Chronicles in Ordinary Time 255: “We are not alone.”
July 4, 2023Apologies, if this hasn’t uploaded properly. WordPress used to be better, before they improved it.
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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 252: Cognitive Dissonance
April 8, 2023
Chronicles in Ordinary Time 251: choosing to walk forward, together
March 16, 2023
When I have trouble making sense of the world, I turn to movies and science fiction…
I’ve been doing that a lot, lately. Science fiction must be structured. Our lives? Not so much.
Davis: That’s part of your problem: you haven’t seen enough movies. All of life’s riddles are answered in the movies.
Davis: The point is there’s a gulf in this country; an ever-widening abyss between the people who have stuff, and the people who don’t have shit. It’s like this big hole in the ground, as big as the fucking Grand Canyon, and what’s come pouring out is an eruption of rage, and the rage creates violence, and the violence is real, Mack. Nothing’s gonna make it go away, until someone changes something, which is not going to happen. And you may not like it, even I may not like it, but I can’t pretend it isn’t there because that it is a lie, and when art lies, it becomes worthless. So I gotta keep telling the truth, even if it scares the shit out of me, like it scares the shit out of you. Even if it means some motherfucker can blow a big hole in my leg for a watch, and I’m gonna walk with a fucking limp for the rest of my life and call myself lucky…
Claire: Look, Mack, I don’t even know what I’m gonna say from one second to the next. The world doesn’t make any sense to me anymore. What’s going on? There are babies lying around in the streets. There are people living in boxes. There are people ready to shoot you if you look at them. And we’re getting used to it. The world is so nuts, it makes me wonder about all the choices that we’ve made.
Davis: There’s so much rage going around we’re damn lucky we have the movies to help us vent it.
Grand Canyon (1991)
I envy those who can believe there is a greater hand, writing our story, who chooses the words to keep chaos at bay.
Connection.
Joy.
Love.
With these words, the path becomes clear for a moment, and then disappears.
And resurrection.
If I have a path…I’m still searching for it.
We all are.
That’s how we find our way, by choosing to walk forward, together.
And if there is a greater hand leading us into an uncertain future…
…I can only hope it guides us well.
Michael Burnham, Star Trek: Discovery
The first law of thermodynamics is a version of the law of conservation of energy, adapted for thermodynamic processes. In general, the conservation law states that the total energy of an isolated system is constant; energy can be transformed from one form to another, but can be neither created nor destroyed.
You are energy. You can be transformed from one form to another, but you can be neither created nor destroyed. This explains how all/most of the religions of the world demonstrate truth. We do not cease to exist upon death. Our human energy is transformed. We are not aware of this energy because we are ‘trapped’ in human bodies.
Here, for me, is where/how Faith becomes believable. I was raised outside of Faith. In high school I discovered that I am an existentialist. In my reading over the years, I read the teachings of Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor from 161 to 180 AD and a Stoic philosopher. He was the last of the rulers known as the Five Good Emperors (a term coined some 13 centuries later by Niccolò Machiavelli), and the last emperor of the Pax Romana, an age of relative peace, calmness and stability for the Roman Empire lasting from 27 BC to 180 AD. He served as Roman consul in 140, 145, and 161. If you’ve seen the movie, Gladiator, the murdered Emperor, Commodus’ father, is based on the person of Marcus Aurelius.
The theology I read in my third year of college was along the lines of Aurelius. Fifty years ago, I turned my life over to the One who made me; I was doing a fairly lousy job of it. One school break, I planned on sharing this information with my parents… only to discover that they had fled the Church. The reason I was raised without Faith. I think my two grandmothers might have had something to do with this.
Fifty years later, I have a much better understanding of why my parents left the Church. I’ve left the Church. The Pandemic becomes a convenient excuse. I have immunosuppressed family members. My reclusive-self delights in not having to leave the house. The rising Conservative tide, brought into the forefront by politicians who apparently have never heard of Jesus Christ beyond a profane expression. One cannot participate in the life of Christ and at the same time, ignore America’s pathetic efforts toward Social Justice. If Critical Race Theory is prohibited in schools most of my life history will disappear. The Sixties, The Seventies, The Eighties and beyond to Black Lives Matter. I’m White; American history revolves around our shared guilt in terms of oppression of people who simply have skin with more melatonin. While Social Justice proponents remain in the majority and vote, our society will move forward. The percentages of Liberal and Conservative appear to have become very similar. Voting becomes more important each year.
Jesus never tried to convert the religious leaders in Jerusalem. Very few came to Him for counsel. The one we know about became very uncomfortable.
We see these natural tragedies, which are the Earth’s response to our maltreatment. […] It is we who have ruined the work of God.
Pope Francis
“Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.”
Martin Luther King Jr
The other night was Oscar Night—something I usually don’t care much about.
According to a film historian, only 44 of the 1300 top movies have had Asian leads.
The very strange film, Everything Everywhere All at Once—won seven Oscars for Best Picture, Best Performances… I’ve seen it; I don’t intend watch it again. The reason I stayed with the film was because of one of my favorite actresses:
She and I have one thing in common—something I’ve only learned about in recent years. Michelle, first and foremost a stunt performer, missed her target spot in a jump from a freeway overpass. If her eyes were open, she was looking at her heels directly in front of her. For a significant amount of time, a mere touch on a specific part of her spine, would cause her to puke.
I landed on a trampoline in high school, with the same landing—MUCH shorter drop. My legs went backward over my head. I did not have my eyes open, so I did not see my heels directly in front of my eyes. What I heard was the sound of a giant zipper, as all of my vertebrae moved in a way they shouldn’t have done. I was supposed to land on the middle of my chest. Apparently, I landed close to my collarbones.
I could still move, so I wasn’t sent to a doctor. In order to look at someone to my side, I had to rotate my entire body; this went on for a long time. Damaged both my lumbar and cervical vertebrae. I’ve had problems with pain, ever since. About ten years later, my wife and I married in the thankfully-brief time of ‘leisure suits’. My wedding suit had a yoke in back with stitching intended to be horizontal—parallel with the floor. I learned that I have a ‘shoulder drop’ of about 3 inches.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
The multi-verse may exist; I’m not a physicist. The Stargate collective frequently talked about multi-verse, many years ago—in the last century. Philosophically, I don’t see the point in a mutli-verse. Of course, I believe that the Universe is Created, and has purpose in its Creation. My assumption is that the Universe is still being Created, far beyond our ability to observe or predict.
Oversimplified, the multi-verse is based on the idea that every choice we make creates another Universe. A Universe made up with what would have happened if we turned left, rather than turning right. An Infinite [without end] collection of Universes created by a lifetime of my choices; and your choices, and the choices of more than 8 billion people at present. And all the choices that came before their lives. If the Multi-Universe exists, it will never end, until all of the living humans on Earth have died.
But what about the mammals and however far down the evolutionary scale there are entities that have the power of Choice? When a squirrel in my back yard jumps to another branch; but misses the one intended, does this create a new Universe? Is there someone behind the curtain that quantifies/qualifies the number of decisions made?
We make choices constantly. The majority of choices don’t change our lives nor the lives of others. When I gave my life back to my Creator 50 years ago, I did not have an end goal. My life today was totally beyond any expectations I had for the future. That concept is neither good nor bad. It just is.
What seems pretty clear is that we don’t get do-overs; nor do we yet have the ability to switch between the multiverses—as happens in Everything Everywhere All at Once. Do something that would likely gross you out, and it becomes the means by which you jump between multi-verses.
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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 250: when my life changed forever
February 26, 2023
February 26, 1973, was when my life changed forever. Metaphorically, The Time Lord came into my life. Not unlike this image. The Lord of Time and Space, Creator of the Universe. Third year of college and I’d never heard anything about religion in my family as I grew. In high school I had learned that I was an existentialist. I found the purveyors of god at my first college to be annoying. Conversations with dorm neighbors in year 3 led me to reading theology. One day the “dinosaur” above came into my dorm room—it was terrifying and I learned that there is more to life than our everyday experience. There is a ‘spiritual’ side of life—not unlike Light. Visible Light is only a portion of the Electromagnetic Spectrum.
The electromagnetic spectrum describes all of the kinds of light, including those the human eye cannot see. In fact, most of the light in the universe is invisible to our eyes. The light we can see, made up of the individual colors of the rainbow, represents only a very small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.
https://hubblesite.org/contents/articles/the-electromagnetic-spectrum
Humans, in our self-centered nature, want to be able to see infrared images while stuck in Visible light. Some people see this impossibility as being unfair.
By the end of that school year, I handed my life over to the One who made it. I wasn’t doing a very good job with that life on my own. It would be inaccurate to say that I’ve never regretted the decision; consequences sometimes suck. I stopped feeling lost. I stopped feeling broken. Fifty years later, I can hardly believe we are here again. I was of Middle School age when the President was assassinated. While I was in high school his Attorney General was assassinated, as well as three other Civil Rights leaders. The first thing President Johnson worked on was the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I have trouble believing that there isn’t a connection there. I don’t know if Johnson, a Senator from Texas, was expected to forge a Civil Rights Amendment.
A seemingly unending war that no one really understood. My draft number was in over 300. My second year, our dorm floor had a raffle—the person with the lowest draft number received however much money had been collected. The President we had after Johnson was disliked as much as the orange guy, who also did not concern himself with legality. The FBI and J. Edgar was standing there beside him.
It will be good if humans never leave our Solar System. C.S. Lewis was correct.
I inherently [a permanent, essential, or characteristic way] distrust strangers. Can’t really explain it. I think I’ve been this way all of my life. I sometimes describe myself as asocial rather than anti-social. My entire life has been a continual encounter with an American world that [1] isn’t the product that is sold; [2] Never has been. At least for someone who does not have pink skin. An entire branch of our government that once again is lobbying for the belief that people with brown skin are not the same as pink-skinned people. Lynching by cop, in this period of time.
Our age of impunity. By David Miliband
Mr. Miliband is a former foreign secretary of the United Kingdom.
Impunity is the exercise of power without accountability, which becomes, in starkest form, the commission of crimes without punishment.
When billionaires evade taxes, oil companies misrepresent the severity of the climate crisis, elected politicians subvert the judiciary and human rights are rolled back, you see impunity in action. Impunity is the mind-set that laws and norms are for suckers.
The orange guy, not-yet-convicted criminal, is six years older than I am. We have seen the exact same things in our society; but he saw it from a place of Impunity. My parents, my immediate family saw the world from the viewpoint of ‘suckers’ according to Mr. Miliband. My Dad was raised as a wheat rancher. That did not work; the ranch disappeared. All through my aware-life [much of it seems to have been not-paying-attention] my Dad worked more than 12 hours a day at different pursuits. When he and Mom had guests, Dad usually fell asleep because he was always exhausted—and he was simply sitting, not working. He lived on coffee and cigarettes. He worked himself to an early death. I am now three years older than my Dad lived to be. I have about six more years to catch up with the man that I knew as my grandfather. This year, I catch up with his brother—my actual grandfather—who was in a sanitarium for most of his life, brain damaged from one of two separate stories, neither of them good.
“…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]
From Nadia, and what is being called the Asbury Revival:
“I swear that social media should just be called “Joy Stealers Anonymous”. Analysis has its uses, but I’ve been left, over the past couple days, wondering: can we just absorb something with an open-hearted awe and curiosity for one fucking minute?”
Nadia Bolz-Weber is an ordained Lutheran Pastor, founder of House for All Sinners & Saints [HFASS] in Denver, Colorado, and one of my heroes. A friend I’ve never met. Sometimes known as Pastrix, she is covered with tattoos, many from church history. She currently preaches at a Women’s Prison in the Denver area.
The one time that we were at HFASS at church time, Nadia wasn’t there. However, the church service was beyond description even without her. There have only been a few times in these fifty years when I have felt the Presence of the Creator. It’s an experience of awe.
One of the people below believes she is an ‘influencer’—whatever that means. I think she’s an idiot, but no one has asked for my opinion.
Jimmy Carter served one term as President. From what I remember of the time, the reason he wasn’t reelected was that he refused to declare war against Iran.
“…a growing confrontation over United States support for the deposed Shah of Iran exploded on Nov. 4, 1979, when Iranian revolutionaries invaded the United States Embassy in Tehran and seized 52 American diplomats and citizens.
The crisis — in which billions in Iranian assets were frozen by the United States, American warships patrolled Iranian waters and an attempted American helicopter rescue cost eight lives — was a pivotal episode in the history of deteriorating United States relations with Iran, and a major factor in Mr. Carter’s landslide loss to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential election.”
New York Times
Jimmy Carter has made the world a better place as ‘ex-President’ than most presidents do while in office. At 98, he has placed himself in Hospice care. He’s tired of going to the hospital to fix another issue.
“The man was a marvel. The starchiness and righteousness were still there. He had not mellowed, thank God. He remained, to use the descriptor favored by one of his sons, intense. He still felt the sting of being dissed and held at a distance by his successors Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
As a post-president, Carter’s decency and honesty shone. Unlike Clinton and Obama, he didn’t go
Hollywood. Through the Carter Center, he worked tirelessly to eradicate diseases like Guinea worm and supervise elections in more than 100 countries.
He cared so passionately about peace that he even offered to go on a mission for a Republican president with very different values, Donald Trump, to talk to Kim Jong-un in North Korea.
Carter cared about building — furniture and relationships. The nasty new face of Georgia politics cares about dividing.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene followed up her furry catcalls to President Biden during the State of the Union by proposing secession.”
“The man was a marvel. The starchiness and righteousness were still there. He had not mellowed, thank God. He remained, to use the descriptor favored by one of his sons, intense. He still felt the sting of being dissed and held at a distance by his successors Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
As a post-president, Carter’s decency and honesty shone. Unlike Clinton and Obama, he didn’t go Hollywood. Through the Carter Center, he worked tirelessly to eradicate diseases like Guinea worm and supervise elections in more than 100 countries.
He cared so passionately about peace that he even offered to go on a mission for a Republican president with very different values, Donald Trump, to talk to Kim Jong-un in North Korea.
Carter cared about building — furniture and relationships. The nasty new face of Georgia politics cares about dividing.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene followed up her furry catcalls to President Biden during the State of the Union by proposing secession.”
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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 249: Hope has to be cultivated
February 1, 2023
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 6th] 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:
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December 24, 2022
Chronicles in Ordinary Time 235/248: A Story of Christmas
4th 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
Chronicles in Ordinary Time 