I am hoping to find time to make posting on locals a regular thing again, but I am unsure of how to arrange my schedule for this due to a number of things that are happening in my life right now. Among these, my father is literally on his deathbed, and may pass at any time, I am doing my best to preserve all of the music my father wrote for posterity, and I'm trying to keep myself up with my own writing. My father's declining health has greatly contributed to keeping me from posting over the past two years. If I am again delinquent in posting, understand that it is not because I don't care, it's just because I haven't figured out how to better organize my time.

A post on quora.com from a person in despair prompted me to write the following post. I should point out that this person expressed fear that he or she had committed the unpardonable sin, and there were other answers to his post that I felt were inadequate for assuring him about the love of God. Here is my response:

Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost is a very difficult concept that is often misunderstood and misdiagnosed, in great part becuase Satan, the father of all lies, wants it to remain unknown and drive people into despair. Despite what many others who have answered this question have postulated about the nature of this sin, it is not, and has never been, attributing Christ’s healing power to Satan, which, while sinful, can be forgiven. The Apostle Paul, who once persecuted the disciples of Christ as agents of Satan, believing they used that power to perform miracles, repented of this sin and became one of Christ’s most loyal followers. He did commit a form of blasphemy, that of ...

Reposted from my Minds (https://www.minds.com/gdavidturnblom/) account.

Forty-two years ago today, what is possibly the most devastating natural disaster in the history of the United States occurred. The incident resulted in the deaths of at least 57 people, thousands of trees and animals, and destroyed property in the neighborhood of around $1 billion, which today would be more than $3.5 billion. I am speaking of the eruption of Mount St. Helens, the first instance of a lateral eruption recorded by science.

Prior to this eruption, Mount St. Helens had been showing some signs of renewed life for around two months, beginning in March, 1980, with a number of small earthquakes indicating magma movement. Among the first visible signs of the upcoming eruption was a new crater which appeared after on March 27, accompanied by rising ash that traveled comparatively short distances, although some reached Spokane, WA, nearly three hundred miles away and Bend, OR about 150 miles south of the volcano. A...