But, that's ridiculous

In lieu of my usual trying to glean insanity from the news pages, I have decided to share a couple of stories that are... well, hard to believe, except that I was involved in them.  One involves cute cuddly animals, and one involves social media.  So let me tell the animal one first, so at least you'll stay for the first part...


So before I get to the story, let me warm you up with a FB post I made early last week:


Seen on today's walk: 1- still in the complex, one pair underwear, mens, neatly folded, with 1 pair socks, same; 2- St Joe Road, 1 wall unit air conditioner, some assembly required; 3- canal trail, two squirrels fighting falling out of a tree and down an embankment. As I listened, I heard them still barking at each other. One squirrel, pissed, emerges from the undergrowth, briefly thinking I was his sparring partner, decides I'm not and leaves. 4- Canal trail again, redwing male dive bombs me, hissing directly over my head. Beginning to think my hat's orange bill might be bugging him, may run an experiment later.


Now, while the rest could qualify, I just wanted to make mention of this because of #3- the squirrel thing.  To flesh this out, the incident was just south of Scrappy's trail to the landing, and the bank was a steep, bush-and-tree clogged drop which the two fighting rodents crashed from at least ten feet above.  I could hear the thrashing remnants of the landing, and could hear them barking at each other very loudly, so I came up to the edge of the bank to look closer.  The barking was separated by about 20 feet- one of them had apparently hit the... well, whatever he hit- running.  But that was the spot I kept hearing the thrashing, and eventually, he broke through the brush about a yard away from me, mad as hell (you can tell because they squint their eyes until they look Chinese) and slashing his tail back and forth like his butt was on fire.  He saw me, which rather surprised him because he thought I was his (former) friend.  I said, "Hey, bud,"  And he when back into hiding and barking mode.


Now I tell that story because it made an excellent counterpoint to what happened yesterday.  I'd love to show you a GOOD picture of the scene, but it was my phone, and thus...

You might can kinda see, Mr and Mrs Duck, down at the stream near the apartment.  If my phone could enlarge stuff well, you'd see a squirrel at the base of the tree.  Here's what went down- I swear this is all true.


So the squirrel is looking for acorns or somesuch at the base of the tree, when Mr Duck decides to check him out.  Squirrel plants himself as if bracing for impact; Duck comes closer, drops his head low.  They look at each other for a few seconds; Squirrel goes up the tree, Duck moves away.  The Squirrel comes back down and resumes what he was doing; and Mrs Duck decides to have a turn at it.  She walks up;  Squirrel goes into his pose.  She stops, he comes a bit closer.  She drops her head and begins to 'mumble-quack'.

At this point, Squirrel apparently decides, "Oh, this is a game," and this is where it became really hard to believe.  He picks up a nearby twig, rolls over on his back and wrestles with it.  Rolls a bit towards the stream bank, drops the stick, and goes back up the tree.  Comes back down, grabs the twig, repeats the process.  This goes on 3 or 4 times, until finally the hen moves towards Mr Duck, apparently saying something along the lines of, "Yes, thank you, the jester was quite entertaining," and flies down into the stream bed.  The Squirrel goes up the tree, Mr Duck looks to where the Mrs. landed, and all lived happily ever after.


**********************************************


The other story:

Back when I was a pre-schooler and desperately trying to understand the world around me, I listened intently at Church and wondered just how many "Persons" went into "God".  I mean, there was God the Father, Jesus, Jesus Christ, Christ Jesus, Christ, Lord, Lord Jesus, and the Holy Spirit at least.  But as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, I put away childish ideas after I got older and the Nuns whittled it down to three.  And that made sense.

Skip ahead to around a year ago, when our good friend Al Penwasser (actually his alter-ego) introduced me to a FB knock-off without the censorship called MeWe.  It is more or less a group based thing; unless you go in with a bunch of friends, you need to pick a group or it gets real boring.  Al found that out and bailed early.  I bumped across it once in a great while because I joined some Christian groups.  Unfortunately, most of the players on MeWe are in a range from "a little off center" to honest-to-God flat-earthers (that isn't even a little exaggerated).

A few months ago, someone else I knew found himself at loose ends after Google+ went belly up and ended up on MeWe.  For a reason that still baffles me, he invited me into his circle (we'd had a bit of a falling out), and about the same time some other guy- a pastor of some stripe- invited me into his group.  Hoping that maybe things might liven up, I got involved again, because iron does sharpen iron, even if it's got some rust stains on it.

Well, yesterday, after a Sunday sermon on the Personhood and priorities of the Holy Spirit, I went on MeWe and a lady who'd invited me into her group (She's the group 'owner' by MeWe standards) posted an article asking what the difference is between the Holy Ghost and the Holy Spirit.  Now, much like the pre-schooler who learned from the nuns, I thought, "This is kind of a dumb question to start an article about the Spirit, because any clown knows that the ONLY difference is "Ghost" is a somewhat archaic word for "Spirit"- there IS no difference."

But I forgot what world I was in.  According to this article- which I bailed on before I even got to the part about what the difference is- The Spirit is NOT a Person, is NOT God, but like I said I said, I bailed before figuring out just who this author thought He was.  Thinking to myself, "If I want to set the record straight, I'm going to spend a lot of my Sunday reading this thing and then trying to put a rebuttal together myself (which I eventually did anyway), I found two excellent articles on the Godhood and Personhood of the Spirit and put them in the comments.

Part of the reply made a little sense.  Part of it crossed my eyes.

Essentially, she started out saying, "The Holy Spirit is God," then said that she was 'non-trinitarian.'  Then she threw in the even more bizarre, "The Holy Ghost and the Holy Spirit are the same, but different."  Frankly, I had no idea WHERE she was coming from.  I explained my point of view concisely and politely, she replied likewise, "We believe differently on Trinity."  Another thing she brought up was that, "As long as you believe in Jesus, you are saved."  That was good enough for me at that point.

Today, I thought more about it though- do you let someone go on happy with a doctrinal error like that?  I mean, in a way she was right- If her stance was based on misunderstanding, but not false religion, I don't think God sends anyone to hell for "not figuring out the details."  But once again, the story takes a turn.

I brought back up the article to make sure I was quoting right, and noticed that she had 'liked' my comment and another gentleman had put up a 'confused' emoji.  Re-read what I had said and what she had said.  And about two paragraphs ago, I thought, "let me bop over and copy my comment on my view of the Spirit."  And between my starting this post you are reading and two paragraphs ago, she DELETED not only the entire post, comments and all, but an entire 5-hour long message thread between herself and "confused".  Why, and what was in the deleted thread,  I have no idea.  In fact, I just looked, and she has DELETED the entire group!

I'd be surprised, but something very much like this happened when I first joined MeWe.  I confronted an administrator of one of the groups on something I thought he was wrong on.  He somehow decided that I was right about whatever it was, and soon later deleted his whole profile.

I guess, when it comes down to it, maybe FB isn't so bad after all...