Papa Pat Tiny Devotionals

Greetings, Internet friends and neighbors, and family members of various subsets! This is PART TWO of My Introduction to CBD Oil and Vaping. If you haven't read Part One , then I recommend you do so now. Also, I said in Part One that I would post this 'tomorrow,' and I actually had almost all of it written, BUT I realized I needed to expand and extend the transition, and then...I don't know. Life. So, at the end of Part One, I said that in early 2013 a (relatively) new pain treatment gave me another chance at life. That treatment, the Butrans patch, managed my chronic pain from the auto-immune condition I have called ankylosing spondylitis. It does so without goofing my head, putting me to sleep, causing constipation, and it's administered through a weekly patch I stick on my arm. It's a much, MUCH smaller dose of medication; it's so small, that it has NEVER shown up on  ANY of the drug screens I've taken over the last six years. Most of you will just ...

Greetings, friends and neighbors out there in Internet Land, and a big shout out to my family who turn to this channel from time to time.  What this is. This is the promised post on the matter of pain. It has come about because of a peculiar attack of physical pain that hit me at the end of January: with intermittent, sharp, stabbing pains in different areas of my back. The attacks lasted about six weeks before I sought relief. Soon, however, my physical pain was overshadowed by  mental and emotional pain, and that's really the bigger issue, and the reason for this post. You see, it MAY be (and the verdict isn't in, yet!) that there is a form of pain relief that I haven't known about, due to other-than-medical reasons. That's a BIG deal to me; I suffer from chronic pain, due to an inherited condition called ankylosing spondylitis (AS), a systemic auto-immune disease which manifests in my case by a little bit of spine problems, and a BUCKETLOAD of inflammation. Act One:...

Greetings to all of my internet friends and neighbors, delightful family who read this, and whoever happens to stop by. People stop me on the street, and they say: "Papa Pat, you are retired, and do not have to be anywhere in the morning. And your sweet and precious children, Kenneth and Alicia, don't have to be on the bus until  the hour of 8:30 AM. Middle Schoolers Kenneth and Alicia  "So why, pray tell, do you rise at 5:15 AM with your gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant, foxy, praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA?" Pat and Vanessa. (Not at 5:15 AM) Okay, I lied about that. Nobody has EVER asked me that question, and Alicia said if they did, it would be weird and stalker-y. But they might. It could happen. Really! And I have part of the answer. By doing that, I am assured that my day will begin in peace , as I prepare ginger tea for the two of us, and we sit on the couch in the living room and talk about whatever we wish. Then,...

Greetings and well-wishes to you all, my dear Internet friends and neighbors, precious family, and especially all those patient authors who are waiting for a review. It has been a week since I last made a post here, and much, much longer than that since I have been able to read to any good purpose, specifically with respect to writing a review. It is not from a lack of appropriate material; I have (at least) 10 books in my TBR&R queue, and my perception, based on the authors, titles, and covers, is that these are books I will VASTLY enjoy. And some of those authors are important to me! Behold, I shall conceal nothing from you: the last several weeks have been a challenge. Not all is my story to tell. I have related a bit of the Georgia Monsoon of 2019 Septic Tank Disaster in my last post . I have NOT mentioned the new, different, agonizing, sharp, stabbing, localized, intermittent, and migratory back pain I have been experiencing for the past six weeks. (More on that in a later po...

Greetings, and abundant blessings to my dear internet friends, my neighbors, my beloved and beleaguered family, and to whoever in my Home Group reads this. This is a post about angels. In 1978, my wild and capricious lifestyle best thinking lead me to enroll in seminary, and to take a class in New Testament Greek. I had prepped the summer before by learning the Greek alphabet, and I suppose that did help a bit. The very first Greek work that caught my attention was  "ἄγγελος ," and I think the best I can do to represent that in our lettering system is "aggelos." The Greek letters are alpha, gamma, gamma, epsilon, lambda, omicron, sigma. "Hmm," I thought. "That's almost the same as 'angel,'  but there is no 'ν ' (the Greek letter 'nu') to represent the 'n' sound." And shortly afterward, I learned my first REAL Greek lesson: when there are two gammas written together, "γγ" , the sound is changed ...