The Discerning Hermit

It was 2:23 PM when I fired up my desktop computer for this afternoon's writing session after a nap. Back on 14 July 2025, I wrote the following in my first article on Pluto in Tropical Aquarius :  "Alright, it is 3:53 AM EDT, I have just returned to my desktop with fresh water and a cup of herbal tea, and the Moon is culminating at 4 degrees of tropical Pisces. For tea, I went with a mix of gingko, lemon balm, gotu kola and peppermint from Jean's Greens. But I don't intend to get pulled into a discussion about pharmacological Christian mysticism and the Pisces-Virgo axis just yet, however strongly the Moon and North Node in Pisces may now be drawing me in that direction. Let's see if I can save that for a writing session on Sunday, 20 July 2025 at 10 PM EDT, when Mars is conjunct the South Node in Virgo." As it turns out, I slept through Sunday night's potential writing session. But early this morning the eastern sky was clear, and I saw Venus again, with...

It's 4:48 AM on Monday morning. My second order of business today concerns Psalm 4. I listened to two versions of Psalm 4 yesterday evening: Psalm 4 by the Psalms Project and Psalm 4 by Neumes and Tunes . Now that I am getting deeper into this exploration of the musical side of the psalms, I realize that I am ready to create a new project under a "Music" Area of Responsibility titled "Psalter and Psalmody." This is on the conservative side. On the progressive side, I will develop my interest in world and electronic music under "Thoughts on Music." 

It's 3:51 AM on Monday morning. My first order of business today is another change to my blog description, which is to say my mission statement. Instead of "Finding Planetary Community through the Fruitful Discourse with God that is Relative Contemplative Solitude," I am going with "Testing the Spirits on a Journey to Wholeness, That Our Joy May Be Complete." This takes me to the First Letter of Saint John, where God calls me to dive deep. Will I soon or eventually find myself on the other side of the argument with Dr. Stanley? Will my gentle but firm disagreement become a reversal of position?

I made it outside for a 1-hour walk in my neighborhood from 8:15 to 9:15 AM this morning. I wore Merrell Vapor Gloves. Before that I prayed and meditated. After that I had breakfast - maybe a little too much - and reflected for a while on the YouTube content I had listened to during my walk. Here it is: Ain't No Grave (LIVE) from Bethel Music & Molly Skaggs Biblical Perspectives on Health and Fitness from Straight Truth Podcast  Why Christians Should Care About Fitness from The Gospel Coalition Are You Walking with God? by Dr. Charles Stanley The Discrimination Argument Against Religious Exclusivism Christian Antisemitism, the World’s Oldest Hatred by Rabbi Tovia Singer I didn't listen to all of Dr. Charles Stanley's sermon at first. I stopped fairly early on, when Dr. Stanley said that the beginning of our walk with God is when we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. "In other words, if I want to walk with God, I can't even get to God except throug...

It's 10:52 PM on Saturday evening and I want to close out Week 29 by chronicling today's YouTube viewing. First there was  What is the GTD areas of focus and responsibilities review? by Meg Edwards. Then I watched  Was Paul Torah-Observant or Spirit-Led?  by Two Messianic Jews.  I finished up the day with  Pacing Change | Covenant & Conversation | Pinchas | Rabbi Sacks  from the Rabbi Sacks Legacy and  Divine Law - It's Not Set In Stone | Rabbi Angela Buchdahl  from Central Synagogue: I truly appreciate the wisdom in these presentations, even as I am wrestling with some implications of this week's Torah portion and the accompanying commentary in Depths of the Torah . Is this really a weekly beat that I can and should keep up with after the next Simchat Torah? I decide to make this a project called "The Shabbat Question" under an Area of Responsibility yet to be determined. 

It's 3:24 PM on Saturday in Albany as I ask myself this question, and it's a tough one. My short initial answer is in some ways yes, and in other ways no. If by Torah observance we mean obedience to your ground rules for my salvation, Messiah Yeshua, I am going to say after an hour of deliberation that on balance the safe answer is yes. Alright, now it's 4:24 PM and I have had a small epiphany. The question I should have been asking myself was whether Torah observance was my "next" Area of Responsibility. And here the truth is that I probably won't lose my salvation if I don't read the Torah portion and related commentary in Depths of the Torah this week. But it might be a sin for me in your eyes, Messiah Yeshua. Let's disentangle this just a bit further. Is the issue in front of me right now a potential further breakdown in a "Book Reading Program" Area of Responsibility, in a "Shabbat" Area of Responsibility, or in a "Torah ...

It's 7:02 AM on Saturday morning and I am slowly beginning to wrap up Week 29 of 2025. I've been at prayer more or less since 5:35 AM, but I don't know that I should call it prayer, even though much of it has been on the prayer cushion. It's been more like deep thought about how to advance my life mission through the vocation of eremitic blogging. I feel that I need to modify "The Discerning Hermit" to give it more fullness. Here are some options: The Discerning Hermit: Getting Closer to God's Judgment One Blog Post at a Time The Discerning Hermit: Navigating God's Law One Week at a Time The Discerning Hermit: A Journey to Wholeness The Discerning Hermit: Finding Community in Solitude The Discerning Hermit: Testing the Spirits One Day at a Time The Discerning Hermit: Testing the Spirits to the Promised Land The Discerning Hermit: Testing the Spirits on a Journey to Wholeness The Discerning Hermit: Hopefully Healing Planetary Community from the Fruitful...

It's 6:33 PM on Friday evening and I don't know what has gotten into me, but I am blogging up a storm during this Week 29 of 2025 and I don't want to end my streak just yet. Maybe it is the Holy Spirit. Since this is a Friday evening writing session, and I have previously committed myself to observe an offline Shabbat from 6 PM Fridays to 8 PM Saturdays, I first need to take myself off the hook from this commitment. But this is easier said than done. Is offline Shabbat a commitment I have made and am free to change at the prompting of the Holy Spirit, or is it a fixed commandment from God?  Am I Torah-observant, or Spirit-led? Is this a false dichotomy? And where do I stand at this point in relation to the mitzvot? How do I see the mitzvot in relation to my five customized Horizons of Focus?

It's 12:35 PM on Friday and I am shifting into a Getting Things Done blog management session. I expect to stay in this session until about 5 PM this evening. My goal for this session is to begin the process of reorganizing my blog so that it performs better for me and my readers as a Getting Things Done (GTD) organizer. In order to accomplish this, I will need to customize the GTD Horizons of Focus to fit my situation. The standard GTD Horizons of Focus model has five horizons in addition to the ground. This is a bit more altitude than I can handle, at least at this stage. Back in 2006, Michael Sampson came up with an alternative visualization: I really like Sampson's visualization, but I cannot handle goals just yet. What I think maybe I can handle is the following five horizons: Next Actions, Projects, Areas of Responsibility, Vision, and Mission.   How can I apply these five horizons to the structure of my blog? Well, here is what I am thinking: Blog Title = Mission Blog D...

It's 9:25 AM on Thursday morning in Albany and I am contemplating my YouTube Watch Later playlist. I've accumulated three videos since reaching "YouTube Zero" on Tuesday evening, as you can see in the screenshot above. I am experiencing considerable pressure to spend another 80 minutes listening to Dan Senor and Ron Dermer, but the strategic significance of NATO defense spending is also pressing. Is there anything else on YouTube that needs my attention?  I conduct a targeted YouTube search on "Syria," scan the headlines of the top videos, and then take a look at my YouTube homepage. This is a mistake. I don't see anything under breaking news that requires my attention, but I do see four music-related videos that I cannot help but add to Watch Later. Finally, I search for the Rabbi Sacks talk on this week's Torah portion and add that to my Watch Later playlist, too. At this point I am starting to get overwhelmed by my list. I do some walking meditati...

It's 8:10 AM on Thursday morning and I have just finished a late session of centering prayer on the meditation cushion. Much earlier today, around 1:30 AM, I listened to three versions of Psalm 3 on YouTube. In the first version , "the canting (singing) is done by a Sephardi Jew reciting the Tehillim (Zabur/Psalms) in Hebrew and the video recording contains an English translation of the text from the New Living Translation."  The video is from this channel . The second version is a contemporary worship track from Zac Fitzsimmons Music , while the third version is Gregorian chant from Neumes and Tunes . So far during this Week 29 of 2025, I haven't listened to any music on YouTube (or elsewhere) except for the first three psalms. I am trying to be much more intentional with my YouTube consumption, at least for this week. I am a little bit tempted to try working my way through all 150/151 psalms in a sequence before listening to anything else, but I have doubts that I...

It's 12:17 AM on Thursday morning here in Albany. I guess I don't need to get back to sleep too soon, since I already fell asleep from 7:30 PM to 10:30 PM, and there is one more issue I would like to address while I am up and have some energy. I am thinking about nuclear nonproliferation because Iran Makes Nuclear Threat was the lead story when I opened Google on my smartphone yesterday, and I couldn't help but read the article, which opens: Iran is threatening to raise uranium enrichment to weapons-grade levels and exit the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) if Western powers move forward with reimposing United Nations sanctions, according to Iranian state media. This is not what the world wants to hear. Iran should be willing to suspend uranium enrichment for 12 months and work with IAEA inspectors to remove all highly enriched uranium from its borders within that time frame in order to buttress the integrity of the NPT, which is threatened by Iranian enrichment brin...

It's Wednesday at 10:59 PM as I begin to write. While eating lunch earlier today, I watched a few minutes of President Trump's bilateral meeting with the Crown Prince of Bahrain on YouTube because it was at the top of my screen when I opened the application on my smartphone. After lunch, I searched YouTube specifically for the FDD Morning Brief and watched Jonathan Schanzer interview the Reverend Johnnie Moore, Chairman of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Then I napped until 2 PM. Upon waking from my nap, I checked the Times of Israel, then listened on YouTube to 40 minutes of Dan Senor's interview with Ron Dermer on Call Me Back. At 3 PM I switched over to UN Web TV on my desktop computer and watched the 9959th Meeting of the UN Security Council , which lasted 3 hours and 15 minutes. After this, I reverted to YouTube on my smartphone and listened to The Gaza Paradox by Haviv Rettig Gur. Then I fell asleep from 7:30 PM to 10:30 PM, got up, brushed my teeth, made a cup ...

It's Wednesday at 8:29 AM. What does it mean to navigate the UN Charter? Well, there are two ways to think about this. For example, what does it mean to navigate the ocean, and what does it mean to navigate the USS Ocean? It's my job to navigate the Discerning Hermit blog through the waters of UN Charter implementation and reform. What did I last write of high-level importance on this issue? That would probably be  Exploring My Doubt, Reason, and Faith in a Reforming UN Charter , which I published on 14 May 2025 (also a Wednesday morning, but I don't want to fall into the trap of generalizing a Wednesday morning UN Charter review session into the rest of my summer quarter calendar as a consequence of the coincidence. I've made that kind of mistake in the past. What is apophenia and what is sound inductive reasoning? It can be hard for me to tell).  Now it's 8:48 AM. I want to review everything I have thus far blogged about UN Charter navigation, and relabel all of i...

My meditation cushion is next to the bookshelf where I keep my Orthodox Study Bible (OSB). During prayer this morning my eye landed upon the OSB, and I could not help but think about Psalm 151. I thought about it for a little while and then decided to jump ahead in my study of the Psalms. As I started to open the OSB, I made a rough guess with my thumb as to where Psalms would start. I n light of my  previous entry , i magine my surprise when I opened to Job 38:30! I quickly scanned Job 38:31-33 at the top left of the page.  Here is the text from the OSB: Do you understand the band of the Pleiades, And have you opened the fence of Orion? Will you open up the Mazzaroth in its season, And the evening star with his rays? Will you guide them? Do you know the movements of heaven Or the events which take place together under heaven? What should I make of this astounding synchronicity? Is it reasonable for me to conclude that the Bible is inspired, maybe even inerrant, and that I am ...

It's 4:25 AM on Wednesday. I woke about ten minutes ago to see Venus shining down on me through my bedroom window. Actually, I wasn't sure if it was Venus or Jupiter at first, because I haven't been keeping up closely with my cultural astronomy lately. I used a pair of Celestron 7x50 binoculars to get a closer look and picked up a faint orange star nearby. It looked almost like Saturn or Mars. Then I checked LUNA and saw that the main planet was definitely Venus in tropical Gemini, conjunct my natal Moon. Jupiter, for its part, is just crossing the horizon on the Ascendant in tropical Cancer. But what about that faint orange star? For this I turned to Stellarium, and quickly learned that it is Aldebaran. What is the spiritual or mythic significance of Aldebaran? I ask Google Gemini and learn that Aldebaran, the "Eye of Taurus," is known as the "Watcher of the East." It is associated with new beginnings, initiations, and the start of cycles. It is one of ...

It's 7:31 PM EDT on Tuesday and I have succeeded in reducing my YouTube playlist footprint to "Liked Videos" and "Watch Later." There are only two videos in "Watch Later," as you can see from the above screenshot. Now it is time to sink into Psalm 2 from Neumes and Tunes . I haven't enjoyed any music since listening to several versions of Psalm 1 on Sunday evening. Here is the description of the Neumes and Tunes channel: Neumes & Tunes is dedicated to serving God through the beauty of sacred music in a way that’s meaningful and accessible to modern audiences. We are told in the Psalms that “God is the king of all the earth” and to “sing ye wisely” (46:8). Here we are reminded that music is not only associated with pleasure, but morality as well — the sense of hearing as a sort of pathway to the soul. Wise men throughout the ages have taught that various rhythms and modes have the power to influence and shape the mind according to their distinc...

It's 10:25 AM on Tuesday and I am just settling back in at my computer workstation after a 45-minute walk and a 25-minute breakfast while listening on my earbuds to Friday Night Live #166: Experiencing God's Presence by Craig Wescoe for Creation Care Church. I was able to avoid all other YouTube impressions during my walk and during breakfast, but once I got to my desktop and started working on this post, I couldn't help but get somewhat distracted. YouTube knows me well. I've already noticed three other videos that feel like they could be "required" listening before the end of the week: Launch of the Sustainable Development Goals Report 2025 by the United Nations; The Paradox of Gaza by Ask Haviv Anything; and Part 1: Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer by Call Me Back Podcast. Okay, enough of that algorithm-driven, attention-getting YouTube sidebar. I just closed YouTube on my desktop and smartphone without adding anything to Watch Later. And my earbud...

It's 6:44 AM on Tuesday morning during Week 29 of 2025 as I begin to write this entry. Last night I finished clearing my backlog of open Google tabs with my final post  for Monday, and I haven't listened to anything on YouTube since Psalm 1 on Sunday evening. This won't seem like much to veteran hermits, I am sure, but for an aspiring novice like me, it's quite a bit of separation time from my online news and musical support system. During Operation Rising Lion, I was checking both my YouTube feed and the Times of Israel liveblog nearly every waking hour. That's a bit of an exaggeration, but not much. I think my next step after formal morning prayer today is to continue working away at my YouTube playlists on the journey to "YouTube Zero." Alright, I've made some progress. It is now 8:36 AM and the image at the top of this entry shows the first of my three remaining playlists. It is titled "01 Simplify" and it contains four videos that I ha...

This is an important question that came to mind as I was reading the fourth footnote after the abstract of  ‘I am an Israeli’: Christian Zionism as American redemption | Culture and Religion Vol 14, No 3 . Here is the section of the footnote that really grabbed my attention: Similarly, Joel 3:2 reads: ‘I will gather all nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. There I will put them on trial for what they did to my inheritance, my people Israel, because they scattered my people among the nations and divided up my land’ (NIV). Again, for Christian Zionists this is not only a historical promise, but also a future one. Any nation that contributes to the division of Israel—through the promotion of the creation of a Palestinian State—will receive God's punishment. For example, Pat Robertson famously claimed that Ariel Sharon's stroke was the result of divine punishment after Israel disengaged from Gaza. Although this kind of theodicy is often shied away from publicly...

Resolution of the "Three Oaths Problem" seems like an important area for deep theological work in Christian Zionism. I only have a limited amount of time left for my writing this Monday evening, and there is still much that I feel I need to get recorded before retiring, so I will try to confine this post to a set of links for further study:   Three Oaths | Wikipedia The Three Oaths and the Opposition to Zionism | Nefesh B'Nefesh The Blogs: Exposing the 'Anti-Zionist' Lie About the Talmudic 'Three Oaths' | Micah Ben David Naziri | The Times of Israel Kotzk Blog: 504) The ‘Three Oaths’: Theologies of Cancellation and Resurrection I've scanned all four articles and read the middle two fairly closely in their entirety. They are all salient. The contrast in the Wikipedia article between the Anti-Zionist Arguments and the Zionist Arguments is particularly helpful. Hopefully this is a subject I can return to for a second look. But I suppose I should say for...