Originally published Jan 30, 2026 for our weekly Issue of Mindful Intelligence Advisor. Subscribe to get weekly issues.
By Paul Gordon Collier, Editor
“The bleak truth is that, under normal conditions, most of North America and Europe are buried under about 1.5km of ice. This bitterly frigid climate is interrupted occasionally by brief warm interglacials, typically lasting less than 10,000 years. The interglacial we have enjoyed throughout recorded human history, called the Holocene, began 11,000 years ago, so the ice is overdue, Chapman wrote. All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead.” – Philip K. Chapman
- THE ICE
Hopefully, you remember our last Riqueday Castle update. In that update, we shared the news we had healthcare issues that delayed our work on the castle. With winter coming in a land known for harsh winters (by our American standards), we knew our serious work would have to be delayed until the Spring thaw.
During this delay, we’ve been checking up on our Castle, keeping the sidewalks cleared, doing basic maintenance and care. Unfortunately, there are gaps where the castle isn’t being monitored, but never more than one week.
During one of those times, a deep freeze hit the region over a 3-day period. Our castle was hit by an ice storm at a time when no-one was around to monitor it. Over the course of those three days, a heating coil break would lead to our steam heating system getting iced. The full damages within are not clear, though they appear limited to pipes and not other essential equipment (save for two heat registers). We may be looking at damages as high as $10k and as low as $1k.
We were fortunate that our heating system’s water valves were turned off, meaning the damage was limited because there was only a small amount of water in the system. As we were planning on activating our heating system, we hadn’t yet drained the system (that was going to be done by our service company only a week after the ice storm hit).
The news was devastating, but we can certainly overcome this setback. We were not alone, unfortunately, as many others in the town had heating system and plumbing damage as well.
When the heating and cooling company completed their investigation, the CEO of the company called Bill to let him know he’s heard of what we’re trying to do (about our castle project) and a lot of people in the town are cheering us on. He assured Bill they will work with us however they can to make this is as painless for us as possible.
We knew that serious work on the Castle would not, could not resume until Spring, now that’s definite.
We were hoping to have our first “From the Belltower” show FROM our belltower (where our studio is mostly completed), but that will not be the case due to this unforeseen event. The show is still scheduled to air February 2nd, 2026, at noon ET on Facebook (here) and YouTube (here). Our YouTube channel has just been created so we are starting off with 2 subscribers (please subscribe). This first episode will feature Paul Gordon Collier, the editor, but future episodes will feature both Paul and Publisher Bill Collier. We will include a link to the YouTube version of the show on the last page (the archive page).
We also had an unexpected tax bill. It seems there were a series of clerical errors that led to our bill being sent to the previous owner. Fortunately, we made the discovery a day before the bill was due, and fortunately we had the funds to pay it (it was over $4k).
- THE WORD
This season has been a test in many ways, but we are committed to walking through faith towards our goal of building a Hope Exit castle that can be a model for others to learn from (through our errors and our successes).
What I hope for is that our castle becomes covered in the Word of God, in spirit and in material. I hope it becomes, in part, a hub for whole-bible literacy that manifests in the lives of our community, which has come together to live out that individual and shared meditation on the whole Word in fulfilment of the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.
But that’s just one dream of many we hope to see fulfilled through our castle. My wife has her dreams, brother Bill has his, and others have dreams we also hope to enable through our castle.
All of us involved have different callings and passions; mine is to facilitate whole-bible literacy. To give you a sense of what I mean by whole bible literacy, I wanted to share a note I made following one of my daily meditations on the word.
I read Leviticus 20 to Numbers 3 and Mark 9-12 that day. Here were my notes:
In Numbers, I believe I am close to having the encampment of the twelve tribes around the Tent of meeting fully internalized, and I’m closing in on having the camp of the tribe of Levites internalized. Today if you ask me, I will be 100% accurate, but maybe not next week. It’s interesting that the groupings of the tribes here don’t align with the grouping in Gilead of Manasseh, Reuben, and Benjamin. Reuben, for instance, is with Simeon and Gad in this grouping.
In Mark 11, the Triumphal Entry of Christ cannot be seen in the context the Jewish authorities would have seen it without the OT. This is five days away from Christ being arrested in the garden of Gethsemane and six days from his brutal execution and final atonement for the sins of humanity.
If Christ would have entered the city with just a few people waving palm fronds, he would have been dead before he ever reached the gate, but the popularity of Christ (just six days away from the crowd cheering his death, even demanding it) was such that they had to endure the “heretical” display.
If you are not intimate with the Old Testament, you will have to rely on some egghead scholar to point this out to you in a YouTube video, though if you are in the habit of reading scripture daily and that habit leads you to read through it at least 3 times a year, after a few years this “scholarly” disembodied “fact” is just a simple common sense conclusion when scripture becomes a whole in your mind.
“The unfolding of your word gives light, it imparts understanding to the simple.” – Psalm 119:130
ED.NOTE: This is the fruit of a whole-bible approach. In the 19th century, this was called hermeneutics, and it unfortunately led to structuralism, which led to post-structuralism, which is the foundation wokeness is built on today. What God meant for God, Satan turned to Evil, but yet the foundation, hermeneutics, is as righteous then as it is today. Like the Qin in our January 23, 2026 installment of Transitions, they built poison on top of a solid foundation, wokeness built poison on the solid foundation of whole-bible knowing.
You would not understand how “heretical” this Triumphal entry was unless you knew the Old Testament. In this case, the rub is this: the Feast of the Lord begins on the 15th day of the seventh month of the year. THIS is when you have the Palm frond triumphal celebration. (Leviticus 23).
“And you shall take on the first day the fruit of splendid trees, branches of palm trees and boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days.” – Leviticus 23:40
Why are they celebrating the Feast of the Lord on the day Christ entered Jerusalem? It is a celebration of a wedding they as yet do not fully understand.
The Feast of the Lord is also called the Feast of Booths. Jonah, after he delivered his message of repentant salvation, sat bitterly and made himself a booth. I suspect he is observing the Feast of Booths. He overlooks Ninevah with bitterness, knowing if they repent the Lord will forgive them.
Jonah is one of a handful of people Christ compared himself to. He is one of the many shadows of Christ in the Old Testament. He told the authorities seeking a sign that He is the Christ that, like Jonah, the only sign he will give them is three days and three nights in the heart of the earth (like Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a fish).
“Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, ‘Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.’ But he answered them, ‘An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.’” – Matthew 12:38-40
The Jewish leaders understood that the Triumphal Entry was a declaration that Christ is King, but they did not understand that his Kingship is a spiritual authority that advances through the spirit of being in carrying out the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.
To the Jewish leaders, this is a vulgar act of heresy they do not act against (yet) lest the mob destroy them (the same mob that will later call for Christ’s execution).
This is just another reminder that only demons tell the children of God to decouple the Old Testament from the New, for anyone who has faithfully meditated on the whole over years would NEVER dare think such illogical and unreasonable assumptions, even from a purely textually critical perspective.
It is VERY clear the NT writers viewed the OT as essential to their own text, and it is VERY clear that they intended to add layers of understanding to the OT through their divinely “delivered” final testaments.
Read your bible. Steward your OWN beliefs on what is, in actuality, the face, the will, the desire, of God.
End note.
This was my note, and my observations were instant, in flow (I only edited typos and grammatical errors). This was not a word study, it emerged from my faithful meditation on the Word daily, working through scripture minimally 4 times a year, allowing, through the Holy Spirit, what facts might become memorized to emerge from that faithful encounter.
I have been doing this for five full years. This is year six. This is what I hope to teach others to do, and to provide space for those willing to meditate on the Word and share their thoughts with others doing the same, within the context of approaching scripture as a child, assuming its truth is sure, and God’s justice is just, and that only through the Holy Spirit can we hope to deeply know the Word to make it the plumbline of our soul and the impetus of our daily action.
Thankfully, through scripture alone I have come to know how God allows pain and suffering to give us opportunity to experience at the blood and bone level our unconditional love for Him; to praise him in our pain and walk in faith the darkness is a valley we can walk through and not a perpetual state of being.
Next up for the castle is news of the damages after we get a thaw that allows us to test the system (zone by zone, we have six) and an estimate on installing a bathroom in me and my wife’s to-be second floor quarters.
The next update will be in the February 27, 2026, Monthly edition of MIA.
