At the end of May, Audrey and I made the trip to the Meuse-Argonne in France to see my grandfather’s battlefield of 100 years ago. My love of history and my conviction that 50-year segments of time are significant induced us to make the trip this year. Thanks to all the staff at Military Historical Tours of Woodbridge Virginia and a special thanks to John and Bob who went the extra “many” miles to put us on the 79th division’s battlefield. 

Sunday, November 3, 1918 my grandfather would often recall as his worst day, losing many buddies and experiencing  numerous personal close calls, as a sergeant in the 304^th engineers of the 79^th division of the US Army. The 79th was in the early stages of attempting to capture “Corn Willy Hill” from the Germans to take away the eyes of their artillery. That same German artillery had found the 304^th engineer train’s staging area on Samogneux hill just to the south thus the losses that Sunday. The 79^th would succeed in their mission but lose many good men over the next several days. However, November 3, 1918 always stuck out to my grandfather as his most perilous hours.

November 11 and the end of WW1 was only 8 days away, imagine the roller coaster of emotions in those early days of November 100 years ago. He and my grandmother (the girl he left behind) always celebrated November 11, Armistice Day, as the day they got their lives back.       

Our upcoming Veterans day on November 11, 2018 is 100 years in the making.

To all our veterans, Thank you for your service!

At Camp Mead ready to ship out. Summer 1918.

  The New Year which starts in few days will mark seven years since I finally understood Joseph’s story. This chart helps explain the Genesis One creation story’s paradigm of seven in the second half of Genesis. The Seven Years Jacob worked for Rachel is a “FOUR”. In other words it is a fourth set of seven years of a 50 year Jubilee cycle. Publishing this chart now is a small attempt to set a new standard of understanding as Year-Four begins.

For three years I have gently put my book and website out for public consumption. I was purposefully low key about the fact that this information can balance your emotions as you invest in the modern market place. I took this quite approach mostly because I value my credibility and the last thing I want is to be seen as just one more prognosticator. I have no interest in predicting the future but I am interested in learning how to think about the future based on the same information I believe Joseph creatively deployed in Egypt. In fact, I will go so far as to say I expect the blessings on Joseph and his sons found in Genesis 48:1-6, 49:22-26 and Deuteronomy 33:13-17 are being restored after a very long and painful ordeal.

In two weeks we enter the “Sprout and Flower” half of YEAR THREE.

Behind us is the revelation of chaos, “the let there be light” of YEAR ONE. The continued shaking, even beating or pounding of YEAR TWO which revealed to us a space for future life with chaos above and below. In the last six months we have identified some bare ground as the chaotic waters have been gathered to their places of rivers and seas.

So far very few see what we see, or expect what we expect. Most wonder why we work so hard at something which seems to yield nothing. However, we know what happens next, we know new life is just around the corner and we aim to have added our efforts to the Creator’s pattern. We have worked hard for seemingly little benefit because we know the paradigm of seven and believe in its creative effectiveness.

Here are a few thoughts for the next seven months, the second half of YEAR THREE.

The world of finance is being rankled by this strange new means of trade. Will Bitcoin or other types of crypto currency replace our dollars just like fiat paper dollars replaced gold and silver in the last century?

I really like this 11.5 minute video put out by Quartz  “What happens next?” It will make you think about the question “What is money?”

Just remember one thing, the creative pattern of seven segments of time is hard wired in our world and regardless what means of trade is being used the individual characteristic of each segment of time will continue to function as described in the revealed instructions.     

Each of us has a daily routine and by now we are pretty good at it. We know the best place to buy fuel for our vehicle, shop for food or buy the household goods or hardware needed for our family’s daily life. In other words, because we have practice at these things we do a pretty good job of making purchases for our day to day items. It’s also true that all these purchases are done in a none stressful, care free environment, no one tries to up-sell you at the grocery store or the gas station. In fact, today we pay at the pump for our fuel and many supermarkets now have self-check-out, therefore we can complete these transactions with no human interaction at all if we wish. Even at the hardware store the clerk is most likely laid back and there to be helpful.

However think about our big purchases, cars, trucks, homes, RVs. Notice that as the price tag goes up and the purchase becomes less frequent, the companies who sell these things see to it that human interaction is the main focus of these transactions and rightly so as we often do need help as we are unfamiliar with the product and in many cases the typical means of financing. Thus, the value of sales staff for the customer and business is obvious. Yes, it is possible to buy many of these things without sales folk, but most of us will not, as we value the hand holding a knowledgeable sales staff provides.

I still remember the first time I went to make a purchase that I really had no idea how to quantify the value of the item.  Having grown up in a very conservative no-jewelry household I experienced deep angst upon attempting to buy a diamond engagement ring for my intended bride. I also did not know anyone who could guide me in the process and since it was to be a secret until “the moment” I could not make a lot of inquires. The good news is I did find an acceptable ring, Audrey said yes and that diamond is still part of her jewelry collection, now on a pendent as the diamond ring needed to be upgraded a few years ago.   

This week we remember the 508-point, 22.6% stock market crash of October 19, 1987

In the summer of 1987 I had levered up, borrowing to buy a house and also committed to purchase a business. Watching TV that night my thoughts turned to my grandfather who, though an orphan, had worked himself into a position to buy a farm in the late 1920’s. Only to lose it in the Great Depression which was triggered by the stock market crash of October 1929. Obviously, he had borrowed lots of money and when the farm was repossessed his equity was wiped out. My thought that night was: “Are the Miller’s just unlucky?”

As the sub heading of this blog says “This is where I write to figure out what I think”. This post may be more about the “What do I think?” exercise than usual so please bear with me. It is not my purpose to stray too deep into this subject but there are some very interesting quirks that exist in our world. When I am done my hope is that the reader will be all the more convinced of the wisdom of considering the 7 and 50 rhymes (i.e. the biblical moedim) in their decision making.

 For two years now negativity has seemed to be truth. Those who speak negativity are often seen as smarter than those who are optimistic. None-the-less for these two years we have had our instruction “be creative” – “work”. At times we optimistic souls have been told that our efforts will be for naught .

For some time, I have proposed that the modern 24/7/365 culture we live is damaging us. Our modern world has eliminated even the natural order of sleep time with our electric lights and electronic devices of entertainment and communication. Our consumer society wants 24-hour service and our businesses advertise their availability 24 hours a day – seven days a week, with the certainty that such service is a virtue. Is 24 hours a day – seven days a week service a virtue? Consider this instruction out of Deuteronomy.   

“And beware not to lift up your eyes to heaven and see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, and be drawn away and worship them and serve them, those which the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven.” Deuteronomy 4:19

What did the ancient worshipers of the sun, moon and the stars see when they worshiped all the host of heaven? What was it that intrigued them and made them think of the sun and the moon and the stars as “gods”? As this picture demonstrates, when the shutter of a camera is opened at night, the stars in their courses are always moving.

Knowing that the human body needs sleep could it be that the ancients thought of these celestial beings as “gods”, because they were always moving, never stopping? Did they think of these always moving “gods” as an ideal to be copied?

Those on this journey of 6 days and a rest, might want to read The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds, by Michael Lewis. Here is how the book is pitched on Amazon: How a Nobel Prize–winning theory of the mind altered our perception of reality.

Forty years ago, Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote a series of breathtakingly original studies undoing our assumptions about the decision-making process. Their papers showed the ways in which the human mind erred, systematically, when forced to make judgments in uncertain situations. Their work created the field of behavioral economics, revolutionized Big Data studies, advanced evidence-based medicine, led to a new approach to government regulation, and made much of Michael Lewis’s own work possible. Kahneman and Tversky are more responsible than anybody for the powerful trend to mistrust human intuition and defer to algorithms.