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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 86: Gifts

December 7, 2015

coverThe Gift of the Magi Kindle Edition
by O. Henry (Author), Marty Jones (Illustrator)
www.amazon.com/dp/B0167QVMH0
UK Edition
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0167QVMH0

“The Gift of the Magi” is an illustrated short story originally written by O. Henry; it tells the story of a young married couple named Jim and Della and how they deal with the challenge of buying secret Christmas gifts for each other when they have more love than money.
Featuring hand-drawn graphite images that have been digitally-manipulated, “The Gift of the Magi” has been 20 years in the making. The original project used acrylic paintings; and then the computer came along.

The story of an illustrator with more work to do for other people than time for himself to pursue a personal project…

 

This is always an awkward time of year for me, and is best represented by this image from A Charlie Brown Christmas:

tree

I have a real problem with Christmas in the 21st Century. I felt the same about it in the latter part of the previous century, when dinosaurs ruled the earth…

I’m not one of those people who start decorating for Christmas on the day after Thanksgiving. I don’t participate in Black Friday, nor Cyber Monday. I consider the commercialization of Christmas to be an affront to the Creator of us all.

And I am aware of the hypocrisy of advertising my new book at the beginning of this particular post. It’s a Christmas story that may provide some enjoyment in someone’s life. I don’t expect it to be a ‘best-seller’—it’s simply the completion of one of my dreams. The Kindle version is about the cost of a cup of designer coffee from that coffee place that has gotten so much airplay on Facebook for their holiday practice.

 

Christmas is supposed to be about the Creator of the Universe deciding to enter time and space in the form of a human baby… Sort of sounds like science fiction. Earth is a flyspeck in the volume of the Universe—how arrogant it seems of us to believe that the Creator would spend time thinking about this world that prefers war to peace. A people who are destroying Creation simply because we can; where people whose heads are in a place where the sun doesn’t shine, people who say that the destruction of our planet has nothing to do with us.

Why would the Creator care?

Love. Compassion. Grace. Concepts that are hard to grasp.

For me the idea that makes sense is an image that came to me twenty or so years ago. If you pick up a rock from the garden, on the underside you will see a small world of wriggling, squiggly, crawly things.

When thinking about the nature of the Creator, the entire Universe is in some respects small—in the same way that my 2000sf house is small in my mind—I realize there is simply a difference of scale. The property below is much larger than I am; I’m half the size of the red dot. I designed our house for my parents, while I was in college.

I_Live_in_ForestI live in a forest.

To some of my neighbors’ regret, my forest is located in a suburban neighborhood of Portland, near houses where people mow their lawns and plant gardens and pull weeds…Things I refuse to do. I decided a long time ago that I did not want to invest the time that is my life in the domestication of foliage that grows without my aid. I’d rather use the time to make stories.

However, my parents had a totally different idea, and most of the trees and shrubs that surround our house were selected and planted by me. Because I hadn’t set aside the topsoil when the foundation was excavated, all of the soil around the house is clay. I had to dig individual ‘pots’ with filled with potting soil for each tree and bush.

I designed the house, drew the plans, secured the Building Permits, and built-by-hand most of the house. Most of the drywall was installed by subcontractors; and a plumber and an electrician installed most of the plumbing and wiring. The rest was done by me, and some friends who worked for me.

Every part of the house was at one time in my brain. In that sense, my house is ‘small’ to me.

The same concept occurs with the Creator of the Universe; the Universe is, in some sense small. To the Creator, what would ‘small’ look like? Small may include the blue marble rotating around our sun.

Back to the rock in the yard…

If I imagine that I cared about the squiggly things crawling around, and wanted to help them to understand the purpose of their lives, the only way I could do it would be to become one of those squiggly, crawly things. It seems to me that the best way to be accepted by those crawly things is to enter their lives as a ‘child’; my guess is that even a centipede has some hardwired knowledge that the next generation needs care, in order for the race to survive.

As difficult to believe as it is for me to think that I might become a bug, in order to relate to bugs, it would be several orders of magnitude more for the Creator of the Universe to become a human.

The Creator of the Universe became a squiggly, crawly thing that was given the name Jesus. He was born in a barn because his parents were refugees. Magi—wise men from the East—went to King Herod the Great and Nasty and asked directions to where the new King had been born. They had learned from their study of the Universe that a new King had been born, One who would save mankind from itself. After they’d left, King Herod the Great and Nasty ordered the death of all male children in Israel, aged two years or younger, in hopes of killing the new King. The Slaughter of the Innocents.

Joseph, Mary and Jesus, by this time, had sought asylum in Egypt; refugees in fear for the life of their child.

While traditions vary, “the East” is generally thought to be Persia; more commonly known today as the Islamic Republic of Iran…Isn’t it interesting how history keeps repeating in strange ways…Perhaps because we fail to learn.

nativity

I’m a fan of Doctor Who—I find my admiration for the show growing all the time. A Hero who does not rely on weapons to fight his battles; he instead uses a sonic screwdriver which works on nearly everything except wood…

A Christmas Special with Matt Smith’s “Doctor” tells of a tradition that the Winter Solstice is a time of congratulations for our having made it ‘half-way through the dark’. There is so much darkness in the world today. I would like to think we are half-way through. I fear that we aren’t.

Winter Solstice celebrations were preempted in the Middle Ages and turned to a celebration of the birth of Jesus, even though He was likely born in the Spring. And so ‘pagan’ Christmas Trees somehow enter the story of the miraculous birth. Tradition teaches that the practice of Christmas gift-giving is a tribute to Saint Nicholas, the Bishop of Myra, who was known for secretly giving gifts to the poor he served. When the subject of gift-giving came up when my children were young, I talked about Saint Nicholas rather than the guy with the red suit and the white beard. I don’t like the notion that Christmas in America is about gifts—the only thing that seems important to the American economy.

St.Nicholas

And then there are the gifts given by those Magi.

We give gifts as a sign of love. Sadly, we seem to think that love can be bought.

The Babe came to show us that Love cannot be bought.

 

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 83: The Search for Meaning, Part Two

October 25, 2015

I meant to send this out later in the week; I just watched a movie that changed my mind.

Della's Brain“Della’s Brain”

We can change the way we think.

The flashes of light in the above image represent the electro-chemical signals that cross between connections in our neurons. The flashes of light represent thoughts in Della’s mind. What those thoughts are, are known only to Della…

Our brains contain thousands of neurons, and tens of thousands of connections between those neurons. Dr. Eagleman, quoted in Chronicles in Ordinary Time 82, comments that about twice as many connections are created in our brains in the first two years of life than we normally use as adults. I don’t think these connections disintegrate, they simply stop being used. The fading of memory isn’t due to degradation of the nerve cells that make the connections; it’s simply due to the fact that we aren’t using those connections very often. The pattern, the map, between those connections and our conscious mind is still there; it just takes a while for the connections to be made.

We have the ability to make new connections between the neurons that register ideas, and we have the ability to think in new ways. During the teenage years we start questioning our parents’ beliefs; we can choose to follow them, or not. We can make new connections between our ‘stockpile’ of past experiences and sensations, and come to new conclusions. These new conclusions can change our lives.

We can change the way we think.

Prejudice starts in the mind.

Hatred starts in the mind.

Healing starts in the mind.

My appendix ruptured in 1988, and I came close to dying from peritonitis—an infection of the membranes that hold our internal organs in place. The docs pumped me full with antibiotics, and killed my immune system while killing off the bacteria. A ‘napalm process’—while killing off the bacteria that was damaging my body, the bacteria that aids my body was killed off as well. For the first few months, I caught every germ that entered the Portland Building.

I did a lot of research during the 6 months it took me to fully recover; I discovered that adult-onset appendicitis was frequently a result of stress that had occurred in the patient’s life. For most of the year before the appendicitis attack, I was heavily involved in the fund-raising for, and the care of my sister, who needed a liver transplant. I firmly believe that the circumstances around her transplant were miraculous—I perceived the working of the Creator in the events that took place, and soon the events began running ahead of us.

I realized that if Donna’s new liver was connected to the Miraculous, then my appendicitis was in some way an extension of that miracle process. I don’t believe in coincidence. I don’t believe in accidents. I gave my life to my Creator 40 years ago, and asked [Him] to direct the events of my life. Therefore, the appendicitis wasn’t a surprise to the Creator; it was only a surprise to me.

In the early weeks of recovery from the peritonitis, it became clear to me that there was a ‘connection’ between my experience of a diseased appendix and past anger that I had toward my Dad; the anger wasn’t so much about the man he was, or what he did, but the reality of the father he wasn’t; the father I had wanted. He wasn’t very good with Grace; I doubt that he’d ever experienced it. I could be wrong—we never talked.

I realized that the anger I had felt toward him was gone—the burst appendix was like a boil that had been lanced. New connections had been made while I slept for days. I believe I was Healed. The healing of my anger did not remove the patterns of behavior I had learned while protecting myself from my Dad’s loud behavior. Changing many of
those patterns became part of the work of bringing my own children into this world.

I realized that my Dad was probably very much like his father, and that family of wheat ranchers—he didn’t know how to do things differently, because he hadn’t had a different role model. I decided, with the help of a lot of books and tapes, that I could cause myself to become more like the father I had wanted. I could change my life. It required the making of a lot of new connections in my brain.

I grew up without a concept of faith. The Creator wasn’t a part of my thinking until my college years; and the change of thinking mostly came from religious people who got in my face… And then the Creator ‘hit me upside the head’ in my third year; and I started making a serious change in the direction I traveled. It was at least a 45-degree turn, maybe as much as a 90-degree turn. I began looking at the circumstances and emotions of my life, and started seeing them in a new light. This is the actual definition of the word that is translated from the Hebrew and Latin as “repent.”

“God loves you and has a plan for your life”—a phrase that usually gets heard when bad stuff happens in one’s life. Often the people who say such things don’t really think about the concept that in effect says, ‘oh, God gave you cancer so that you can learn something.’ I’ve struggled with such concepts for the last 40 years. One of the guys in my life at present is angry at the god he doesn’t believe in because that god
allows people to be tortured by pain and death. He sees his cancer-related pain as torture that keeps him from being able to do the things he wants to do with what’s left of his life.

I experience a large amount of pain each day; several neurologists have no idea why it has occurred. “Idiopathic sensory nerve disorder.” A description, rather than a diagnosis. I have pain all over, even in places that have no external sense of touch. The most likely candidate [meaning, the one that hasn’t yet been ruled out] for a cause appears to be the large amounts of analgesics and muscle relaxants I consumed while working for the City of Portland for 14 years. I got through each
day on pain meds and I possibly poisoned myself in the process. Now I work at living without pain meds, in hopes that some of the damaged neurons will heal. Instead of viewing my pain as torture, I use it to help me learn compassion for a whole lot of people who deal with much larger health challenges. It’s a matter of perspective. The pain doesn’t disappear, but the fear of pain can diminish. I learn not to react to pain.

Does God have a plan for my life? I think ‘the plan’ is that I was created with a brain that is capable of changing the way I perceive the world. I learn to make new connections in my brain when I encounter new situations. I don’t believe that anything will happen in my life that is larger than the Creator can use for [His] own purposes. Occasionally it seems as though the Creator dips a hand into the ‘river of my life,’ and alters the flow; usually this happens in a manner that I cannot prove, and it usually only has a direct effect on me. Broken cars that mysteriously come back to life without the aid of a mechanic or tools; events that come strangely together in a manner I could not predict. However, the Creator is not a genie; I can’t rub a lamp and get my wishes fulfilled.

Shit happens in my life; and good stuff happens in my life. I can change my attitude toward the rotten stuff by making a conscious decision to view life differently. I know each day that I am surrounded by the prayers of people who pray for me. Some of you who are reading these words are lifted up in prayer by me, each day. Some of you are supported in prayer by people you don’t know, because I’ve told others of your needs. I think the prayer makes it easier to make new connections in your brains; and these changes can strengthen the soul we cannot see.

I can’t download faith into anyone. I wish I could. There IS Light in the darkness; and that Light is on a wavelength that is easy to miss unless you are looking for it. Sort of like Luminol fluorescing when in the presence of ‘alternate light sources’. Or wearing 3D glasses to watch the movie—there’s a depth to life we can’t normally see, because it isn’t hardwired into our brains. We have to choose to look for it, and keep working at seeing the Light in the midst of ever-growing darkness.

Stars [1926]““Stars” Maxfield Parrish [1926]

 

 

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 82: The Search for Meaning, Part One

October 23, 2015

watson's brain2“Watson’s Brain”

I’ve long been fascinated by the human brain and perception…

If Myers-Briggs is accurate, my personality type is INTJ, and is only shared by 2% of the population. 98% of any group perceives the world with a different type of thinking. Consequently, I see things differently than most people; and most people see things differently than I do.

The “mechanics” of vision is such that no two people see a scene in exactly the same way. Light passes through the lenses in our eyes, gets flipped upside down and then is bounced off of light-sensitive cells at the back of our eyeballs to send electro-chemical messages through the optic nerve to our brains. Somehow these electro-chemical signals cause us to see the world as if we were looking through a picture screen at the front of our heads… People with color blindness and disorders like Irlen Syndrome have cells in the retina that don’t work properly; floor the color-blind person colors look differently than the colors I see. For people with Irlen Syndrome, the letters on this screen might look scrambled. I know a guy who has a ‘hole’ in his brain—parts of the brain tissue are missing, for no known reason, and as a result he has no depth perception. Looking through his eyes is the same as you looking at this monitor—my drawings have the illusion of depth, because of the way they are shaded; but they have no real depth. You really aren’t looking at a piece of paper attached to your screen…

I watched “THE BRAIN WITH DAVID EAGLEMAN” on PBS the other night…

http://video.pbs.org/video/2365587672/

Some quotations from the show:

“What makes you You? For a long time the answer was an immortal soul, or spirit; something that goes beyond mere matter and gives you your life and your identity. But the modern story of the brain tells a different story: who we are can only be understood in terms of the 3-pound organ in our heads…what makes humans unique “is the way
that the human brain can mold to fit the world around it.” Our brains come with some basic programming that allows us to learn language and facial expression; “but the remarkable thing is the degree to which our brains are
unfinished. Which leads to a period of prolonged helplessness. But the plan is that instead of hardwiring everything the way most of the animal kingdom
does, our brains are designed to let life experience wire up the rest of the brain…

“The number of brain cells in a child is the same as the number of brain cells in an adult. The secret lies in the how those cells are connected. Over the first two years of
life, the neurons begin connecting extremely rapidly; forming as many as two million new connections every second. By age two, the typical neuron has more
than 15,000 connections. That is almost twice as many as found in an adult. After the age of two, the growth is halted. The process of becoming someone is about pruning back the possibilities that are already present. You become who you are not because of what grows in your brain, but what is removed.

As we grow and learn new skills, we reduce the number of connections in our brain–in favor of focusing on a smaller number of stronger connections…the connections go from being universal to being specific. Those links you don’t’ use, you lose. Over the course of childhood, brain circuitry is wired up according to experience and interaction with the environment. But this dependence on the outside world is a gamble. The outside world won’t always provide what a brain needs…”

Eagleman doesn’t address the italicized text above—the language that speaks of design, as opposed to randomness. Most of the Animal Kingdom enters this world with built-in programming. Who does the programming? If our brains are different in that they are grown in our mother’s womb, with minimal hardwired programming, but with the ability to make connections between sounds, feelings, smells and abstract words, how does that ability come into being?

At the end of the episode, Eagleman points out that no one has figured out what the mechanism is that gives certain connections greater meaning than other connections. What defines Meaning?

I believe that Meaning is connected to that “immortal soul” that Eagleman discounts at the beginning of the episode. An integral part of the human psyche that can’t be measured. I believe that the ‘connections’ we make to the world around us as we grow, can be made in a similar manner to a ‘world’ we cannot see, feel or touch—the world of the Spirit. The association of the world of spiritual belief and the world of physical experience are similar to the concepts of ‘parallel universes’—universes that we cannot perceive, that exist next to our own universe. I believe that some of the connections that are made between the neurons of your brain can be influenced by your Creator…

We can change the way we think.

We can decide that the way we have thought in the past is not getting us to the future we desire, and that today we will begin following a different path.

We have the ability to make new connections between the neurons that register ideas, and that we don’t have to maintain the thought processes from our parents’ belief systems as we move into our teenage years of growing independence. We can make new connections between our ‘stockpile’ of past experiences and sensations, and come to new conclusions. These new conclusions can change our lives.

 

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 79: Change the World

September 1, 2015

EstherThe Story of Esther, acrylic
permanent collection: Museum of Biblical Art, Dallas, Texas

Tonight [my tonight] there are fanatics in Syria, destroying thousands of years of art and architectural history, in the name of religion. This has happened before, in Western history; we call it iconoclasm. Part of the reason there is so little visual art in Protestant churches is a result of the iconoclasm that took place in the 1500s during the Protestant Reformation. The historical link, in the Abrahamic faiths, is a literal interpretation of the Creator’s command that man shall not make ‘graven images’—the creation of idols that are worshipped in place of the Creator. Israel’s “Golden Calf” being a prime example. People still make idols that sit on dashboards of cars and are enshrined in homes. In the American culture of today, many of our idols are concepts—we even name television shows after them…We make idols all the time. The Creator knew this from the beginning of Eternity. The Creator also gave us free will—the ability to choose how we live our lives. And the Creator gives us the power to get past our idols.

I am a man of faith, and I am an artist. I am grateful to The Sisters of the Holy Names at Marylhurst, and other Catholic friends who helped me to resolve the differences between art that represents faith, and art that creates idols. More of my art is digital these days—my hands and eyes don’t work as well as they did in earlier times. Part of me ponders the idea as to whether or not digital images—patterns of light upon a screen—can even be considered ‘graven images’—the images don’t even really exist until they are printed on some type of medium. At that point, they really aren’t the created image, they are a copy of the image, subject to idiocies of printing equipment.

When my brain hurts because of the actions of extremist fanatics, I find myself retreating to science fiction movies—particularly of the genre inspired by Gene Roddenberry and the creators of the Stargate saga. Roddenberry believed in a future where the ideology that separates people can be overcome; that people of different races, religions, ideologies could live together in harmony rather than always being in endless war. These stories present the idea that we can become better people. Always working at becoming better people. Semper opus fieri meliores for those who believe that a phrase is always more cool in Latin…

This way of thinking seems hard to find, in today’s world. Here, the world runs at the whim of the rich and powerful—today’s American idols. People in masses tend toward violence and hatred; and fear of the unknown.

Individuals, and groups of individuals can actually create positive change. I’ve seen it happen, I see it happening every day, in small ways; small steps that can become giant leaps. Will the 98% overthrow the 2% and the fractions of the 1%? Hard to imagine, given that we keep electing millionaires and aspiring millionaires to the seats of power in government… This is the 10th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and its destruction of the Gulf Coast. Ten years on, there is still a lot of damage to be undone. The promises of government have not been kept. The actions of individuals working together have demonstrated what faith, hope and love can accomplish.

There are ideas and ideals that money and power cannot buy. Most lottery winners end up broke in a few years. From what I understand, most millionaires end up with broken families. I am neither rich nor famous—I have aspired to both in my time—but I am richly blessed in that I have a family that aspires to be better than they are at any given time. It takes a lot of work and commitment. Compared to much of the world, I am rich. My net worth is a positive number.

How do we change the world? One act of random kindness at a time.

A few years ago, without permission, I edited the movie “Evan Almighty” into a-few-minutes-long synopsis video. The file [link below the image] is fairly large so it will take a few minutes to download…

One Act of Random Kindness… can change the world for the better.

evan_almighty

http://mjarts.com/videos/Change_the_World2.mov

 

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 78: the tracks we leave behind…

August 27, 2015

My desire for the last few weeks has been to write something upbeat…it’s just very hard, looking at the world and the way it is.

Sitting BullWe will be known forever by the tracks we leave behind.

Lakota Proverb

I watch a lot of movies. Now that my time is not as tied to a schedule as it has been in the past, and because I spend about 1/3 of my day in a chair in the living room, I watch even more movies/DVDs…they occupy my mind while my hand and eye are working together.

I’m not sure why I’ve never watched “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” before. I spent several months, back in the 90s, researching our American history and our treatment of the ‘indigenous people’ who occupied our continent until we—white folk—drove them off their land. I’ve heard that there were something like 500 nations in the Americas before the Europeans arrived.

I’ve also spent/invested the last two weeks of my time investigating my family history. As an adult I’ve largely considered myself as an ‘immigrant child’—I’m ‘first generation on my Mom’s side of the family [she was born in Norway]; and ‘third generation’ on my Dad’s maternal side of the family [my maternal great grandparents were Swedish, born in Finland. My paternal great grandfather comes from a family line that seems to have taken the Biblical command VERY seriously: “As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it.” From that generation backward, it seems like every mother gave birth to a dozen children—free labor. I found an immigrant side of that family as well—one of my ancestors emigrated from England to America in the mid-1600s. To my surprise, that line of my family goes back to Charlemagne—by marriage—a Plantagenet descendant married a woman who is in my ancestral line…

I’ve been a member of churches for the last 40 years; and I was in a Christianity-based sales organization for much of the 80s and early 90s. For years I have heard from platforms and pulpits, how blessed the [white] American people are—‘the only nation created in the name of God’—and other such nonsense. The prosperity so valued began in the 50s and 60s, increased in the 80s and died in 2008…I’ve heard so many people state that our material prosperity is a ‘gift from God.’ For all of our supposed ‘prosperity’ we have an incredible number of mass murders. Divorce, unemployment, destitution.

A lot of people who ‘proof text’ the Old Testament tend to leave out the places where ‘God’s People’ were cursed because of their wickedness. The Pilgrims who arrived here were seeking religious freedom—from the Anglican Church of England at that time. It’s probably an exaggeration to state that the Pilgrims came to bring religious freedom to a new land. They weren’t seeking religious freedom for everyone—they were seeking the freedom to practice their own religious beliefs.

We tend to rewrite history to make it sound much better than it really is. It appears today that the Founding Fathers, in declaring their independence from England were really saying that “we hold these Truths to be self-evident—that all [white males] are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights…’ However, history has caught up with the Founders and the Supreme Court has ruled that these rights mostly apply to all American citizens, without regard to gender, race or religion. One of the ‘problems’ of a Democratic Republic—the rules can change.

Tonight I’m thinking about the huge number of Native Americans who were slaughtered by European emigrants who believed they could own land [“On 8 September 2000, the head of the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) formally apologized for the agency’s participation in the “ethnic cleansing” of Western tribes]; about the Japanese-American citizens who were sent to American concentration camps during World War II; and the hundreds of thousands killed in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, which included the murder of thousands of children. How do we overlook such wickedness…

It is far easier for me to see the world today as being under a “curse”—I’m a 21st Century enlightened American Christian who has trouble thinking of the literalness of “curses and blessings’—than it is to see the results of blessing in our world.

And then there is another quotation from the movie: “There is another road that runs beside warpath, a secret road, only known to the Christ worshippers…” for me, it is important to distinguish between the religion and the followers…they aren’t necessarily the same.

Medicine Bottle

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 77: Imagination and Inspiration

August 18, 2015

Martian landscapeImages: http://mars.nasa.gov/mro/multimedia/images/?s=326

 These are aerial photographs of the landscape of Mars.

This statement blows my mind. It ought to blow yours.

Not Hollywood. Not CGI. Photographs made with a camera that sits aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, a satellite that’s been orbiting Mars for about 10 years; shooting photos of strangely colored sand dunes, enormous ‘dust devils’ that extend thousands of feet into the air, and create strangely beautiful shadows; avalanches near the snow-covered Poles of Mars.

However, we live in the 21st Century; and the world of the Internet. All sorts of wonders happen all of the time, and we yawn and scroll down to the next item on Facebook…

When I was a kid, back when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, I read the John Carter of Mars novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I read of Barsoom and its canals and an adventurer from Earth who found himself a stranger in a strange land. The books are better than the movie was.

I was 10 years old when JFK spoke these words at Rice University:

“We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man…”

Full speech below

 We went to the Moon by the end of that decade; and we have gone far beyond that goal. Astronauts have inspired children the world over to “seek out new adventures and to go where no man has gone before…”

I read the works Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov as well as dozens of other science fiction authors. Tom Swift Jr. was one of my literary heroes, and the subject of many of my internal adventures—a young inventor traveling the world and outer space, seeking to make life better. And now I can view photos of Mars, I can watch videos of Mars and its moons…as easily as I can watch Facebook.

Should we be trying to go to Mars? I’d rather see us fix up the planet we have, than to encourage us to continue wrecking this one while we find a new planet to wreck…

The problem isn’t money.

cost of war

The bottom number starts with One Trillion. A number, when applied to money, that none of us can accurately imagine. You can probably find a graphic somewhere on the Internet. These numbers of course are significantly smaller than the numbers are at this moment, as you are reading these words. You can find current numbers here.

There is no lack of money in the US and in the world for solving most of the problems of mankind; what is lacking is the willingness to sacrifice our comfort for the sake of people we don’t know. We can take pictures of Mars!—surely we can provide clean water and electricity to the planet. Can we reverse global warming? Probably not. Maybe we can slow it down.

You can inspire a child to dream; you can inspire a child to do something for good that no one in their history has ever done. You can inspire a child to become a better person than you are. By training your mind you can become a better person than you are now.

 JFK_Rice_University

 

“We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.

There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic?

We choose to go to the Moon! We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win.”

President John F. Kennedy in front of a large crowd gathered at Rice Stadium in Houston, Texas on September 12, 1962.

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 76: It’s always too soon to quit…

August 10, 2015

peacock window

A dear friend of mine recently posted some quotations from Marcus Aurelius on Facebook; a mutual friend, a woman we don’t know all that well, in reading his post remembered inspiration she received by reading the writings of this this long-dead Roman Emperor; and baby Aurelia was given her name. In the annals of history, being the instrument of the naming of a child is probably a small thing; however, she is only a few weeks old, and has her entire life ahead of her. Who knows what the inspiration from a Roman Emperor of 1900 years ago might have upon her life? The naming of each of our children was a well-thought-out experience, and I imagine it’s the same for many parents. We can never overlook the possibilities that our smallest acts contain.

This dear friend of mine has a lot of reasons for doubting the value of his life; he battles a chemical imbalance in his brain; probably a result of genes—something he cannot control. One of my ‘fears’ is that one day the chemistry will win out over what he knows in his heart-of-hearts to be true. When such ‘fears’ come upon me, I turn them over to the Author of Life, in whose name my dear friend was raised. Whatever events happen in our earthly lives, I know that we will meet again in the Life to Come. This is a promise from the Author of Life.

Sixty-three years of life; forty-two of them walking with the Author of Life. I rather wish I’d kept a list of the ‘small things’ that have happened in my life that ended up being extremely significant. Many of the ‘small things’ were barely noticed; like the song that just happened to start playing as I’m writing this paragraph [statistically, a 1/1340 chance]—The Impossible Dream, which caused to realize that there is more to live for in this life than the stuff we find around us. The story of the ‘Man of La Mancha,’ presented in a Senior AP English class in high school by “Captain Bob” Bonniwell opened the door to faith in my life. The older I get, the larger the pile of ‘stuff’ gets, and the more potent-smelling it becomes. And still I contend that it is better to live life as it could be, to live life as it ought to be lived; rather than to live life as it often presents itself in our circumstances. I never made the opportunity to thank Captain Bob. Should have.

I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to create a life for myself that allows me a lot of time to think, to ponder, to hope and to dream. The dreams are harder now, partially because the Dreambuilders I once surrounded myself with aren’t around. But I still am able to ponder and hope. I too often fail to realize what a gift my lifestyle has become for me. Most people have little time to think about LARGE concepts, such as faith. I wish I had the ability to download faith into all those who need it; I’d post it in a Dropbox and plaster the URL across the internet. Sadly, I can’t do that. By “faith” I’m not talking about religion; it often starts with religion; however, there is a Faith that transcends religion. I’m not there yet, but I can see it in the distance.

One of our shortcomings as human beings is that we tend to think that we are something special; just by being human. In today’s world, “American Exceptionalism” is probably the most insidious version of this curse—at least within the American culture. I believe that when the Creator said, “let us make man in our own image,” the Creator wasn’t talking about form. I believe that the gift we were given, that gift which is in the Creator’s image, is our ability to Create. There are other creatures that use tools; creatures like the spider that can build a web we can’t even begin to replicate—and these abilities are hard-wired into their tiny brains and neurological systems. Birds make nests; I don’t know if there are birds who have realized that all that plastic garbage we leave lying around can become weather-proof roofs over their heads…

We have the ability to create our own realities; and by this gift we are human, slightly lower than the angels. As animals, humans display a lot of behavior that is far from special. We are more than animals.

I’m in an *interesting* place in life. I don’t have ALS—it’s clear that I don’t have ALS—and yet I can’t help but wonder if what I experience is similar to those with ALS: watching my body ‘dissolve’ around me. I end most evenings [early mornings to much of the world] watching ‘hero stories’ on DVD. I find that drawing-time seems to work best after 10p or 11; and lasts for 3-4 hours; after which it simply hurts too much to keep sitting down. So I move to the couch, and watch a couple hours of ‘hero’ stories; and then I try to figure out how I’m going to get off of the couch, and make my way to bed. I was at a friends’ house yesterday, and sat down on a footstool; I immediately realized that this was a bad choice, because the footstool turned out to be much squishier than I expected it to be. When it was time to leave that room, I waited until I was the last one there, so I could figure out what method I’d use to get myself from footstool to standing up… I honestly can’t tell if it’s a strength issue or a function [lack of] issue. Getting up from the footstool was awkward, and I am innately self-conscious.

There are a couple of old guys in my life, guys who cannot [yet] cope with the idea of ‘new normal’—a new set of conditions in their lives that make their former plans extremely difficult to achieve. Neither of them live with the difficulties that one of my heroes lives with; a woman who has lived most of her life in a wheelchair, with a body that mostly does not respond to her control. She’s endured more operations than she has years in her life. Her physical abilities are far less than those of the two old codgers I’m writing about; and yet they have trouble finding a reason to stay alive. My hero-friend has been making that choice for a long time.

We make choices as to how we will live our lives. Some of us have horrible crap to overcome; some of us merely have inconvenience to overcome; and we think that it’s ‘horrible crap’ because our view of life is too small… Each day above ground is a gift, whether or not we want to see it that way. And we are given tremendous flexibility as to how we will use this gift.

How will you use your gift, today?

How will I use mine?

Summer King

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 75: The Shadow People

July 17, 2015

Human Shadows Imprinted by Nuclear ExplosionHuman Shadows Imprinted by Nuclear Explosion

 I had planned on writing something more upbeat for this installment; I don’t like writing about the physical challenges I deal with—there are so many, with so many more…The hope, in writing the last installment, was that it might prove helpful for someone…

Then I was informed of the date: July 16, 2015, the 70th Anniversary of a horrific event.

On July 16, 1945, scientists in Los Alamos successfully exploded the first atomic bomb at the Trinity test site, located in nearby Alamogordo, New Mexico. The atomic age began; and the words were uttered by Robert Oppenheimer: “I have become death, the destroyer of worlds”. On August 6 and August 9—next month—the 70th Anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will occur. The above images are from these cities; the shadows left on structures after their owners were vaporized by the atomic blast.

 Atomic_bombing_of_JapanAtomic cloud over Nagasaki from Koyagi-jima

 Wednesday afternoon I opened my email to find that people are suggesting that we go to war with Iran; for fear that Iran will become a nuclear power, and will provide terrorists with nuclear capability. The insanity of nuclear war must stop.

This subject is particularly meaningful for me, in that it reminds me of one of my ‘failures’ as an illustrator. I was hired [not sure I ever got paid] to illustrate a “Hiroshima Diary” but could not finish the illustrations in the time I was given. Most of the illustrations have never been finished, nor published in any form. The diary is the story of a teacher who entered Hiroshima after the bombing, looking for two children who had been sent to Hiroshima for schooling. As she walked the streets of Hiroshima she saw hundreds of children wandering through the rubble, looking for their parents. The only survivors she found were children. Her diary tells of her encounters with wandering, damaged children; all of whom die in her arms…

Ashes of HiroshimaWe did this.

I don’t care how much discussion occurs over the justification of our actions; we obliterated thousands of women and children. Non-combatants. Perhaps they would have become combatants if we invaded Japan. We didn’t, and they weren’t. We slaughtered:

20 U.S., Dutch, British prisoners of war
90,000–166,000 killed in Hiroshima
39,000–80,000 killed in Nagasaki
Total: 129,000–246,000+ killed

 Champions of Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

It must never happen again.

 

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 74: Life is filled with surprises…

July 11, 2015

p25From the soon-to-be-published, “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry

 Jim is a little dismayed…when he left for work this morning, his wife, Della had knee-length hair. At lunch he went out and bought her a pair of elegant hair-combs as a dearly-purchased present. Life is filled with surprises…

My birthday today. 63 is a surprising number. Not that I didn’t expect to reach this number, it’s just that it seems so soon; or so sudden. My brain is still somewhere in my 40’s. The last six years have tumbled all of my plans; and have made it difficult to make new ones…

In 2008 I worked with Medical Teams International in two different parts of the world. First in New Orleans, working on Katrina Recovery; and a few months later in Oaxaca, Mexico. While in New Orleans I watched an exhausted young couple coordinate the efforts of dozens of volunteers, sent out to various places, repairing damaged houses. Earlier in my life, I was a contractor; followed by 14 years in the Bureau of Buildings in Portland. I realized that I could give that couple a break; I knew how to do what they were doing. I just needed to figure out how I’d deal with the finances. I had a belt custom-made when I returned home, as a reminder of my desire to serve… Standing in my room in Oaxaca, overwhelmed with the foreign-ness of the nighttime activity happening on the street below, I realized that I might have found my purpose for the years ahead—using my experience in construction to help others around the world.

Six months later I started seeing neurologists, concerned about two numb areas, one at the bottom of each foot. Six months after that, I lost most of the sensation in my skin, over most of my body. While working with our church in building some homes in a village on the Baja Peninsula, I discovered that working with sharp things wasn’t very smart. I was able to draw blood without feeling it. A similar trip the following year, after the lack of sensation in my skin had covered the rest of my body; I was convinced that I was done with construction. I still have most of my tools; I haven’t found the self-discipline to get rid of them. Now, standing on my feet and walking around for a couple of hours exhausts me. My hands shake when I draw; I have difficulty with finger movement; so now I draw at large scale, and mostly work with digital versions of my drawings. There was a period in my life when I expected to become a ‘famous illustrator’. Life is filled with surprises…

And yet I still find hope… Not hope that the neuropathy will heal; not hope that I won’t have wheels in my future. Nor hope that I’ll still become a famous illustrator. Hope that things will work out OK.

It’s hard to explain hope; I believe that my hope is a gift of the Creator. I have two old guys in my life at present, 10-20 years older than myself. Neither of them has much in the way of hope; both expect to die soon, their dreams for the future unfulfilled. They are both angry. I’d be angry, too. Some days I am angry.

When I asked the Creator into my life in 1973, I determined not to become Religious. I found Religious people to be annoying; they had opinions about my life that had very little basis in fact. I have come to realize that the opinions weren’t far off the mark, because humans are remarkably similar; but they were rude in their presumption. There is nothing in my life that causes me to deserve Heaven, or to have earned a place in Heaven. We don’t spend Eternity with the Creator because we are good people. We spend Eternity in Heaven [whatever that may be] simply because that is what the Creator intended from the beginning of Creation. This idea messes with the minds of a lot of Religious people, and they have all sorts of verses from the Bible that justify their opinions, ‘proving’ me wrong. I learned a long time ago that there is no point in arguing Scripture with these folk. Scripture can justify nearly everything, if one is good at it.
There were two thieves hanging on a cross, next to Jesus. One of the thieves mocked Jesus.
But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

No “Spiritual Laws,” no going to church, no being a good person, no not-doing a list of things that good people aren’t supposed to do. Just, ‘remember me.’ And a promise from the Creator of the Universe, come to earth in the form of Jesus. Most of the people who are most critical of non-Religious people are well-intentioned, although it often doesn’t seem that way. They just never learned to play well with other children…

I see life in America, and life in the Church in an odd way. A dear friend recently described it as a “Specialized Uniqueness.” I have to limit it to America, because I’ve seen very little of the world. I have friends in various places in the world, doing mission-work among people who’ve never really heard of Jesus. The majority of the world has never heard of Jesus, or have heard a very peculiar version of Jesus. To the uninitiated, it seems like missionaries are trying to ‘win points in Heaven’. From my experience, these are people who have found a way to make sense of life, and they truly want to share the experience with others, out of love and compassion. A compassion that isn’t found very often in this world. And yes, it often comes with a ‘yardstick’. To me, that ‘yardstick’ tends to make a lot of sense. But it can’t be forced. Jesus never forced anyone to do anything; and He was fairly intolerant of those who did. Somehow this part tends to get overlooked. He spent most of His time hanging around with the people that the Religious people couldn’t stand. Jesus liked to party.

I’m not big on parties. I don’t like drawing attention to myself [how I ever believed that I could be a ‘famous illustrator’ while not drawing attention to myself I’m not sure I’ll ever understand]. Maybe when I get Home I’ll enjoy parties…

 the universe in his hands_1

 

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 73: Altruism

June 14, 2015

robot 2

I watched Guardians of the Galaxy this afternoon; amusing, but I’m getting tired of ‘comic book’ movies, aka ‘collateral damage’ movies. Movies whose most prominent feature is the property damage that occurs during the battles between the good guys and the bad guys. The movies rarely, if ever, deal with the fact that lots of people lose most of their stuff, if not their lives; and that the heroes of the movie rarely help the victims recover. That’s one of the places where the difference between life and movies becomes obvious.

C.S. Lewis hoped that mankind would never venture into the solar system and beyond—his fear was that we would spread the infection of our foul natures out to the other life in the universe. Ever notice how the science fiction movies that get made so often assume that other intelligent life chooses evil as a way to live? I can’t help but wonder whether or not other life in the universe may never choose evil as a way to respond to life…

I have a friend who is angry at god because of the evil in the world. I keep telling him that most of the evil in the world comes from the hands of man; and our tendency to use our Free Will to take advantage of others. We want what’s best for ourselves and are unwilling to put ourselves out for the benefit of others. Not all of us, not all of the time; but all it takes is a few of us taking advantage of others to ruin it for the rest of the world. Too many people respond to the bad stuff that happens to them by passing that bad stuff on to others. We feel crappy, or we feel crappy about our circumstances, and we act crappy toward others. The disease gets passed on to others.

Can you imagine a world where people treat each other, treat everyone graciously? I can, sort of, because I’ve met these kind of people. Not a lot of them; and most of them wouldn’t want to consider themselves as being ‘especially good’ people—we all know our failings, and these folks would look first at their failings, and consider them more significant than the good stuff that comes so easily to them. People that decide to live an entirely different life than most of us choose. I know a young couple, with a new baby, who have chosen to live in ‘outer Mongolia’ in order to tell people about Jesus, in a world where nearly everyone has never heard of Jesus. They have a different religious belief. To those who believe that one religious belief is as bad as another, this concept has a negative tone. It used to have a negative tone for me. Life changes one. I know this couple who are giving up most of the stuff that the rest of us strive for—there isn’t anything negative there. The same belief that sends healthcare workers to fight Ebola and MERS in a different country; the same altruism that sends people to Nepal when people are fleeing earthquakes. The altruism that sends First Responders into burning buildings…

It isn’t me; my goals are more mundane and more career-related. I’ve looked at this concept for lots of years.

I like to close with another illustration; none of the people I’m thinking of would like their faces to be used—they wouldn’t want to be seen as an example. So, I’ll end with some who are anonymous, and can express joy:

silhouette tap

 

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