Caption text here

I had an allergic fit yesterday, causing an intense headache which some people would think hurt a lot, I thought to myself

So I went to sleep; I slept the whole day and it didn’t go away, so I slept the whole night too

Woke up next day at 08:00 feeling tired, really exhausted, isn’t that odd? Must’ve slept 16 hours? Or more? But, there was no headache

I really appreciate the absence of headache

And the sun shining down on me from up above through the foliage on this walkway where I walk facing the breeze

Walk with feet planted broadly like some sort of cowboy

Or sheriff

this world makes absolutely no sense to me.

The older I get, the less I know

speaking terms / heat wave — snail mail

i into started listening to lush because i wanted to post a spotify link of my favorite song on twitter, all in attempts to get a like from a hot guy i (briefly) met at a house party. that aside, these two songs are some of the best indie rock to come out in recent memory. i’m most impressed with jordan’s guitar playing, switching between pretty abrasive strumming patterns and intricate finger plucking seamlessly. these songs also pair narratively: speaking terms seems to have the narrator assert their agency over an unloving partner insisting that they have unknowingly gone too far. despite this, heat wave starts with (presumably) the same speaker, waking up in their clothes having dreamt of them. we also can’t forget:

and i hope whoever it is holds their breath around you 'cause i know i did

on an oddly specific personal note, this song represents expansion. i remember looping this album as it accompanied me walking in between classes my freshman year of college. how crazy was it to be free for the first time?

detour / need for speed / basketball — kim petras

she needed a win so bad that she pulled out an unreleased sophie demo… this shit means something to her!!! no but seriously, i was really impressed with this album in an unexpected way. granted, i’ve been off kim petras since feed the beast came out with lackluster reviews, all of which she probably agrees with given her intentional (and 100% initiated) move away from massive record labels that have stifled her creative vision. even before that… wasn’t there an n-word scandal brought up by old tweets?

aside: i think we forget that miss petras was at the center of hyperpop before its transitional period to becoming that much more mainstream. this was back when charli xcx was signing douches at meet and greets after concerts and every self-proclaimed Twitter Gay was sending mine by slayyyter to all of his mutuals.

anyway… i’m glad she was able to independently create this project with a series of top notch producers like frost children and margo xs given that classic bubblegum pop sound with bright synths and opaque percussion was flattened by previous collaborators in her record label projects.

funny — broncho

i listened to this song when the weather just started to get warm in toronto after what felt like an eternal winter. spring was totally eclipsed by subpar temperatures and the need to put on a sweater every time you left the house in early may—basically an attack on my entire bloodline who lived in dewey temperatures for most of the year. ryan lindsey’s lyrics washed over me as the sun hit my skin not as a relief from cold but a reminder of warmth re: take a moment / for a moment / and i liked it.

the feeling — steve lacy

his voice has persisted throughout his progression as an artist. even if the production value increases, the writing remains honest and unique to lacy. i’m often wondering if the narrators in his songs are aware of their ego. in the feeling, he asks if he’s still cared for (am i your baby?) and states an eagerness to rekindle a toxic relationship (i’m not scared to bleed, you know our history).

the video for this song reminds me a lot of what he did for playground—a dreamy sequence of scattered, colorful visuals punctuated with lacy singing to the camera right in the foreground. he needs to keep kathleen heffernan on his production team ALWAYS!

Have you ever had a tension headache? Or a study, thinking headache? That tired feeling in your brain after doing a lot of learning — probably you felt it during your highschool exams and college thesis times, probably you felt it when you were trying to learn something new and really struggling. That’s because… learning things isn’t easy. Your brain has to do a lot of work, running through existing connections and building new ones. Over the course of my career as a software developer I became aware that the more I felt I was struggling, the more I was probably learning. It was only weeks or months after the fact that I could reflect and conclude, “oh, I was having a tough time because I was doing something new — and here’s what I learned”.

Learning thing is hard actually

I once experienced this most dramatically when things ‘clicked’ for me in Object-Oriented Programming. I’d been bashing my head against code for months. My approach was to just copy code from examples and tutorials, assert that it works (through mostly manual tests at the time — we’re talking 2003 – 2005 after all), and mumbling to myself “I don’t know why this works but it does”. I learned that in order to understand something, I first needed to put up with the frustration of not understanding it.

Now, everyone learns in different ways. Some people do great by just absorbing an entire manual and then know everything that was in it. Some people do best when watching videos, or having a teacher/mentor explain it to them. Me, I learn best through imitation, followed by examining what I just copied. “I built something that worked, because I did it like this — but why does that work?” Rather than making sure I get it all perfect and understand it perfectly before I build anything, I learn by doing and then reflecting on what I did. (I daresay I’m not unique in this and in fact most developers learn like this, which is why they’re great developers.)

I remember quite vividly the first time I typed something in Java like Button button = new Button(); At that point, I didn’t know what a class was, or an instance, or an object. I just knew I typed four words and three of those were the same word and I thought that was really funny. And that amusement spiked my curiosity and so I learned what those words meant in that context.

Why am I saying all this? Because obviously, nobody wants to learn anymore.

I think with the advent of AI everything, we’ve kind of forgotten that learning things is inherently taxing, frustrating, difficult, time-consuming, and just like, annoying to do. It burns energy, it gives you a headache, it might even make you feel bad about yourself. Because that’s what learning feels like! You don’t start at A and then magically, frictionlessly, arrive at Z. You gotta walk the steps.

But AI allows us to skip many of those steps. It has the capacity to think so you don’t have to, then give you the bullet-list, bolded-keywords, easily-readable version. But in my previously established pattern of learning, if AI writes the code for me, and I then review it by asking about what it just wrote, maybe I’m still learning, though? Maybe… maybe not.

Because I also distinctly remember typing over the example was much more effective than copy-pasting. In a similar vein, if you really want to commit something to your brain, write it down with your own hand. Physically. On paper.

There’s increasing amounts of research pointing to how increased use of LLMs decreases your brain’s capacity to think critically and learn things on its own. “Dumber” or “stupider” is quite a incendiary label, and I prefer to be a bit more precise about it, but the accumulation of cognitive debt is a real thing. And that’s because of the alphabet-journey I described earlier. If you’re skipping steps, you may get there faster, easier; but you simply won’t have picked up the learning along the way (the ‘debt’ the research points to).

Now think about how much time and effort you’ve spent during about the first 20 years of your life in education. School was hard work. Homework sucked. Studying for exams and taking them was so tough you might still have dreams about it. Writing your thesis, pretty much one of the toughest things you ever did cognitively, at least, up until that point. This is not to overvalue traditional education (there are plenty other ways to learn – on the job, self-taught, and so on). But my point is, none of that was easy. Your brain was working hard.

And it’s beautiful. (Source: Unseen details of human brain structure revealed, Google Research & Lichtman Lab, Harvard University. Renderings by D. Berger, Harvard)

I’ve been thinking about this a lot because I had a period last year where I was using LLMs quite intensively. I didn’t feel like I was getting dumber at the time, but that’s the thing, if I was then how would I know? This is the cognitive pitfall – if you are truly losing your cognitive thinking skills then you won’t be able to entirely catch and prevent that from happening. That’s what alarmed me. I was like, “well, I think I’m critically reviewing this thing’s output and still using my own thoughts and judgment but if I wasn’t then how could I be sure?”

The answer maybe is “if you’re at least still questioning that, then you’re good”. At the very least, it’s probably better to doubt yourself, than to just assume whatever the LLM responds with is always correct. If you’re not verifying the output in any way, then you’ve probably already been led astray and you’re not even aware of it…

Anyway, I’ve only been talking about learning so far, but there’s another aspect to this I want to bring up: creation.

Creating things is also not easy, turns out

Just like learning, making things is hard. Truly sitting down and making something out of nothing with your own mind and body is difficult, time-consuming, exhausting, challenging… and you often have to do it a lot, and deliberately, to even have it turn out kinda decent. This was humanity’s shared truth for a long time. Even when things came along that made creation more convenient, it still wasn’t easy. It required real cognitive effort. It’s why professional artists, musicians, writers, will often struggle with a creative ‘block’ where they just can’t synthesize something new; because it’s just that hard sometimes. Especially if they’re faced with their own perfectionism: knowing from talent or expertise what they want the result to be, and then not being able to get there.

The process of creation, and the process of learning, are very similar. When you make something, you are learning, and like me in order to learn anything you often have to go through the process of creation. An obvious example is knitting: you can’t learn how to knit by just watching videos. Your hands have to actually make something. A scarf, a beanie, a blanket. You make mistakes along the way, and you learn, and your knitting improves. You make less mistakes. Your stitches are more uniform. You knit faster.

AI makes it trivial to make something out of nothing. Using only a prompt, you can generate entire essays, songs, graphics, animations. I wonder if it’s because historically we’re used to creation being hard, thus valuable, that we haven’t adjusted to this reality where creation is easy, but we still value it as if it cost a real person blood, sweat and tears — when in fact it just cost you tokens. Because I’m curious and want to understand things I actually played around with these generators, and I found that the quantity is huge and the quality is just… not there. Certainly not the specific quality that I appreciate in any creation, which is the human quality.

I mean, you’re reading a blog post where every word was typed by me (yes, really!) I’m the woman who burst into tears the first time I saw The Sunflowers by Van Gogh and The Water Lilies by Monet. Real, human-made art affects me deeply, and I’m kind of hyper-sensitive to any creation that doesn’t have it.

That’s why over the past months I’ve grown increasingly frustrated and exhausted and annoyed with the AI slop that is just… everywhere. You see, I don’t necessarily mind if things are made with the help of AI (‘help’ doing a lot of heavy lifting in that phrase) Like, I get it, especially in a corporate context. We want more profit faster and what better way to get it than with automation instead of slower more expensive humans? (Although by now it seems humans are the cheaper option.)

What just truly grates me is the bad quality of it. Hands with too many fingers, graphs that are melting, words that are mangled, eyes that just aren’t quite right. Every blog post and LinkedIn post that now just reads the exact same effing way (which is why I am adamant about typing every word here, and if it still ‘sounds like’ LLM-speak that’s because I have unfortunately been influenced by reading and using it too much). Every single time I read “That’s not X, that’s Y” or a bullet-point list with sentences that don’t really say anything. UX designs that all look the same. Video thumbnails that all look the same. Everything is just the same, uninspired, AI-generated sludge. And it sucks, and it’s boring, and it’s just a waste of time to read/watch and a waste of resources to generate.

We can do better. Even if you want to generate things to get a headstart or whatever, you can still use your own judgment, add your own flavor. Hell, if you’re adamant about generating all your social posts at least teach the LLM to write like you so it’s not the same as every post out there nowadays.

Humans are imperfect, so everything we make ourselves is imperfect, which is exactly what makes anything interesting. I love reading something that’s clearly written in someone’s own voice and style. I love listening to music and seeing visual art where I can tell it has the maker’s characteristics there. Not everything has to be smoothed over. More importantly, if everything that’s created is the same, then why even do it? What’s the added value if it’s not expressing who we are and what our own story is? Am I the only one deeply annoyed by how samey everything is getting? (That’s separate from every other criticism leveraged against AI, mind you.)

The real kicker is, as I said, I’m not fully opposed to it. But what I see happening is that the “actual helpful use cases” are blurring together with “garbage output”, probably exactly because using LLMs intensively decreases your critical thinking skills. In other words, you might start out using it critically for specific applications, and end up not being able to distinguish quality stock photography from melting architecture and polydactyl people. You stop seeing what the big issue is. Endless LinkedIn posts full of “That’s not X. That’s Y” don’t even bother you anymore. You’re deep into the slop pool and the feeling of everything being that same gooey AI texture starts to be comfortable, like your mind sinking into digital oatmeal.

I’m not comfortable, here. I keep trying to use AI tools in meaningful ways, but I can’t do that and also tolerate all expressions of human creation and communication turning into grey goop.

There is real, measureable, significant value in the things we make ourselves and in the process of learning and creation, exactly because it’s hard. So go out there and make something yourself today! It’s worth the effort.

Because effort isn’t the enemy. Every blog post written like this is.

Especially if it ends like this—hitting hard.

With lots of periods.

And em-dashes.

HELP MAKE IT STOP NOOOooo—

Watching an old episode of Stargate SG-1.

And the adventure continues.

Among YouTube's better suggestions was to start showing me – around three or four years ago – home-made videos by the New York-based trio New Jazz Underground: this one, for example. For some time thereafter I kept up with their activity on Bandcamp, hoping for some of their music to appear on CD or vinyl. More time passed and eventually I stopped looking. By happy coincidence though, just last week something else on YouTube alerted me to the recent arrival of the trio's debut album Hoodies. A copy arrived here on Friday.

It's great to finally hear them playing in a studio setting, where their talent & technique shines, with no loss of the soulfulness & spontaneous charm that was obvious in their YouTube days. Most of the compositions on the album are by bassist Sebastian Rios, and he performs solo on one of the tracks – the marvellous ‘Las Salinas (Prelude)’. Saxophonist Abdias Armenteros demonstrates a clear and beautiful tone — not to mention a fine singing voice, which we hear on two songs. Drummer TJ Reddick meanwhile demonstrates equal facility with metronomic grooves and more elastic time-keeping. It’s a highly enjoyable record.

---

Another week, another old anthology of translated poetry, this one German Poetry 1910-1975, edited and translated by the estimable Michael Hamburger. It's a successor volume to an earlier one (Modern German Poetry 1910-1960) that he had co-edited with Christopher Middleton. In his introduction, Hamburger writes that, in place of the ill-defined notion of ‘modernity’, he substituted “a criterion quite as vague in itself, but meaningful as soon as it is applied to specific poems, specific poets: the criterion of authenticity, an authenticity usually bound up with novelty of one kind or another...”

I was already at least slightly familiar with the work of a number of the poets included (Rilke, Trakl, Brecht, Huchel, Bobrowski, Celan, Bachmann & Enzensberger). Among those whose names were new to me a couple that stood out were Yvan Goll and Ernst Meister. Also very interesting were the poems by authors better known for their prose: Robert Walser, Thomas Bernhard, Günter Grass & Peter Handke. The book is organised chronologically by the poets’ year or birth, which works well up until the end, where a variety of the youngest authors (perhaps then still not well-established names) are represented a little unsatisfactorily by a page or two apiece.

---

Cheese of the week – Baron Bigod, which must be up there among the best of English cheeses, akin to a very good Brie de Meaux. From the Fen Farm Dairy website: “Beneath the nutty, mushroomy rind, Baron Bigod has a smooth, silky golden breakdown which will often ooze out over a delicate, fresh and citrussy centre.” I first tasted it a few years ago, since when I've returned to it several times, finding it reliably excellent. I bought a ‘Baby’ 250g cheese (Fig. 26) from the Town Gate Butcher's shop in Chepstow on Saturday.

Photo by AS Photography from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/purple-petaled-flowers-in-mortar-and-pestle-105028/

“HERBALISM AND HEALTH RESOURCES I’VE USED”:

https://filedn.com/ljIKsiFxDsuSKJBJorqrS74/Herbalism%20and%20Health%20resources%20I've%20used%206-8-26.mp4

Camp Nelson Military Cemetery – image by Loran Joly on Armed Forces Day, 2026

These days, someone’s death certificate may say someone has died “of’ “HEART DISEASE”, “CANCER”, or “ACCIDENTS”, ….

CAUSE OF DEATH?

The MODERN AGE?

An age FULL of ANGER and FEAR?

I introduce this article I wrote, today, and it has information on herbs, as per Dr. Edward Bach, and much, much more:

“Cause of Death: The Actual Causes or the PSEUDO-Causes?”:

https://medium.com/@loranjoly/cause-of-death-the-actual-causes-or-the-pseudo-causes-f9383503c1f2

We might also see:

“The Neurotic Personality of Our Time – Karen Horney – Summary”:

https://youtu.be/WMGE4C4AD_0?si=UCGuvGsdbBLCSDkb

Something for the men in the audience because I think a lot of us don’t necessarily get explicit training on this.

I was fortunate enough to be trained as a high school teacher, so I did get explicit instruction on this: I was told to not be alone with students with the door closed, to not touch or hug students, and to be constantly aware of, basically, the worst possible interpretation someone could put on your conduct.

“But I’m not a teacher!” you say. Okay, but the same rule applies. You’re gregarious and social and want to talk to people but have no creepy intent? Sorry, but creepy guys have ruined this for you.

“It’s not fair for people to assume I’m creepy!” That is true. It’s also not fair that women get sexually harassed. They’re playing the odds here, willing to forgo knowledge of you personally in order to protect themselves from potential creeps. You don’t want women to consider you a potential creep? You need to go out of your way to show them that you’re not.

Let’s start with physical space. If possible (obviously if you’re jammed into a packed subway car it’s not, but otherwise), give women more space than you think they need. And if you’re walking in the same direction as them, maybe cross the street or slow down to give them space or speed up to get past them. Just send the message that you are about your own business and not trying to interact with them. “Geez! That seems like a lot of work!” It’s not actually that much work. It’s just a small exercise in empathy. Now obviously if you’re on a crowded street it’s different, but if you’re the only ones on the block? Especially if it’s nightttime? Give her some space. Now give her some more space.

Now on to conversations. Again, you need to remember that every time you open your mouth to talk to a woman you don’t know, you’re setting off her creep alarm. Perhaps your intentions are innocent, but what’s happening here is especially unfair because you get to be relaxed and she gets to be tense, waiting for the conversation to take a turn, or just resentful because she doesn’t get to decide whether she’s having a conversation on this flight.

“But people like to talk to me!” Do they, though? Because you should know that most women are very good at humoring men. Perhaps they’re like the woman I saw on a recent train ride who spent the entire length of Connecticut being regaled by a guy, said, “it was such a pleasure to talk to you!” to him as she got off the train, and then slumped, laughing and exhausted, against her companion as soon as she was off the train and out of sight.

Now if you’re a gay man or a trans man, do these rules still apply? Yep! You still need to give women personal space and assume they don’t want to talk to you.

But what if you’re neurodivergent? Irrelevant! Giving women extra space and not forcing conversation on women are within the capability of every single neurodivergent person I know. Except for the ones who use their neurodivergence as an excuse for being an asshole. Don’t be that guy.

But how will I flirt and find a romantic and/or sexual partner? By meeting someone at a party, or being introduced by friends, or because you’re both working in your community garden plots or because your kids are in the same first grade class or whatever! Demonstrate that you are a person with interests and not just a random perv, and then women will talk to you! If they feel like! And not if they don’t! And that’s okay!

This marks the day before my last day. It could be one day, one week, one month, or longer… only time will tell how long I'll be out. I have not felt the same amount of motivation to track this blog as I did last week when I started, but I think that is what makes it a good challenge. I also think the emotional toll will start showing more as we continue.

Now I feel like I procrastinated the last bit of what I have to do and left it entirely for the last day. I need to finish up between today and tomorrow so we will keep this short.

This is my last Monday. I feel tired today and don’t have much else to say…

I would have probably sat with some uncomfortable feelings today had I not signed myself up to volunteer for eight hours. I am dreading the next few days of work a little bit, but mostly because it is my last three days and I am feeling tired. There is also the fact that I don’t actually have any work to do so I am really just going to hang out but not do anything besides sit at a desk in front of a computer. I can’t even try to make myself useful, since I would only be able to complete projects that don’t take more than three days.

It hasn’t fully hit me that after Wednesday my schedule will look a little different. I am taking it one day at a time, but I am ready for rest and time to reevaluate a lot in my life.

Where is my God in this moment of abandonment?

And here I am, having to find a way to say goodbye.

Ground I have learned well, A road become well traveled.

For what else is there but to live in the desert of my existence, apart from you— the only real oasis I have ever known.

So go— send me to my banishment, like Moses in his wandering years.

Only my return will not herald deliverance, nor lead anyone home— only mark the end of a long, lonely life,

that grows lonelier still.

---

I cannot wait to see you again... to feel you again.

To hear the air vibrate from you again.

---

#poetry #wyst #FM

When a people forgets how to blush, warning becomes mercy’s final language.

Jeremiah 4–6 is a fierce warning that Judah and Jerusalem have reached a breaking point: Jehovah calls them to return sincerely, not with ritual or empty words, but with cleansed hearts and real justice. The people refuse correction, trust false promises of peace, exploit the vulnerable, and reject the “good way,” so disaster from the north is pictured as an unstoppable invasion. Yet even in judgment, Jehovah says he will not make a complete extermination, leaving a narrow thread of mercy inside an otherwise terrifying message.

Jeremiah 4

“If you will return, O Israel,” declares Jehovah, “If you will return to me And if you will remove your disgusting idols from before me, Then you will not be a fugitive. And if you swear, ‘As surely as Jehovah is alive!’ in truth, justice, and righteousness, Then the nations will obtain a blessing for themselves by him, And in him they will boast.”

For this is what Jehovah says to the men of Judah and to Jerusalem: “Plow for yourselves arable land, And do not keep sowing among thorns. Circumcise yourselves to Jehovah, And remove the foreskins of your hearts, You men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, So that my wrath may not blaze up like a fire And burn with no one to extinguish it, Because of your evil deeds.”

Declare it in Judah, and proclaim it in Jerusalem. Shout and blow a horn throughout the land. Call out loudly and say: “Gather together, And let us flee into the fortified cities. Raise a signal toward Zion. Seek shelter, and do not stand still,” For I am bringing in calamity from the north, a great crash. He has emerged like a lion from his thicket; The destroyer of nations has set out. He has gone out from his place to make your land an object of horror. Your cities will be reduced to ruins, without an inhabitant. Therefore, put on sackcloth, Mourn and wail, Because the burning anger of Jehovah has not turned away from us.

“In that day,” declares Jehovah, “the heart of the king will fail him, Also the heart of the princes; The priests will be horrified, and the prophets will be amazed.”

Then I said: “Alas, O Sovereign Lord Jehovah! Truly you have utterly deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying, ‘You will have peace,’ when the sword is at our throats.”

At that time it will be said to this people and to Jerusalem: “A scorching wind from the barren hills of the desert Will sweep down on the daughter of my people; It is not coming to winnow or to cleanse. The full wind comes from these places at my bidding. Now I will pronounce judgments against them. Look! He will come like rain clouds, And his chariots are like a storm wind. His horses are swifter than eagles. Woe to us, for we are ruined! Wash your heart clean of wickedness, O Jerusalem, in order to be saved. How long will you harbor wicked thoughts? For a voice tells the news from Dan, And it proclaims disaster from the mountains of Eʹphra·im. Report it, yes, to the nations; Proclaim it against Jerusalem.”

“Sentinels are coming from a distant land, And they will raise their voices against the cities of Judah. They come against her on all sides like guards of the open field, Because she has rebelled against me,” declares Jehovah.

“Your own ways and your actions will be brought upon you. How bitter is your disaster, For it reaches clear to your heart!”

O my anguish, my anguish! I feel great pain in my very heart. My heart pounds within me. I cannot keep silent, For I have heard the sound of the horn, The alarm signal of war. Disaster after disaster has been reported, For the whole land has been destroyed. Suddenly my own tents are destroyed, In a moment my tent cloths. How long will I keep seeing the signal, Keep hearing the sound of the horn?

“For my people are foolish; They take no note of me. They are stupid sons, with no understanding. They are clever enough when it comes to doing bad, But they do not know how to do good.”

I saw the land, and look! it was empty and desolate. I looked at the heavens, and their light was no more. I saw the mountains, and look! they were quaking, And the hills were shaking. I saw, and look! there was no man, And the birds of the heavens had all fled. I saw, and look! the orchard had become a wilderness, And its cities had all been torn down. It was because of Jehovah, Because of his burning anger.

For this is what Jehovah says: “The whole land will become desolate, But I will not carry out a complete extermination. For this reason the land will mourn, And the heavens above will become dark. It is because I have spoken, I have decided, And I will not change my mind, nor will I turn back from it. At the sound of the horsemen and the archers, The entire city flees. They enter into the thickets, And they climb the rocks. Every city is abandoned, And no man dwells in them.”

Now that you are devastated, what will you do? You used to clothe yourself with scarlet, To deck yourself with gold ornaments, And to enlarge your eyes with black paint. But it is in vain that you beautified yourself, For those lusting after you have rejected you; They are now seeking to take your life. For I have heard the sound like that of a sick woman, The distress like that of a woman giving birth to her first child, The voice of the daughter of Zion who keeps gasping for breath. She says as she spreads out her palms: “Woe to me, for I am exhausted because of the killers!”

Jeremiah 5

Roam the streets of Jerusalem. Look around and take note. Search her public squares to see Whether you can find a man who acts with justice, One who seeks to be faithful, And I will forgive her. Even if they say: “As surely as Jehovah is alive!” They would still swear to what is false. O Jehovah, do your eyes not look for faithfulness? You struck them, but it made no impact on them. You exterminated them, but they refused to accept discipline. They made their faces harder than a rock, And they refused to turn around.

But I said to myself: “Surely these must be the lowly. They act foolishly, for they do not know the way of Jehovah, The judgment of their God. I will go to the prominent men and speak with them, For they must have taken note of the way of Jehovah, The judgment of their God. But they had all broken the yoke And torn apart the restraints.”

That is why a lion of the forest attacks them, A wolf of the desert plains keeps ravaging them, A leopard lies awake at their cities. Everyone going out from them is torn to pieces. For their transgressions are many; Their acts of unfaithfulness are numerous.

How can I forgive you for this? Your sons have abandoned me, And they swear by what is no God. I satisfied their needs, But they kept committing adultery, And they flocked to the house of a prostitute. They are like eager, lustful horses, Each neighing after another man’s wife.

“Should I not call them to account for these things?” declares Jehovah. “Should I not avenge myself on such a nation?”

“Come up against her vineyard terraces and bring ruin, But do not make a complete extermination. Take away her spreading shoots, For they do not belong to Jehovah. For the house of Israel and the house of Judah Have been utterly treacherous with me,” declares Jehovah.

“They have denied Jehovah, and they keep saying, ‘He will do nothing. No calamity will come upon us; We will not see sword or famine.’ The prophets are full of wind, And the word is not in them. Let this happen to them!”

Therefore this is what Jehovah, the God of armies, says: “Because these men are saying this, Here I am making my words a fire in your mouth, And this people is the wood, And it will consume them.”

“Here I am bringing in on you a nation from far away, O house of Israel,” declares Jehovah. “It is an enduring nation. It is an ancient nation, A nation whose language you do not know, And whose speech you cannot understand. Their quiver is like an open grave; All of them are warriors. They will devour your harvest and your bread. They will devour your sons and your daughters. They will devour your flocks and your herds. They will devour your vines and your fig trees. They will destroy with the sword your fortified cities in which you trust.”

“But even in those days,” declares Jehovah, “I will not carry out a complete extermination of you. And when they ask, ‘Why has Jehovah our God done all these things to us?’ you should answer them, ‘Just as you abandoned me to serve a foreign god in your land, so you will serve foreigners in a land that is not yours.’”

Declare this in the house of Jacob, And proclaim it in Judah, saying: “Hear this, you foolish and senseless people: They have eyes but cannot see; They have ears but cannot hear. ‘Do you not fear me?’ declares Jehovah, ‘Should you not tremble before me? It is I who placed the sand as the boundary for the sea, A permanent regulation that it cannot pass over. Although its waves toss, they cannot prevail; Although they roar, they still cannot pass beyond it. But this people has a stubborn and rebellious heart; They have turned aside and gone their own way. And they do not say in their heart: “Let us now fear Jehovah our God, The One who gives the rain in its season, Both the autumn rain and the spring rain, The One who guards for us the appointed weeks of the harvest.” Your own errors have prevented these things from coming; Your own sins have deprived you of what is good. For among my people there are wicked men. They keep peering, as when birdcatchers crouch down. They set a deadly trap. It is men whom they catch. Like a cage full of birds, So their houses are full of deception. That is why they have become powerful and rich. They have grown fat and smooth; They overflow with evil. They do not plead the legal case of the fatherless, That they may gain success; And they deny justice to the poor.’”

“Should I not call them to account for these things?” declares Jehovah. “Should I not avenge myself on such a nation? Something appalling and horrible has occurred in the land: The prophets prophesy lies, And the priests dominate by their own authority. And my own people love it that way. But what will you do when the end comes?”

Jeremiah 6

Take shelter, O sons of Benjamin, away from Jerusalem. Blow the horn in Te·koʹa; Light a fire signal over ! For a calamity looms from the north, a great disaster. The daughter of Zion resembles a beautiful and delicate woman. The shepherds and their droves will come. They will pitch their tents all around her, Each grazing the flock in his care.

“Prepare for war against her! Rise up, and let us attack her at midday!” “Woe to us, for the day is declining, For the shadows of evening are getting longer!” “Rise up, and let us attack during the night And destroy her fortified towers.”

For this is what Jehovah of armies says: “Cut down wood and raise up a siege rampart against Jerusalem. She is the city that must be held to account; There is nothing but oppression within her. As a cistern keeps its water cool, So she keeps her wickedness cool. Violence and destruction are heard in her; Sickness and plague are constantly before me. Be warned, O Jerusalem, or I will turn away from you in disgust; I will make you desolate, a land without inhabitants.”

This is what Jehovah of armies says: “They will thoroughly glean the remnant of Israel as the last grapes on a vine. Pass your hand again like one gathering grapes from the vines.”

“To whom should I speak and give warning? Who will listen? Look! Their ears are closed, so that they are unable to pay attention. Look! The word of Jehovah has become something they scorn; They find no pleasure in it. So I am filled with the wrath of Jehovah, And I am tired of holding it in.”

“Pour it out on the child in the street, On the groups of young men gathered together. They will all be captured, a man along with his wife, The old men along with the very old. Their houses will be turned over to others, Together with their fields and their wives. For I will stretch my hand out against the inhabitants of the land,” declares Jehovah.

“For from the least to the greatest, each one is making dishonest gain; From the prophet to the priest, each one is practicing fraud. And they try to heal the breakdown of my people lightly, saying, ‘There is peace! There is peace!’ When there is no peace. Do they feel ashamed of the detestable things they have done? They feel no shame at all! They do not even know how to feel humiliated! So they will fall among the fallen. When I bring punishment on them they will stumble,” says Jehovah.

This is what Jehovah says: “Stand at the crossroads and see. Ask about the ancient roadways, Ask where the good way is, and walk in it, And find rest for yourselves.” But they say: “We will not walk in it.”

“And I appointed watchmen who said, ‘Pay attention to the sound of the horn!’” But they said: “We will not pay attention.”

“Therefore hear, O nations! And know, O assembly, What will happen to them. Listen, O earth! I am bringing calamity on this people As the fruitage of their own schemes, For they paid no attention to my words And they rejected my law.”

“What do I care that you bring frankincense from Sheʹba And sweet cane from a distant land? Your whole burnt offerings are not acceptable, And your sacrifices do not please me.”

Therefore this is what Jehovah says: “Here I am setting for this people stumbling blocks, And they will stumble over them, Fathers and sons together, A neighbor and his companion, And they will all perish.”

This is what Jehovah says: “Look! A people is coming from the land of the north, And a great nation will be awakened from the remotest parts of the earth. They will grab hold of the bow and the javelin. They are cruel and will have no mercy. Their voice will roar like the sea, And they ride on horses. They draw up in battle order like a man of war against you, O daughter of Zion.”

We have heard the report about it. Our hands fall limp; Distress has seized us, Anguish like that of a woman giving birth. Do not go out into the field, And do not walk on the road, For the enemy has a sword; There is terror all around. O daughter of my people, Put on sackcloth and roll in the ashes. Mourn as for an only son, with bitter wailing, For suddenly the destroyer will come upon us.

“I have made you a metal tester among my people, One making a thorough search; You must take note and examine their way. All of them are the most stubborn men, Walking about as slanderers. They are like copper and iron; All of them are corrupt. The bellows have been scorched. Out from their fire there is lead. One keeps refining intensely simply for nothing, And those who are bad have not been separated. Rejected silver is what people will certainly call them, For Jehovah has rejected them.”

---

#BIBLE #JEREMIAH #reading