Chronicles in Ordinary Time

Apologies, if this hasn’t uploaded properly. WordPress used to be better, before they improved it.

I found this once again. It wasn’t on my shelf, so I didn’t see the title. Changed that.

The crazies have won and now, Governance has become Revenge Politics. I guess this is why the Speaker was so adamant about becoming Speaker. The last time choosing a Speaker took so long was around the time of the Civil War. And the crazies winning was the price of the role. Tomorrowland was made in 2015; the slides teachers were using in classrooms could have come from this weeks’ news outlets.

Nix: Let’s imagine… if you glimpsed the future, you were frightened by what you saw, what would you do with that information? You would go to… the politicians, captains of industry? And how would you convince them? Data? Facts? Good luck! The only facts they won’t challenge are the ones that keep the wheels greased and the dollars rolling in. But what if… what if there was a way of skipping the middleman and putting the critical news directly into everyone’s head? The probability of wide-spread annihilation kept going up. The only way to stop it was to show it. To scare people straight. Because what reasonable human being wouldn’t be galvanized by the potential destruction of everything they’ve ever known or loved? To save civilization, I would show its collapse.

But how do you think this vision was received? How do you think people responded to the prospect of imminent doom? They gobbled it up like a chocolate eclair! They didn’t fear their demise, they re-packaged it. It could be enjoyed as videogames, as TV shows, books, movies, the entire world wholeheartedly embraced the apocalypse and sprinted towards it with gleeful abandon. Meanwhile, your Earth was crumbling all around you. You’ve got simultaneous epidemics of obesity and starvation. Explain that one! Bees and butterflies start to disappear, the glaciers melt, algae blooms. All around you the coal mine canaries are dropping dead and you won’t take the hint! In every moment there’s the possibility of a better future, but you people won’t believe it.

And because you won’t believe it you won’t do what is necessary to make it a reality. So, you dwell on this terrible future. You resign yourselves to it for one reason, because *that* future does not ask anything of you today. So yes, we saw the iceberg and warned the Titanic. But you all just steered for it anyway, full steam ahead. Why? Because you want to sink! You gave up! That’s not the monitor’s fault. That’s yours.

Last week, in my timeline, there was another warning that will probably be ignored…

90 Seconds to Doomsday

“Humanity is closer than ever to the end of the world.” That was the dire warning this week from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which, since 1947, has been estimating how close the world is to ending by stating starkly how many “minutes to midnight” remain on its signature Doomsday Clock. The clock on Tuesday was set at 90 seconds to midnight, the closest to midnight it has ever reached, according to the Bulletin, a nonprofit organization and publication.
The Doomsday Clock had been set at 100 seconds to midnight since 2020. But the clock was moved forward this year “largely but not exclusively” because of “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the increased risk of nuclear escalation,” the Bulletin said in a statement.” New York Times

“Donald Trump and his supporters and allies are a clear and present danger to American democracy,” [J. Michael] Luttig told the [January 6^th] committee on live television.
“We Americans no longer agree on what is right or wrong, what is to be valued and what is not, what is acceptable behavior and not, and what is and is not tolerable discourse in civilized society,” he said. “America is adrift.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2023/01/31/michael-luttig-judge-jan-6-trump-pence

I think the whole world is adrift [a generalization. I think I know people who are far more ‘positive’ than I am].

Tomorrowland is about the possibility of hope. Hope is internal. Hope has to be cultivated.

They were just high school kids, named Ernest, Elizabeth, Jefferson, Terrence, Carlotta, Minnijean, Gloria, Thelma, and Melba, who made history in 1957 when they became the first Black pupils at their school, in the face of fierce opposition. We start Black History Month here in Little Rock, the state capital of Arkansas, at the Little Rock Nine Monument, named for that group of kids who played an important role in desegregating public schools.

Meanwhile, on the planet Mars:

Chronicles in Ordinary Time 235/248: A Story of Christmas

4^th Sunday in Advent

[I’m about 10 hours early]

This was created last Christmas, with some edits today.

I still don’t do Christmas well. I don’t know why. I enjoyed watching our adult children when they were young [Back When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth], and anticipated Christmas. I enjoy watching the continuous joy of our 3+ year old grandson as he wanders through a forest of new things. I am thankful for the birth of his little brother. My major understanding from this year is that “happy” appears to be ‘standard equipment’ for humans. At four months, our new grandson clearly understands happiness; this begs the question as to why I have trouble understanding this.

Back When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, and I worked for the City of Portland, at lunchtime I would listen to a local Catholic radio station that played only Advent music in the weeks before Christmas. Music that prepared people for the appearance of the Christ Child…

The Story isn’t all that complicated. The Creator of the entire Universe entered Time and Space [not unlike Doctor Who] in the form of a single cell implanted in the womb of a teenaged Jewish girl named Mary. Her son Jesus lived as a human male, apparently took over his adoptive father’s carpentry business, then preached for 3 years reminding people how they should act and was subsequently killed by upset religious people of Authority.

Yes, I believe the Universe is Created. I’ve worked as a designer for 50 years; I recognize Design when I see it. I have experienced Intervention over the last 40+ years. Things that have happened that I cannot explain. Not often. Jesus is believed to have healed 30-40 people in a three-year period. The Evangelical Church expects healing all the time. I have a problem with that. I have ‘been healed’ [no other explanation] several times in the last 50 years; at some point I would be ‘broken’ again.

Christmas in America has little to do with the Story. Jesus probably wasn’t born in a barn; the Magi came when Jesus was a toddler. Christmas Trees have nothing to do with Christmas. The Magi brought gifts for a newborn King, nobody else.

Humans have a need to venerate/celebrate/experience wonder. I don’t have a problem with that. Celebrations of the Winter Solstice accomplished that. Jesus entered the world to bring Life; not to create a reason for a party; not to help Christmas sales.

Back to Mary. She was visited by an Angel and was told that she would that she would bear a son who was to be named Yeshua; and that he would save the people from their sins. There is a long passage in the New Testament called “The Magnificat”—Mary’s response to the Angel that came and told her she would bear a child, not having ever having sex.

Last year, I created the image below, thinking about how my 20-year-old granddaughter might act, if she was in Mary’s situation.

A male-looking Angel comes into her bedroom[?] and she apparently does not get freaked out. I have trouble believing that part. Eventually understanding that what the Angel said might be true, I can believe.

Now we get to the ugly part of the Story.

Searching for the Christ Child, three Maji from East came to Judea. They stopped at the Palace, to ask King Herod for the location of the new King that they had foreseen. Herod did not know but asked the Magi to return after they had found Him so that Herod could worship Him [he lied]. Having visited the new King, leaving behind gifts to honor a King, the Maji took a different route home.

Herod, realizing he had been fooled by the Magi, ordered that all male children of 2 years of age and younger were to be murdered. History calls this The Massacre of the Innocents [above left]. Such massacres have continued into our time. Humans are broken. An Angel warns Mary’s husband Joseph in a dream and tells Joseph to take his young family to Egypt [above right].

The Gospel of Matthew tells the Christmas Story, complete with Angels from Heaven, and domestic animals in a barn. A great Story told and retold for two Millennia. The Story would probably look different if there had been a camera and a reporter there to document the event. Doctor Who, the Time Lord who has roamed the Universe for Millennia, claimed to have been there, near the barn where Mary gave birth to Jesus, because he had rented the last room at the inn…

I am making a conscious choice to allow the Story into my life this year. This year has been exceptionally difficult. What’s worse, nearly all of the challenges have to do with the choices I made in the past, intending better outcomes. As it says in the movie:

“Okay, there are two things that l remember about my childhood…
First, l remember being with my dad.
He would get these far-off looks in his eye, and he would say,
“Life doesn´t always turn out the way you plan.”
l just wish l realized at the time he was talking about my life.”
While You Were Sleeping [1995]

I never had that conversation with my Dad.

The Story isn’t all that complicated. I also never had this conversation with my parents; they had run from Church in early adulthood and weren’t interested in the information I wanted share with them—information that I’d never heard before.

Evangelicals have lists as to Naughty and Nice. Different denominations have their own list. They tend to believe that everyone has the same list.

I’m on the Naughty list owned by the church I served since 2004, up to the Pandemic. I’m on the Naughty List for a certain Political Party in this country. I believe that we are all [no Exceptions] tasked with finding Creator wherever we can. No one is separated from Creator by their actions. This the concept of Omniscience—All Knowing; in the same category as the Laws of Thermodynamics. We can never surprise Creator. There are no Naughty and Nice lists with Creator.

To say that ‘sin separates us from Creator’ can be found in passages in the Bible. As can the following:

Psalm 137
1 By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion…
8 Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is the one
who repays you according to what you have done to us.

9 Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.

I have never heard a sermon preached about that part. Probably would not go over well in Texas and other states that advocate pro-birth. [If they advocated pro-life, they would assure early childhood care].

The Story is that Creator came into the world as a cell that grew, was birthed,
and was raised as a Jewish child.
It is believed He became a Carpenter, following His adoptive father.
In His 30s He became all of the Creator that a human can be.
…For God did not send his Son into the world that He would condemn the world, but that He would give life to the world by Him.  John 3:17   Read it literally.
The male pronouns above refer to Jesus.
Jesus came into our world to give our world Life.
Jesus either succeeded, or Jesus failed.
There really are only two options.

I choose Succeeded

https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/060/01GJ3HZRT43P8JATFQ90Z8EZ0W?news=true

The image found at the Webb Telescope NASA website above, is a likely-illustration of a planet in an entirely different solar system than ours. This opens the door wider on the subject of “impossible”.

We are living in a time of only-imagined science, only found in Science Fiction as I was growing up, far too many decades ago.

This example of wonder is placed in the same ‘box’ as the destruction of seemingly everything due to human destruction of this planetary gift, given by the Creator of all.

On the front pages of news ‘papers’ at this time is political squabbling about revenge politics and the death of the innocent by the hand of FEAR. Mass murders every day.

Tomorrow I will gather with my immediate [in the sense, “present”] family at a wondrous table [my son was an Executive Chef, before blowing-out the ligaments and tendons in his wrist] of food and good company, including our nearly 3-month old grandson and his older brother. If I am smart [doubtful] I will take that opportunity to be thankful for Creator’s gifts; my own FEAR is that I will be unable to see Grace because of human stupidity.

FEAR:  False Evidence Appearing Real

To be more accurate, this is likely to be an image of Tarzan in a book I am writing, illustrating, editing; originally written by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It will take years to finish.

Why Tarzan, now?

1. I need Heroes. I’ve always needed Heroes. My babysitters, for a large portion of my childhood, were these guys:

For the uninitiated, Robin Hood, the Lone Ranger and Tonto, Superman and Zorro.

They were all in Black and White. In 1960, I was 8 years old

Both of my parents worked, my Mom worked at home. Television kept me absorbed.

I feel as though this is what has occurred:

“An anti-hero is the main character in a story who lacks conventional heroic qualities and attributes such as idealism, courage, and morality.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antihero   2.No one has ever done Burroughs’ Tarzan well, in all of the various versions that have been created. The most recent movie, The Legend of Tarzan [2016] was much closer to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ vision.I’m old enough now to have the arrogance to say that I will do Tarzan better. This is part of the reason I expect to be at this for years. I’ve already been at it for a year, and I’m barely started. There are Heroes who pass through our lives, often unnoticed. There have been heroes in my own life; ‘debts’ that can never be adequately repaid. One of those heroes in my life is a blues guitarist named Eric Bibb. I met him once at a Ray Charles concert, about 25 years ago. I’ve been listening to him ever since. https://www.ericbibb.com