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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 212: Finding a New Normal

July 1, 2020
Life has a way of making the foreseeable what never happens; and the unforeseeable what your life is about.   “Appaloosa”

COVID-19 by the Numbers 6/30/2020 7:33p

Over 10 million COVID-19 cases, and more than one-half million deaths, worldwide.
I continue to be amazed at how many people I communicate with, via Social Media, who are unwilling to believe these numbers. They get their information from strangely named sources with highly visible agendas and are unwilling to believe that our Administration is lying to us. They are unwilling to accept the information found on traditional news outlets.

While a young reporter for The Washington Post in 1972, Carl Bernstein was teamed up with Bob Woodward; the two did much of the original news reporting on the Watergate scandal. These scandals led to numerous government investigations and the eventual resignation of President Richard Nixon. The work of Woodward and Bernstein was called “maybe the single greatest reporting effort of all time” by longtime journalism figure Gene Roberts.[1]

The Post is one of p45’s favorite targets for being called “Fake News.” The reality is that the name “Fake News” is applied to any reporting that the president doesn’t like.

Confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States surpassed 2.5 million on Sunday as a crushing new wave of infections continued to bear down throughout the country’s South and West. Across the nation, 40,587 new daily cases were reported.
Florida, Texas and Arizona are emerging as the country’s latest epicenters after reporting record numbers of new infections for weeks in a row. Positivity rates and hospitalizations have also spiked. On Sunday [6/28], Arizona (3,857) and Georgia (2,225) hit new one-day case highs.
A record surge in new cases is the clearest sign yet of the historic failure in the United States to control the virus — exposing a crisis in governance extending from the Oval Office to state capitals to city councils.
The faltering response in the United States remains a subject of global shock and fascination, with one prominent French virologist saying Sunday the situation was “explosive.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/06/28/coronavirus-live-updates-us/

Meanwhile, the president is playing golf…

mjarts face masks at Redbubble

Life has a way of making the foreseeable what never happens; and the unforeseeable what your life is about.   “Appaloosa”

Yes, I’m being repetitious; this may be my theme for a long time.
I turn 68 next month; I probably have “underlying medical conditions,” as the posts from the Oregon Health Authority publish in regard to COVID-19 deaths. Consequently, I am considered ‘at risk’—which sometimes feels like another name for “old.”
Since I am not allowed to volunteer anywhere, because of this classification, I am doing what I able to do. It appears that Face Masks are going to be with us for a long time… Unpleasant to think about it as it may be, we may need to wear face masks for the rest of our lives. I have designed a number of Face Masks, based on illustrations I’ve created in the past. I will be posting each design on Social Media over the next weeks. I have created 15 designs already; more designs are in the works.

The nature of viruses is that they are not alive, so they cannot be killed. The virus is a microscopic organism that exists to replicate; with COVID-19, the replication occurs in the lungs. Face Masks are not intended to keep you safe from COVID-19; they are intended to keep people around you safe. The COVID-19 virus can exist in our lungs for 2-3 weeks before we are aware of symptoms. It is not known at this time whether having recovered from the virus, we become immune—we don’t know whether we can catch the virus again. This is a Novel virus—one that is brand new [novel]; it has only existed for 7+ months. In spite of contrary messaging coming from politicians, COVID-19 is not ‘the flu’ that comes through our lives every fall. COVID-19 is deadly, for about 5% of the population that contracts the virus [8% of those tested]. If one survives being on a ventilator in a COVID ward, recovery may take months. Epidemiologists have not yet learned what causes some people to be asymptomatic—no discernable symptoms—nor what causes some people to die. People who are asymptomatic can still infect others. That is why we are ordered to wear masks.

You who are reading this: if you have been indoors among groups of people that aren’t wearing masks—political events or concerts—in the last two weeks, you may be infected and you are not aware of it. If you are infected, and go to public places without a mask, you can infect others. You may be infecting a grandparent or parent, or a family member.

For the foreseeable future, this is our New Normal.

This isn’t me; nor is it real

I damaged my spine when I was in high school—landed wrong in PE causing my legs to circle over my back, in an attempt at folding me in the wrong direction. I remember hearing my spine crackle like a zipper. It seems that my parents believed that if one can make it to the doctor, one does not need to see a doctor [probable financial reasons—I don’t even know if health insurance existed in the late 60s]. For many weeks, in order to turn my head to look sideways, I had to rotate my entire body. I was probably 16 or 17—youth brings a power of recovery that slowly disappears over time.
I received my last traffic citation when I turned forty—sort of a bizarre birthday present. The law enforcement officers, and the ambulance people, when they looked at my driver’s license, regretted their need to cite me for turning into an oncoming car—which wasn’t there when a began the turn… a blind corner of sorts. [we stopped traffic on the highway that goes over Mount Hood, so a helicopter could land] This was the third vehicle that I was in, that was totaled by another vehicle.

At that point, I decided there would never be a reason in the future, for me to rush, while driving.

I also worked as a less-than-careful carpenter for a decade or so. My guess was that the damage began in high school and was aggravated multiple times over 20+ years. I have been on pain medication for 50 years; plus, antidepressants. More meds, starting in 2009—”idiopathic polyneuropathy”—this is doctor speak for, ‘your neurological system is messed up, and we have no idea why’. I finally ‘found’ a neurologist who was willing to admit the latter phrase. I received a letter from him, a day or two ago, saying that because of COVID-19, he and his family were moving to the East Coast, to care for a mother. expletive deleted.
Beginning in 2009, ‘New Normal’ has occurred in my life every two years, in May or June, almost like clockwork. “New Normal’ began occurring more rapidly last year. I’m on my third New Normal since the beginning of 2019. It sucks.

The World has entered into New Normal.

Even in the Amazon Rainforest.

Greed, avarice, an unreasonable desire for wealth. Investment bankers, hedge fund managers and billionaires don’t want there to be a New Normal. The Military-Industrial Complex does not want a New Normal, as perhaps the last honest Republican President—Dwight D. Eisenhower—warned in his last address to the American public. They want the Old Normal, where they could get rich without having to deal with consequences.
Four months. 129,971 deaths in America. [ https://factba.se/topic/calendar ]
For two of those months, we Sheltered In Place, went without earnings, we avoided contact with other people. We collapsed the American economy. Two months which could have been used to create a path toward living with COVID-19 until a vaccine can be created and found to work. The European Union and Asian countries followed plans and are living with the COVID-19 virus. People continue to become infected; but the hospitals can handle the patient load. People are back at work in altered surroundings to minimize the spread of COVID-19. The European Union is rebuilding their economies. The European Union is banning Americans from travel to the E.U.

Memorial Day 2020 in the US. People partied like it was 2019. No Social Distancing; no Face Masks; no Sheltering In Place. This coming weekend is the Fourth of July. Will people party like it was 2019? States are recording the highest number of new infections since the end of March. Hospitals in various parts of the country are filled to capacity with COVID-19 cases; hospitals are running out of supplies. It is as if we were back at the end of March instead of the beginning of July. The two months where a plan could have been made were wasted on doing nothing. There is no Federal plan for dealing with the Pandemic. Governors are having to come up with their own plans for their states, with very little support from the Federal government.

We have the ability to imagine a New Normal; one that provides equity and justice. This has been proven in the last month. Black Lives Matter protests have brought positive benefits to the country. People who want a New Normal that provides Equity and Justice need to vote. We need to encourage voting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 211: Life in a Pandemic

June 15, 2020

Life has a way of making the foreseeable what never happens; and the unforeseeable what your life is about.   “Appaloosa”

I had other plans, back in March. We all had other plans and then the unforeseeable happened, and now, this is what our lives are about. [There are people who could foresee much of what has happened and did nothing. They will have to answer for that, in this life or the next]

Frodo: I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.

Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world Frodo, besides the will of evil.

LOTR Fan Art

Frodo: How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on… when in your heart you begin to understand…there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend…some hurts that go too deep…that have taken hold. LOTR The Return of the King, 2001

I’ve ‘always’ had a tendency toward OCD. In me, the ‘disorder’ takes the form of desiring control. Our house is a mess, but I am very particular about certain things. Mentally, I calculate the most efficient way to accomplish tasks. I have the store in which we buy groceries memorized, to pass through the store quickly. Since Social Distancing is my normal lifestyle, I’m not tempted to engage in conversations with random people. I eat the same food during the day that I’ve eaten for years; and have specific ways of preparing it. The dietary ‘rules’ relate to my degenerative polyneuropathy [doctor-speak for, ‘we have no idea what’s wrong with your nervous system’]. By eating the same selections of food, if my body doesn’t work properly on a given day, it isn’t because of my diet.

I write as a way of analyzing and understanding the Disorder of the world. A Disorder that has not existed in this country for a century, compounded by America’s Original Sin of Racism.

My great-grandfather, and one of his daughters died in 1919, here in Portland, during the Spanish Flu Pandemic. My Dad was something like a year old, having been born in Eastern Oregon in 1918.

The Spanish Flu Pandemic infected 500 million people—about a third of the world’s population at the time.[5] The death toll is estimated to have been anywhere from 17 million to 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million, making it one of the deadliest pandemics in human history.[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu

By the time you read this, over 436,000 people in the world will have died from COVID-19; over 116,000 of those people will have lived in the U.S. The number of infected people in the world will have passed 8 million. Lockdowns in the U.S. started about 3 months ago, in March.
Lockdowns are beginning to disappear; the problem is that COVID-19 has not changed. Those states/cities where the rate of infection dropped, only dropped because of the lockdowns. Infection rates are climbing in the South, and those parts of the country weren’t locked down, because of Memorial Day weekend. In 2-3 weeks infection rates will spike to new levels; as will the rate of deaths.

I wrote to a friend tonight and told him a story from one of my favorite books. The story takes place in a VA Burn Ward. There was a patient called ‘Sarge’ who had suffered third-degree burns over most of his body. He helped the nurses in the Burn Ward by bringing cups of water, and other Graces for the patients. A woman had been brought into the Ward, also suffering from third-degree burns over most of her body. Some months later, Sarge was telling this woman about his daughter going off to college. The woman said something like, ‘why would you send her to a Black University?’ Sarge replied, ‘because we are Black.’

There is no Melanin in the Burn Ward.

All of the patients in the Burn Ward have a thin transparent layer of dermis covering the muscles and tissues under the surface of our skin. The muscles and ligaments and tissues under our skin are the same throughout the world. The concept of Racism is based on a grim fairy tale that having pink skin is better than having brown skin. The idea has no basis in fact. Melanin is found in the basal cell layer of the epidermis and is about 0.2 mm in thickness. All of this anger for 0.2 mm.

Black Lives Matter Plaza, Washington D.C. June 2020

The other day, a friend asked me if I believe in evil.
Evil has been on display across the country; sadly, many of those who are sworn to protect and serve are responsible for creating the evil.
I saw Evil’s face in Minneapolis, staring into a camera for 9 minutes while he and his partners crushed the life of a man who supposedly paid for something with a counterfeit $20 bill. When did buying something with a counterfeit dollar bill become worth a person’s life? Do you check the paper money you receive from a cash purchase to see if the bills are counterfeit?

Karma may come into the picture in the weeks and months ahead. In his autopsy, George Floyd was found to be Positive for COVID-19…

He said he wanted a wall. Only, it isn’t at the Southern Border [that one has been breached in many places]; and the American Taxpayer is paying for it.

‘The need to fortify your house shows weakness’: Heavily secured White House at odds with its long history as ‘the people’s house’ The Independent, UK
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/white-house-protection-security-protests-trump-a9550476.html

The White House is known as “The People’s House” — and since 2009, the Obama administration has made that nickname truer than ever before for millions of guests by opening the White House to as many Americans as possible.
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2014/09/15/opening-peoples-house

Tourists may find it harder to get that perfect photograph of the White House after construction begins on a new 13-foot fence, almost double its current height, to help keep intruders out.

The White House has become a fortress.

How the US is viewed in Germany
The Fire Devil
A president sets fire to his country

 

 

 

 

 

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 209: MJ Arts Response to COVID-19 Pandemic

March 30, 2020

My tendency is to be a Rescuer—fixing the problems of others, when I encounter them. This tends to be very inconvenient, since I am also an introvert by nature; a time of “Social Distance” has very little impact on my daily life.
Having learned when I have offered to help with the COVID-19 Pandemic, that I am too old, too large, and too affected by my Neuropathy to be of use as a volunteer.
My solution: to make a series of “Super Heroes Wear Scrubs” illustrations, as well as a couple illustrations regarding the COVID-19 virus itself.
I will be posting these images on my retail store sites, so they can be used as T-shirts, mugs and Art Prints. However, since the object of creating these images isn’t earning money from the effort, I have created a Dropbox folder with the full-scale images enclosed. Since I don’t have the necessary equipment for making shirts and mugs and museum-quality prints, I am going to upload them to retail sites. The images in the Dropbox, all in png format, are based on an 11X17 sheet of paper. The actual sizes vary.

The first three images are already uploaded to my Society 6 retail store.
The remaining images will uploaded during this week.
https://society6.com/mjartscom

The other sites I will be uploading to, later in the week; same design, different products:

http://www.redbubble.com/people/mjartscom

https://www.teepublic.com/user/mjartscom

https:///artrepreneur.com/p/mjartscom

http://artist.com/marty-jones-323

The images in the Dropbox, all in png format, are based on an 11X17 sheet of paper. The actual sizes vary.

COVID-19 Folder

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/trshpwioxvfi5x2/AAD415R93EmUzIfzs-lxTfC_a?dl=0

COVID-19 Virus.png

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5gj1ql16deawdtr/COVID-19%20Virus.png?dl=0

coughing man.png

https://www.dropbox.com/s/54u2gfon8zb4elp/coughing%20man.png?dl=0

Scrubs 1.png

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nqy64ynjk2hp2wq/Scrubs%201.png?dl=0

Scrubs 2.png

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kfkmngt8h65e0wa/Scrubs%202.png?dl=0

Scrubs 3.png

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fn25ycpr678miyu/Scrubs%203.png?dl=0

scrubs 4.png

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kwkdykxl366rifa/scrubs%204.png?dl=0

scrubs 5.png

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ll7y8xcf58osazv/scrubs%205.png?dl=0

scrubs 6.png

https://www.dropbox.com/s/esojj1wcaireaks/scrubs%206.png?dl=0

Stay at home; stay well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 208: This one isn’t starting so well, either…

March 19, 2020

As of Thursday, March 19th, 2020, 1:13a there are 218,825 confirmed novel (new) coronavirus (2019-nCoV|COVID-19) cases in the world, according to Johns Hopkins University. There have been at least 8,810 deaths, worldwide. In the US, there have been 9,415 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 150 deaths. By the time most of you have read this, there will be over 10,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the US. A confirmed case means that someone has been tested and found to be infected with the coronavirus. As of today, the only people in the US that are being tested are those in hospitals.

On Feb. 27, at a White House meeting, the President stated: “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.”

Thursday, March 6th, 2020
The Trump administration on Friday sought to beat back criticism of its handling of the response to the deadly coronavirus, as President Trump and his aides played down the threat it poses and said Democrats and the media were overhyping the dangers of the outbreak. President Trump said Monday that he believed it was safe to continue holding campaign rallies across the country during the coronavirus outbreak. “I think it’s very safe,” Trump told reporters when asked whether he believed holding rallies was safe during an Oval Office meeting with Colombian President Iván Duque Márquez on Monday morning.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-coronavirus-health-economic-risks/2020/02/28/0b817082-5a3a-11ea-9b35-def5a027d470_story.html

Thursday, March 19th, 2020
For weeks, President Trump has minimized the coronavirus, mocked concern about it and treated the risk from it cavalierly. On Tuesday he took to the White House lectern and made a remarkable assertion: He knew it was a pandemic all along.
“This is a pandemic,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/us/politics/trump-coronavirus.html

Always remember “Individual 1” The President is an unindicted criminal. He remains unindicted because of a Memo. The Memo isn’t a law or a statute; it’s simply a memo that floated around the Justice Department during the Nixon Presidency. According to the Memo, Sitting Presidents cannot be indicted regardless of their actions…

Donald J. Trump coordinated with Michael Cohen to commit federal campaign fraud, prosecutors state in a sentencing memo filed December 7, 2018 advising a substantial prison term for crimes to which Cohen has pleaded guilty.
Attorneys from the Southern District of New York state explicitly in the court filing that Cohen “acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1” in handling payments to two women who claimed to have an affair with Trump long before the election. Trump is identified in this and other filings by U.S. attorneys as “Individual-1,” who “was elected President.” (The women are Karen McDougal and Stephanie Clifford, known professionally as Stormy Daniels.)
“I pled guilty in federal court to felonies for the benefit of, at the direction of, and in coordination with ‘Individual 1,’” Cohen said, reading from his prepared statement. “And for the record: ‘Individual 1’ is Donald J. Trump.”

Generations of former Presidents, good, bad and mediocre, have served as the example of how a President is supposed to act in public—a model for Civil Behavior. We have a President that does not comprehend Civil Behavior. He has never had to answer for his actions. He insults people he doesn’t like; a President who spends most of his days watching television and sending out comments via Twitter. A President who goes to rallies and tells lies to the American public.

The President has been impeached by the House of Representatives. He was given a ‘pass’ by Senators of his political party. Senators within his party admitted that it was completely clear that the President had abused the responsibilities of his office; but they refused to censure him or to remove him from office.

When the President leaves office, he will be arrested, tried and sent to jail. He does not want anyone to remember this.

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I started writing this post weeks ago; I have had trouble finding words that are of any meaning. The COVID-19 Pandemic has affected my life, my family’s lives, as it has affected a large segment of the world population. The City of Portland has drafted a Shelter-in-Place Order; it apparently is floating around City Government. The economic affect of such an order to would harm thousands of service workers in Portland. However, it would lessen the demand on local hospitals. This is the reason why world governments are trying to ‘Flatten the Curve’ on a virus that is highly contagious and has a mortality rate of 4.%. Our hospitals are unable to treat thousands of new patients.

The problem is that the COVID-19 virus appears to take about two weeks before symptoms develop. During that two weeks, a person can infect dozens of others simply by being in the same space—an office, a store, a park, a concert. COVID-19 advances through a population in an exponential curve: first one, then two, then 4, then 16, then 256… The only way to stop the advance is to isolate people, so that they cannot infect others without being aware they are doing the infecting.

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Our lives are filled with the tangible—the things we can feel, taste, smell, hear and see. However, the most important element of your life is entirely intangible: your Soul. You are not a human with a Soul; in reality you are a Soul with a body. Whenever someone thinks, ‘there’s got to be a better [life, job, place etc.] than here’, I believe the Soul is making a statement about fulfillment.

I’m not being religious here; I am writing as an Artist…Art is not a thing; it is a Way—an opening into the larger Universe in which we exist. To be an artist is to open a door… A door into a view of something larger than ourselves.

If you have never experienced an event in your life that cannot be explained by tangible circumstances, perhaps you haven’t been paying enough attention.

Vermeer-Geographer plus The Doctor

Humans devote an incredible amount of time and energy arguing about religion, especially in times of crisis. There is a horrid number of Evangelical preachers lying about their ability to heal COVID-19 through the television set, by way of magical cures, by the Power of Faith… They are lying. COVID-19 will either kill you, or more likely, will make you ill for a prolonged period. You may require hospitalization. But it won’t be cured by magic or religion

I spent the first 22 years of my life without any concept of religion. When I finally discovered Faith, I took my first opportunity to tell my parents about something we had never known. I was told that they did not want to hear a single word on the subject. I hadn’t been told about Faith because they had fled the church in their early twenties [a guess on my part—I learned this information from my wife].

There are many aspects of life on Earth that can’t easily be explained by some form of evolution or science. Most people ignore the awkward stuff. There are a lot of people in Houses of Worship that are there because their parents raised them amidst Houses of Worship. They never really had a chance to not-believe, until they moved out of their parents’ houses.

A constant, through Millennia on Earth, is a seeking of the Divine, on the part of human beings. There is evidence that implies that even Neanderthals might have had belief in the Divine, in some fashion. Some would argue that people who have religious beliefs are not much more advanced than a Neanderthal…

I do not have enough faith in science to believe that the Expanding Universe sprung into being on its own. Some believe that the Universe is expanding until it reaches some limit, and then it will collapse, and start over. Sorry, I can’t go there.

I believe that there is a Creator of the Universe; and there is but One Creator of the Universe. Whomever desires to serve the Divine, whomever reaches out to the Eternal, reaches out to the One. The One who goes by many names, here on Earth, and by other names throughout the Galaxy. This isn’t science fiction; it’s what lives beyond the open door… Wherever sentient beings inhabit planets in the Universe, there will be a “Jesus Story” similar to our own—entirely different details, entirely different beings; but the same story—Creator entered their time and space in order to show the inhabitants of those worlds how to live.

Sadly, enormously so, there are a whole bunch of people who say that they follow Jesus but want to have nothing to do with what He taught. People who spend a lot of energy exclaiming that the Bible is the Word of God, but choose to follow certain passages more strictly than other passages… Taking one verse out of the middle of a paragraph written thousands of years ago by people in the Eastern Hemisphere, who had no idea that a Western Hemisphere even existed. Not realizing that the numbers for chapters and verses were not added to “The Bible” until the 17th century… The oldest fragments of the New Testament are believed to have been written somewhere around 300 AD; these fragments, translations of Aramaic into Greek, do not even have spaces between words…

Editorial Cartoon by Ron Cobb

 

 

 

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 206: Darkness never sustains

January 23, 2020

Forty-plus years ago, Faith unexpectedly changed the course of my life. Faith/religion was barely mentioned in my family growing up. My parents’ ‘religion’ was the American Legion. When I started working on my degree in Architecture, I learned about Christians—mostly the people one finds in the news, nowadays fawning at the feet of the criminal* that sits behind the Resolute Desk. Christians claiming that I was going to Hell; when they didn’t even know my name, much less my spiritual beliefs. It wasn’t until my third year of college that I learned about Faith; a concept that is different from religion; and especially the Civil Religion practiced today in America and highlighted in the news. Over the course of the decades, I’ve visited a variety of churches, and have been involved with several denominations. Based on my observations, my conclusions are that most church goers have very little information about what goes on in other denominations; and that denominations are the result of a theological argument with other people.

One consistent message I’ve heard in every denomination, is that people who live like the criminal* behind the Resolute Desk are going to Hell. It’s a central premise of the American Civil Religion; a premise that apparently is superseded by the ability to appoint Conservative judges and the ability to eliminate abortion providers. If one has those two ‘superpowers’ then it apparently doesn’t matter how one lives their life, or what one believes. Con men on steroids.

It is Important to realize that the only people Jesus provoked were members of the Religious Right at the time when “B.C.” became “A.D.” However, the Religious Right never before had access to nuclear weapons.

Let Your Faith Light  © Ron Cobb

* the unindicted co-conspirator known as “Individual 1” in the indictment of Michael Cohen, Donald J. Trump’s personal attorney; imprisoned for bank fraud, insurance fraud, breaking campaign finance laws, tax evasion, and bribery

In times like these, find that I need Heroes to help me find Hope.
Not the movie heroes who are ‘the good guy’ because the other one is the ‘bad guy’ even though they act the same. I need Heroes who ‘play by a different set of rules.’

Heroes who Refuse to give in to the darkness that surrounds us today.
The darkness is deep.

Thankfully, there is a Time Lord.

The new series of Doctor Who has begun. In the second episode of Spyfall, The Doctor explains the unexpected predicament in which she finds herself, while in 1943 Paris, to Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, who minutes before was in London of 1834.

“Ada? Are you all right?” (Distant gunfire)
“I have always wanted to return to Paris.”
“It’s not at its best. Nightly bombing raids. Millions dead. They promised that war at this scale would never happen again, and yet here we are.”
“This isn’t the first time? Who are you?”
“I’m your ally, I promise. This is the future. A world on fire. These are the dark times. But they don’t sustain. Darkness never sustains…even though sometimes it feels like it might.”

For two years I worked on illustrating my Sherlock Holmes story, A Scandal in Bohemia, while listening to The Scandal in Washington D.C. A Scandal that deepens day by day, week by week.
If you spend much time looking at news headlines, you will find that there are many who claim that there is a Divine Element in all that is happening at this time. There are always people always want to justify their actions by some sort of Divine Intervention. White Evangelicals point to passages in Scripture as justification for their ideas that the American President is bringing about the Second Coming of God. The Prophets of the Older Testament were very aware that if what they spoke in the Name of Creator did not come about, they would be stoned to death, as false prophets. People aren’t stoned to death because of inaccurate comments made on Social Media…

The question I keep asking the Universe, is what will the White Evangelical Church say when the man they believe appointed by the Creator to lead this country, goes to jail.

In my opinion, these religious ideas refer to the concept of a local deity; not the Creator of the entire Universe. I believe that the Creator of the Universe already knows the fate of the American President. Creator knows the fate of our world.

The Creator is creating the entire Universe.
There is no evidence that the Universe is complete.
There are only theories.

NGC 4380 is a spiral galaxy located in the constellation of Virgo

… a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…

Any Truth about the Creator that is True on Earth; that is True in our Solar System; is True throughout the Universe. Or not.

“Eternal” does not mean a really long time.
“Infinite” does not mean a really large distance.

From a theological perspective, Eternal and Infinite refer to magnitudes that human understanding does not comprehend; and probably cannot comprehend. Because the Creator is Infinite, the Creator knows the fate of any living creature in the Universe, at any point in recorded history; in the history that has not yet been recorded; and with history that could not be documented. Essentially, Infinite refers to ‘database storage’ that has no end. But the Creator is far more than database storage. Perhaps, Sentient database storage. Sentient means there is awareness of what is happening; and the ability to take part in what is happening.

Scripture talks about the Creator knowing all there is to know about the flight of every sparrow and the loss of any hair that falls from any hair-bearing creature [throughout the entire Universe]. Humans say that ‘this can’t be true, it’s impossible.’ We understand the Possible, based on our intellect and our education. Physicists speculate on ideas that are beyond the understanding of most people [myself included]. We are accustomed to three dimensions—length, width and height. Some of us are accustomed the concept of a fourth dimension—time. I fell in love with the concept of Time Travel in the 1960s, as a boy. I first saw the movie, “The Time Machine” [1960] one afternoon in my elementary school. I could not comprehend the ‘physics’ of Time Travel, but my imagination had been sparked.

There are physicists who believe that there could be eleven dimensions. For years, I’ve said that if there are eleven dimensions, I believe one of those dimensions will be a dimension of Faith. I make such statements because I have experienced things in this life of Faith that I cannot begin to explain; and cannot believe that what I experienced was imaginary.

If you believe in forever, then life is just a one-night stand.
Righteous Brothers – Rock and Roll Heaven (1974)

Darkness never sustains.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 204: Guardians

December 13, 2019

On the left side of the page are four career foreign service employees of the State Department. Four of the people who exposed the U.S. involvement with the government of the Ukraine, and the 45th President of the United States, who has become the fourth President to be Impeached by the House of Representatives. Three of these people are immigrants.

On the right side of the pages is Greta Thunberg, the teenaged Climate Change Activist who has sailed the Atlantic Ocean, by herself, twice. She has become an icon for people across the world, who are under the age of 40. A symbol that is being ignored by our present Administration, who has a bizarre investment in the complete ignorance of factual evidence regarding Climate Change. Ms. Thunberg has been declared by Time Magazine as Person of the Year. She was also expected to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The award would have capped an already extraordinary year, in which Thunberg evolved from a student sitting outside the Swedish parliament, all by herself, to become the leader of a global youth movement, inspiring millions of schoolchildren around the world to join her in calling for greater action on climate change.
“How dare you? You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,” she told world leaders in a blistering speech at the United Nations last September.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/why-didnt-greta-thunberg-win-the-nobel-peace-prize/2019/10/11/e84e6efc-eba4-11e9-9306-47cb0324fd44_story.html

Apparently jealous of this 16-year-old girl’s placement on the cover of Time Magazine, the 45th President of the United States has been insulting her by way of his overworked Twitter account. This is the nature of the man currently sitting behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.

The most powerful man in the world, insulting a teenager, because of jealousy.

The middle section in the image above contains the last paragraph in the President’s Articles of Impeachment.

I’ve been apolitical for most of my life. Meaning, I’ve voted in most of the elections over the last fifty years; voting for candidates based on the information I’ve heard from friends and those I came to respect. I’ve read the voter’s pamphlets. Having worked for the City of Portland, I’ve become fluent in ‘bureaucrat’ as a form of language. Generally, I was always ‘busy’, when it came to the subject of politics.

My life has changed; somewhat unexpectedly. At present, ‘busy’ isn’t a word I can use to define my life. While working on my latest book for the last two years, an illustrated version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Scandal in Bohemia, I’ve been listening to commentary on the Scandal in Washington DC.

I’m currently volunteering with a Citizenship/English as a Learned Language program for Green Card holders seeking Naturalization as US Citizens. People who have prepared for Naturalization appear to be far more knowledgeable regarding US history and Civics than most high school students [Who wrote the Federalist Papers? The Federalist Papers were the foundation of the US Constitution]. Every week I am reminded of my own family history. My mother and her sisters were born in Norway. Early in the 1920s, my grandfather and his brother emigrated from Norway to the US. There was no work for them in their part of the world, partially due to a famine; they came to the US because they had an uncle who had emigrated to Oregon years earlier and had built a construction business. My grandfather and his brother did not know English; but they new how to work with wood. After a few years [?], they had the money to send to my grandmother and her daughters, so they could come to the United States.

Immigrant Eyes

Guy Clark/Willie Nelson

Oh, Ellis Island was swarming, Like a scene from a costume ball
Decked out in the colors of Europe, And on fire with the hope of it all
There my father’s own father stood huddled, With the tired and hungry and scared
Turn of the century pilgrims. Bound by the dream that they shared
They were standing in line just like cattle, Poked and sorted and shoved
Some were one desk away from sweet freedom, Some were torn from someone they love
Through this sprawling Tower of Babel, Came a young man, confused and alone
Determined and bound for America, And carrying all that he owned

Sometimes when I looked in my grandfather’s immigrant eyes
I saw that day reflected and I couldn’t hold my feelings inside
I saw ‘started with nothing and working hard all of his life’
“So don’t take it for granted,” said grandfather’s immigrant eyes

He would rock and stare out the window, But his eyes are still just as clear
As the day he sailed through the Harbor, And come ashore on that island of tears
My grandfather’s days were numbered, But I won’t let his memory die
‘Cause he gave me the gift of this country, And the look in his immigrant eyes

Sometimes when I looked in my grandfather’s immigrant eyes
I saw that day reflected and couldn’t hold my feelings inside
I saw ‘started with nothing and working hard all of his life’
“So don’t take it for granted,” said grandfather’s immigrant eyes
“Don’t take it for granted,” said grandfather’s immigrant eyes’

By the time I was a teenager, I occasionally helped my Great Uncle, with construction projects; I remember helping him hang sheetrock. Probably the only time I enjoyed working with sheetrock. At the time, it never would have occurred to me that this man had come to this country ‘with nothing’ more than a couple of suitcases. He probably had worked hard all of his life, and became the Provider for his brother’s family, when his brother was severely injured in a construction accident. My grandfather lived most of his life in a State Hospital.

My ‘Grandfather’ went Home a over 30 years ago. I still miss him. I will see him again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 203: Advent

December 8, 2019

An Elder at our church this morning wished everyone, “Merry Christmas!”

I’m not Catholic, but for a number of years I hung around with the Sisters of the Holy Names at Marylhurst… The title of my blog comes from the Liturgical Calendar. After Pentecost, and before Advent, the calendar is in Ordinary Time. I feel as if most of my life has been lived in Ordinary Time.

Christmas is on December 25th. It’s probably appropriate to use the greeting above on Christmas Eve. Christmas ends on January 6th, with the Feast of the Epiphany. That’s when the guys above arrived in Bethlehem. Followed by, but not celebrated, is The Massacre of the Innocents; see Chronicles in Ordinary Time 201: Massacre of the Innocents

I dislike this time of year.

The Creator of the entire Universe did not create a single cell, implanted into the womb of a teenaged girl, so that we could all shop. The Creator did not enter time and space in the form of Jesus in order that we might have another excuse to spend money. Granted, we live in a Market Economy; Black Friday is traditionally the time when retail stores finally make a profit—going from ‘in the red’ to ‘in the black’.

My wife and I don’t ‘do Christmas’. The Christmas decorations we have, are present all the time. We stopped ‘doing Christmas’ when my Mom died. She came to live with us on Christmas Eve for the last year of her life; she went to her eternal Home, one year later. After the morticians left, we went to the Christmas Eve service at the church we belonged to back then. People were surprised; for us, being with our Church family was the most natural thing to do, at such a time.

We ‘did Christmas’ when our children lived with us. There is a ‘magical’ element when one mixes children and Christmas. Nicholas, Bishop of Myra has been attached to children and Christmas for the last Millennium.

As humans eventually do, we mess up the meaning of the Story.

The Creator entered time and space in the form of Jesus in order that we might learn how to live. I saw the image below, posted today.

This is not how we are supposed to live.

Modern holy family by Eric Fitzpatrick

There will be children in cages, at our Southern Border, this Christmas. They probably will not see any gifts, nor Christmas trees. They may see another young person beside them, dying in the ‘care’ of ICE.

[Last] month, new government data shows…an unprecedented 69,550 migrant children held in U.S. government custody over the past year, enough infants, toddlers, kids and teens to overflow the typical NFL stadium. That’s more children detained away from their parents than any other country, according to United Nations researchers. And it’s happening even though the U.S. government has acknowledged that being held in detention can be traumatic for children, putting them at risk of long-term physical and emotional damage.

https://apnews.com/015702afdb4d4fbf85cf5070cd2c6824

I know people who simply do not care. They have told me that these people don’t belong here anyway. Our President, in this last year, has announced that ‘we are full’. Food rots in fields because there are no pickers to harvest the crops. And our President has hired undocumented workers at his golf facilities for years.

We should be ashamed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 201: Massacre of the Innocents

November 2, 2019

Rubens – Massacre of the Innocents

As the story is told in the Gospel of Matthew, in the time of King Herod, Magi from the East came to Palestine looking for a new King who had been born. “We saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him.”  Matthew 2:2

Magi were priests in Zoroastrianism and the earlier religions of the western Iranians. The earliest known use of the word magi is in the trilingual inscription written by Darius the Great, known as the Behistun Inscription. Old Persian texts, predating the Hellenistic period, refer to a magus as a Zurvanic, and presumably Zoroastrian, priest.

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

The Magi had come to Palestine, following a new star in the sky—a star whose light from millions of miles away had just arrived in the Solar system.

They came before King Herod, asking about the new King. Herod had not heard of this King, but asked the Magi, on their return home, to tell him the whereabouts of this new King, so that Herod could go honor him. In time, Herod realized that the Magi were not returning by way of Jerusalem and ordered the deaths of all boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, according to the time frame he had learned from the Magi. Joseph, the husband of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, was warned of this slaughter in a dream, and took his family to Egypt.

History calls this time the “Massacre of the Innocents”. This was the world into which Jesus was born.

This is our time, also. The American President, who after a telephone call, removed American troops from Syria; so that the Turkish military could slaughter Kurdish infants, children, women, the elderly and the Kurdish soldiers who defended their homeland. This portion of Syria is now being claimed by the Turkish and Russian governments. The American President’s first Secretary of Defense is now awaiting his sentencing for being an undeclared agent of the Turkish Government, employed by the Turkish government…

Lives ruined for generations because of a stupid telephone call and an undisclosed discussion. The results of that discussion will be on the head of the American President.

In another chapter of “Massacre of the Innocents”, new information has been released regarding children kidnapped by the American government, as they seek asylum in a country that officially does not want them to come here.

“In all, the administration has taken at least 5,460 children from their parents. That is a stain on Mr. Trump, on the government he leads and on America.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/only-now-do-we-understand-the-true-cruelty-of-trumps-family-separation/2019/10/29/8294ef9e-f9cf-11e9-ac8c-8eced29ca6ef_story.html

Back when dinosaurs ruled the earth, I remember listening to President Ronald Reagan describe America as a ‘city shining on a hill’ as he ended his tenure as President. His ‘trickle down’ economic policy has turned out to be a total disaster; and he spoke of a country that does not appear to exist today:

“I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind, it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace – a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors, and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c32G868tor0

Those doors are closed today.

 

President Clinton was impeached for his actions on two Articles of Impeachment: Lying Under Oath and Obstruction of Justice. No one died as a result of his violation of his Oath of Office.

It’s doubtful that the President’s actions toward Syria and his cruelty to those seeking asylum will be included in the upcoming Articles of Impeachment, and the Impeachment Hearing that may start later this month. These crimes are merely immoral, not illegal.

Lives ruined for generations that, in reality, are not only the responsibility of the President, but are the responsibility of every American adult living at this moment. We allowed it to happen. There are people at the church I attend that do not even consider these immoralities to be wrong…

I again wonder, why do I stay?

 

 

 

 

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 200: Time and Space, Part Three

September 23, 2019
Keep your faith. Travel hopefully. The universe will surprise you… constantly.The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos (2018)

For centuries, scientists/physicists have been trying to understand the nature of Gravity. The reality is that there are theories about Gravity which we believe apply throughout our Solar System; analysis of the telemetry for far-distant stars seem to conform with this thinking. However, until humans can leave our Solar System, these ideas will remain theoretical.

Gravity is most accurately described by the general theory of relativity (proposed by Albert Einstein in 1915) which describes gravity not as a force, but as a consequence of the curvature of spacetime caused by the uneven distribution of mass. The most extreme example of this curvature of spacetime is a black hole, from which nothing—not even light—can escape once past the black hole’s event horizon. However, for most applications, gravity is well approximated by Newton’s law of universal gravitation, which describes gravity as a force which causes any two bodies to be attracted to each other, with the force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

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

NASA’s Gravity Probe B (GP-B) mission has confirmed two key predictions derived from Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which the spacecraft was designed to test. GP-B determined both effects with unprecedented precision by pointing at a single star, IM Pegasi, while in a polar orbit around Earth.

To a degree, the concept of the Soul is largely a theory.

The soul, in many religious, philosophical, and mythological traditions, is the incorporeal essence of a living being. Soul or psyche (Ancient Greek: ψυχή psykhḗ, of ψύχειν psýkhein, “to breathe”) comprises the mental abilities of a living being: reason, character, feeling, consciousness, memory, perception, thinking, etc. Depending on the philosophical system, a soul can either be mortal or immortal. In Judeo-Christianity, only human beings have immortal souls (although immortality is disputed within Judaism and the concept of immortality may have been influenced by Plato).
The current consensus of modern science is that there is no evidence to support the existence of the soul when traditionally defined as the spiritual breath of the body. In metaphysics, the concept of “Soul” may be equated with that of “Mind” in order to refer to the consciousness and intellect of the individual.

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

While there is ‘evidence’ in my own life that points to the existence of my Soul, I have no way of transferring my ‘evidence’ to your brain. The first Believer I ever met, one who wasn’t attempting to convince me to believe what he believed, was a guy named Brad. He introduced me to a Way of Life that I had never imagined; he invited me to join him on his journey, but there was no coercion. He introduced me to friends of his that were traveling the same path; but again, no one tried to change the way that I thought. In time, I realized that these people saw the world from a perspective I’d never had; they believed there is a Creator who is active in the lives of humans.
I’ve been watching Ken Burns’ Country Music; I’m not fond of twangy singing, however, I enjoy well-played fiddles and guitars. While the genre began in America with the Blues and the Old-Time music of the South, it was the phonograph record and radio stations that spread the music across the country. The music evolved with the preferences and circumstances of the nation. To a degree [as with rock & roll], the genre began with the music of the Church—the gospel songs and rhythms sung by congregations.
A comment was made about “the primitive Baptist Church” and how it influenced the music of Hank Williams…

Primitive Baptists are firmly in the mold of a traditional Calvinist denomination. According to Old School Baptist, they adhere to the five points of historical Calvinism: Total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and preservation and perseverance. The adjective “primitive” in the name is used in the sense of “original”.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_Baptists

“The Wanderer”
Song by U2 starring Johnny Cash

I went out walking through streets paved with gold
Lifted some stones, saw the skin and bones
Of a city without a soul
I went out walking under an atomic sky
Where the ground won’t turn and the rain it burns
Like the tears when I said goodbye.
Yeah, I went with nothing, nothing but the thought of you.
I went wandering.
I went drifting through the capitals of tin
Where men can’t walk or freely talk
And sons turn their fathers in.
I stopped outside a church house
Where the citizens like to sit.
They say they want the kingdom
But they don’t want God in it.

My experience has been that there are Christians who will extract one or two sentences from a chapter of Scripture, paying no attention to context, and find meaning for their lives because “the Bible is the Word of God.” While there are Believers who speak of ‘Biblical Inerrancy’ and talk about the ‘Word of God,’ most Believers know very little about the making of the ‘Word of God’. For example, they do not know about the texts that were used in the translation of the manuscripts that go into the book we know as the Bible.

The Codex Sinaiticus, or Sinai Book, is an ancient fourth century C.E. Bible handwritten in the Greek language. The manuscript contains the Septuagint, a version of the Old Testament that was adopted by early Greek-speaking Christians, as well as the oldest complete copy of the New Testament. The book’s importance to biblical scholars is immeasurable. The pages are made of vellum parchment, or calfskin. The work is written in scriptio continua—without spaces between words. In the ancient Greek world, reading continuous text on a page was more like reading a musical score today. The reader would memorize the text and use the pages as a guide while reading aloud to an audience. Not until the 10th century C.E. would spaces between words become the norm [emphasis added].

The text was written by three or four different scribes and annotated through the centuries by no less than nine correctors. [the original text we have was not without error]
A Newsweek article from 2014 provides some additional context:

…a sentence like weshouldgoeatmom could be interpreted as “We should go eat, Mom,” or “We should go eat Mom.” Sentences can have different meaning depending on where the spaces are placed. For example, godisnowhere could be “God is now here” or “God is nowhere.”

https://www.newsweek.com/2015/01/02/thats-not-what-bible-says-294018.html

Does this mean I do not accept the Truth of Scripture? No. I believe that the Bible is True; but not necessarily factual. I’m inclined to believe that Scripture is mostly metaphor. A metaphor can be just as truth-filled as the events we witness with our eyes.
The ‘youngest’ book of the Hebrew Scriptures, Malachi, takes place in 430 BCE; the ‘youngest’ book of the New Testament is the Book of the Revelation of John, written in 95 AD; however, the earliest copy of ‘the Bible’ available to us was compiled in 330-360 AD.
There were 430 years of Silence; no Prophetic revelations between the Old and New Testaments. To put this in contemporary American terms, the time of Silence of the Creator would go back to thirty years before the Pilgrims landed in 1620.
Except for the Prophet Mohammed, (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him), there have been no Prophetic utterances for the Christian or the Jew, for 2,000 years.
I think the Creator gave up on His attempt to train humans, by words, to become Decent Human Beings.

The Creator of the Universe created One Cell and implanted the Cell into the womb of a teenaged girl. The boy who was conceived lived in a small village, grew up to be a carpenter, and became an itinerant preacher for three years in Galilee and Judea. He is said to have healed many, performed miracles, and was killed by Roman soldiers to placate the ‘religious right’ of His day. Three days after his being entombed in a cave, He left the cave and wandered among the living, walking through walls, for a period of weeks. He said that we could do this, also.

Jesus is the Center of Scripture.
He still heals, and still works miracles; but not ‘on command’.

After 46 years of this life called Faith, I have come to the conclusion that because the Creator entered time and space as the man Jesus, that Believers conclude that the Creator is like mankind. A cosmic misunderstanding.

I’m inclined to believe that mankind is something akin to a ‘pet’ of the Creator. A ‘pet’ with a streak of viciousness that will destroy a quarter of a million people with the push of a few buttons—simply to prove a point. The ‘point’ being that our soldiers are more valuable than foreign civilians [see my previous post].
A ‘pet’ who refuses to become housebroken and destroys the ‘house’ in which he lives, just for the hell of it. A pet whose excrement gets dumped into his drinking water.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/12/trump-expected-to-roll-back-obama-era-water-regulations.html

An adult ‘pet’ who isn’t nearly as smart as the children of the world, who by the millions, stage protests so that these adult ‘pets’ without empathy, might become as intelligent as children, and take responsibility for our actions in destroying this world we were supposed to nurture.
People ask, ‘if there is a God who loves us, why doesn’t He stop the wars and the pain?’

He doesn’t stop the wars because He NEVER starts them. It is OUR responsibility.

Lord, in Your Mercy, hear our prayer.

 

Enough of that.

 

  • Illustration Tip #23: Layering

I consider the psd file to be an indispensable tool for digital image creation; the psd file allows for the creation of multiple transparent layers. There are a number of programs that work with the psd file; while I use some Adobe Photoshop filters, I do very little work with Photoshop. I use two pieces of software from when dinosaurs ruled the earth, that continue to work with Windows 10 [I’m not sure they want that known]. Same program, different versions, and different memory requirements. Since my drafting work frequently uses a 24in X 36in, 200dpi work surface, I use the older version, which requires a lesser amount of RAM. GIMP [ https://docs.gimp.org/2.10/en ] is a modern version of my dinosaur software. GIMP can operate with psd files.

The Doctor Who image above and below, has 12 layers, shown above.

The components above are shown in back-to-front order; and are the layers of the resultant image. The final psd file has layers that are invisible/unused [two sets of fonts I decided not to use]. The original psd file had several additional layers that were merged-down to the layer below. The rocks of Layer 2 were composed from 3-5 merged layers. The TARDIS [Layer 4] and the Dalek [Layer 3] are sandwiched between Layer 2 and Layer 5.

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 199: Time and Space, Part Two

September 8, 2019

I spend a lot of time [perhaps too much?] being at least peripherally aware of the current events of the world; and the mess that the American Government has become. Including the madness of [would be] king Donald… I want to state, for the record, that using Nukes for any purpose is truly Madness; especially for the inane purpose of dissipating hurricanes…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What angers me most is our nation’s duplicity in believing that America is a godly nation; and our incredible short-term memory when it comes to the decisions that have driven the American Story.
I am a man of Faith. I did not pursue Faith; it ‘hit me upside the head’ in my third year of college. I can’t say that I was raised as an atheist—the concept of ‘god’ was associated with the ‘godandcountry’ patriotism of the American Legion—that which served as ‘church’ for my parents. Forty-six years later, Faith is what defines my life; Faith drives all of my decision-making.

I think that the one thing that the American Church does, that annoys me the most, is to express the idea that belief in [the Christian] God somehow makes a person ‘special’. In the Book of Hebrews [written in Greek] one finds the text, translated literally:

Thou didst make him some little less than messengers, with glory and honour Thou didst crown him, and didst set him over the works of Thy hands and placed everything under his feet. When God subjected all things to him, He left nothing outside of his control. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him…

A lot of the translations use the word, “angels” instead of “messengers”. Hollywood has messed with the concept of “angels”—I’m not sure that 21st Century ‘pilgrims’ [like myself] truly understand the nature of an angel. There are a number of Hebrew words that are translated in English as “angel”. In context, “angels” do the work of communicating with humans.
The text goes on to say that Jesus, Himself, was also a little less than messengers. “A little less than the angels” may not have the same ‘special-ness” attributed to the human race and the Human Propensity to F*ck things Up [aka ‘sin’]. After all, we humans destroy entire cities to make a point.

Truman apparently felt that incinerating hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians—men, women and children—was ‘better’ than letting American soldiers die by attacking the Home Island of Japan. Roosevelt imprisoned Japanese-American citizens here in America based on where their parents were born. There were no Germans imprisoned in Concentration Camps, here in America.

Humans are able to make the distinctions between ‘good’ people and ‘bad’ people based on features of humanity that are entirely beyond our control. Soldiers today return home with PTSD, often resulting from the horrible things that they have been ordered to do, in the name of National Honor. What honor exists in destroying a child out of fear that she may be carrying an IED?

My immigrant family members came here from Scandinavia; where the ultraviolet rays of the Sun do not require the human body to create additional Melanin to protect the skin. The ultraviolet rays of the Sun are the most harmful in the Equatorial regions; the Creator enabled the human body to produce Melanin as needed for skin protection. This is why pink-skinned people pay money to turn their skin brown, in order to sunbathe; and yet they treat people with naturally brown skin as being lesser in value. Currently, the Government of the United States treats children that come from places the President has called “shithole countries” as criminals, locking them away in cages. The President now wants these children locked up for an indefinite period of time; causing the United States to truly be a shithole country… the only ‘developed’ country in the world that publicly locks up children for the ‘crime’ of being born. And the American people, with the exception of a few brave souls, does nothing to stop this from happening.

I, too, have my own excuses for not forcing change.

Today we use words that were not part of the vocabulary when dinosaurs ruled the earth before the invention of Social Media; and words that were not used in ‘polite society’. For the President of the United States to use language in his speeches that must be censored on television by FCC regulations was unheard of. The biggest controversy over the ‘Nixon tapes’, in the Watergate era, was not that the President authorized the break-in of the Democratic Party headquarters; the biggest shock to American society was the profanity he regularly used while in the Oval Office. A type of language that offended ‘polite sensibilities’—the language used [in the thinking of the time] by people of low moral character.

What is staggering to me today, is that the Evangelical Church in America is willing to accept with little criticism, a President’s language in campaign rallies that matches the language Nixon only used in private. Having not been raised in a church environment, hearing speeches/sermons on a monthly if not weekly basis, that the ‘moral decay of America’, was evidenced by celebrities who occasionally ‘cussed’ on camera; or by celebrities who ‘cheated’ on their spouses; the Evangelical Church’s acceptance of the ‘Porn Star President’ puts my brain on ‘TILT’. [BTW, one of the leading media outlets in 2018 discovered that Donald J. Trump has a cameo in 3 porn films from the 90s; another first for an American President]. He is also one of the most investigated Presidents of our American history, suspected of criminal activity:

https://publicintegrity.org/federal-politics/elections/presidential-profiles-2020/donald-trump-maga-orlando-president/

Consequently, I have had to come to new understandings of language, when referring to the Eternal; the Creator of all that exists in the Universe. Most of the language of the Church I find to be inadequate.
Human beings are selfish, hateful people with the possibility of living more in touch with those who are downtrodden; and more in touch with the world we were given stewardship over. I’m not an expert, but I can’t think of many species on Earth that devour each other with such abandon as human beings.

I cannot think of any reason why the Creator of the entire Universe should pay any attention to humans at all; and yet, the Creator of the Universe entered Time and Space in the form of One created cell, implanted in the womb of a teen-aged girl. The boy that was born lived among us—we have very few accounts of His life before His thirties, when He gave up carpentry and became an itinerant preacher and Healer.
Having pissed off the Conservative religious leaders of His day, by teaching and by healing ‘without a permit’, He was arrested and executed as a criminal, by the most offensive method of His day. He died and was buried in a tomb, guarded by professional soldiers. Three days later, He walked out of the tomb, and for the months that followed, entered and left buildings without using the door… He said that Death could not hold us, either.

We are not special. We are the insects that live under rocks, in terms of the entire Universe; somehow, we are Loved with Abandon. The Creator of the Universe came to live with us under our rock; and our ancestors killed Him. Yet, we are still loved.

Jesus never said a word about entering time and space in order to save mankind from our Human Propensity to F*ck things Up [aka ‘sin’]. Jesus taught a new way to live.

 

Enough of that.

Advertising moment:

RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked the World is an electric look at Native American influence in popular music, going deep into the Indigenous foundations of blues, rock, and jazz. http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/rumble/

We live in a three-dimensional world [four, if one counts time]; and yet we only have two-dimensional tools for creating ideas [holograms work in movies, but it’s mostly cgi]. In high school, my drafting teacher would have us work on Technical Illustration during Spring term. I fell in love with the concept of emulating three-dimensional objects with two-dimensional media; and expected to be a Technical Illustrator for the rest of my life. Didn’t happen as planned…

For us to imagine new ways of understanding life and Creation, we need a different ‘vocabulary’ with which to describe our observations. This happens continually in the sciences, in the field of Physics. Physicists now accept the concept/fact that light operates as both a particle and a wave—two concepts that were impossible to consider before their mental ‘vocabulary’ was able to rearrange their understanding of their observations. Non-scientists experience the same sort of effect in language.

For centuries, mathematicians have understood how to locate a point in space, using the three axes within a square space [x, y, z coordinates]. Basic geometry.

It wasn’t until the launching of communication satellites around the Earth that we had a Global Positioning System; using three separate satellites to locate any point in space. The GPS project was launched by the U.S. Department of Defense in 1973 for use by the United States military and became fully operational in 1995. It was allowed for civilian use in the 1980s.

We can also locate the position of any star [largely nebulae] in the sky. The Constellations with which mankind is familiar were ‘graphic’ representations of pattern recognition. The human ability to find faces in tortillas and pancakes, the grain of wood, and the random patterns in floor coverings.

One of the shortcomings of our ‘advancement’ and ‘invention’ is that we still see the Universe from our own perspective. A tabloid in the UK seems determined to have the Earth colliding with asteroids. Nearly every day I see headlines about new Black Holes and galactic collisions that are occurring as astronomers view these events through space telescopes. The articles almost always forget to mention that these events being witnessed in our time frame actually happened millions of years ago. The light from these events is just now reaching us. Possibly habitable planets tens of light years away from us. Only, we are nowhere near being able to have humans leave our solar system, much last travel at velocity near the speed of light…

Soul Nebula

The center of the Universe is nowhere near us.

We are in a low-rent corner of the Milky Way Galaxy. One of the multitude of Galaxies in the Universe.

  • Illustration Tip #22:

Next year, I think I will simply skip August; and go from July to September.

 

 

 

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Posted in art, careers, children's books, depression, Illustration, neuropathy, pain, self-employment, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Chronicles in Ordinary Time 199: Time and Space, Part Two

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