There was an old hermit in Cromer
Who wanted to befriend a loner
So he went on to Tinder
He opened a window
He picked me for he liked my aroma.

Cromer is too remote for a lady
Who likes to go out somewhere shady
I went to Soho
As I did not know
It’s for harlots,  and folk who feel flakey.

Sin is   a category error
Which fells  folk like me with its terror
So I decide  not to brood
Nor ruminate food
In case I go blind or turn yellow.

I think  my retina has conked out
And also I’ve grown far too stout
So chop off my head
When I am in bed
That will be a full cure for my doubt

Luther was an evil man, I find
Maybe sinner is a better term
He hated Jews and made up Hitler’s mind

To his own sins, he seemed  rather blind
And he sowed a seed, or call it germ
Luther was an evil man, I find

 

Only someone mad could thus align
A tasty Diet made  up out of worms
He hated Jews and aided Hitler’s mind

Whatever he decided was defined
To make the bellies of the Churchmen churn
Luther was an evil man, I find

The grace of God confined him in a bind
Good works were of no use, did nothing earn
He hated Jews and lived in Hitler’s mind

Let the  sinless  one take the right turn
While the rest of us  in flames shall burn
Luther was an evil man, I find
He hated Jews, bedevilled Hitler’s mind

How dangerous is technology?

“The tangible benefits of technological progress are wonderful, but are matched by irreversible damage to our global resources. To support almost eight billion people, our attempts to provide sufficient food are made with limited regard to the land or other creatures, and we have destroyed cultures and hundreds of languages. Crop yields and health care have advanced with the aid of drugs and chemicals but they are not, and cannot be, confined to their original locations. Food and water supplies are seriously contaminated with a cocktail of chemicals and drugs which no earlier civilization has ever experienced. Despite warnings and research, the potential for allergies, ill health, and mutagenic and fertility changes are ignored by the majority. Humans have always been concerned with the present, self-interest, and profit. This is why we have advanced. The difference now is that we have outgrown our potential resources.”

He told me I looked happier than him
Standing by the rack of magazines
He’d like to die, but it is still a sin

Instead, I wondered how about a gym?
And  prayer to fill the emptiness that looms
He told me I looked happier than him.

He was handsome , smart and also very slim.
A pity we were not just two baboons.
He’d like to die, but it is still a sin.

He has good eyesight, and has lost no limb
I can hum about a million tunes.
He told me I looked happier than him

His cup compared to mine is full to brim
Yet I desire to lick the plastic spoon.
He’d like to die, but it is still a sin.

We in Europe rich, feel full of doom
We are going blind, one may presume
He told me my attraction  was a sin
He’d like to harass me  like life has him

“If we wish to find a scapegoat on whose shoulders we may lay the miseries which Germany has brought upon the world — I am more and more convinced that the worst evil genius of that country is not Hitler or Bismarck or Frederick the Great, but Martin Luther.” Reverend William Ralph Inge,

1944.http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/The-Jewish-Problem—From-anti-Judaism-to-anti-Semitism/Foundations-of-the-Holocaust-Martin-Luther-Theologian-of-Hate-365321

Did Luther Suffer from Recurring Depression?

 

“1) Martin Luther: the Christian Between God and Death, Richard Marius (Harvard University Press, 1999, 576 pages):

[H]e was perhaps like many others at the time prone to melancholy — we would say say depression, even (as modern psychological jargon has it) “clinical” depression of a sort that might require treatment by a good paternal figure.

(p. 54)

She [his wife] was a consolation to him in his bouts with tristitia, a word meaning “sadness” that I think is here best translated by “depression,” attacks that he said in 1533 were greater afflictions than all his enemies and labors . . . He had these attacks often, he said . . .

(p. 439)

2) Martin Luther, Michael A. Mullett (Routledge, 2004, 240 pages), mentions Luther’s “recurrent bouts of depression” (p. 256).

3) True Faith in the True God: An Introduction to Luther’s Life and Thought, Hans Schwarz, translated by Mark Williams Worthing (Augsburg Books, 1996),

[H]e was frequently plagued by sickness during the remaining decade of his life, especially from pain caused by stones but also by severe headaches and depression.

(p. 33)

4) The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther, by Donald K. MacKim (Cambridge University Press, 2003, 338 pages), cites “occasional bouts with what may tentatively be identified as clinical depression” (p. 266).
5) Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation, 1483-1521, by Martin Brecht, translated by James F. Schaaf (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993; at least 529 pages):

When we survey Luther’s illnesses after 1527, it is obvious that in the meantime he had become an unstable man. Again and again can be seen the connection between his circulatory problems and an emotional depression, combined with his spiritual Anfechtungen, . . .

(p. 210)

6) Martin Luther: A Penguin Life (Penguin Lives), by Martin E. Marty (Viking Adult, 2004, 224 pages): “. . . the decade [1535-1545] of his disease and depression . . .” (p. 182).

7) The Revolt of Martin Luther, by Robert Herndon Fife (Columbia University Press, 1957, 713 pages):

[T]he friar was assailed by hours of restlessness and agonizing doubts. It is quite probable that this began to be the case early in his cloister life. “When I was first inducted into the monastery, it happened that I would always go about sad and depressed and could not shake off this melancholy,” This is one of the recollections from his early middle age. There is reason to think, as we have seen, that fits of depression beset him before his entry into the cloister . . . Nevertheless, though physical causes may have accentuated the attacks of depression, their source lay in his psychical personality and therefore far below the reach of the investigator’s plummet. They play a large role in his reminiscences and undoubtedly began early in life, for they recur throughout the middle years. It was a part of the mythology implanted in childhood that he should have regarded these visitations as temptations of the devil. “It seems to me,” he declares in 1521, “that from childhood Satan foresaw in me something of what he is now suffering from me. That is the reason he has raged against me with unbelievable tricks to hamper and destroy me, so that I have often wondered whether I was not the only one among mortals in whom he was laying his traps.” 62 The attacks followed him through life, but with advancing age he worked out a system, based largely on the Scriptures, by which he gave himself successful treatment. The strife against mental depression, he concluded, is a struggle with the devil 63 God is happiness and hates melancholy; the devil is melancholy, 64 and the Christian who fights off its attacks is resisting the devil. 65 . . . He himself seems to have escaped any real mental difficulty, but the tension of life showed itself in pronounced hysterical symptoms which may be noted from time to time in the monastic years and tended to present themselves also, though less acutely, at middle age and even on the threshold of old age. These “temptations,” as he calls them, brought him occasionally to the verge of despair. We have read the story of the fit in the cloister choir as reported to Johann Cochlaeus by certain Augustinian brothers. It bears marks of probability, for Luther himself records another instance of strikingly similar character which happened some years later, probably in 1515. Then, as he tells a scribe at table sixteen years after the event, he was struck with terror at sight of the sacrament borne by the vicar general, Dr. Staupitz, in the Corpus Christi procession. 69 His sensitivity to powerful attacks of depression is shown by several experiences recorded later but evidently belonging to the days when he was still in the Augustinian order. A vivid recollection of this kind comes down from the period of the struggle over indulgences and is found in the Explanations on the Power of Indulgences in 1518. Here, in a remarkable passage on the tortures of purgatory, he describes pangs of conscience which he had endured. “They lasted, to be sure, only a short while, but they were so hard and infernal that no tongue can express their power, no pen describe it, nor can anyone believe it who has never had the experience. If they should remain at their most extreme point for an hour, yes, even six minutes, the victim must quite perish and all his bones be turned to ashes.” 70 About the same time at which these words were written, possibly two or three years later, he seems to have suffered severe attacks of despair, especially the feeling that he was hated of God. “I was beset by the most extreme temptations [fear of the wrath of God]; they devoured my body as with fire so that I scarcely remained alive.” 71 Respecting a similar onset at the same period of life, he declares that no one could console him, so that he was obliged to ask: “Am I the only one to suffer the spirit of sadness? I saw so many apparitions. But ten years ago when I was alone, God comforted me with his angels to go on struggling and writing.” 72

Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2016/04/did-luther-suffer-from-recurring-depression.html#dFDmp10voGF5sM47.99″

http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/writing-saved-life

 

“If you don’t know where to start, here are a few recommendations:

• Use fast, stream-of-consciousness writing. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, etc. After all, in a conversation about something important, words just flow with hardly a breath in between.
• Don’t worry about what anyone else thinks. Your writing can remain private if you so desire. You can jot down your deepest feelings and then immediately shred them, which is therapeutic in itself.
• If you want to take this to the next level, challenge someone you trust to do the same thing and then exchange what you produced.

These days, my writing is meant to inspire others and to provide an antidote to the negativity and sensationalism we see in the news and on social media. In my third and fourth books—the first instalments of the (Extra)Ordinary series—I looked for people who are lighthouses for the rest of us, and they were not hard to find. Extraordinary people are all around us!

I’m thankful to know that and to know them. And I’m thankful for the life-saving gift of writing.

Writing has taken me out of myself and connected me to people in new ways. I’ve discovered more about who I was, who I am and who I want to be, all while learning about others in the process. Writing gave my life a renewed purpose. Writing saved me. “