Hello everyone! My week stay in Atlanta was wonderful! I have photos to post up from my 2 book signings for SALSA!. They will be up soon. Now, I am happy to announce I’ll be having another book signing at the Book Boutique located on 19 W. Pacific Ave. Henderson, NV. So please mark Saturday, February 23rd on your calendar because I want to see you there from 12 to 2pm.
Tag: Latin
Vegas Valley Book Festival 2012
I participated in this year’s Vegas Valley Book Festival today! My books didn’t come in yet so I didn’t have any to sell at this event. So I had some flyers made up and I went there anyway to enjoy the day, meet new people and get the word out about Salsa! the Taste of Life, my new book. I don’t let anything stop me!
As it turned out, I am glad I went and there was a happy surprise! I was able to read excerpts from Salsa! in front of a captive audience. I love it when things fall together better than when I plan them . I call that serendipity. Here are some pictures from the event. I plan to attend the next one in 2013 and I am sure I will have books to sell then. “When life hands me lemons, I bake a lemon merengue pie!!” -Eva 😀
-Eva Santiago copyright 2012
I Like How it Feels!!
I’ve been pouring over my proof copy of SALSA! The Taste of Life, my new book coming out soon to your local bookstores. It occurred to me that I am in a great place in my life right now ! Then this song popped in my head and so I had to share it with you, my amazing audience. So now I’ll get back to some more weeding out of last minute typos! HAPPY LABOR DAY 🙂
365 Snap Shots of Life Day: 204
Salsa! The Taste of Life, my new book is soon to be released and here is another one of my edited poems. Life is a dance! Some of us move and flow with the music. Others have a hard time following or even keeping up at all. Enjoy your day with your loved ones as you read this poem ask yourself, when was the last time I really let my hair down and danced? If you haven’t, and it’s been a while, just go for it. if you are like me who is still dancing after everything life has thrown at me, then grab someone’s hand who hasn’t danced in a while and dance!
Dancin’ Shoes
Teach me Your dance,
show me Your steps.
Put Your rhythms in my feet,
make me follow Your beat,
make me follow Your lead.
I want to dance to the sounds,
of Your holy music.
You initiated this pas de deux long ago;
as You formed me in seclusion.
I’m just now awakening,
to the joyous serenade.
All my life I waited and waited,
for the dance to commence.
It began on the day that You took my hand,
and invited me to dance;
now I know I will tango, mambo,
salsa,
my way into eternity.
I will not be a mere guest,
because I am already a member in this heavenly ball!
-Eva Santiago copyright 2012
30 Day Blog Challenge: Day 18
Please refer back to my earlier posts and read what this challenge is about so that the later posts make sense.
Day 18 Question # 18: What is the earliest lesson you can remember learning as a child that you have followed throughout your life?
Answer: I just had a talk with my kids about embracing their Latin roots and my answer comes from this talk. I was explaining to my kids that I love the Latin culture because we always seem to find the positive in the negative. That way of thinking permeates everything including our music. One day when my second daughter was younger I was listening to a ” EL NIAGARA EN BICICLETA“, a merengue by Dominican born star Juan Luis Guerra. She asked me to translate the words for her and when I did she was amazed and she said, ” Wow! Such happy music but the words are so sad.” I told her that our Latin music is a lot like that because we stay joyful even when things aren’t all that hot.
When I was in the 4th grade Sister Mary Valentine, my teacher was reading to us about some of the miracles of Jesus. One day she read to us how Jesus healed 10 lepers and out of the 10 only one came back to thank Him for his miracle. I remember thinking.’ WOW! I want to be like that guy! I want to say thank you all the time.’ And that’s what I’ve done my whole life. I go out of my way to say thank you to God, family, even the cashier at the grocery store who rang up my groceries.
I believe that when you have a thankful attitude, it shows up in all you do. That is what I wanted to impress upon my kids the other day regarding their Latin roots. Latin music is happy because no matter what the lyrics say, no matter what you’re going through in life, we always find something to be thankful for and we sing and dance about it!
The Evil of Fatalism
Dear Warriors,
Reflection and foresight assure success and freedom. Therefore it is important for me to reflect on our days gone by and their lessons, but also to apply prophetic foresight in order to lead us in the right direction. I understand the importance and value of contrasts. Let the one who is excessive join with the one who is conservative, the impulsive with the restrained, and the intemperate with the rational. Contrasts make the world beautiful and if they bring such harmony in the physical world, they will accomplish greater harmony in the moral and spiritual world. As a prophet, I have availed myself to such contrasts by my choice of friends and associates because through the meeting of these extremes there may emerge a meaningful path of untold possibilities. The one thing that I face being a prophetic voice is the accusation of being a lunatic. Maybe for a period of time I am seemingly crazy because of the word that I give in season, but the true lunatics are the voices of those who cannot budge from their stand on the judgment of God…The fatalists; the determinists.
The force that is connected to this religious “luna” is the spirit of materialism, which we can observe by simply watching certain “Christian” shows. The Christian is quite free to believe that there is a considerable amount of settled order and inevitable development in the universe. The materialist is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine the slightest speck of spiritualism. The materialistic person is sure that history has been simply and solely a chain of causation.
Of course there is some truth to this, but what about destiny and our choices to make history? I’m going to use a word that I kept thinking about during my time in Israel, as God was dealing with me about the future – that word is determinism. I looked up the definition and this is what it means. Determinism is the doctrine that all facts and events exemplify natural laws. It’s the idea that human actions and choices are fully determined by preceding events and so freedom of choice is illusory or misleading. In theology it means “lack of free will.” The word “determine” simply means to come to an end and to settle, and from the Latin word “determinare.” Let’s break it down:
TERMINARE – LIMIT
OFF LIMIT, LIMITED.
We are all acquainted with the word terminate. One of the greatest enemies to the prophetic is predetermination. What is this? Predetermination is the belief that something was decided in advance, and in the case of the many prophetic words being spewed out against our nation, the belief that God ordained sorrow, death, sickness and such for an individual/nation in advance and nothing we say or do can change that. This is a lie.
Determinism leads to fatalism. Fatalism is the acceptance of all things and events as inevitable. An example, “Her fatalism helped her to face death with stoic calm.” In other words, all events are predetermined so that man is powerless to alter his destiny, which ultimately causes a lack of effort or action in the FACE OF DIFFICULTY.
SPIRITUAL WARFARE IS THEREFORE REDUNDANT, AS THIS WILL NOT CHANGE ANYTHING.
The determinists come to bind, not to loose. These people do not believe in appealing to the will, but they believe in “changing the environment.” They will say to the sinner, “Go and sin no more,” because the sinner cannot help it, but then they will put the sinner in boiling oil because boiling oil is an “environment.” So many of today’s prophets believe that God is creating an environment so that the sinner will sin no more. This environment comes in the form of hurricanes, earthquakes, famines, droughts, pestilence, etc. So let me state categorically that this particular method of “environment” isNOT in fact causing the sinner to sin no more. America has been troubled with hurricanes, earthquakes, etc., and yet I see no sign, not even a glimpse, of acknowledgment of sin (from the sinners and rulers) and only the church is screaming at the world demanding them to change their ways, and threatening even more judgment.
In John 8, the scribes and Pharisees brought a woman to Jesus who had been caught in adultery. Jesus wonderfully deals with the hypocrites by challenging them with these words, “He who is without sin among you, let him throw the first stone at her.” Once they had all left, HE ASKED HER IF SHE HAD ANY ACCUSERS LEFT TO CONDEMN HER. THEN HE SAYS, “NEITHER DO I CONDEMN YOU…Go and sin no more.” So, she DID have the power to make a change.
Another time in John 5, Jesus heals a man who had been crippled for 38 years, waiting for his miracle at a pool. Jesus heals him on the Sabbath and the Jews condemned him for carrying his bed on the Sabbath. Forget the fact that a miracle took place on the Sabbath. When Jesus finds him later in the temple, He said to him, “See, you have been made well. SIN NO MORE, LEST A WORSE THING COME UPON YOU.” So he DID have the power to make a change in his future. His choice of will would determine whether a better or worse thing would come upon him. Surely Jesus knew that there was a power of choice to do right that could be attained from within?
Gilbert K. Chesterton wrote, “It’s amusing to notice that many modern day mystics have taken as their sign an eastern symbol, which is the very symbol of a miserable mean infinity. It is a serpent with his tail in his mouth, eating away. The eternity of these material fatalists is indeed very well presented by a serpent eating his tail – a degraded animal that destroys even himself. The image of a very unsatisfactory meal.”
So what is it that many of these prophets of judgment have left out of their message? MYSTERY. Mysticism keeps men alive. As long as you have mystery you have health. When you destroy mystery, you CREATE MORBIDITY.
Let’s compare the church to the world. The ordinary non-religious man has always been a mystic. He has permitted twilight. He always had one foot in earth and the other in wonderland. He has always left himself free to DOUBT GOD, but also free to believe in God. The world’s spiritual sight is three-dimensional. The carnal man, one who is not influenced by religious fatalism, believes that there is such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will as well. What I’m saying is that there is more openness on the part of a “sinner” than many saints. In John 4, Jesus gave the woman at the well an opportunity to see further than her fatalistic view, which caused indifference. She said, “A Jew shouldn’t be speaking to a Samaritan and especially a WOMAN.” She argued about where the correct place to worship was, whether in Jerusalem or on the mountain in Samaria. Jesus said to her, “If you knew (spiritually perceived) the gift of God and whom it is who says to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water.” Even then she remained determined not to shift from her materialistic thinking and to entertain the mystery of living water. Chesterton writes, “The whole secret of mysticism is this, that man can understand everything by the help of what HE DOES NOT UNDERSTAND.”
As Christians we must permit free will to remain a sacred mystery. He continues to say, “Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity is centrifugal: it breaks out.” Let me explain. ISLAM IS CENTRIPETAL – MOST RELIGIONS ARE CENTRIPETAL. Centripetal means, “developing from the outside toward the inside; developing inwardly not outwardly.” CHRISTIANITY IS CENTRIFUGAL. Centrifugal means, “moving outward from the center; developing outward from the center.” Another great definition is “developing or progressing outward from a center as in the growth of plant structures.” For example, in a centrifugal inflorescence such as cyme, the flowers in the center tip open first while those on the edge open LAST. IT BREAKS OUT!!
The fact is that organized religion, including dogmatic Christianity, is like the serpent eating its own tail. The meal is atrocious. And unfortunately it is a vicious circle of the church catching its own tail for a meal. Religion is a circle. The circle is perfect and infinite in its nature, but it is fixed forever in its size. It can never be larger or smaller. But the CROSS-, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms forever without altering its shape. Because it has a paradox in its center, it can grow without changing. The circle returns to itself and is bound. The cross opens its arms to the four winds and is a signpost for free travelers.
Isn’t that beautiful? I’ve been speaking about this subject on my From the Matrix teachings on Tuesday and Thursday nights on www.kimclement.tv and I hope it’s helping and freeing some of you. God has a promise for our nation and for us and it’s a promise of abundance, prosperity and breakthrough. We are His destiny. We are His future.