12/5/2020: California certified its election results, bringing the Biden
Electoral Votes to 276; assuring his election victory.
In 2016, Trump had 306 Electoral Votes.
In 2020 Biden received 306 Electoral Votes.
Biden received 7 million more votes than Trump.
Attorney General William Barr has stated that
there is no evidence of election fraud.
12/15/2020: State Electors Vote for Joe Biden
I avoided Avatar for a long while, primarily because of the Jarhead Colonel and his total lack of comprehension for any life but his own.
Sort of like humans today.
We live in a world where everything is connected; and we are too blind to see it.
We live in a Universe where everything is connected; and we are almost totally blind to its reality.
For years, I’ve been trying to come up with an analogy that explains my understanding of the Universe, and a life of Faith. I found what I was looking for by watching Avatar the other day.
For those unfamiliar with the film, the story takes place on the far distant planet, Pandora, far in the future. As with all examples of Manifest Destiny, the planet Pandora contains an incredibly valuable mineral called Unobtainable; a name, and a metaphor. The largest deposit of Unobtainable on Pandora is located under a Great Tree in the center of a forest amidst floating mountains. As with all examples of Manifest Destiny, earthlings who have created spacecraft and machines of War believe they can plow their way through any obstacle to get to the Unobtainable and steal it. [Manifest Destiny is a term coined in the early days of the European Occupation of the lands on which the America’s Indigenous peoples lived. An expression of belief that their occupation of lands belonging to others was, ‘ordained by god’]
The Indigenous population of Pandora, the Na’vi People, resembles, in terms of technology, the Lakota Sioux of 19th Century Earth. Defending themselves from gunships with arrows. Each of the Na’vi People has a nervous system that connects with all life on Pandora, animal and plant. “There be Dragons” on Pandora. For Dragon Riders, the bond between Dragon and Rider is permanent, once made. The Rider communicates with the Dragon by thought and the physical neurological connection between them.
Manifest Destiny on Pandora is occurring by means of mercenaries commanded by the Colonel Jarhead mentioned above. Since the Indigenous People do not use technology, they are considered to be ‘savages’ that are in the way of the human armed heist. A repetition of the histories of the Americas and of Earth.
In order to ‘encourage’ the Indigenous population to relocate, ‘Avatars’ have been created to infiltrate the Na’vi People. These ‘Avatars’—living robots to a large degree—are inhabited by a human intelligence and personality, linked to an individual’s DNA. The Na’vi refer to these Avatars as, “Sky People” and they are looked upon with suspicion. Enter Jake; a soldier whose legs have been blown off in battle. Jake relies on a wheelchair to get around; by inhabiting the Avatar of his deceased brother, a scientist working to better understand this mysterious culture, Jake once again has working legs. He understands his job as a soldier; he learns how to live as a scientist understanding a different culture. In the story, Jake has his own destiny, one which he does not understand—Jake will be the One who will inhabit both worlds—for he has become a Na’vi by will of the Creator—his own world, and the world of these people connected to their planet, as one entity.
The Na’vi are victorious in resisting the attack of the earthlings, but at tremendous cost. Unlike the intentions of the mercenaries of Earth, the Na’vi allow the mercenaries of Earth to leave Pandora.
Since numerous sequels to Avatar are in production at this time, no doubt the mercenaries will return, and the battle will start again.
The Universe is so large that we don’t even have words to describe it. Some astronomers believe there could be two trillion galaxies in the Universe, spanning an unknown distance. Our Milky Way galaxy has perhaps 200 billion stars; many of these stars will have solar systems; many of those solar systems will have planets; a fraction of which will be located a distance from their suns where life can exist.
I’ve been a designer for close to sixty years. I don’t remember a time that I didn’t draw. Designing stick figures on a sheet of paper, telling a story in my imagination. In time, I designed furniture for my shop class; then I started designing houses; and in time I designed schools. When I worked for the City of Portland, I analyzed the designs of architects building high rises, to ensure that the buildings were compliant with the Building Code.
This all took place when Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth.
In this century, I started designing books and videos in addition to designing construction solutions for architects and building designers. In relatively recent years, I’ve had to design a new way to create illustrations, since my hands don’t work very well anymore.
After sixty years of exploration, I recognize design when I see it.
Creation is designed. I’m not referring to “Intelligent Design”—there is too much in Creation that defies logic—the appendix, for example. That open question that nearly took my life. The chicken and the egg. An Australian website claims to have solved the age-old question of ‘which came first’—”At some point, a different kind of egg began to evolve” as explanations go, that one is pretty lame. Why would a different kind of egg evolve? Do we owe our breakfasts to a evolutionary mistake?
There is no reasonable explanation as to how light-sensitive-skin cells in our genetic chain evolve into the wonder that is the human eye. I don’t have a problem with the idea that humans are incapable of understanding the intricacies of how we got here. The Human Genome Project has shown that the Human Genome has similarities to a wide variety of creatures on earth. As a designer, I use repetition whenever it is productive. Newly created things don’t have to be entirely original.
One of the problems that arise when people of Faith start talking about science, is that they let their religious belief system get in the way. Much of the theology of the White Evangelical Church is a system of theological ideas, mostly derived from an interpretation of Scripture, rather than Scripture itself. Frequently, these interpretations come from Prophecy; and seem to overlook the notion that, in Scripture, if the words of a Prophet did not come about, the Prophet was supposed to be stoned. I tend to think that some of the prophets were stoned, in the modern sense of the word.
Most people in the White Evangelical Church don’t do a lot of research through the historical documents that shape their belief systems. This practice is often discouraged by Pastors who seem to think that they have special powers of interpretation. The historical record—the actual documents that have been found, which shape these beliefs—is pretty sparse.
This above image is a photo of one of the oldest papyrus fragments that collectively became the Bible:
This page contains 2 Corinthians 11:33-12:9
There is no punctuation. There are no spaces between letters. There are no verse numbers. “Papyrus 46 is one of the oldest extant New Testament manuscripts in Greek, with its ‘most probable date’ between 175 C.E. and 225 C.E.—two to three centuries after the events took place. The document uses the abbreviated version of common divine names and words, a type of writing that began in the first century C.E. and referred to as nomina sacra. Words such as God, Jesus, cross, mother, Israel, and heaven are shortened from their conventional Greek.”
“Another text, The Codex Sinaiticus, or Sinai Book, is an ancient fourth century C.E. Bible, handwritten in the Greek language. This manuscript contains the Septuagint, a version of the Hebrew Old Testament, that was adopted by early Greek-speaking Christians, as well as being the oldest complete copy of the New Testament. The pages are made of vellum parchment, or calfskin. The work is written in scriptio continua—without spaces between words.”
Hebrew script relies on a variety of added symbols for understanding. Greek does not include these added symbols. Therefore, the Septuagint is flawed, compared with the Hebrew text.
We live in a time unlike any other in the less-than-United States, one where objective truth is doubted by almost half of the American people. All because of an extremely successful propaganda campaign put into place in the last four years by the President of the United States [‘the President said it, therefore it must be true’]. Protests over the results of this year’s election occur every day, some violent, some threatening violence against State officials, the goal being an attempt to overturn a legitimate election, falsely described as ‘stolen’. The idea is held by 73 million voters. 80 million voters agree with the outcome.
This week, on 12/8/2020, the President’s hand-picked Supreme Court Justices, and all of the other Justices of the Court refused to hear the President’s suit to have the election overturned. Something like 49 other suits have been found to be without merit.
With Donald Trump losing the 2020 election and refusing to concede, and his ‘believers’ certain that COVID-19 is a hoax created by Progressive Liberal Democrats, it seems that there are a bunch of ‘prophets’ that need to be stoned.
As I’ve watched the current election cycle unfold, I have seen what I’ve encountered for decades—people who seem to equate Creator with some sort of ‘fairy godfather’ who grants our wishes. This ‘fairy godfather’ apparently floats above the Earth, controlling the events on Earth. Despite help being called upon from ‘angels in South America and Africa’, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the election. Despite a belief system that says COVID-19 is a hoax that was perpetrated by Progressive Liberal Democrats, over 3000 Americans died from COVID-19 yesterday. That number will be exceeded tomorrow. More people will die from CVirus every day than died on 9/11; and the CDC predicts that this will continue for months. The number of deaths that will exceed 300,000, could have been greatly reduced if half of the population believed that the wearing of face masks was a tool for public health, rather than an imposition upon individual liberty.
Imagine, if you can, a Universe that is entirely connected to an invisible ‘neurological system’ located outside Time and Space, one that we usually cannot perceive through our normal senses. This ‘system’ is the Spirit of Creator, available to all who desire to be ‘connected.’ This description is what I believe, because this is what I have experienced. I have no ‘proof’ beyond my experience.
Creator exists outside Time and Space. The words, ‘eternal’ and ‘omniscient’ and ‘omnipresent’ are in our vocabulary because these words refer to an experience outside of our normal understanding. I believe that all of Creation has been known from the moment of Creation; in such a manner that everything that happens, and has happened, and will happen, is known by Creator. Creator is never surprised by the events of our life. Not because Creator controls these events, but because Creator has known these events since the moment of Creation. Does Creator cause bad things to happen to us? No. Creator has known about CVirus since the moment of Creation. Did Creator create the virus? No. Viruses are part of the nature of living things. Not all viruses are ‘bad’; viruses enable immunity to occur, and CVirus is a virus transmitted from bats to humans. CVirus does not seem to harm bats and a growing number of other animals; it does harm humans. About 2% of the humans that are tested Positive for CVirus die. Many people that have been infected with CVirus have serious physical problems that take a long time to recover. Some people seem to think that a virus that does not kill 98% of its victims as something that is not worth the effort to avoid.
Until the victim is a beloved family member or friend.
Does Creator intervene in our lives? I have to say, ‘yes’, because there are events in my life that I cannot explain in any other way. Do these events happen often? No. Do these events occur because I am in some way, special? No. I believe these occurrences happen in my life as a ‘side effect’ from some other intervention into Time and Space, some other place. Sort of like a cosmic ‘twofer’. However, I cannot prove this assertion.
Thirty-plus years ago, our 5-year-old daughter was subject to painful earaches; a not-uncommon phenomenon. We had ear drops that normally reduced the pain; but this night it wasn’t happening. I tucked her into her bed, still crying. I checked-in with her, an hour or so later, and she was happily playing in her room. I asked her, ‘what happened to the earache?’
‘I asked Jesus to take the pain away, and He did.’ The faith of a child.
Do I believe these ideas make sense to the general population? No. They only make sense to those who desire to better understand Creator.
A lot of religious people believe that their experience of god is the only way to believe; as if there are multiple gods in the heavens, and you select the god you want. Happens a lot in the White Evangelical Church. ‘Our way or the highway.’ My explanation is that there is only One Creator; and people use different names/addresses to contact the same place. A ‘place’ that is outside Time and Space.
There are four centuries of silence between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Four hundred years with no Prophecies, no recorded interventions into human life. Creator apparently had nothing more to say to the people rescued from captivity. Believers would do well to remember this.
I am of the opinion that when Creator does attend to us humans, it’s more like picking up a rock in the yard and looking what is underneath that rock, than anything else. The Human Propensity to Foul things Up fills our millennia of warring upon each other. The savage warring that is occurring right at this minute; the abuse of children, the abuse of women, the abuse of those who do not have the power to overcome their adversaries. You and I are doing nothing to stop this savagery. We feel powerless.
Creator entered time and space in the form of a single cell implanted into the womb of a teenager; the young woman who gave birth to Jesus; the Man who came to us to show us a new way to live. Jesus ended the four centuries of silence and promised that through the Spirit of the Creator, we could change. And that we could stay in our brokenness, if that is what we want. Freedom from the jail cell that is locked from inside the cell.
The religious elite, who had power over the Jewish people, had Jesus murdered in the most shocking way that the Roman invaders had: Crucifixion. This death was to prove a point—Rome rules. Tyrants Rule. Autocrats Rule, unless they are voted out of office.
People want proof that there is Life on other planets, so that we will know we are not alone. Our knowing that we are not alone is one of the major accomplishments of Jesus’ short life on Earth. Creator entering Life on Earth. To prove we are not alone.
Chronicles in Ordinary Time 