine over the church s failure to address the world s aids problem push came to shove and the jesuits kicked him out of the order i don t know what happened to charlie other than life had become a living hell for him hell real or unreal is a scary place it has probably the one fear that has ca u sed me the most anxiety over the course of my life it is this fear that has led me to be self manipulating and seeking to control all necessary and rewarding intrusions on my person including medical ones without trusting in god s will and grace as i continue to get older i think about this a lot more a s my love for god intensifies and my ability to t rust myself to his saving more to his love and grace increases i don t see how he could allow so many billions of his flawed creation to lose him for all eternity purgatory to me has become the most logical and creditable of all the church s teachings on morality sin and forgiveness when taken in connection with its teachings on original sin a reasonable teaching to see god imperfect man must be purefied but maybe not by a punishing fire but an enlightening love i have also come to believe that this temporary state is not one of pure physical punishment but one of a loving guidance that challenges the soul to see the errors of his or her lives in lewis book the narrator inexplicably finds himself in a grim and joyless city the grey town which is either hell or purgatory depending on how long one stays there he eventually finds a bus for those who desire an excursion to some other place and which eventually turns out to be the foothills of heaven although the country is the most beautiful they have ever seen every feature of the landscape including streams of water and blades of grass is unyielding solid compared to themselves it causes them immense pain to walk on the grass and even a single leaf is far too heavy for any to lift i tried writing a play on purgatory which i called for the love of dickens i chose a nyc subway train for my version the saved were required to ride the city s vast system reading the great books about life and love and so o n while i did create som e interesting characters the main character was to put it frankly boring it was during one of my regular massages with lena about 18 months ago that it dawned on me that if she could literally push the pain out of my back and lower extremities with her heavenly touch why could not an angelic therapist do the same for the residue of sin guilt sorrow weakness and so on a perfect metaphor i think it is theologically correct and i hope it inspires many people to start thinking about what happens next for a synopsis of this play and an entire scene please check my post gaby s people or if you would like to read the whole thing just use my e mail address bbprof sbcglobal net gaby s people is scheduled for its first public reading at big daddy s restaurant 2nd fl 771 3066 at 1000 sydney st through the auspices of the first run theater group the date is monday night february 4th at 6 30 for information please contact first run theatre 314 865 1296 mario www firstruntheatre com posted in uncategorized tags cardinal ratzinger first run theatre gaby s people marriage of heaven and hell purgatory the great divorce gaby s people january 22 2013 1 comment i wrote gaby s people to show a bird eye s view of the human condition with much of its defining passion pain pride lusts and other evidences of man s flawed nature using the venue of a health spa i have tried to give new meaning to the idea of a therapeutic massage in that the therapist s strokes are as much for the soul as the body drawing my inspiration from such diverse sources as dante alighieri s purgatorio c s lewis the great divorce and bruce jay friedman s 1970 controversial play steambath gaby s people has the grand ambition of rethinking traditional understandings of sin punishment forgiveness and ultimate salvation in god s waiting room while it certainly is not a divine comedy i did write it in a humorous but very adult vein so as to keep it earth bound the main character gaby is a selfless individual whose people sometimes draw her to the limits of her patience all of them john lance donavan and harry as well as mike her attendant display human qualities that push human nature to the brink murder rape incest hatred sloth and self indulgences are all par for gaby s course in addition to these major moral failings her people often wrestle with poor self image intimacy modesty and prudery and self forgiveness issues while gaby sometimes appears to be from a different world her involvement in the raw and bawdy humanity of her people rubs off on her causing not only a cleansing effect but also a deep sympathy that energizes her true calling that of a unified physical spiritual and emotional healer gaby s people is scheduled for its first public reading at 6 30 on monday night february 4th at big daddy s restaurant 2nd fl at 1000 sydney st 771 3066 through the auspices of the first run theatre group for more information please contact 314 865 1296 mario www firstruntheatre com here is a scene of what you will hear and see the massage therapist gaby walks into the therapy room of her ultra body face and spirit spa in an undisclosed location scene five same location later in the future a man lies fully clothed except for his shoes and socks on top of the massage table gaby looking at her file as she enters the room you must be harry harry looks up at her yeah that s me starts to get agitated i have to get outta here i got stuff to do gaby we have stuff to do here harry and just why do you still have your clothes on harry look that guy outside hard to get a good massage like this gaby you mean mike harry i don t know what his name is and i don t care he just told me to come in here and lie down and make myself comfortable gaby he didn t tell you to disrobe to your level of comfort harry yeah something like that gaby and this is your level of comfort harry yeah this is as much as i m taking off what s wrong with it gaby oh just about everything look i can t do you any good unless you take off some of your outer clothes modesty is an important concern so you don t have to take off everything if you re not comfortable harry lady that s not going to happen in this lifetime get it through that empty head of yours gaby o k have it your way i ll just massage your big toe f...