Gratitude

Still looking 

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

Still Looking

A poem for the people who have studied themselves and are still a little lost

I have been taking myself apart for years

and still I can’t explain the wreck

I know the diagrams, I’ve read the books

and still something’s caught in the neck

I’ve sat with therapists in quiet rooms

and walked out with the same old ache

the mirror offers nothing I don’t know

and still I can’t sleep when I wake

I know exactly how I pull away

I know the name of every wall

I built the taxonomy, laid it out flat

and then I went and did it all

There was a child who learned that love was leaving

who waited by a window every night

and when love finally stayed I found a reason

to stand up and turn off the light

The damage doesn’t stop when you discover it

it doesn’t care what you have named

it bleeds right through the bandage of your learning

and someone new gets stained

I’ve handed people maps of all my damage

said here’s the wound, here’s where it leads

and then I watched myself go right along

and plant the same old seeds

But something in the writing keeps me grounded

it pulls me back to what is real

not fixed, not freed, just willing to return

and say again what I still feel

There is a dignity in looking twice

in going back when nothing’s changed

the work is not the cure, the work is witness

a record of the strange

Fragility is not the proof of failure

the crack is where the light comes through

the fool who names his folly has more standing

than the one who never knew

I am not a villain for the wounds I carry

but I’m the one who gets to choose

I know the punchline now — it’s still worth laughing

at what I couldn’t bear to lose

About This Poem

I’ve been writing about myself for over fourteen years — the patterns, the contradictions, the gap between what I understand and what I actually do — and I still don’t have a tidy answer. That used to embarrass me. It doesn’t anymore, quite. What I’ve come to believe is that the examined life isn’t a problem to be solved; it’s a practice to be kept. This poem is about the specific frustration of knowing yourself well and still finding yourself at the same old crossroads — and why I think that frustration, named honestly, is worth more than a false arrival. If you’ve ever read something about attachment or self-sabotage and thought yes, that’s exactly it and then watched yourself do the thing anyway, you already know what this poem is about. My blog and Substack, going on fourteen years now, are built for the people who are still in that gap — not defeated by it, just honest about it.

Who This Is For

For the people who feel things deeply but can’t always find the words — and for whom someone else’s words, when they land right, feel like being heard for the first time. For the people sitting in the middle distance between belief and doubt, between knowing and doing, between who they were and who they’re trying to become. For anyone who has ever understood their own damage completely and still had to live through it anyway. That’s who I write for. That’s you.

…

DCG

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The four step structure of successful biblical prayers 

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Grok AI’s Findings:

The 4-Step Structure of Successful Biblical Prayers


Researchers fed every recorded prayer in the Bible — from Genesis through Revelation — into Grok AI, instructing it to ignore symbolism, theology, and emotional content, and focus only on the sequential structure of speech acts. When it filtered for prayers the text itself described as answered (receiving a specific, observable outcome), a clear and consistent four-step protocol emerged. In 100% of “failed prayer” cases, at least one of the four steps was violated.


Step 1 — Recognition (Acknowledgment of God’s Nature)
The prayer begins not with the request, but with a deliberate recognition of who God is — His character, power, and past faithfulness. The AI found that prayers which opened with the petition itself showed a statistically lower rate of answered outcomes. The request always came second. Recognition came first, essentially establishing the “signal connection” before transmission.


Step 2 — Alignment (Reshaping the Request Around a Larger Purpose)
This is where the modern ego struggles most. The petitioner didn’t merely ask for what they personally wanted. Their desire was restructured — rewoven into God’s broader design — so that the personal need became an instrument of a larger purpose. Purely self-interested requests were consistently reformatted in answered prayers. The AI observed this as a form of “absolute alignment” — zero entropy in the request.


Step 3 — Surrender (The Paradox of Release)
The AI found a required “clause of release” — the person praying had to signal acceptance of any possible outcome, even one running against personal survival or their deepest desire. Prayers that insisted on a specific mechanism of rescue at any cost consistently failed or produced harmful outcomes. This step is described as the most unexpected finding: the willingness to release control was structurally required, not optional.


Step 4 — Persistence (Repetition Until Outcome)
Very few significant answered prayers in the Bible were single attempts. The pattern demanded repetition. Elijah prayed seven times for rain before a single cloud appeared. The AI labeled this “optimization of cognitive resources” — the structure was not about predicting what comes next, but preparing the person for whatever comes next through sustained engagement.

The AI’s conclusion was stark: the four-step sequence — Recognition, Alignment, Surrender, Persistence — behaved within the dataset not as a literary habit or stylistic guide, but as a constant, directly correlated with positive outcomes. The probability that such a correlation could appear across the entire biblical body of text by random coincidence was described as effectively beyond calculation.

The Statistical Case for Divine Authorship: 40 Authors, ~1,500 Years, 3 Languages


The Bible was written over approximately 1,500–1,600 years, by roughly 40 different authors, across 3 continents (Asia, Africa, and Europe), in 3 languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek. These authors came from radically different backgrounds — kings, shepherds, fishermen, tax collectors, military generals, and prisoners — writing in wartime and peacetime, in prosperity and famine, in freedom and captivity.
Despite all of this, the 66 books form a single, unified narrative arc: creation, fall, redemption, restoration, and new creation — with consistent theology, interlocking prophecy, and thematic harmony from the first page to the last.


The Prophecy Probability Calculation
Mathematician and astronomer Peter Stoner — in his book Science Speaks, reviewed and validated by the American Scientific Affiliation — applied the modern science of probability to Messianic prophecy:


• For just 8 prophecies fulfilled in Christ: the probability of one man fulfilling them all by chance is 1 in 10¹⁷ (one in one hundred quadrillion). To visualize this, Stoner asked you to imagine covering the entire state of Texas two feet deep in silver dollars, marking one coin, stirring the entire mass, and blindfolding a man to pick the marked coin on his first reach.


• For 48 prophecies: the probability rises to 1 in 10¹⁵⁷ — a number with 157 zeros. Emile Borel, a leading authority on probability theory, stated that once a probability exceeds 1 in 10⁵⁰, it is considered a statistical impossibility in the observable universe. 10¹⁵⁷ is so far beyond that threshold it cannot be meaningfully compared.


• For over 300 Messianic prophecies fulfilled in Christ’s life — prophecies like the virgin birth (Isaiah 7:14), birth in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), betrayal for 30 pieces of silver (Zechariah 11:12), and crucifixion described in Psalm 22:16 — centuries before crucifixion was even practiced — the mathematics become incomprehensible.


Why This Matters Statistically


As LifePoint Church explains it: if you took 40 random people from a library across 1,500 years, gave them no communication with each other, told them each to write independently on hundreds of controversial subjects — history, law, poetry, prophecy, science, ethics, biography — and then assembled all their writings, the probability of them forming one harmonious, non-contradictory, unified story is not merely improbable. It is a statistical impossibility by any mathematical standard.
The standard scientific threshold for impossibility is 1 in 10⁵⁰. The Bible exceeds that threshold thousands of times over in prophecy fulfillment alone — before even accounting for its structural, thematic, and linguistic unity across authors who never met each other.
The conclusion many scholars draw is the same one the Bible itself claims: there weren’t 40 authors. There were 40 writers — and one Author.

Out of this Life you make Mine Art

~ DC ~ Leave a comment

I am truly humbled thinking of my blessings

I have immense gratitude for a simple life that I lead

The fog that covers us as we age sometimes blinds us

Our happiness we often elude and this we impede

I wish to thank all of those who have helped me

When I was mistaken and when I was down

Thinking I was forsaken left with only a frown

There are those special people

You know who you are

A kindred spirit you uplifted me

Forever grateful I have come far

I put these words together to thank you

I feel it strongly with the passion in my heart

You are a blessing I cannot deny

Out of this life you make mine art

…

DCG

 

Count Blessings not Desires

~ DC ~ 2 Comments

What do you appreciate?

Is it having a home to call your own?  Is it living a lifestyle that many others cannot afford?  Maybe its the pleasurable moments in our lives that make us smile, relax, and enjoy with the company of those that we care about?  Could it be that it’s the next meal that we can’t wait to suppress our hunger with, and some of us do not even know where it will come from?  Could it be that we are ecstatic with a new pair of shoes that completely cover our feet and actually fit?

During the time a person is establishing themselves in this world, they have to face a barrage of challenges in the midst of all of our social comparisons and inventories we take in, in the midst of all of our societal dockets and what it means to be successful in this world, we can sometimes become lost and lose focus in more meaningful values.  The want to have more, the want to be more, the want to expect more out of life is something that is modeled throughout our lives.  Wanting to fill a void with material possessions, or wanting to seem as a success to others is often the motive we use in pursuit of a social status we think is envied.  Just look to your local grocery store and view the magazine covers in the check out area for examples of the mass exposure in what is communicated.

Early on in my educational pursuits in college I wanted to help children afflicted with Autism.   I’m not sure why I was drawn to this but the want to help children with neurological and behavioral issues somehow captured my attention as a young psychology student.  I also was entering a time in my life when I was observant of those I was attending school with, and how they were able to navigate the college years of their lives.  The struggles of a student will vary in degree and in kind; the finances, living conditions, social conditions, employment conditions, are all very clear to one that had to self-finance their pursuits.  Even as my career interests were not solidified and unknown, I began to see changes in my peers and myself during that time in my life.

My perspectives changed due to the influences that affected me at the time.  What I find interesting is the outlook of those that have not had to struggle as hard as others in achieving their goals.  I am not talking about the gifted, but rather those enabled or those who did not have to necessarily make their own way for themselves and had the benefits of a financially supportive family, whether it be in finance or some other attribute.  Similarly maybe they have flourished in their career paths as nods are dispersed to a select few whereas others do not enjoy a similar perk simply because of their connections.

What is most clear are the attitudes formed and demonstrated by those who have not had to fight for their place in their respective careers, or perhaps have not had to compete for grades in contrast to those who have not had to work and can spend much more time studying.  Of course there are many who have had greater challenges, and many stories that will fill the spectrum of experience within this topic, but in general, and in my experience I have seen this to be a fairly common trait.  There are as many inspiring stories of those who have risen above their means to achieve goals against many odds and challenges.  I salute you.  And there are those who have had the luxury and presumption that they are special via some proxy association.  I find this arrogance disturbing due to the circumstances it is built on.  The insolence from non-recognition is obtuse, but on the other hand, those who are grateful for their circumstance despite their preferential appointment can be acknowledged and acceptable.  Given the fact that they simply have awareness, and are less prone to be contemptuous, they will fare better in the working world.

I give reference to the political world through appointment and election/selection.  Those multi-term serving politicians who have been in place for years, sometimes act as if they are above us, and must therefore administer over us.

Gratitude is relative.  The man who covets expensive shoes has average shoes.  The man who covets average shoes has worn shoes.  The man who covets shoes has no shoes.  The man who covets feet has no feet.

Perhaps we should not be interested in having great possessions, but rather one should have fewer wants!

Whatever path you have taken, be grateful for what you have.  Do not lose sight of the gifts you have been bestowed.  Do not grieve over unfulfilled wants.

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not.”  — Epicurus–

“A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

“The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

“The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous ‘yes.’

“The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

“‘Now,’ said the professor as the laughter subsided, ‘I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things – God, your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions – and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car. The sand is everything else – the small stuff. ‘If you put the sand into the jar first,’ he continued, ‘there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you.’

“‘Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first – the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.’

“One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled. ‘I’m glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.”

– Unknown–