the Word BigBang

Way, way back in time, before all this stuff was here, even back before the Big Bang, something very amazing happened.


I was wondering about our universal origin, so I took a chance on a Wikipedia entry about it. This is what I found:

“ The (Big Bang) model describes how the universe expanded from a very high-density and high-temperature state.”

Scientists and dreamers like me have, for many and many a year, puzzled about what that “very high-density and high-temperature state” might have been.
I was pondering this development. My irrational dreamer self was wrestling with Reason as I attempted to figure out what that very high-density pre-Bang substance might have been. Being the 20th-century educated baby boomer that I am, my mind stumbled into an idea that I must have discovered in a science classroom somewhere along the line. Therefore, E=mc² banged into my big (bigger than a chimpanzee’s) brain.
Energy = mass x the speed of light squared.
Which means something like: When a very small chunk of (mass) material stuff gets its atomic parts whirling around at a certain extremely high speed, and when that speed is zipping along at a rate of that same velocity multiplied by itself (faster than I can imagine), the whole baleewick crosses some kind of transformational threshold and suddenly that mass of nuclear stuff gets changed Presto Chango! into something fundamentally different— Energy!
Waves and waves of energy . . .
Energy. . . hmm. . . whataboudit . . . Now I do know that there are many different forms of energy. There’s kinetic energy, like a bat hitting a ball, which then suddenly propels that ball to an absolutely reverse direction from the direction in which the pitcher had pitched it. Pretty amazing thing for a batter to do, when you think about it.
Amazing. Lots of amazing in this universe. Moving right along. . . don't blink or you'll miss something.
And then there’s potential energy, like Mr, Newton’s apple, which was, naturally, connected to an apple tree until, all of a sudden, something gave way and the apple dropped to the ground, which provoked Mr. Newton to ask:
Say what?
Which translates from 17th-century English to: what the heck is going on here? Or, if you’re an out-of-the-box kind of thinker . . . what the hell is going on here?
Potential energy instantaneously being converted to kinetic energy! That's what.
Perhaps it’s a little microcosm of the Big Bang, but on an exponentially smaller scale. The apple does make, you know, a kind of thud when it hits the ground, and then it transforms into a treat for an itinerant traveler to partake thereof.
Meanwhile, back at the tranche,  back to the the case of the macrocosm, the, as it were,  Big Bang, which was hypothesized as high-density matter being converted suddenly into kinetic energy, and subsequently expanding outward . . . (as John Lennon sang back in the day) across the universe . . .
and then, along the way, settling into a reverse of the mass-to-energy scenario, back into the energy-to-mass state of being, which brought forth . . . mass, stuff . . .
a Universe, duh . . .
I can only wonder, well, it is what it is, or . . . or it is what it has a become, as a result of all that instantaneous transformation, which has been transforming itself over 14.5 billion years to ravel as what we call “the Cosmos," and everything therein.
14.5 billion years of unfolding Universe.
Wow!
Francis Collins’, in his book The Language of God, described the beginning of the phenom, this way:

“For the first million years after the Big Bang, the universe expanded, the temperature dropped, and nuclei and atoms began to form. Matter began to coalesce into galaxies under the force of gravity. It acquired rotational motion as it did so, ultimately resulting in the spiral shape of galaxies such as our own. Within those galaxies local collections of hydrogen and helium were drawn together, and their density and temperature rose. Ultimately nuclear fusion commenced.”

All of this posited data reverberates in my 21st-century brain, settling into my born-again spirit, and restates itself as an expanded statement of Moses’ ancient, pre-science explanation:

“Then God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light; God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.”

Makes sense to me. You?
 
Glass half-Full

The killing of God

Just because the potentates of old Europe wrangled the Bible away from its Hebrew roots and turned it into dead religion doesn’t mean God doesn’t exist.

God did, after all, create humans with a free will. We are not programmed bots. Just because we homo sapiens screwed it up over the course of a few thousand years doesn’t mean that God wasn’t in the midst of it all somewhere, trying to break through our cerebral density, carnal shenanigans and political bullshit.

Actually, God did break through. But look what we did to him.

In the Middle Eastern crossroads where our wayward cruelties had taken advantage of 1st-century Empire-building power politics to nail him, a stake was driven in the ground. It turned out to be a bloody mess and a sacrifice of universal proportions.

So, as the centuries rolled by, the movers and the shakers among us took that bloody sacrifice and ran with it, transformed it into a first-class religious system that rolled on through time and continent like a runaway ox-cart on a roman road. A thousand years later, we’d manhandled that pivotal sacrifice into high-powered religion, through which men and women worldwide were either convinced or manipulated (depending upon your interpretation of it) into the mysteries of practiced religion.

Long about 1500 ad dominum, a few upstart readers who were paying attention to the original scripts started to figure out that something had gone wrong somewhere along the line.

So they raised some issues. Well, long story short, all hell broke loose.

That great institutional juggernaut that had rolled down through a millennium of pox humana religiosity suddenly was under attack from men who were trying to get to the bottom of it all, which is to say . . . trying to get through all that institutional religiosity to . . . the truth.

The truth? What is truth?

Haha glad you asked.

This little question became a matter of serious debate.

Now that the snake was out of the bag, everybody and their brother was trying to figure out what the truth really was and how it should be used to improve the human condition. People like Rousseau, Hegel, Engels and Marx, Lenin and several other notorious bastards.

As the movement to replace God with human wisdom and government gathered steam, human history heated up quite a bit. And the conflagration of it increased exponentially because this historic development just happened to coincide with the 19th-century Industrial Revolution. So we had a lot more fire power to implement all the big changes that needed to happen in order to get mankind delivered from the great religious debacle that had held us in bondage for so long.

Some guys in Prussia figured out that, since the great juggernaut institution of religion had been exposed to be the manipulative Oz-like empire that it was, the immediate conclusion was that not only had we killed religion, but we humans had managed to finally kill God! Voltaire, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche made this point perfectly clear.

Several bloody revolutions and a couple of world wars later, we are in the process now of finally getting our ducks in a row and ourselves straightened out, now that we’ve finally gotten God out of the way.

Even though we had already killed him one time before, but that’s another story.

Actually, it’s The Story.

His-story.

You can’t kill it, because that death-sentence strategy has already been implemented several times, yet without conclusive results.

We humanos insist on perpetually resurrecting that Story. We just can’t get enough of the un-killable presence among us. It refuses to stay dead. Might be worth looking into.

 

King of Soul

The hollowness of God

So many people dis God these days--criticizing him because he (she, or it) doesn't correct the dysfunction and atrocity of this world. And the word on the street or in the web is that the Deity, if he (she, or it) does exist, doesn't seem to care enough about us and our faith to make our proper expression of that religion a little easier to validate.
My guess is that God is a little skittish. When he did show up here to give us some direction, we nailed him to a cross. So perhaps you can understand why he doesn't just throw his weight around; he knows we're likely to just crucify him again. In fact, some of his people are probably being given the third degree in places right now here on this earth.
One thing that God has done lately that I know of, however, is: he has taken a lower profile. The deity's presentation to us these days doesn't appear to be aimed at compelling us to revere the high and mighty aspect of his being.
This is a different scenario than what it used to be among us homo sapiens.
There is evidence in the earth, however, that in ages past, God's presence was experienced and conceived of amongst his people in way very different than what his minimal interface with us today would indicate.
In times of long ago, it seems that God was Big.
Which is to say, when humans strove to express their devotion to the Almighty, they did it in a big way. They built big structures for a big God.

We were in Europe a few weeks ago, traveling between three fascinating capitals, Vienna, Prague, and Budapest. Traipsing through such ancient cities was a real eye-opener for me. These old megalopoli are amazing in the eyes of a clueless American such as I, who was born and raised, you see, in a the "new world." I have discovered now that America truly is a new world, compared to this very old place.
In the new world we do have Big, but our Big is mostly applied to commercial stuff, like the Empire State building, Sears Tower, TransAmerica building, World Trade Cent--er, not that one. Anyway, we Americans developed Big Business, so we have built big buildings to express our big ideas about capitalism, and our big development projects and our big bank accounts.
In Europe, hundreds of years ago, Big was all about God. Let me show you what I mean. Here's a shot of the inside of the Cathedral that the Czechs built in Prague, at a complex called Prague Castle:

Pretty huge, huh?
You betcha. The Catholics worked on this thing for over 600 years before they got it finished. As you can surmise from the photo, the inside view of this structure is quite impressive, possibly incredible enough to even inspire the beholder's belief in God, or at least provoke a thought or two within the viewer's brain that God's non-existence is an unlikely proposition, since humans would go to so much time and expense to build such a place of worship for Him.
The outside is pretty impressive, too:

In the 21st-century, however, most folks, mostly tourists such as myself, walk around such places and snap pics on their phones, and maybe ooh and ahh a little bit at the remarkable immensity of human propensity to fill the God-shaped hole in our collective souls by going to all the time and trouble and blood and sweat and tears to erect such an edifice.
Surely they. . . we. . . would not do all that for a God who doesn't exist.
In the olden times, when believers would gather together in this place and others like it, they would attend masses that were performed by priests, and they would pray to God and pray at God and receive communion and then be dismissed by the priest to go back to their humble domiciles and live their simple lives. That's what doing church was all about back in the middle ages when the construction of this Catholic temple was begun.
Nowadays, though, doing church is typically more like what these folks were doing in Vienna, on a typical summer Monday morning,

lingering outside the incredibly impressive superstructure of the cathedral, buying trinkets, snapping pics, sipping coffee, then going inside and oohing and aahing at the hugely structured religion, or excuse me, the the huge religious structure, and whispering to their companions, admonishing them to be quiet so as not to disturb those Catholic worshippers who are up there in the front as we speak doing their religious thing. . .
Apparently that's "doing church" in the 21st century.
But for the worshippers in that sancturarial up-front, whatever transpires mysteriously in that hollowness between the congregants and their risen Saviour is not the same as whatever we tourists are doing in the periphery as we gaze up at the distant ceiling.
I do wonder what's going on up there. It's a long way up. Incredible what men and God can do when they put their souls to it.

King of Soul

Fifth Dimension

If you are looking for a better way of life--a city, perhaps, or a country, in which plenty of good stuff replaces the deficiencies and poverties of this present arrangement. . . if you are thinking, perhaps wishing, for a nation or kingdom in which justice prevails instead of corruption and all is well instead of screwed-up, the only way you can find such a ridiculous thing as that is to first believe that it does exist somewhere.

Or believe that it can exist.

Now if you can believe that, if you already do believe it, then your mind, your soul, is operating in a realm that is beyond the world that we know and live in and walk around in every day.

Take a look at the device on which you are presently reading this message. Over on the right side of your electronic view is a vertical line; it is the edge of the screen. At the top of that line is a pixel, or point, positioned in the upper right corner of your screen. From that point, look downward along that straight line until your attention is placed directly on the point at the very bottom corner of the screen.

Now your mind has conceived a straight, vertical line. It represents one dimension of your view, that dimension being what we shall define as "height."

From that point at which your mind arrived at the right-lower corner of your screen, train your eye along the bottom edge, so you are viewing a straight, horizontal line extended between that corner and the one on the bottom-left. Now that you have conceived that horizontal line, you have arrived at the idea of a third dimension, which we shall define as "width."

Now imagine.

Imagine--as you ponder that pixel-point in the left-lower corner of your screen--imagine another line, beginning at that point and extending through airspace directly to your left eye. Now you have conceived the idea of a third dimension, which we shall define as "depth."

Next, consider that from your original starting-point--which began from the top-right and then went from there to the lower-right and then over to the lower left and then directly from the screen to your eye--consider that it took a little while for your eye to perform all that viewing. Now your mind has arrived at an idea of a fourth dimension, which we shall define as "time."

Now consider this:

There is a whole universe out there, far beyond the confines of that line on the right side of your device, far beyond the bottom edge of your screen, and extending far, far beyond the distance from your screen to your eye. Furthermore, this universe has existed for a much longer time than you can conceive or imagine. Within this universe you can find some quite amazing developments. Take, for instance, this:

Now if you can plant a seed from which such a wonder as this can be brought into existence--far surpassing, in its complexity and beauty, the simplicity of these straight lines you just pondered, and far surpassing our simple concepts of height, width, depth and time by which we thought rationally about these phenomena, and if you can understand that this rose will grow and bloom, and if you can appreciate that people who pass by may marvel at its beauty, and they will wonder how such a beautiful thing could arise from the mere dirt of this earth.

If you suppose that just maybe this did not just happen through the natural processes of this physical world, but rather that there is-- preceding it all and activating all--there is a sentient creator who conceived it all and then caused it all to happen and then allowed you to enter into it and be astounded at the beauty and wonder of it all, and if you can believe that you yourself can enter into this creative vortex by the power of God and participate in that creation. . .

. . . then you have entered into the realm of the fifth dimension, which we shall define as "faith."

Welcome to the kingdom of God.



Glass half-Full

A King's prayer

Oh God, how my adversaries have increased!

Many are rising up against me.

Many are saying of my soul, "there is no deliverance for him in God."

I'm just thinking about this, and praying.

But you, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the One who lifts my head.

I was crying to the Lord with my voice, and He answered me from his holy mountain.

I'm just thinking about this, and praying.

I lay down and slept; I awoke, for the Lord sustains me.

I will not be afraid, even if ten thousands of people have set themselves all around me.

Arise, O Lord; save me, O my God!

For you have slapped all my enemies in the face. You strike the wicked people.

I know this: salvation comes from you, Lord.

Your blessing be upon your people!.

Man and God

Whose walls these are I haven't a clue;

it looks like somebody didn't know what to do.

Maybe there was some death, bankruptcy, or divorce

that set this place on a ruinous course.



What man has built but then failed to care

soon falls to ruin and disrepair,

while God's handiwork is faithfully maintained:

a rising, setting sun so constantly sustained.

Glass half-Full

The Lightning! the Thunder!

You know that feeling you get when you're caught unprepared out in the open air, maybe in a field or a park, by a summer thunderstorm--

it's a very sudden, primordial thrill.

The clouds have quickly moved in as if there're taking over the world. In the space of a few minutes the sky turns dark and foreboding; billowing mounds of gray sky-madness roll up like war drums of weather. The wind kicks up and you can feel the barometric pressure dropping a mile a minute. Dashing instinctually for cover, you are catapulted into a mode of being that is primitive, as if your breathing life could at any moment be zapped into silent non-being.

Suddenly, time and the earth stand still for a moment while an unearthly presence splits the air, seizing control of everything all around: a flash.

Lightning!

A moment passes. Thunder! The earth trembles!

And a mere man is fear-stricken in shock and awe!

If you were a Neanderthal, you'd feel the dark sky-spirit hang momentarily upon your very life like a death-weight around your neck;

or an ancient Viking-- suspended in the midst of a fiery Thor visitation;

or like Elihu of ancient days, who later spoke to his friend Job of such fearful moments:

"At this my heart trembles, and leaps from its place.

Listen closely to the thunder of His voice,

and the rumbling that goes out from His mouth.

Under the whole heaven He lets it loose,

and His lightning to the ends of the earth.

After it, a voice roars; He thunders with His majestic voice,

and He does not restrain the lightnings when His voice is heard.

God thunders with His voice wondrously,

doing great things which we cannot comprehend!"

Or, if you dare not admit to the God thing, and maintain your life studiously suspended in a calculated state of self-trained unbelief, then

you process all this dazzlingly extreme stimuli, arriving promptly at an analytical conclusion about what just happened, and you find yourself relieved that you have just emerged from a condition in which a luminous discharge of electric charges between clouds, and between clouds and earth, through which the path is found by the leader stroke, and the main discharge follows instantaneously along an ionized path, followed by a crackling, booming or rumbling noise which accompanies the flash, and you understand inductively that the noise has its origins in the violent thermal changes accompanying the electrical discharge, which causes non-periodic wave disturbances in the air, and it may even seem that

all hell has broken loose!

Or, if you were the original rock musician, Antonio Vivaldi, translating, back in 1725 A.D., our mysterious storm-crossed experience into an electrifying concerto of stringed instruments performed through a notated snippet of music which you have named Summer, and prefaced the work upon the written score with these few lines of poetic explanation:

"The shepherd boy cries out, frightened of the storm and of his fate.

He stirs his weary limbs for fear of the ferocious lightning and swarms of gnats and flies.

Ah, his fears are all too justified, for thunder shakes the

heavens and breaks down the corn!"

Then your musically arranged memory of the event would feel something this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g65oWFMSoK0



Glass Chimera

Blood runs through it

It not very often that a man can see

such a sight as this little nest in a tree

woven among branches, for free.

An ole fella showed it to me.



One of those rusty little robin mamas hath done this;

She been hoppin around on grass

pluckin up worms and strands and God only knows

what all she be extractin for these little critters to eat.



Why just a little while back

when I was achin for spring to pop out

she come hoppin around like she own the place.

Now look what she done.



As I look at this wonder in the tree

three little miracles do I see:

that tweeky yellow beak, fully formed it seems to me,

quite prickly in the midst of that soft bird infancy,



and a fat vessel where birdie's red blood I see

in this miniscule critter balled up in sibling idiocy

as these clueless hatchlings await their turn

to grab from mama beak a big fat worm,

or two.

Who knew?



And number three wonder is the vigilant care

with which mama robin hath woven this nest so fair.

She must really love them little critters in there,

dispensing her care from out of thin air.



Now somewhere deep in my memory

someone said only God can make a tree;

now I'm amazed he grew this tree here for me

so I can view such new life from mama birdie.



Glass Chimera

The Interface of Light and Matter in Costa Rica

In my freshman philosophy class, Dr. Henderson used the word "anthropomorphic" to describe Man's tendency to form a notion of God into his own human image. That is to say, we make God out to be human, or like a human, because that's all we know.
After 44 years later of pondering this and living the wonderful life God hath provided, I prefer the Torahic approach to conceiving what God is like. Torah, or Genesis, says God made Man in His own image. God was expressing himself when created all things, including humans. If we see human characteristics in his handiwork, it's because God intended for us to see that he was expressing himself through creation, just like we do.
God is an artist, like me.
Those artistic tendencies that he developed within me are what enable me to appreciate the Artist that He is.
Here is an example:

Nice work, n'est ce pa? I like this better than, say, Mondrian, Pollock or Warhol. And it's almost as interesting as Wyeth or Monet.
Here's another, with a little more background, like DaVinci adding background to Mona's portrait:

Sometimes, God takes his brush and turns it downward with a little perpendicular slash, like Van Gogh:

Other times, God uses his electromagnetic energy to separate Light from Dark, like he did in the Beginning:

Every now and then, we see a microcosmic image that resembles a larger microcosm. Here's one that reminds me of an airplane view I got once, over Utah, or maybe it was Nevada.

Another good thing about the Original Artist: He like to use his critters to help make the work interesting. Here's one where the sand critters do their thing:

Pretty interesting, n'est ce pas? That's enough for today's gallery. Time for dinner. I think Pat's throwing a salad together with celery or broccoli, maybe parsley. (wacplnts)

But listen! What Victorious hailing rings from yon beach bar? It is celebration! Costa Rica has defeated Greece in World Cup soccer! That "V" in picture above takes on a new meaning here in Costa Rica. Viva Costa Rica!

Glass Chimera

A Strand of Providence

One of my favorite things to do in this life is visiting the sea strand. The beach. While growing up in Louisiana and Mississippi, our family had many excursions with fond memories to the Gulf Coast at Mississippi and Florida.

After graduation from LSU in 1973, I took a job in Florida and moved to St. Petersburg.

In my year-and-a half stay there I spent many days and hours at the beach, becoming intimately familiar with that setting--that expression of nature's wonders.

Through many hours of studying the interaction of tidal water and surf-sand, I noticed a few things about the cycles of our life existence.

In the forty years since that Florida time I have visited many beaches throughout the world, from Calabash to Rockaway to Dover and Calais, from Hawaii to China, from Tel Aviv to Cayman to California and Carolina. I love experiencing beaches. Doesn't everyone?

Today is our first morning in Costa Rica. We got into Liberia airport, then drove to Tamarindo, on the Pacific. So of course I got up early and walked a few hundred yards to the beach. Perfect beach: wide, flat, smooth with very pacific waves, arranged in a classic half-moon arc with nearby low mountains in the distance. Clear morning, not yet hot.

As has happened on may beaches before, the first thing I notice while approaching the surf is that cycle of dark and light bands of sand at the water's edge, where the waves roll in gently and do their artwork in the sand. My favorite beach characteristic to notice and contemplate.

I consider these waves, their perpetual rearrangement of the sand grains, and it takes me back to the time when I first began to notice this universal cycle, back in St. Petersburg. A meditation on nature to revisit. I think I'll linger for awhile.

Being a civilized animal, I prefer to sit in a chair while thinking. So I go back to the condo and get one.

A few minutes later I am sitting in the chair at the water's edge, considering the ocean, the sand, the wave motions and their visual record of rearranging dark and light bands of sand, the cycles they indicate or perhaps represent, the universe, God, and ignorant armies clashing by night and Dover Beach and all that stuff.

I think the first level of such thought/meditation is analytical. Is that natural to me as a man, or is it an acquired habit? just something I was taught to do in school? I don't know. Put that layer of analysis back in a file somewhere in my head and wait for the deeper, experiential level. I am looking at the Pacific beach, which is right in front of me now.

Wait a minute. What about all the stuff of my life that came before?

Now I am a Christian, have been since 1979, or maybe even before that when I was raised Catholic. So, to base my analyses and judgements about life, its consequences, priorities and outcomes, etc on an ancient Revelation, the Bible, the church--what is that? How does that affect any objective analysis I may attempt? Well, sure it does.

Hey, It's what I am. I was born into a specific place and time, with all the cultural baggage thereof.But let's not get too analytical. By grounding my judgements on my own experience as well as ancient Revelation that was handed down to me through the ages, I am utilizing the best of both worlds-- the experience of those prophets of old, primarily Jesus himself, as well as my own experience.

Now, back to the here and now. Over here in the sand, dark bands are alternating with light. There is some kind of cycle going on here, some kind of process. Been going on a long time, seems to be universal. Seeing that cycle of sand bands with my eyes is objective. Relating them to other life cycles is subjective. Can I do otherwise? No matter what theses, hypotheses, or conclusions I come to, I am a subjective man, and I will make use, in this life, of both the objective truth that is really out there, the cumulative wisdom of other men/women, and my subjective experience and evaluation of it. I'm going for the best of them all. Do I have any other choice? My options are limited.

To be human means to understand that our options are limited, so we would do well to make the best of them. Rather than dwelling on what we don't understand, consider and act upon what we do find to be true and workable.

By the way, and I didn't tell you this before. Yesterday, I experienced the worst pain I have ever had in my life. This was no small thing for me, although in the big picture it is insignificant. It's over now. That's the main thing. But the pain experience has produced an aftermath.

How did this pain happen? I had had a bout with walking pneumonia or something like it before we left North Carolina. My head was all stopped up with mucous or sinus fluid or whatever that stuff is that's stuck in your head when you've got a cold. While were in the plane descending to Costa Rica, I had the most terrible half-hour of pain in my life, because I had not done the cold medications effectively.

Now this is getting pretty dam subjective, talking about pain and my health condition, like the 62-year-old-geezer that I have become. I hate it, don't want to go that route. I'm not stuck in the wheelchair at the nursing home yet. So fuhgedaboudit.

But I do have to say something about all that physical health report stuff, because there is a lesson in it.

So I'm sitting here on the strand with my old thoughts about the universality of the surf and sand, and my right ear is still clogged with that stuff from yesterday's struggle against walking pneumonia. I've been trying for days now to get rid of that mucous.

I tilt my head to the right. Something--a liquid--shifts inside my head, and suddenly I can hear more clearly.

Thanks be to God!

Maybe you think that crediting God for such deliverance from pain is a naive assumption. Who cares? It's my life, my ear, pain. I will deal with it. I am not only going to thank God for this little relief that came in the tilting of a head,in the blinking of an eye, but I am going to use my God-given hands to begin to solve the problem.

What will happen if I gently put my little finger in my ear and manipulate that ear canal ever-so-slightly while my head is tilted? Could such intervention, perhaps, release some of the fluid from the ear and thus alleviate some pain? I'll try it.

I do it.

It works! Clogged ear now clearer than it was.

Praise be to God. Thank you Jesus!

Pretty subjective response, I know--this burst of grateful praise, but I'll gratefully accept the little strand of divine deliverance, even though I was the one who administered it.

Now, as for conclusions and evaluations about this insignificant event while contemplating sand, waves and the universe:

The cycle of pain and absence of pain--it comes; it goes. When the pain comes, it's hell on earth, but when it's gone--Thank you, God. A man's gotta roll with the tide. I'll take it. Not bad for a Friday morning.

Glass half-Full

The Apple Moment

Who knows how many lifetimes ago the Appalachian mountains laid this little stream down between these two ridges.

This afternoon in bright spring sunshine, flowing waters roll softly over mica-laden silt. Here and there the ripples leap over smooth stones, gushing as they go.

It's just a small stream here, but clear, cold water has trickled along this valley's lowest path for centuries.

The creek is not a wild one now; it's been domesticated. Lawn grass, now vibrant with spring greening, extends through the surrounding slopes down to the water's edge. But the peaceful waters still render it, for visitors and passersby, a welcome respite from nearby human habitations. Overhead, the maples, locust trees and shrubs are sprouting leaves. Spring is here at last.

A cluster of two-story apartment buildings adjoin the stream. A street winds pragmatically through the well-planned site. Beside the shady street, which is reasonably quiet most of the time, a wooden landscaped ledge displays low juniper foliage.

I am walking through dappled sunshine below the ledge, which is about four feet high. There between two junipers next to the timbered ledge I see an apple on the ground. It's very red atop the brown bark mulch. Somebody has dropped this apple.

So I pick it up. I am the maintenance man here. Whose is it? Its a store-bought apple. Maybe I'll return it to its owner, or maybe I'll just take a bite of it. But no! There's a big rotten spot on it.

On second thought, because the bad spot occupies about half the apple, I will not eat it, I'm not hungry in mid-afternoon, and surely nobody else wants this apple either. That's probably why its here on the ground by the road.

What shall I do with it?

I will throw this apple. What the heck. This is the first real spring day here in the Blue Ridge. I'll just go crazy like a March hare and throw it and let it smash. Spring practice.

Where shall I throw it?

There's the stream over there, gurgling through the shade and the spotty sunshine about thirty yards away. Maybe some baby trouts would enjoy this apple if it smashes in their watery domain.

I look at the stream. In an instant, my eyes settle on a specific spot in the stream, where water is gurgling over rounded stones. I raise my arm and cock it back like the center-fielder that I was many and many year ago in little league back in the day, and I hurl the apple over at the stream.

It strikes the water with a splash, exactly where I was looking on the water's surface. How did I do that?

I haven't thrown anything in a coon's age. I have not been practicing this. I'm 62. I wasn't even aiming. I was just. . . throwing an unplanned apple on a day in May.

Doesn't everybody throw an apple, or something, in the spring time just to, just for the sake of . . .

It wasn't my mind that did this. It was a sudden, impetuous act, with no purpose. I didn't even think about it. My arm and my brain managed, intuitively, to retrieve some ancient muscular memory from baseball or from skipping stones or . . . it landed exactly where my eyes were focused.

To what do I attribute such intuitive finesse? Is it evolution that preserved within me this unprecedented, unplanned mastery? Hurling a found object across a trajectory in such an arc of indeterminate accuracy that it splashed exactly where my eyes had imagined it would?

Am a genius? Maybe an idiot savant?

Well, no. And I don't think such a wondrous accomplishment as this is attributable to mere evolution.

My belief is: I know there is a God; God did it. Surely I myself could not have pulled off such a thing. God conceived and formed my DNA and my bones and my muscles that cling to those bones, and my neurons that connect up to my brain that commands my arm and coordinates its movements with my eyes, and my depth perception and a hastily-improvised assessment of the appropriate arc of the purposeless apple projectile and the weight of the apple with air resistance and sunshine and springtime and suddenly for no reason whatsoever there it is splashing in the millennial stream.

Surely God hath done this thing with the apple!

But why did I do such a crazy deed as hurling an apple at a creek when I was supposed to be doing my maintenance man job?

A few hours later, I'm thinking maybe my exuberant toss happened because I was jubilant, having just heard Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue on the radio, or having just realized that it was was a springtime day such as this 350 years ago when Isaac Newton noticed that an apple dropped from a tree and the rest is history and history is being made as we speak.

Glass Chimera

Kai kai Kauai

Surfy shimmer late afternoon slant light
hath revealed glimmering
truth that midday overlooked,
as each wave topples in from aquamarine bliss
blasting gold and magic disappearish foam upon the beach.
Silvery rumpled water plane retreats back to sea
leaving sheen that descends into coarse brownsand,
mottled with micro rivulets crisscrossing intersecting
as multiple mini-sandstorms settle from their infinite mini-maelstroms
upon this shore,
racing, streaking wavelets o'er the smoothness of ancient speckled sands
where sandstonish texture takes over as crystalish water is disappearing
constantly and forever
and ever and amen
according to shapeshifting strand line as erratic as
a dowjones database
Jackie Paper will sail no more on this particular
day
but the sun sets down its golden splashes same as
it always has since
God only knows when.

Glass half-Full

The Path

After I had passed through the dark time

I came around a bend

and there ahead of me

was a bright path.

Then I knew my Creator

had brought me through,

and there would be goodness ahead.

I could see the light

scattered among those shadowy branches.

I turned and looked behind me,

down at the trail already trod

and knew the brightness

had been there all along,

though the morning fog

had obscured my view.

The light is there as I see it,

and yet it was there when I could not.

Thank God I knew

and now I could go on.

Glass half-Full

The Smile

What was God up to

when he came up with this smile thing?

--when it was implanted

within the potentiality of any man, any woman,

any child, or in each and every oldster--

this capacity to instantly broadcast

Joy!

and then project that joy across space,

and time,

sowing contentment like seed corn

into the swirly-world fields of people and places.

Here comes one now-- an unexpected smile that

lands suddenly upon my stony day.



What in heaven's name was Creator intending,

by positioning at the corners of any living human mouth,

or in just any wagging bouche or yapping trap,

this little trickle,

this glistening trace element

of radiant happytude; it shines

through the air, and boldly accross errant cares,

leaping out at us like it owns the place.

What a forcefield of fulfillment,

this silent manifestation of mirthy music!

How could such insignificant little corners of a person's

upturned lips,

dancing with the wrinkly corners of their bright eyes

ever so gracefully--

how could this facial arrangement display

such uninhibited sparkle

such irrefutable iris gleams?

How could this smile leap forth so freely

to disable nearby gloom

and decimate delinquent dismay?

So unashamedly is this random joy

flung at us passersby,

as if to smother with contentment our alienation, outperforming our angst,

destroying our dread,

trumping our worry, like some ace of hearts hidden beneath love's sleeve.



See the waitress over there

hispanic looking gal--

she doesn't even need to

do the lips maneuver,

doesn't even need to turn on a residual sparkle.

Her countenance, by some indeterminate power,

radiates well-being

before the mouth even catches up.

How does she do that?

Wonder what God was up to, enacting

this sublime power of the smile.

Look! There it flashes again.


Glass half-Full

Intelligence and/or Faith

Intelligence and faith are not mutually exclusive. To compare them is to compare apples with oranges.

Intelligence is limited, and this fact must be acknowledged by those who believe that their accumulation of it is infinite.

Faith, on the other hand, assumes the limitations of knowledge, and accepts the reality that we live in a universe that requires explanation.

So let us explain. And, for the sake of explanation, let us define.

Intelligence is the systematic application of information that has been observed and gathered, to problem-solving.

Faith is the evidence of things not seen, and the substance of things hoped for.

Say what?

What are my sources, you may ask, for these two definitions? The intelligence definition I wrote from my own observation and experience. The faith definition I found in the Bible, Hebrews 11:1.

I am not trying, necessarily to be logical here, merely sensible; there is a difference between the two. I do not believe that logic is absolutely foolproof, but then faith isn't either. So this fool tries to utilize both; let's be sensible here.

An intelligent person wants to know what is correct; a faithful person wants to act correctly.

I'm shooting from the hip here, as usual. Using myself as an example, say, I would say this about me: I am an intelligent person whose functional life is grounded in faith.

What does my intelligence tell me? It informs me that I live in a physical world that requires me to process information in order to live and function every day. There is DNA, and there is physical life that results from it, which includes me.



My intelligence raises an infinity of questions, always will. There's no end to it. How many centuries did people believe that the earth was flat and the sun revolves around the earth? A lot of centuries. Galileo and Kepler came along and, by their intelligent analysis, changed all that. Newton built a whole world of information and calculation around their discoveries. Einstein came later and changed all that again. Quantum mechanics on the brain, and auto mechanics on the road, so I can get to work tomorrow. Knowledge is limited, but ya gotta start somewhere.

Knowledge is limited. Get used to it. The Hubble telescope can assist our seeing, but only so far, and even then you don't know what you're looking at. Same thing in the other direction--microscopes. It takes a lot of work and research to find out what's going on up there in space, or down there in the cell, and then when we do find out some stuff, part of what we discover turns out to be wrong, and someone else eventually comes along with more reliable data.

I mean, look at Gates and Jobs: apples and oranges. I was tearing my hair out last night trying to integrate a new scanner/printer with our iMac so I could send a certain pdf in an email; the iMac wouldn't accept my brand new scanner. Was I screwing up? or Mac? Probably me. Can't blame Jobs. Nevertheless after an hour of frustration I went over to the old Dell with Word, and a different scanner, and worked the whole problem out, sent the pdf in the email. Go figure.

Knowledge is limited.

Is faith limited? Probably. It only goes as far as you and God will let it.

What does my faith tell me? There is a God, and I am not He. There is a code upon which physical life is constructed, and there is a Writer of the code. There is a tree of knowledge and there is a tree of life. One of them is fascinating; the other is productive. I'll leave you to decide which one you want to eat from. Probably both, if you're like me. But I know where my life comes from, and it aint the tree of knowledge.

CR, with new novel, Smoke, in progress