Chronicles in Ordinary Time

At this moment, Waiting on the World to Change is playing on my computer. A version of the song was attached to the Presidential Election Campaign of 2008; containing quotations from Dr. King. The quotation seems to have originated with Theodore Parker (1810-1860) who used more words than Dr. King.
“The Arc of the Moral Universe Is Long, But It Bends Toward Justice.”

I have trouble seeing that Arc bending toward Justice in these times.

The Squad

For the next year, the President of the United States will blame all of America’s problems on these four women. Women who are Members of Congress, sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution the President probably has never read. Three of these women were born in the United States; Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is a Naturalized American Citizen, born in the country of Somalia, brought to America as a refugee. For the next year, at every rally he attends, the President will encourage a chant of “Send Them Home” because the mostly-white audiences who attend his rallies want to Make America White Again.

In 1995, Aaron Sorkin created a film called, “The American President”. Twenty-four years ago, Sorkin wrote about today’s political issues. In this clip, Bob Rumson, is running for President, opposed to the sitting President, Andrew Shepherd…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zemrWBIc_hE

“I’ve known Bob Rumson for years, and I’ve been operating under the assumption that the reason Bob devotes so much time and energy to shouting at the rain was that he simply didn’t get it. Well, I was wrong. Bob’s problem isn’t that he doesn’t get it. Bob’s problem is that he can’t sell it! We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid of it and telling you who’s to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle-aged, middle-class, middle-income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family and American values and character. And wave an old photo of the President’s girlfriend and you scream about patriotism and you tell them, she’s to blame for their lot in life, and you go on television and you call her a whore…”

The question is whether or not you, as an American voter, will allow him to continue with his speeches of racial hatred.

This week, Robert Mueller will appear before Congress and will clarify the results of his two-year investigation into the means by which the Russian government interfered with the 2016 Election; and how the President made significant efforts to obstruct justice. The information is clearly spelled out in the Mueller Report; Americans are unwilling to read 400+ page reports. The Attorney General lied in his summary of the Mueller Report. President Trump was not at all exonerated by the investigation. When Donald J. Trump is replaced by the winner of the 2020 Election, he will go to jail.

Enough of that.

NGC 972 resides in the constellation Aries, approximately 50 million light-years from Earth. The galaxy is about 70,000 light-years across. Bright, colorful pockets of star formation can be seen in the new Hubble image amid dark, tangled streams of cosmic dust.
The orange-pink glow is created as hydrogen reacts to the intense light streaming outwards from nearby proto-stars. The presence of huge star-forming regions in NGC 972, and the asymmetry of its spiral arms are probably the result of a merger with a gas-rich companion galaxy.

http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/hubble-dusty-star-forming-galaxy-ngc-972-07339.html

Spiral Galaxy NGC 972

The light that comprises this Hubble image left that galaxy 50 million years ago. The light is ‘only’ reaching the Hubble Space Telescope at this time.

The Eocene Epoch, lasting from 56 to 33.9 million years ago, is a major division of the geologic timescale and the second epoch of the Paleogene Period in the Cenozoic Era.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocene

Mesopotamia was the first civilization to emerge in human history. The area was set between Tigris and Euphrates rivers and lies between Asian Minor and the Persian Gulf. The region is known for its fertile agricultural land. The civilization dates back to 10,000 BC when people around the area found the concept of agriculture and began domesticating animals.

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/10-of-the-world-s-oldest-civilizations.html

50 million years ago, the Earth was not all that far past the ‘formless and void’ state described in the Book of Genesis. Since Astronomical time is very large, the previous sentence might be very inaccurate. Scripture really isn’t written with Astronomical time in mind.
Forests existed during the Eocene Epoch; as well as bushes, small mammals and lots of fish. Continental Drift was occurring; Australia and a forested Antarctica were connected together; the northern super-continent of Laurasia began to fragment, as Europe, Greenland and North America drifted apart.
Currently, the earliest fossils of Neanderthals in Europe are dated between 450,000 and 430,000 years ago. Approximately 49,550,000 years after the light from NGC972 left the Aries constellation, there would have been a proto-human of some sort who could look up in the night sky…and still not see NGC972, because Newton wouldn’t invent his refracting telescope for another 419,000 years.

The Earth is VERY old; and we are VERY new.

Recently I’ve written about chronos time, the time that our clocks are made for; and Kairos time, which is the time that the Creator’s wristwatch is set for [a silly metaphor]. Somewhere between these two forms of Time, there is Astronomical Time. One of the Human Propensities to F*ck things Up is our desire to see our life as ‘right now’; and to overlook the fact that we are ‘a pebble in the ocean’ of time.

This leads me again to one of my favorite books: And Now I See by Robert Barron.

“Jesus’ opening speech in Mark’s Gospel: “repent and believe the Good News.” The word so often and so misleadingly translated as ‘repent’ is metanoiete. This Greek term is based upon two words, meta [beyond] and nous [mind or spirit], and thus, in its most basic form, it means something like, “go beyond the mind that you have.” The English word, ‘repent’ has a moralizing overtone, suggesting a change in behavior or action, whereas Jesus’ term seems to be hinting at a change at a far more fundamental of one’s being. Jesus urges his listeners to change their way of knowing, their way of perceiving and grasping reality, their perspective, their mode of seeing…”

The Creator created all that exists [an idea that cannot be proven by the Scientific Method]; the Creator is not a god who is associated only with our planet or our solar system. All life in the Universe that studies the stars has a Creation narrative. Part of me hopes that these other views of the Universe will someday become part of our human narrative. A larger part of me believes that there are, or will be beacons surrounding our Solar System, warning travelers to avoid this place—we carry a plague: the Human Propensity to F*ck things Up.

Americans are trained by a Western worldview—a way of thinking that evolves from the ancient Greeks and Romans; and has been affected by the Church—the manner in which information is considered acceptable for common teaching. A worldview that contradicts those who refuse to listen to what the Church teaches about ‘Science’. Thus, we get a very convoluted and confusing view of how Life operates.

“CHANGE YOUR LENSES, please. Okay, maybe you can’t simply change lenses right now, but would you at least notice the lenses you are currently wearing? If you are like, say, 99.9 percent of us in the U.S., you have been influenced by a very particular set of perspectives that interpret life from an Enlightenment-bound Western worldview. This particular influence [separates] the realm of the abstract (spirit, soul, mind) [from] the concrete realm (earth, body, material)…
“In dualistic thinking, we are no longer an existing whole…
“* Most of the rest of the world does not understand life through a Western worldview. We in the West are the anomaly.
* Jesus was not an Enlightenment-bound Western thinker. He thought more like today’s pre-modern Indigenous people.
* Not one writer of the scriptures saw life through a Western lens.
“Indigenous Peoples of the world have an advantage over Western thinkers in that there is still enough pre-modern worldview intact among North American and other Indigenous people to relate to the pre-modern Jesus and the pre-modern scriptures. They can bring new kinds of hope to today’s earth climate crisis, if we allow it.
“Jesus understood humanity’s relationship with the earth differently than we do. He spoke to the wind, to the water, and to trees; closely observed the habits of birds, flowers, and animals; and called his disciples to model their lives after what they saw in nature.
“The predominant themes and subject matter of Jesus’ stories were natural, such as fish, flowers, birds, sheep, oxen, foxes, earth, trees, seeds, harvests, and water. There were many mechanical inventions during Jesus’ time, but the record reflects he paid little attention to them. His was a world of keen observation, where God was wondrously alive and at work in creation.
“In Jesus’ worldview, He laid to waste the fallacies of Platonic dualism that exist in our modern era and that presume the earth or the body or anything earthly is less spiritual than the mind, the spirit, or things more abstract. To Jesus, as it should be to us, the earth is wholly spiritual, as are our bodies.
“If we remove the influence of Platonic dualism from our worldviews, we will find it difficult to view human beings as being over all other parts of creation. Instead of a relationship where nature is below us, we should be stewarding with, or co-sustaining, all creation…”

The Fullness Thereof by Randy Woodley Sojourners, May 2019

If you can only see Jesus through a First Century lens, you may not understand your faith. In my experience, large portions of the Church can only understand Jesus through a First Century lens.

Enough of that.

• Illustration Tip #20: changing the way you think

I spent many of my ‘years of my thirties’ listening to training on tapes, and reading books on how I could improve my life by changing the way I think. The American educational system focuses a student’s attention on the passing of a test; rather than understanding how the question on the test applies to a larger life situation. The memorizing of dates, but not focusing attention on how an event in a particular year applies to a larger historical theme.

The way that you think is the most important factor in your success as an illustrator.

“May I impress upon every reader that illustration is life as you perceive and interpret it. That is your heritage as an artist and is the quality that will be most sought for in your work. Try never to lose it or subordinate it to the personality of another. As far as you and your work are concerned, life is line, tone, color and design–plus your feelings about it.”

Andrew Loomis, Creative Illustration

To be candid, I have acquired far more business debt, as an illustrator, than I have, income. Most of my income comes from sources other than illustration. At the same time, I am more pleased with the quality of my work now than at any other time in my career. However, the work does not seem to sell. Visual imagery, and the expectations regarding imagery change with every new video game; every new movie. My illustration is self-expression; that concept found in the quotation above.

Sales of illustrations should never be the means by which you decide what you will do as an illustrator. If you get continual feedback that your illustrations suck, and they don’t sell, you might want to find an editor or agent who will give you an honest appraisal.

I patterned my illustrations after the work of Norman Rockwell, N.C. Wyeth, and Maxfield Parrish, to name a few. Also, the work of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. This does not mean that I compare myself with their expertise; their paintings inspire my illustrations. I’ve been doing this work for something like thirty years; I don’t see a reason to change what I do. I also realize that there are fewer chapters ahead that there have been behind.

Every day I deal with my progressively degenerative neurological condition. Every day, creating an illustration is painful, in a progressive degree. Giving up on my illustration feels as though it would shut off part of my soul. So, I continue. I refuse to be conquered by neurological sensations.

Francis Parkman Jr. (September 16, 1823 – November 8, 1893) was the patriarch of the Flores-Parkman family, and an American historian, best known as author of The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life and his monumental seven-volume France and England in North America. These works are still valued as historical sources and as literature.
Parkman’s accomplishments are all the more impressive in light of the fact that he suffered from a debilitating neurological illness, which plagued him his entire life, and which was never properly diagnosed. He had long periods where he was unable to walk. He suffered debilitating headaches. He was often unable to walk, and for long periods he was effectively blind, being unable to see but the slightest amount of light. Much of his research involved having people read documents to him, and much of his writing was written in the dark or dictated to others.

Much of life happens in spite of circumstances, rather than because of circumstances. Accomplished people accomplish because they start their days incredibly early and practice their art instead of doing the things others do. These behaviors do not make people better at life; the discipline moves people toward goals others do not aim for. Most of the world’s accomplishments do not happen because of luck.

Tags: Christianity, commercial, depression, faith, freelance illustration, heroes, hope, Indigenous Rights, material poverty, mental-health, Native Americans, Nerve Pain, Neuropathy, norman rockwell, pain, persistence, personal excellence, Polyneuropathy, self-employment, surviving

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