Shore Lunch With Jesus

What do we want on our tombstone? For a long while I've had the thought of "Gone fishing with Jesus" based on John 21:

Afterward Jesus appeared again to his disciples, by the Sea of Galilee. It happened this way: 2 Simon Peter, Thomas (also known as Didymus), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples were together.3 “I’m going out to fish,” Simon Peter told them, and they said, “We’ll go with you.” So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing. 

4 Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus.5 He called out to them, “Friends, haven’t you any fish?”“No,” they answered.
6 He said, “Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.”When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish.
7 Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” As soon as Simon Peter heard him say, “It is the Lord,” he wrapped his outer garment around him (for he had taken it off) and jumped into the water. 8 The other disciples followed in the boat, towing the net full of fish, for they were not far from shore, about a hundred yards.  9 When they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals there with fish on it, and some bread. 

10 Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish you have just caught.” 11 So Simon Peter climbed back into the boat and dragged the net ashore. It was full of large fish, 153, but even with so many the net was not torn. 12 Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” None of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. 13 Jesus came, took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. 14 This was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead.

The earthy incarnation of the Lord of the universe, AFTER his death and resurrection in his glorified body, cooking shore lunch for his disciples! It is a picture that always makes me smile and often gives me that little shiver of eternal awareness.

My father has often told me of he and his dad out fishing on Upper Turtle Lake in NW WI in the dark with cane poles and minnows in 8-10' of water while the sounds of a local dance hall drifted out over the water and WWII raged across the seas. Both his brothers where in the army, but dad's blood pressure was too high to be drafted ( he is 91 now, he lived longer  than either of his brothers who also lived into their late 80's).

I'm familiar with the lake, and have often fished it myself -- In later years, after my dad had some health scares, I occasionally have a dream of sitting in a row boat with my somewhat younger dad in the dark as music drifts over the water while we fish for walleye with cane poles. A couple of times, it vaguely seems the sun has been coming up and there is a man on shore with a fire ...

As we prepare our home for sale and contemplate our residency move to the Iowa lake place and an an apartment in Rochester "3 days a week", the reality of "stages in life" is very real. Our boys were just kids as we moved into this house in '95, now they are grown with the oldest having kids of his own. My dad was lucky enough to live to see not just his grandchildren, but his great grandchildren. The blessings of this life can be great, however certainly at my dad's age, and increasingly at mine, we begin to seriously contemplate the next.

My soul says that I can trust a risen Saviour that not only cooks shore lunch for his disciples, and even tells them the right way to catch an abundance of fish (153)!

I have no idea of heaven  (other than it being wonderful) -- and I strongly suspect it will NOT be as this vision is, however, it is comforting to me. Fishing for walleye with my dad on a warm summer night looking forward to shore lunch with Jesus.

How do you think of your eternal home?

Billy, Not Bill, Graham

https://www.redrockschurch.com/media/detail/455/248/teaching/

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/21/opinion/billy-graham-death-missed-opportunties.html

I have been derelict in commenting on the passing of Billy Graham. I always hated being called "Billy" myself ... proof that I lacked the humility of Rev Graham. It is fitting my Bible reading has just taken me through Joshua, so I've been reading a lot of Moses, the most humble man in the OT, having been offered the chance to be the new Abraham by God multiple times, as God sought to destroy Israel and raise up a new nation with Moses as the father. And each time, Moses talked him out of it. (which is one of my favortie things to ponder relative to God, God being willing to have his mind changed by mere man)

On the Red Rocks link, you should find the sermon that one of their ministers did honoring Rev Graham.  Red Rocks mission statement is "Making Heaven More Crowded", which was what Billy was up to as well. I'll let you know there is a really nice surprise at the end of the sermon that adds more to understanding the humility of Billy Graham -- it's your present for listening to the sermon, and I found to be a good one.

The NY Times piece is about what you would expect -- they wanted Billy Graham to be a social justice warrior for their view of what that concept might be, rather than preaching Jesus Christ crucified  to make Heaven more crowded. The NY Times mission is about creating a "heaven on earth" built to their own exacting specifications for "heaven". They closed their article as followes ...

The memory of Mr. Graham is rightly honored by those who shared his values and the goals for which he mobilized evangelical Christianity. But the rest of us can surely be forgiven if we remember him differently.

In a Christian civil society, we could honor and even love people who we disagree with while living, let alone when dead. We are admonished not to judge them while they live, and certainly once  the ultimate judge is taking care of judgement, we can honor even those who had many values that we disagreed with.

Martin Luther King Jr was a conservative Republican Christian minister who fought for civil rights, and who was a friend of Billy Graham, including joining him to speak at a Crusade in NY in 1957., The following quote is from the Washington Post, supporting MLKs conservative bonafides. I suspect even the NY Times, while they would no doubt do their best to re-write the "conservative Chrisitian, Republican" part of MLK's legacy, would still praise him more than his co-worker with Christ, Billy Graham.

“My friends,” Dr. King said in his Detroit sermon, “all I’m trying to say is that if we are to go forward today, we’ve got to go back and rediscover some mighty precious values that we’ve left behind. That’s the only way that we would be able to make of our world a better world, and to make of this world what God wants it to be. . . .”

Billy certainly would love to see ALL "the rest of us" forgiven, however the forgiveness that counts is from God, and that requires that we humble ourselves to God, not saying that we can "surely be forgiven". When judgemental language shows up in our DBT class, we sometimes refer to this ...

Christ also had VERY little to say about the Roman Empire, which was not all that much of a "kinder and gentler" sort of government. Christ and Dr Graham agreed that the important kingdom is "not of this world" --- eternity makes the mere lifetime of the universe ( 14 billion years so far, maybe 5 to go ) into one of those milli, micro, pico, femto. plank kinds of parts of a second that are way too short for us to register.

As a personal aside, by an odd happenstance, I stood and talked to Billy Graham's future daughter in-law as she was wearing her "slip" -- talk about "old times"!  A "slip" was a piece of women's clothing that a woman would wear over her other undergarments, basically a "white sun dress". As I stopped by the shared apartment to pick up the woman who would eventually introduce me to my wife (she was getting ready, imagine that!), one of her roommates stood and chatted with me, but seemed to be getting more and more red / flustered.

Those that know me are aware that I talk "easily" and my degree of being "observant" could be better. She finally blushingly tittered "I'm just wearing my slip" and ran off! ... not that it mattered, but this was a house of really conservative Christian women. She later went on to marry one of Billy's sons ... I'm not certain which. Sometimes memorable things happen while "waitin on a woman". In over 30 years of marriage, it is something I have some experience with ..

Many Baptist Churches were broken up by Billy Graham. The reason is because Billy was pretty much willing to stand on a stage with anyone -- no matter how liberal their theology, and all Christian churches have some level of "separation", a very tricky topic. I tend to see all of human life as having AT LEAST two ditches, and we are to seek to "drive" (live) on the road. Living in any ditch means that we have fallen into the perils of one side or the other. Being on "the way", means we are following Christ, however it is narrow.

In one ditch,  we have the problem of  separation / law  -- if there isn't anything different about Christians, then how will anyone know you are Chrisitan?  Matt 5:13 “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet."

In the other ditch, we have the problem of legalism -- a problem that we could quote MANY verses on, and Christ himself was WAY harder on than sin --  go read the "7 woes" in Matthew 23 for one example of just how hard. It seems the "worse ditch" is this one based on our pride, and the idea of personal "virtue". Satan fell because of pride, Judas failed to repent because of pride, and it is pride that leads to unbelief that is the unforgiveable sin.

While the essence of Christ and therefore, practicing Christians, is to love and to serve, this ditch says that "our church / tribe / world view / ideology / etc" has it "right / correct / smart / just / etc" and WE must put others in "judgement / separation / punishment / isolation / etc".

As Christ said to the rich young Jewish ruler in Luke 18:19 "Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good--except God alone."

For Christians, this would seem to preclude our judgement of ourselves as "good". Dangerously, outside of Christ, men find their views to be superior and thus "good".  Even when those they disagree with leave this mortal coil, they still find them not worth of honor since they didn't share THEIR values.
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The way of Billy Graham was one of humility, as was that of Martin Luther King Jr and Jesus. How does man find humility outside of Jesus?

What Does It All Mean? The Beginning of the End

This post starts the final series of posts for Moose Tracks. Some of the remaining are just "standard posts", however I made a promise to end the blog, and I didn't want anyone watching to see posts keep dribbling out -- the end should show up virtually at the same time as this series.

There are over 4600 posts in the blog, so I'm the not a moose of few words. In conversation however, I have often summed up the meaning of it all with the stolen anecdote, "Jesus loves me, this I know". Here is the proof of that oft repeated anecdote.

According to the best accounts of the incident I have heard (many have taken on weird additions), Karl Barth was at Rockefeller Chapel (really a Gothic cathedral!) on the campus of the University of Chicago during his lecture tour of the U.S. in 1962. After his lecture, during the Q & A time, a student asked Barth if he could summarize his whole life’s work in theology in a sentence. Barth allegedly said something like “Yes, I can. In the words of a song I learned at my mother’s knee: ‘Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” That is the simple, unadorned story. Many tellers have adorned it with additions of their own (in sermons, etc.).

Karl Barth is considered by many to be the most important theologian of the 20th Century. Life is short, eternity is long -- it's good that the truly important things are simple! There is nothing simpler nor more profound than "Jesus loves me, this I know".

What did the Jesus who loves us have to say about what is important? Matthew 22:37-40

7 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

I took a shot at my top 5 back in February last year if you have an interest. 

God, Family, Friends, Vocation, and Study are where my life focus remains as I close on the age of 62 this fall. 

The solo trip that I took on the Wing back in 2104 was something that I enjoyed putting on the blog -- the final entry from that trip is "I Hold On".  It was an advanture that I was blessed to be able to have. It was not profound, it was self centered, it served no purpose but being a fun adventure. I believe life is more than that, however having such things in your life can make it a little richer. If our life is "about fun", that is a concern. It does not however make "having fun" wrong! To everything there is a season!

As long time readers know, I love putting in little song or video clips in the blog. I like doing it mostly because it anchors sometimes nebulous or dry information in a modern idiom at least for me. It is also one of those things that we CAN do with a lot of ease in a digital blog medium that is not possible on the paper printed page.

The most profound work I read in the last year was "The Divine Conspiracy" by Dallas Willard, while the most daunting was "The Secular Age" ... both of them relate to the same common theme that I return to again and again. The conviction of my soul that this "stuff", this mere matter is not all there is, and the dull dread that if Western civilization continues it's fall from Metaphysical Realism to Nominalism, there will be nothing left for Christians to do but to hide out to maintain a remnant in some sort of "Benedict Option".

And so the end begins.

Boundaries, By Dr Henry Cloud and Dr John Townsend

https://www.amazon.com/boundaries-book/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Aboundaries%20book

This book is one of the highest rated books on the topic of boundaries, and it is very Bible based. I DO recommend the book On page 61 they do the definition:

"Functional Boundaries refer to a person's ability to complete a task, project or job."
"Relational Boundaries refer to the ability to speak truth to others with whom we are in relationship"

Simple, huh?

Due to my contrarian nature, ll start with a critical thought: 

I find the term "boundaries" to be misleading. I understand the reason for the term, and the book does a great job of telling the people that REALLY need to develop some boundaries about how important they are, and how they "should" go about establishing them -- usually putting their foot down, standing 100% firm, and often taking the consequences -- loss of relationship, maybe violence or attempted violence, huge angry outburst, etc.

Obviously, if you are worried about a violent response, the person you are setting this boundary with walking out and never speaking with you again, giant anger, etc, then certainly, you REALLY need "boundaries" -- really best called "walls" in the context the book often talks about. To my mind, a WALL is something put up by one party (like the Berlin wall), and enforced with force -- maybe even "deadly force" as in "comply or this relationship is permanently over".

If I do my version, it will be called "loving contracts", or "good fences make good neighbors", or something of the like. My point is that there is a BIG difference between a neighbor going over to his neighbor and saying "I'd like to put up a fence -- dog issues, kid issues, your 16 year old daughter sunbathing naked is distracting my 13 year old boy, etc ... can we talk together about height, styles, etc over a beer" and you suddenly putting up a 20' lime green monstrosity and telling him "it's on the property line, get over it".

I think they wanted to cover this with page 66, "Don't even try to start setting limits until you have entered into deep abiding attachments with people who will love you no matter what".

Page 156 was important to me. "People don't make other people angry. Your anger has to come from something inside of you". Later; "Problems arise when we make someone else responsible for our needs and wants, and when we blame that person for our disappointments".

Bottom line, we all have to own our feelings -- we are ALL selfish, and we ALL seek to get our needs met by others (and for some needs, have to). In close relationships, that means that we deal with conflicting wants, and we need to NEGOTIATE ... which is much better than slapping up a 20' wall without consulting our "partner'.

Chapter 10, "Boundaries and your Children" needs to be made required reading for those seeking a license for having children. Oh, there isn't such a license? Damn.

"Discipline is an external boundary, designed to develop internal boundaries in our children. It provides a structure of safety until children have enough structure in their character to not need it". Later; "Discipline is not payment for a wrong. It is the natural law of God: our actions reap consequences. Discipline is different from punishment because God is finished punishing us. Punishment ended on the Cross for all those who accept Christ as Savior". 

I grew up on a farm. Hard work was as much a part of life as breathing, and I was a VERY lazy kid -- I still drew breath and worked. I also attended church, often with LOTS of bellyaching -- it was just the way it was. Fast forward to today -- unless parents have the intestinal fortitude to work HARD to insure their children learn responsibility and the fear of God, all bets are off. The Ten Commandments have been removed from most public buildings and certainly from the schools. "Honor your father and mother" is pretty much  considered a matter of discredited "mythology" rather than the only commandment with a promise. "Work" can be nigh on inaccessible at home given "convienience", while the Internet, video games, marketing, social media, etc are INTRUSIVE!

In the middle of 174, "The freedom of the Cross allows us to practice without having to pay a terrible price. The only danger is consequences, not isolation and judgment." .. THANKS BE TO GOD! Paul said in Timothy 1:15 "Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst." ... he is right about Christ, he is wrong that he is the worst -- I've won that race in personal failure after personal failure for which I am most grievously at fault,

As I've been able to study more an more theology after retirement, the following becomes more and more clear, and more and more scary -- page 260:

"God gives a choice and allows the people involved to make up their minds. When people say no, he allows it and keeps on loving them. He is a giver. And one of the things he always gives is a choice, and like a real giver, he also gives the consequences of those choices. He respects boundaries." 

We live in a world where many people believe that "someone" or "some thing" can allow radically free choices, yet remove the consequences.  They often believe that their choices OUGHT to be free of consequences. People really "ought" to be able to do whatever they want and never suffer the consequences.

On page 121, the authors provide a ray of hope to those injured by "boundaries" that were really walls or 20' ugly fences with no consultation.

"If you set limits with someone and she responds maturely and lovingly, you can renegotiate the boundary. In addition, you can change the boundary if you are in a safer place". 

It is a worthy book, again, I highly recommend it. Just don't go out and put up a 20' chartreuse fence with your neighbor and expect them to bake you a cake ... and if they do, don't eat it!

The High Conflict Couple, Alan E Fruzzetti, PHD

https://www.amazon.com/High-Conflict-Couple-Dialectical-Behavior-Validation/dp/157224450X

While this book is written to "couples", it will be of nearly equal value to almost anyone that has conflicts in relationships. In today's world, that has to come very close to 100% of us, with the conflicts generally being more nasty and longer lived.

Since the 1960's we have consistently pushed for each of our views, values, wishes, visions, desires, etc to be of ultimate importance, while the old shared values of "God, Country, Family, Church, Community" are now of much less to often even no importance at all to many.

So there are less shared values, more conflict, and one of the ways that many hope to deal with it is to "ignore it and it will go away' ... I find this paragraph from page to 11 to be as true, direct, and scary as pretty much anything I've read in books of this type:

" Unlike the other patterns, in the engage-distance pattern, there is an imbalence between the partners: one moves one way, the other goes in a different direction. That is one person wants to discuss or pursue a topic and be together, but the other person, at least in that moment, does not want to discuss a topic further, or perhaps not even be together, and instead seeks some alone time. What makes this pattern particularly tricky si that the engager or distancer can start out doing so in either an effective or a constructive way or a more destructive, aversive, or avoidant way, but reguardless, the pattern ends up being a disaster." 

Typically, the "avoider" is conflict averse and  REALLY wants it to "just all blow over", or "maybe things will get better on their own" -- they don't. What it leads to is anger in the relationship ... sooner and later. Anger is a valid emotion -- we all have it. The problem with it in relationships is discussed on page 25  " ... there is a very corrosive aspect to anger in close relationships that often overshadows any possible benefits".

"...feeling angry means having increased negative emotional arousal; this in turn churns out judgements. Judgements then increase arousal, which produces more judgements, which leads to inaccurate and ineffective expression of emotion and desires, which then results in misunderstanding and conflict and rarely leads to effective changes. Thus, angry feelings and angry expressions in close relationships almost always create distance, and distance is the enemy of closeness and intimacy ..."  

Page 46 has even worse news:

"In addition, being together passively can be risky: partners may begin to focus a lot of negative attention on each other inside their own heads, running a list of negative past deeds or anticipated future deeds through their minds, privately judging or criticizing the other,  becoming upset and eventually going on "red alert" waiting for the other to do something and then snapping at him or her ..." 

So what are we to do? The big picture  in the book is "DBT" ... of which I have a website here with lots of videos and charts if you are interested.

DBT goes out of it's way to NOT be "Christianity" -- in fact, it is based on Buddhism. However,  the big messages -- "BE STILL!  ... "BE PRESENT" ... "Observe, do not judge", "ACCEPT", "Let go and let God" (or "release your attachments" in the Budhist perspective) are quite similar.

What is important is for both people in any relationship -- "intimate", or other, to follow the principles of DBT as they discuss issues they have -- hopefully as quickly as possible. More "simmering" just tends to insure that everyone gets at least "scorched", if not fully burned.

DBT is like excercise for your mind and emotions. We ALL have BOTH "Emotional Mind" and "Rational Mind" -- if we practice and observe, we get the gift of "Wise Mind". Modern people tend to spend a lot of time trying to talk reason to people in Emotion Mind (totally useless). Here is a link to these pictures. 

"Why we can't communicate" is because we are speaking different languages. For those of us raised in an era where there were more assumptions that emotions are often invalid, and EVERYTHING can be solved by reason, we can be "very good" (in a scientific lawyerly sense) of "making the case" why the emotional position "loses" -- and usually the relationship is what REALLY loses!

Wise mind is a solution to getting on the same page -- at least one party has to "give" and be willing to take the risk of reaching out, AND often accepting some INvalidation, anger, judgement, etc without "giving as good as you get" ... and thus break the cycle and insert hope.

Wise Mind demands being unhurried, being respectful and non-judgemental. It demands Acceptance -- even of things that we really don't like.  We do not have to LIKE or "agree with" things  to accept them ... we can be a parapalegic for life, radically accept it, and not "like" it! Our son can join a cult that worships space aliens, and we can accept it ... and even validate it "I understand how you find the group you joined to be supportive" without AGREEING with him.

Many in our society even encourage denying acceptance of reality in order to not "normalize" some facet of reality. I really like this video of Marsha Linehan, the creator of DBT on that topic ...

I believe that the book is of "use" without the PRACTICE of DBT, however it is going to be FAR more powerful with a daily practice of at least Mindfulness and Radical Acceptance (Interpersonal Effectiveness and Emotional Regulation are good as well).

Everyone that reads this blog knows that I believe that Christ is what we really need to restore our broken world full of increasingly broken, addicted,  and too often, suicidal people, often at each others throats. For those that are not going to go there, DBT can help -- you may not learn to love your neighbor, or even your spouse, however you are much more likely to be able to tolerate them -- and even yourself.

 Needless to say, I HIGHLY recommend the book, and or course DBT -- I've become somewhat of a zealot on that topic. I'll leave you with this last video -- there are many more out on the DBT Site link above.

Groundhog Day, Again

http://www.moosetracksblog.com/2016/02/groundhog-day-again.html

The moose is a forgetful traditionalist -- I started this "tradition" in 2016, than apparently failed to do it in 2017. Groundhog day is a celebration of repetition for me -- with subtle modifications. I make some updates to the old post that are hopefully improvements ... I do that regularly to many posts in my blog. It is a labor of love for me, not a historical record.

Follow the link, and read / re-read the old yet slightly new post, and certainly the base Goldberg post as well at least if you never have. Oh, if you have not watched the movie, DO IT!

Bless this Groundhog Day, as Bill Murray finally learned to bless the day and thus moved forward to the next.

The Christmas Gift Of Napalm

The Salvation of ‘Napalm Girl’ - WSJ:

I grew up in a Christian home and was surrounded by Christian relatives as well as living in a US that was still largely Christian even though the decline away from God was well underway in the 1960's.

Today I spend a lot of time with people that have either never known Christ or have fallen so far away that they no longer hear that still small voice.

Christian people assume things like "do unto others", "love your enemies", "honor your father and mother", "judge not", etc as being normal human behavior. They are decidedly not! Human nature is "me, me, me", "I have negative feelings around you, therefore YOU must be bad", "I'm OFFENDED!" ... or as Paul puts in Ephesians 2:1-3, which happened to be in my Bible reading this AM.

1 As for you, you were dead in your trespasses and sins, 2 in which you used to walk when you conformed to the ways of this world and of the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit who is now at work in the sons of disobedience. 3 We all lived among them at one time in the cravings of our flesh, indulging its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature children of wrath.

Those who reject Christ often assume that "they do what they want". The Bible tells us that what they do is act in accordance of the wishes of "the ruler of the power of the air" -- Satan. They are "by nature, children of wrath".

The linked article is by the now grown, little naked Vietnamese girl pictured running away from napalm ... which happened to be used by South Vietnamese forces rather than American in this case. It really makes no difference -- For as Romans 8:28 tells us

"And we knowthat God works all things together for the good of those who love Him, who are called according toHis purpose."

Do we have a clue as to HOW God uses ALL THINGS according to his purpose? No, we believe because Proverbs 9:10 tells us that "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom!" Even being napalmed can be a gift for eternal good if it leads to eternity with the savior.

We now live in the non-Chrisitan state of BOistan, so this Christmas you will likely interact with many who no longer serve Christ. Christian doctrine says that man is created to serve, so we do end up serving someone. I'll leave it up to that theologian? Bob Dillon to give his view on that ...

 No matter how angry, disrespectful, "triggered", etc those not serving Christ may be, it is certainly the season to especially show them all the love that we can muster with the help of God. Perhaps a little reflection on the thoughts of Kim Phuc will help that journey ... Merry Christmas!

"My faith in Jesus Christ is what has enabled me to forgive those who had wronged me—no matter how severe those wrongs were. Faith also inspired me to pray for my enemies rather than curse them. It enabled me not only to tolerate those who had wronged me but to love them. No matter what type of pain or sorrow you may be experiencing, as Christmas approaches, I encourage you not to give up. Hold fast to hope. It is hope that will see you through. This peace I have found can be yours as well. I pray that it finds you this Christmas. "

'via Blog this'

The Tragedy of Fake News

NBC News, come clean on Tillerson's alleged 'moron' quote | TheHill:

With my birthday being yesterday I have broken my Facebook hiatus for a couple days to honor all the birthday wishes and respond. It didn't take long for a FB tragedy to roll by, someone I am friends with on FB who was a Trump voter, moderately conservative to libertarian, gave up on Trump on the basis of this!

Naturally, the article was from CNN.

As "The Hill" article linked above covers in detail, Trump is absolutely right, this is COMPLETELY Fake News. It is created by the media finding "unnamed sources", 3 in this case, to state "off the record" that they heard Tillerson call Trump a "moron". THAT is "the news" here ... everything else is the result of that "news"!  (I suggest THIS policy on "anonymous sources") Any gyration about "how mad Trump is", Tillerson wanting to resign, EVERYTHING! It is totally Fake News with no other objective than to continue to make Trump and his administration look as bad as they possibly can 24x7 until they can either get him out of office or defeat him.

As Tillerson said, what anyone that is able must do is stick to reality ... including the reality I just stated.

When asked if he called the president a "moron" (and there's a reason that word is being kept in quotes, but more on that in a moment), Tillerson replied he wouldn't respond to petty stuff like that because the allegation and language is only meant to divide.

Why is our nation divided? Well, beyond the fact that we have lost God and therefore lost the idea of the sacred ... including our Constitution,  the ideas we were founded on, our founders, etc, it is the constant bombardment of partisan Fake News. Until '87 when Reagan allowed the right to fire back, it was 100% from the left ... now it is only 80% from the left. Which naturally the left finds to be VERY "unfair".

So in the Fake News world, when they make something up and put it out as "fact", a failure to deny is a sworn statement of the veracity of the charge. For those of you not offended by crassness of the sort that you wish didn't exist, but know does, I suggest you take a look at THIS ... LBJ on the subject of "getting someone to deny" ... the link is to a Democrat site that for some reason thinks the left has forgotten the "make something up, state it as fact, force them to deny it" ... or perhaps the modern left is pining away for something more "Johnsonian".

As the article put it:

For starters, we're fully expected to believe as fact that Rex Tillerson, one of the more guarded public figures around, called the president an "f-ing moron" or "moron" in public within earshot of the three sources NBC has.

We're also expected to believe as fact that all three of these nameless people kept this to themselves for almost three months before running to NBC with the story.

Tillerson, by saying the alleged comment was too petty to even address, is actually confessing to saying it. Or so we're told ...

One would think there would be no way that Trump could have even gotten elected, but the vast majority of his voters have completely turned off the 80% MSM. Facebook  and other sources increasingly become "amen corners" for the political views of the individual -- people that espouse the "wrong views" are unfriended, hidden, filtered, etc ... so eventually, everything they see supports their own views. They live in their own world where all agree ... and family events become minefields.

Some, such as myself, desire to see both sides, crave it even,  -- and have a VERY hard time not commenting when obvious MSM mind control such as this unfolds. Yes, I fully realize that my average sized finger in the dike of disaster is not going to fix anything, however as Burke said ... "when good men remain silent".

The part I realize today is that totally turning off FB for days at a time means that things like Birthdays,  grandkid pictures, etc go away as well. So, I'll adjust ... I did say that my leaving FB was a "liberal leave" ... can't we have our cake and eat it too? Would it not be better if it was free? Better yet, perhaps someone could pay me to eat my never ending supply of cake, and it would not make me fat.

Let's make a law! Perhaps we could have a team of "unbiased experts" filter all our feeds so we ONLY saw "factual truth"! We could call it "The Ministry of Truth" (or "The Fairness Doctrine")  ;-(

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Eclipsed 2017

If you would like to see where we watched it, follow this link. In the sandhills S of Alliance NE -- we avoided the crowds. We were going to watch it from York NE, the clouds looked bad, so we abandoned our friends and just headed west ... for a spell just outside of Ogallala NE, it appeard that we would be punished for our sin ... it actually got a bit worse than this picture!

We found our spot, and we sat and watched the slow occlusion in bright sun, then we got some high clouds just before totality ... they broke for totality, and then it clouded right up. Whew!!

Here is my one 360 degree video -- I hesitate to include it because like so much of our modern world, it is FAKE -- the real experience is what is awesome, our reading, videos, movies, documentaries, "first person accounts", etc have more and more given many the idea that real experience isn't all that important. I'm starting to feel more and more like there actually isn't anything except real personal experience, with others, when at all possible.

The video underplays the darkness with the 360 degree "sunrise/sunset" effect. You can see that you are in a special spot of totality. It gives you a LITTLE of the feel that "things are not what they have always seemed". Go look at the best movies of the corona that you can find -- it is ALIVE, and the naket eye shows it in all it's majesty during a total eclipse. I had always assumed that the beautiful corona pictures were from special high resolution telescopes -- Nope! There it is in all it's mysterious glory. The mystery is that the surface of the sun is at about 6K degrees, but the the temperature increases very steeply to a few million degrees in the corona, in the region 500 kilometers above the surface,and we don't know why.

The other amazing thing is how light it is right up to that last "flash" as the sun totally disappears -- it looks like a super cloudy day, with a "weird filter", but not enough to really make you look up if you did not know what was going on..

As I write in my blog of "Spaceman",

"Experience vs Knowledge". Mike is orbiting at the Hubble spacewalking, looks around and EXPERIENCES the billiant light of the stationary sun as the earth rotates out of darkness ushering in a new 90 min Hubble "day". Mike EXPERIENCED the fact that the sun is stationary (relative to earth) and the day and night are caused by the rotation of the earth. Of course he "knew" that, but experience is much more. Telling someone about being a grandparent is not the same as being a grandparent.

You "know" what is going to happen, yet when it happens there is an emotional effect -- it "feels odd", how can this be? Even when you have been a space nut your whole life and watched men walk on the moon in rapt attention, there is something about the experience  of the moon blocking the sun that you sense is rare, and it is an honor from a greater source to be able to experience it.

As a believer in divine creation, an eclipse is especially poignient, as it feels like a direct message from God ... "As you grow in knowledge of my creation, you are able to discern my joy in creating the moon 400 times smaller than the sun, yet having the sun 400 times farther away so that at special times because of the eliptical orbit of of the moon, and the tilt of the earth, you may see my hand of creation as the sun is blocked perfectly. I give you these signs so that you may know that I am God".

Alas, for many today it is but one more random phenomenon in a cold and random universe that is so far beyond exceedingly unlikley that the fact of an eclipse would add a few exponents to the number of required universes were the God deniers to consider the ramifications of not only there being a universe that can sustain life at all, but one in which intelligent life arises -- nay, even CONSCIOUS intelligent life that can survey it's place in the universe AND, just happens to live on a planet that experiences perfect total eclipses ... where the sun is EXACTLY blocked, making it's corona visible!

One "explanation" is what Elon Musk believes ... we are in a "simulation" a sort of "Grand Matrix movie".  This explanation is really no "explanation", since it just makes "god" to be whomever programmed the simulation. According to modern physics, there ISN'T any explanation -- it's pure randomness all the way down, so there "must be" something like 10 to the 400th UNIVERSES in order for the extreme unlikelyness of our existence to happen.

To accept 10 to the 400th universes or "being a simulation" is considered intelligent and rational in these times -- God is however something that only the most backward and out of touch with reality believe in.

I pray that others may feel a little "sense of small" as I did in their observations of the eclipse. Our greatest shared loss, and with it, our ability to see our fellow man as similarly tiny short lived entities in a vast and timeless cosmos, is our sense of small. It isn't just our elites that have lost it or at least heavily distracted ourselves from it. Nobody with any sense of their smallness in the universe would waste their time tearing down statues of any sort if they were part of a very small and temporal humankind. Even all of human history is such a tiny blip in time that we barely have any history at all ... let alone any to tear down.

As it has been since Adam and Eve, the human sin that exceeds all others is PRIDE. for me, the eclipse was a visceral experience in being very small and very finite in the face of God and eternity.

Thanks be to God for allowing me to witness this example of his greatness. 

The Mouse Theory Of Moose Hearing Aid Loss

Some of you are aware that a week ago this past Friday, I was CERTAIN that I had took my two hearing aids out before going to bed at our Iowa cabin, and put them on our counter having forgotten  my little case back in Rochester, but being unconcerned since it was only my wife and I at the cabin with no pets.

In the AM, they were BOTH gone! For those of you with hearing aids, you realize this was an over $4k loss, so the relatively easy to search cabin was TORN APART with no result. Naturally, my recollection of having put the devices on the counter was universally questioned by all including me. When did I REALLY have them on last? Do I sleepwalk? Was I drinking? Do I commonly misplace and misrecollect like this?

Even though I had 100% clear recollection of almost going to bed, realizing the hearing aids were still in my ears, and then putting them next to my charging cell phone on the counter, the fact of their abscence in the AM was MUCH more clear!

Within the first couple of hours, the "mouse theory" developed, but was discounted given the questions of BOTH of them? Seriously? I'm NOT a statistician, but I'm pretty sure you can't calculate the probability of a given mouse taking a given hearing aid -- it is a "unique event". I'm also pretty sure that if said mouse takes one hearing aid, the odds of them taking the second are VASTLY higher.

I present the following evidence obtained from under the dishwasher at the cabin.

My contention is that moose senility may or may not be setting in, but this particular incident is not evidence for such a case.

For anyone else who has hearing aids or other small items show up "impossibly missing from where you put them", I would further submit that the mouse theory ought not be discounted out of hand! Especially among those of us "around 60", the loss of self confidence might even be worse than the loss of the money. I must say, I'm not nearly as worried about the other one turning up, nor if they can/will fix this one than I was of WHERE THE HELL DID I REALLY PUT THEM!

I certainly preach the value of humility -- can anyone be sure of anything in this world? I also now have a personal lesson in the terrible feeling of near total loss of confidence in oneself in at least one instance. Having some confidence in our recollections is definitely a blessing not to be squandered lightly!

** UPDATE ** 2nd hearing aid was discovered on TOP of dishwasher when it was finally pulled out.

The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard

https://www.amazon.com/Divine-Conspiracy-Rediscovering-Hidden-Life/dp/0060693339

This humbling work, subtitled "Rediscovering our hidden life in God", OUGHT to make a profound change in me -- as is always the case, the reality of that will depend on the DOING not just on the reading.

The book opens with the example of a fighter pilot flying at night who pulled back on the controls for a steep ascent and immediately hit the ground. They were flying upside down and were not aware of it.

The theme of the book is that we moderns are flying upside down and don't know it. As Tolstoy discovered to his dismay, we think that "particles and progress" are reality,  and "spirit" is fantasy, but in fact, the opposite is true.

"The mantle of intellectual meaningless shrouds every aspect of our common life. Events, things and "information" flood over us, overwhelming us, disorienting us with threats and possibilities we for the most part have no idea what to do about". 

Christianity has largely been reduced to a "consumer product".

"... the only thing made essential on the right wing of theology is forgiveness of the individuals sins. On the left it is the removal of social or structural evils."   

"A Christian is either one who is ready to die and face judgement or one who has an identifiable commitment to love and justice in society. That's it. 

The pointing out of problems is always relatively "fun" for we humans -- we love to point out the failings of others, systems, world views, etc -- and this is where the conviction descends on me personally.

"We ought to be spiritual in every aspect of our lives because our world is the spiritual one. It is what we are suited to. Thus Paul, from his profound grasp of human existence counsels us, " To fill your mind with the visible "flesh" is death, but to fill your mind with the spirit is life and peace".  

"To belong is a vital need based in the nature of being human. Contempt spits on this pathetically deep need. And like anger, contempt does not have to be acted out in special ways to be evil. It is inherently poisonous. Just by being what it is is withering to the human soul."

And we know it to be true, as we feel it profoundly. My "excuse" has been that obviously our modern society is contemptuous of Christians, so it is "only fair" that we are contemptuous in return. Only our soul knows that is wrong. We are to be like Christ, who hung on the cross AFTER going through a scourging that few survived, and being jeered and spit upon by the masses. And what did he do? He said "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do".

But we who have tasted of the blood of forgiveness DO know what we do -- if we let the shame of our contempt for those who are contemptuous of us well up within us. It is much like "the dark side" in Star Wars.

So what are we to do?

"Intensive internalization of the Kingdom order through the written word, and learning from the Living Word establishes good epidermal responses of thought, feeling and action. And these in turn integrate us into the flow of Gods eternal reign. We really come to think and believe differently and that changes everything."

The book gives some introduction to the path of becoming a disciple of Christ. It is not an easy path, nor is it a "required" path -- but it IS the goal. Either here or in eternity, if we believe, we WILL be his disciples and reign with him forever.

For those of us who are not premillennialists, eternity is NOW -- the kingdom of God is HERE, and has been since Jesus began his ministry! Christ offers us the way through the gospels and the sermon on the mount to begin that reign in this life -- through meditation on his word and prayer.

As you might guess, this could easily be one of my longer and less reachable blogs if I was to get into the depths of what Willard expertly covers. Instead, I'll just touch on one basic point -- the fact that this IS God's universe, and the fear of God is STILL the beginning of wisdom, even though in the present day, the entire system is intended to declare it foolishness in the extreme.  (p 231)

But if this actually is God's universe, the lords of knowledge have made what is surely the greatest mistake in history. Believing the world is flat or the moon is made of cheese is nothing compared to their mistake. To believe that the lords of knowledge are right on the other hand, is to omit the spiritual God and the spiritual life from the literally real. It is to make them to be illusions; and two or more centuries of "advanced thinking" have been devoted to showing that they are illusions. So the battle to identify our universe as God's and our existence as part of his creation must go on. We cannot stand aside. And in training people to "hear and do", we must take an open, intelligent, and loving stand on these fundamental matters. 

I've covered this topic many times in a number of different ways in this blog -- my base assertion is that "epistemology", a part of philosophy must be understood to even begin the discussion. Another strange twist is to ponder with Elon Musk, the idea we are "simulated".  For extra credit, there is consideration of the odds of us being here if the universe is "godless".  I totally agree with Willard, to be a disciple of Christ, we must have rock solid understanding that God is creator and be able to show that faith to be at least as "reasonable" as any other faith on human origins.

A profound and discerning work. Will my level of condemnation in this blog drop? I pray it does ... there is no question that this book convicted me.

Trump, The Joy Of Rebellion

Are Liberals Helping Trump? - NYTimes.com:

I remember the line from "Risky Business" quite well.

I'm not a huge fan of profanity, but there is definite truth there. One definition of insanity is to keep doing the same things you have always done and expect different results.

When I went to see Risky Business in 1983, I was single, in my 5th year of employment at IBM and very much in the Tom Cruise mode as he gets this lecture of "not wanting to screw up". About this same time, a person that I knew would leave IBM to go to work for Microsoft! I thought they were CRAZY ... they may as well have gone out and hired a bunch of hookers to try to make a big monetary score. The person that left retired from Microsoft in their 40's with I'm certain 10's of millions of dollars.

At the time, IBM was TOTALLY SAFE ... nobody was laid off, salaries were rising. If you could hang around 30 years (and likely less), you could retire with 2/3 of your salary and full medical benefits for the rest of your life. Sometime in the late '80s a buddy and I were up fishing at Mille Lacs and ran into a couple of guys who had retired from IBM recently that were in their early '50's (I hit 30 years at 51) who had super nice motor homes, a great boat, and had been reeling in big walleyes on Mille Lacs for a MONTH STRAIGHT!

I certainly didn't want to "screw up", take risks, and jeopordize that! One would have to be a FOOL to do so!

By the time I was fired in '12, the pension had been cut to a scant 1/3 of salary with minimal medical benefits to pay for medical costs that were skyrocketing. My wife that started at IBM in '84, who I would marry in '85 will get like 1/10th salary when she retires.

In the late '70s, some of the people that had retired the early '70s were coming back to work. They had gotten what were SUPER pensions at that point that were not indexed for inflation (neither is mine). Thanks to Jimmuh Carter, their pensions were essentially worthless by '80 due to inflation, and anything they had invested (in other than IBM stock) had pretty much earned nothing in the stock market. The Dow hit 900 in January of 1965, in November of '83 it finally went above 1,000 ... stocks were not the answer in those days.

The linked NY Times article points out that politically, saying "What the F" on Trump is considered to be a lot more morally suspect by the left today than pimping for your high school buddies was in '83. Many males may not agree with the morality of buying a hooker, let alone being a pimp, but they certainly understood the concept. Something like half the country today finds the idea of even taking a shot at opportunity to be immoral in the extreme -- so extreme they often can't even associate with such a person.

How will Trump turn out? No idea. My "sense" is that he is a lot more like "going to work for Microsoft" vs sticking with IBM was in '83 than any of the other current analogies. Maybe he is more like hiring a bunch of hookers and charging your high school buddies for sex ... which if you believe the movie, might work out better than one would expect assuming an amoral world and nothing afterward. (which IS the standard assumption of post Christain BOistan).

However, if one believes the left, we live in a HIGHLY moral world. A world more like the Baptist church I grew up in, or even the Mennonite churches around where I grew up. You MUST be "morally pure" ... as in follow all the dictates of "The Party", or you need to be "shunned". Lose contact with friends, co-workers, possibly even family.

I knew some kids like that from the Baptist church -- rebels. Openly drank, smoked, chased (and at least claimed to "catch") girls ... maybe even turned "atheist", or at least cursed the people who put all the moral strictures on them. I was of course quiet and bookish before I met my wife ... so we won't go into that here. I did however at least feel the thrill of rebellion -- I went to PROM, which involved DANCING, causing embarrassement for my father a deacon at church, and my mom a good baptist woman. Dancing, movies, smoking, drinking, long hair and a few other things were bigtime sins in the church ... I had long hair as well. I was a REBEL! (sort of ... a very limited rebel)

At age 60, it seems just plain surrealistic to see millions of people so locked into a secular humanist "morality" that they shun others over political views, or basically "taking a risk" ( on a 70ish multi-billionaire with great kids). I guess in a lot of ways I've never really changed -- mostly I keep my mouth shut about politcs day to day because I realize how bad it makes many people feel that someone they know would vote for Trump. I did the same back then ... I "sinned", but other than prom and long hair, I was pretty quiet about it.

In strange ways, my Christianity has become my "open rebellion" now. When I was in high school I was embarrassed about being a Baptist. I couldn't defend young earth creation, nor really understand why our church didn't allow dancing, drinking, etc and so many of the "world churches" did. Since I had been raised that way, it "felt" like the only way to escape hell was to be "saved" which if properly done would "change me" so I no longer desired any of the worldly things.

It never really seemed to "work" ...  "wanting" girls in the days of the miniskirt was an obstacle that prayers never fixed for me. I wanted to be somewhat popular at school ... and the kids that were able to do a better job of following the Baptist strictures were definitely UNpopular at school. The only "proper path" was to go to Pilsbury Baptist Bible College in Owatonna Minnesota to become a minister or missionary, or to settle in to farming or working at the turkey plant or some other local business, marry one of the good baptist girls, and settle in for what looked like a longer life at that point than it does now. Perhaps that WAS the only way "home" (to heaven) for me ... those were the cards that I was dealt by God and I walked away from the solution that was presented me -- I failed to honor my father and mother and follow the road that God put me on. "The judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether".

I don't spend a lot of time on that -- it crosses my mind with a lot of other things. It comes with my belief that God truly is SOVEREIGN -- even if he puts me in Hell for eternity because I failed to follow the simple clear path he set before me since I felt I was "smarter than that". He is STILL sovereign! I don't feel / believe that will be the outcome -- I believe that Christ died with the promise to save me by GRACE, and those thoughts are just late night nightmares. It is part of honest thoughts that come form being raised as I was raised with the wetware and spiritware that I have.

While I went through a conversion to conservative, Lutheran "process Christian", philosphical wanna be, half the population (+ 3 million HRC voters, so a MAJORITY!)  formed a new religion that kinda reminds me of "Stranger In A Strange Land" which I just realized I ought to re-read. Perhaps Secular Humanism really is the Fosterite cult where all manner of sex, drug use, and wealth aquisition is "blessed" as long as the cult of government is held supreme, the planet at it's existing temprature or colder is venerated, Satan (Trump) is cursed, and those that refuse to kneel before the power of "The Party" (TP-D)  are cast out into utter darkness. There have been stranger religions.

Science fiction appealed to me a lot in high school and through college, but after my conversion to conservatism as a reaction to Jimmuh Carter, I've found history, philosophy, theology, physics, biographies and such to be much more surreal than what people can make up. From my perspective, we really are trapped on an ancient intellectual and spiritual starship with nearly nobody understanding how we got here.

Is Trump "risky business"? Sure, and maybe to some extent we Trump voters really did sorta say "WTF", but from most of our perspectives, we had an even worse choice than Tom Cruise. I wonder if the folks in the the Secular Humanist / Fosterite religion remember what it feels like to be a rebel? As they forgot their sense of small, did they also forget "the will to power" and decided to "play it safe" like I did at IBM?

For me, listening to lefties heads explode on MPR / NPR day in and day out is just TOO much fun! After 8 long years, it is now the lefts turn "In the Barrel", and it is impossible for even a 60 year old me to not take a good deal of joy in that!


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Goldberg, Confidence, Memory, Meaning

Donald Trump’s 4D Chess, Political Master Myth | National Review:

Here is what I consider to be Golberg's central pontification of the linked column:

But I’d like to inter a different common retort: that Trump is playing ten moves ahead; that he’s playing 4D chess; that he’s brilliantly distracting the media by creating this or that controversy. I’m willing to concede that there are times when he’s deftly sent the media chasing their tails. But the idea that Trump’s brilliant master plan is unfolding just as he intended is frick’n bonkers.

First, let it be said that I admire Jonah Goldberg and am even significantly jealous of him -- multiple books, respected journalist at the magazine founded by Buckley, who I nearly idolized.

I realize that in order to operate in life in the position he is in, he needs to:

1. Take firm interesting positions 
2. Always be confident no matter what  

To some degree, that is what it takes for "good mental health", even a "good Christian life". Living boldly in the present, forgetting  / forgiving ones past errors, enjoying and continuing to live boldly in the future present moments with no concern for the morrow. 

My position on Trump definitely "evolved" -- I thought he had no chance, I was aghast when it became obvious that he did, etc. I essentially went through the stages of grief. (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) as we ALL do sometimes many times in a day over matters great and small in our lives. I could go back and link some of my blog entries together and likely chart the progression (with some regressions) relative to Trump. 

Here is Goldberg in an NR column "Operation Destroy The GOP" in October of last year.

I feel like Charlton Heston screaming at the Statue of Liberty on the beach. You people blew it all up. You embraced a man who has no serious allegiance to the ideals you got rich peddling and who had a vanishingly small chance of winning in the first place — even if he had been the disciplined candidate he deceitfully vowed he would be. Trump is now an albatross on the party and he will leave a Cheeto-colored stain on both the GOP and the conservative movement for years to come. 

Goldberg was one of the founders of the #nevertrump movement on the right. He was CERTAIN that not only was Trump going to lose, but that his loss (and the very likely loss of the Senate with it) was "the end of the GOP" for at least the foreseeable future. Based largely on my reading of Scott Adams and the fact that I had COMPLETELY underestimated Trump relative to the nomination, I was "mildly hopeful" on election day, but far from certain that he would win.

When he started to look like he might win the nomination last spring, I started looking for "other information". It was a tiny example of the same logic that led me to find National Review in the late '70s when I realized that I wasn't ready to turn off my Christmas lights, put on a sweater and accept that the best days of America were behind us.

When I realize that I'm wrong, I like to do a reset and look for "other information". Apparently that is even odder than I realize.

I've been wrong too many times to believe that I KNOW that Trump is not playing "4D Chess" -- or to think that he is a bumbling corrupt idiot savant that happened to luck into the White House (maybe with Russian help). I firmly believe that it is possible that he is a genius with a master plan that STILL makes mistakes and can lose "battles" while still winning the war. Back in August, I was getting more convinced he had to be a "plant". Hell, maybe he WAS a plant, and in trying to throw the election he accidentally won because Hillary is such a putz. We have been living in insane times for certain at least since Slick Willie was able to skate with BJs from an employee in the oval office (or was that "oral office"?).

Goldberg is a smart person, WAY smarter than me. Does he realize that even his supposedly educated conservative readers have such short attention spans that they have forgotten what he wrote last fall? or is it simply true that nobody cares about such tired concepts as "truth", "consistency", etc? If that is true however, what is the objection to Trump? Or anything really -- if BOTH sides (all sides?) have abandoned consistency, truth, "history" (of even the less than 6 months sort), then what exactly do words mean?

Perhaps I missed the memo and everyone else but me decided that it IS actually true that we each defined our own meanings of all words -- including "IS" ... so we have passed through the looking glass, and everything operates with each of us playing Humpty Dumpty ...

"When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." 

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master— that's all."

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Teaching The Eternal, Five Things

We don’t need to teach our kids to code, we need to teach them how to dream – Startup Grind – Medium:

 Trying to reduce what to pass on to the next generation to "5 things", or even one thing, is a time honored desire of mankind. At some point in our short lives, we realize that we won't be around long in any case, and usually realize through the death of a friend or family member that "short time" may be our next breath.

As in much of modern life, the author jumped right by meaning on the way to his list.

We’ve prioritized the acquisition of knowledge around what we assume society would deem most “worthy”. For much of history, knowledge was rooted in theology: it was about explaining the world in a supernatural way, seeing goodness as a tenet. The industrial revolution saw a vast shift away from this to a way of maximizing return on investment in a production-centric environment.

His list is:

1. Relationships
2. Curiosity
3. Agility
4. Creativity
5. Compassion 

I'd argue that for all of history -- past, present and future, a meaningful life is, has, and will be about MEANING. The core of all life in the past and all life in the future consists of birth, family and death. Some may want to remove family, however we are all born into one, and if a majority decides that having children and raising them well is not a priority, then their and our future history ceases. This fact has been lost on Western civilization today. 

My life is still based on "theology" in the sense of faith. All lives are -- including the list author, the only question is the realization of that fact. He has faith in a meaningless godless universe / world, and that his five items can make a life worth living. He chooses to either ignore philosophy or just lump it in with theology as no longer applicable to the world he believes he lives in. A scientific world that denies human consciousness, love and beauty because none of those are measurable. 

My list is as follows: 

1. Faith -- "The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God". The base of all meaning to is the tenet of a teleological universe that is created by a PERFECT God and fallen through misuse of the gift of free will. We all have a faith -- if you believe you don't, study some basic philosophy to understand what your faith is (solipsism, empiricism, determinism, positivism, etc)
   
   Faith and hope cover "agility" from the other list. By accepting our true place in the universe, the things of this world can be considered in the perspective of God's perfect love and the fact of eternity.
   
   It all has a purpose, and that purpose is greater than me. (although, God wants it to INCLUDE me!)
   
2. Hope -- Of redemption for me, redemption for those I love, and eventual redemption or re-perfection of the world and universe by a sovereign God. The story of life the universe and everything has a universal class happy ending, insured by God.
   
3. Love -- Love for God, love for family, love for others, and love for myself as I know God loves me. Relationships and compassion on the other list are covered by love.
   
   "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no account of wrongs ..."
   
   Christ (and the Beatles) tell is love is all we need. "Love the Lord thy God wIth all thy heart and soul, and thy neighbor as yourself" (even (especially?) if your neighbor is your "enemy").
   
4. Wisdom -- As I believe I live in a meaningful universe, God has provided me with a desire to know him and to grant me wisdom. Some now, much more in eternity. The pursuit of wisdom is one of my greatest joys.
   
5. Vocation -- God has given me a purpose, and if I seek him, that purpose is made clear to me. As I work at my purpose, God directs the universe to help me to "succeed" in achieving of that purpose.
   
   That purpose may be the bearing of great pain and suffering -- even unto death, or it may be ruling the world. To look at these and accept the sovereignty of God so that my ultimate purpose is the achievement of God's will, not mine, is the way to the most coveted prize of every life "Well done my good and faithful servant". 

It was an interesting exercise to try to do my list of five. Christ knows it best -- the greatest is love! ... and I'm obviously a work in progress since that came in 3rd on my list. 

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30, 60, 90

My father is little over a month short of 30 years older than me and we had his birthday celebration on his birthday, the 21st. He was in fine fettle, even though it really looked like we were going to lose him due to prostate cancer / urinary tract blockages, surgeries, etc this last spring. He bounced back and was able to eat an amazing amount of pizza and homemade ice cream at his party. Based on my data and my mom's roommate at the nursing home that lived to 102, I'm pretty sure that pizza is essentially the fountain of youth.

Readers of this blog know that I am blessed and cursed with a pretty decent memory. I remember well the 30-60 party back in '86 when I turned 30 and dad was about to turn 60. I was 8 years into my IBM career, married a little over a year and still childless, that would not change until March of '88.  The Challenger had exploded in January. It was the year that Iran Contra showed up and the media was certain they could finally get Reagan.

At IBM, business was good -- the IBM PC was still king, although the seeds of demise were visible. The Intel 386 processor started shipping that year, but IBM did not create a machine using it as it had hung it's hat and OS/2, the ill fated OS originally developed "in partnership" with Microsoft, on the 286. OS/2 was "a big deal" at IBM in '86 -- and would never really be a big deal anywhere else.

My Dad seemed pretty old at 60 from the perspective of 30 -- but he was still vigorous and running his farm. His two brothers and their wives were doing well, now all gone including my mom, his sister in Rockford lives on. We joked that I had been 1/30th his age when I was born, but then I was 1/2 his age -- I'd "gained" to being 2/3rds his age at this point. Fractions had been hard for him in school, and they remained so throughout his life (unless he has an epiphany in his 90's !).

Lived fractions show a reality however -- it is BOTH a relative and absolute world. Thirty years remains 30 years, as the length of both lives extend, the relative difference shrinks. If we were blessed or cursed with 300 year lifespans, I could attain 90% of my fathers age. A 30 year old has a hard time imagining long life to be a curse, a 60 year old sees that potential, a 90 year old is well aware of that reality.

Thirty, sixty, ninety are just numbers, and in our modern world, quite small numbers. "70" was a big number in biblical times -- 70x7 was a stand-in for infinity. It doesn't seem so big from 60, neither does 90, and that is impossible to understand from 30. At 30, the amount of time to 60 seemed INFINITE! It was twice my age, and the last time my age had doubled, from 15-30 seemed like FOREVER. From 60, I'd say that in "perceived time", 30-60 seems somewhat shorter than from 15-30 seemed from 30. Thirty to 90 seems shorter still.

I came close to losing my wife in my 60th year, and although her recovery is miraculous, her injury has been life changing for both of us and shows both the fragility of life, and the need to always be grateful for what you have! It only takes a second to be paralyzed ... or gone, and a second is still short at 30, 60,  or 90!

Thanksgiving was spent with family in West Bend, and at our lake place. I've come to love the "home away from home". It is familiar and "home" now, yet very different, in a way that "just going away for a few days" can't be -- it continues to become a place of solitude and reflection as well as a source of new memories with family and friends. It is easy to understand why presidents have their "retreats".

Age is both a blessing and a curse, but only the living of the years really allows that to sink in. It is one of the pieces of wisdom that can't be obtained from books. We inherently understand the blessing, although the wonderful blessing of grandchildren takes living to understand. The curse is also obvious by 60 -- loved ones have passed from this vale of tears by this point, and the rate of passing in those you know starts to accelerate. You see heaven filling with loved and familiar faces, and your prayers for those who ignore or reject the infinite become more fervent.

Then there is the infirmity -- sometimes arriving suddenly as in a fall that injures your spine or a stroke. Sometimes in a diagnosis -- cancer, Alzheimer's, etc. Sometimes it is in the growing circle of the younger that you love. When you were a child, mom, dad and siblings were "your world". You may have lost a childhood friend, but probably not. Sure, losing a grandparent, aunt or uncle was hard, but "normal" too -- the "natural way of things".

As you age in the "old style family", you have in-laws, the in-laws have parents, children, grandchildren, close friends. Your "risk set" is expanding with children / grandchildren for you and others as well. When you were young, visits to hospital or funeral home tended to be rare -- for me, my maternal grandfather's funeral at age 9 is my earliest recollection of sad death. My paternal grandfather passed away before such things registered.

Now, increasingly, there is nearly always someone in your family or acquaintance in hospital or nursing home. Visitations and funerals for co-workers, church friends etc become increasingly frequent. You need to be retired to go to all the funerals and to visit those shut-in even if you are blessed with good health yourself!

As time passes, each lived age "is what it is". When we are young we have plans, dreams ... demands and "rights" even -- at least the we believe so when young. Stand next to (or in) enough hospital beds, next to enough graves, and the message of lived reality becomes ever stronger. We are dust, and to dust we shall return -- as you breath your last, Grace is your only hope -- and neither it, nor anything else are your "right".

We are not in charge of our own next breath -- nor that of any we love. Science is also not in charge, nor government, nor anything in this earthly coil.  We live for a moment in the infinite, and we all have some belief as to the ultimate meaning or lack of meaning in that.

By Grace, I believe in a continuation of the eternal kingdom of God through Christ Jesus. In your belief, maybe a cold cruel random universe and annihilation. Some ignore it, but we are all really all truly and eternally equal in the fact of death!

30, 60, 90 -- all infinitesimal next to eternity. Lord Jesus, thank you for this measure of life, and thank you infinitely more for the gift of eternity, offered so beautifully as the original Christmas gift!

God's Plans

Marla and I received a stern reminder of the old saw "If you want to make God laugh, just tell him your plans" Saturday evening I was off doing some volunteer work and rode my motorcycle home arriving around 8:20 with smoked ribs on my mind. No Marla in the house -- figured she was on the deck, but when I exited the sliding back door I heard her screaming like I've never heard her before.

I rounded the corner next to the firepit and there she was laying face down with her chin on the second small set of steps, her legs out and her arms crumpled beneath her. "I can't move, I've been here quite awhile, nobody could hear me".

Dialing 9-11 seemed to be in slow motion, making SURE they knew about MANOR COURT NORTH WEST vs just "Manor Court",  seemed like running through molasses in January. I'm guessing it was 10 min before they arrived, but it seemed like an hour or more -- I heard sirens almost immediately, my bad hearing amplified by nerves had me thinking that they were pulling up when they were crossing the bridge on 52 a mile away.

We both knew that I couldn't move her -- no feeling in her extremities, but feeling on her back. Lots of blood, but I knew not a life threatening amount. Since the front of her skull was directly against a concrete step, I wondered if the paralysis was due to brain injury rather than spinal, but she was conscious and completely cogent, so it was hard for my addled brain to make sense of it.

The EMTs and firetrucks arrived, she was loaded up and we headed for St Mary's level 1 trauma center where a team of 15+ masked and gowned specialists received her and I was ushered to a waiting room to wait for the first support to arrive. My brain was flooded with fear of still sudden death due to some bleed inside the brain, would we sell the house to deal with her being a quadriplegic? I needed to get rid of those motorcycles!  Too risky! Why wasn't I at home??? !!!

Five days later, my brain still has some of those thoughts, even though the belief is that her prognosis is excellent. When she hit the step with her chin she hyper-extended her neck backward ("whiplash"), fortunately "bruising" or "compressing"  rather than tearing or severing her spinal cord. She was startled by an old firework in a supposedly spent cake that she used to start a fire in our fire-pit going off and "just tripped" as she ran. Had the cord been bruised a bit more, her ability to breathe would have been suspended and she would have died -- as she would have if it had been severed at that level of the spine.

She underwent spinal column surgery last Sunday for 5 hours to make more room for the spinal cord and to fuse the vertebrae to better protect this area that was weak from childhood. She has had one of us with her in ICU since she was admitted since she is unable to push the nurse button. She now DOES have feeling in her hands and feet, major muscle movement on both sides, good toe movement on the left, SOME on the right, a little finger movement on the left, and a TINY bit on the right.

Recovery is likely to be very long. She got out of the ICU yesterday and "3 weeks" is considered an optimistic estimate for when she might be able to come home. Getting back to typing and other skills with her fingers is nearly certainly farther off than that.

She sold her Harley 3 weeks ago because it as too risky -- she nearly died on our patio next to our pond, a spot that I use in my mind as my "happy place"... a  "safe and calming place" to deal with anxiety. This universe is not ours -- human control and power are ALWAYS illusions. Either Trump or Hillary could trip walking down some steps, break their neck, and be gone in a few minutes -- or stroke, heart attack, car crash, plane crash -- the list is completely endless. Worse, any of us, or those we love could do the same. We don't make those decisions.

Do I literally think God might "laugh"? Sort of.  God knows how mundane all of what happens in the mortal coil other than coming to Gods Grace and redemption through Christ is. We are also created in his image, so we know that he has something like "humor".

I personally think our consciousness is traveling but one of MANY timelines, only one of which we "see" in what seems like the single path of this mortal life.  Since it was a "freak accident", maybe on nearly all of the paths, it never happened, or there was a much lesser injury, etc.. On some smaller set of even smaller paths, she died and I'm going to her funeral today or before the end of the week. Perhaps on "1" or a really tiny number, I died in a motorcycle crash on the way home and she is heading on with her recovery without me, or on another, the world is heading on without either of us because I died in a motorcycle accident the same night she stopped breathing due to a spinal injury. "What are the odds of that?" ... well, what are the odds we ever met at all?

In that case, no doubt a number of people on that timeline would be crying at our funerals (more for her than for me), but Marla and I would know the truth and understand that eternity is all that matters, and whatever the worst that life gives you is, next to eternity and THE TRUTH (Christ), the worst this world has to dish out is much less than the medical profession bills as  "just a little bee sting" or "you will feel some pressure now" ...

I believe we have FAR LESS than "no idea" on these things -- "free will", "predestination", the power of the creator of the universe, etc. "Far less" means that all of our ideas about "fate", "God's will", "Why do bad things happen to good people", etc. are likely so wrong as to make the worst description of a Saturn IV Moon Rocket internal operations by a tribesman in the bush somewhere seem like revealed genius by comparison. Just pause and consider the difference in knowledge scale between "all knowing" and any of our pitiful brains, even rolled into one!

I don't believe that God "wills" such things as happened to Marla, but he allows "free will" in the universe, which I see as a combinatorial explosion of uncountable pathways of "if". God is with us on all those paths, always seeking to save us -- he indeed knows all (since all the paths have happened, are happening, and always will happen) but we don't.

He DOES have a plan and it WILL be accomplished -- maybe even on "all the paths" for all I know, but like a parent letting a child learn to walk, he allows us to "go bump" in many many ways, even go through our "terrible twos" where everything must be OUR way!!! No matter how foolish and ridiculous that way is! Some of our "bumps", like Marla's, are just part of being a human living in a physical world marred by sin. It's like hauling 50 million gallons of shit in a fall pumping season -- maybe NONE of the 50 million is your shit, but you are still quite likely to "get some on you".

Of course, none of this dime store rambling "philosophy" or "theology", or more colloquially put "bullshit" means anything while waiting for the ambulance, or sitting with her at night while she is in pain, or watching her struggle to get her toes and fingers to move. Those are the moments that are what is "real" in the human physical sense that is what we call "life". We see through a lens VERY darkly, but we have faith that it all really does mean something SOMEHOW!

Sometimes the soul just cries out with feelings that are not expressible. She is a few feet away sleeping peacefully, THAT is a blessing beyond compare. Our boys, daughter in law and grandaughter visited us and are now home safely -- that is another blessing! Our Iowa family has rushed to our side and continues to. Our Rochester friends have already driven people to the cities multiple times, delivered food, visited, and are making themselves available. Our pastor brought us Communion in the ICU ... I could keep going on, but won't.

We like to kid ourselves that we have plans and control, but we don't . Life is learning to accept God's plan for our lives with the help of his Grace. It is ultimately a WONDERFUL plan, no matter how we might feel about it at a given point -- our goal is to accept that plan and accept that it is in fact God's plan and therefore wonderful. "Accepting" doesn't mean sitting back and saying "whatever" -- it means hard work, which Marla is FAR better than me, so has the best chance of recovering as far as is possible.

So please pray for us. It is always fine to pray for speedy 100% recovery. God knows that is very much what we want, especially for a specially loved person that constantly does everything for everyone else like Marla. But also pray that we can accept and find joy in God's will and plan in HIS time -- because ultimately, that is the only plan that counts,  no matter how hard that plan may be. I am just so thankful beyond words that I'm still living on a path WITH Marla ... "just" seeing her smile when Tula arrived is a gift beyond price.

Thanks to all who are praying, helping and caring -- perhaps that is "the reason" at some level.

It's Gods Plan, and God is Good -- ALL THE TIME!

Mike Rowe, Scotch, Fire, Ron Swanson

That Time Mike Rowe Drank Scotch With Ron Swanson:

Out nation could use a lot more "folk heroes" -- Will Rodgers, Audie Murphy, Paul Harvey ... even Paul Bunyan, John Henry, Rosie the Riveter, etc. People who are real or legendary that provide examples of what it means to be an American.

Mike Rowe seems to be well along on the path of being about the best we have today.

The linked article is worth a read -- turns out there is a video of "Ron Swanson" sitting in front of a fire and drinking Scotch for an hour -- just that. I especially liked this quote -- but it is pretty short and worth the read.

“The first thing that an honest politician would say is, ‘Look, I have no idea what’s best for you and your kids, but if we’re guilty of elevating one form of enlightenment at the expense of all the others, we’re gonna create a list of problems’…that’s what we’re experiencing now. It’s amazing to me the implicit value judgments that go into all the platitudes.”

'via Blog this'